SICK

I called in sick to work today;
Sometimes that’s not so bad.
My head is stuffy;
My body’s achy;
My hands and legs are kinda shaky.
My eyes are weary and sort of blurry.
My sinuses, too, have started hurting.
My nose is dripping; my stomach bloated.
My cheeks, in fact, are kinda swollen.
With that, I called in sick.

I thought the average flu for sure.
Who wouldn’t with what I’ve got?
But something told me it was more than that
When I turned the TV on.

There were riots in Virginia.
There was looting in New York.
They were declaring martial law in towns I’d never heard before.

They were interviewing doctors who had learned of a disease,
And they mentioned that the plague began in Nashville, Tennessee.

Then they interviewed a patient who was pointing at his eyes. He said,
“There are spiders all around us!
They’ll lay their eggs inside us!
These spiders here are poisonous!”
Then he dropped his hands and died.

The doctor on the scene had spoke of symptoms that he knew. He said,
A stuffy head and body aches,
Your hands and legs will kinda shake.
Your eyes are weary and may be blurry.
There’s a chance your sinuses might be hurting.
Your nose is drippy, your stomach bloated,
And your cheeks are almost always swollen.
These symptoms are quite similar to the common cold or flu
And can quickly lead to suicide,
If you let it get to you.

In shock to hear the news, I felt I couldn’t watch no more!
But I will not take this lying down
And let them win this war!

So I drove down to the market, buying cans of spider spray.
And I purchased deadly foggers that will drive them all away.

I placed them all throughout the house, one hundred cans for sure,
And proceeded to ignite each one, and started on my cure.

I sat back down, inhaling deep, to fumigate their nests.
My eyes would swell, but what the hell--
No more will they infest!

I sat there watching TV as I grinned from ear to ear,
Shouting out to all those doctors, “Hey! The cure has started here!”

I started feeling dizzy and my knees came to the floor.
I could barely see the TV, and my sinuses were sore.
With every breath I took, I knew, I’d saved another life,
And the spider eggs within me will have no chance to multiply.

But then I noticed something that had taken me off guard …
A commercial telling parents
That this movie’s rated ‘R’.

Denying my stupidity, I tried crawling to the door,
But my pulse had dropped.
My heart had stopped.
My nerves had caused my eyes to pop.
And there I took my final breath and stared back at the screen
At the movie called Infection
Which was done infecting me.

They did a second autopsy, since I was thirty-three years old,
But they still ruled it a suicide—
Simply depressed from the common cold.