The Boy with the Rats

The boy with the rats was blonde, skinny. I don’t know why he brought them.

I wasn’t even sure just where the hell I was.

I was lying on a couch when a small, furry thing jumped up at my knuckles. I felt the small, stinging bites, and I smacked it in its rear. It turned, revealing the long, skinny tail.

I had thought initially it was a cat.

The boy had cheesy, freckled skin and looked as if he weighed ninety pounds. There were deep rings of guilt rounding his frightened, sleepless eyes.

I told him to take his pets away. I couldn’t tolerate them. They moved like lumps of furry black in the shadowed corners. So he herded them behind bedroom doors—and I thought there might be something symbolic there.

It was an infestation par excellence.

The bedroom door had a gap beneath it big enough to thrust an infant through. I knew that wasn’t going to stop the rats, certainly.

But, appearing suddenly, as if in a vision of holiness wherein we break on through but don’t pass under a door to the other side, was JIM.

James Douglas Morrison.

I asked him for a cigarette. He summed up the room with a practiced aplomb. And all about us was shadow, and love.

And I don’t have to talk anymore.

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"Molotov: Poems" is the first published collection of experimental poetry by musician and outsider artist Tom Baker, exploring dreams, nightmares, and subconscious visions.

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