Did you know that:
1. Dried-up lice have been found on the hair of Egyptian mummies?
2. In northern Siberia, young women showed their affection for young men by throwing their lice at them?
3.In Tonga, it was sign of duty to one’s parents to capture and consume their lice?

A rather fascinating history of lice can be found at http://www.lice.com/clearcare/history.html

To A Louse
Robert Burns
Ha! Where are you going, you crawling wonder?
Your impudence protects you sorely,
I can not say but you swagger rarely
Over gauze and lace,
Though faith! I fear you dine but sparingly
On such a place

You ugly, creeping, blasted wonder,
Detested, shunned by saint and sinner,
How dare you set your foot upon her -
Such fine a lady!
Go somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body

Off! in some beggar's temples squat:
There you may creep, and sprawl, and scramble,
With other kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Where horn nor bone never dare unsettle
Your thick plantations

Now hold you there! you are out of sight,
Below the falderals, snug and tight;
No, faith you yet! you will not be right,
Until you have got on it ---
The very topmost, towering height
Of misses bonnet.

My sooth! right bold you set your nose out,
As plump and gray as any gooseberry:
O for some rank, mercurial resin,
Or deadly, red powder,
I would give you such a hearty dose of it,
Would dress your breech!

I would not have been surprised to spy
You on an old wife's flannel cap:
Or maybe some small ragged boy,
On his undervest;
But Miss's fine balloon bonnet! fye!
How dare you do it.

O Jenny do not toss your head,
And set your beauties all abroad!
You little know what cursed speed
The blastie's making!
Those winks and finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takiing!

O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!

The Lice-Seekers
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
When, full of red torment, the child's troubled head
entreats the white swarm of shadowy dreams,
two gentle grown-up sisters come up to his bed
with fragile fingers like silver-tipped machines.

Before a casement window they sit the child down,
a window open wide to where the azure air
bathes a tangle of flowers, and upon his tousled crown
their terrible, fine fingers move with magical care.

He listens to the sighing of their apprehensive breath
which smells of the long honeys of the fecund earth,
interrupted now and then by a subtle hiss:
saliva caught on the lip - or desire for a kiss.

He hears their dark eyelashes flicker overhead
in the sweet-smelling silence, and their sovereign fingers, sweet,
electric in his languidness meet
in a crackle: little lice are dead.

And their rises in him the wine of listlessness,
delirium-inducing accordion-sigh.
He feels with the slowness of each careful caress
endlessly surging and ebbing the desire to cry.

Swahili Poem
BY Lyndon Harries
The Poem of the Poor Man
A poor man knows not
how to eat with a rich man
if he begin to eat fish
he eats the head.
Invite a poor man
and he comes disreputably
he comes licking his lips
he is an upsetter of the platter.
The poor man has no reserve
if he is called he comes
with the blood of lice
in his fingernails.
The face of a poor man
is furrowed
by hunger and thirst
that is in his vitals.
Poverty is no state
fit for mortal man
it makes him a beast
to be fed upon grass.
Poverty is no right thing
when a man gets it
though he be nobly born
he has no power with God.

Untitled by Mathilde

When I was a little girl I thought
a bogey lived under my bed.
Now I know
it does not exist.
When I grow up
I want to take care of dogs.
I wish in future
a happy family
without lice
a good house
a sweet dog
a big car
and some good children.

Itchy Yet?