Cockroaches Eat.

[Quixilated]

Hello Alston Towers,
You asked for interpretations as a frame of reference, so I'll give it a shot. Be prepared that going into this I'm going to butcher it, for understanding the obscure is not my forte. However, something in your author's note made it sound like a riddle, and I love riddles and couldn't help attempting it. I have actually been attempting to discover the meaning to some of the references by scouring the internet. I don't keep up with current affairs, and I feel like some of these images refer to specific moments or situations. So, from a completely sheltered, average joe point of view, this is what it means.
Apologies in advance,
Quix

Cockroaches, eat.

1. Come close to the winding steps beneath the
2. wishing-well, wish
3. to being well: long live livelihood good times
4. childhood for all.
5. Retrograde retrotectonick electronic colours
7. in a faded Da Vinci,
8. smiling, always smiling, forever smiling,
9. endlessmorelessmoreless.
10.Fell sleep, bright nightmares create frustrated
11.fell sleep.
12.Gas in the sky limpid pink burning skin
13.the man taps away on
14.burning phone gases in your pocket
15.burning leg burning cells
16.in your meat: your human meat.
17.Eat meat eat the crows eat the sheep eat the horses eat the cats
18.eat the dogs and the cockroaches, eat.
19.Twelve hundred and ninety three pounds
20.forty even pence
21.glowing bitten apple in shop that sells coffee
22.dry sand chafed foot dark scars
23.in the ground, holes, ground belly, mud
24.collects
25.dark spring, dark bud of life and coffee shops.
26.Escape, get out get free get past
27.spleenstealers childstuffing fingercracking
28.spleenstealers.
29.Baby on a beach, dead.


I suppose what I'm most curious about is if the meaning is too obscure: I'd quite like your interpretations as a measuring tool. I'm quite new to this.

1. Looked up wishing wells with winding steps and nothing specific really turned up save many pictures of wells. However the most famous wishing well is the Trevi Fountain, so if this is a specific reference to a specific well, I'll guess that one.
2. There is a persistent theme of health vs. sickness throughout the piece. I couln't figure out the meaning as a whole, but I'd be willing to bet it has something to do with sickness, or the ills of society or some such.
3. again with wellness ...
4. This line stands out to me. The use of the word "childhood" as opposed to the standard "youth" (as in fountain of youth etc.) makes me stop and take notice. Why childhood. Does it allude to happier times, or the simplicity and honesty of childhood. Is it a sarcastic reference to the trend of "childhood" egocentrism lasting well into the thirties these days?
5. I have no idea. I tried to look up retrotectonick and only found several websites in another language where the only word I could make out was Belgium. For the life of me I can't fathom what this line means. Is it wrong that I like it anyway, simply because it has a fantastic sound?
7. If we are sticking with an overarching health theme, this could be a reference to Italy's cancer awereness campaign using a bald Mona Lisa.
8. It's the smiling combinded with DaVinci that leads to Ms. Lisa.
9. I don't know.
10.Love this line. Don't know if there's anything I'm supposed to read into it, but love it nonetheless.
11.
12.Polution causeing ozone damage and now we get sunburns? Once again referencing health/illness.
13.
14.A friend of mine recently told me cell phones cause cancer. So that is all I could see in these lines. I don't know if I would have seen something else before she said that, but now it's blinding me to any other meaning.
15.we all keep our cancer causing phones in our pocket. This is also relevent to the health theme.
16.gross, but awesome.
17.And here we are leading up to the title line, but it is also where I feel the most lost. I just don't know.
18.This is the title line, so it has to hold some meaning, but I can't fit the pieces together.
19. I looked this number up in case it had some sort of culteral reference. I found nothing of use. I'm guessing this might be the price of a phone or lap top? I don't know the conversion rate lbs to dollars, so how much money that is lost on me.
20.
21.Basically an apple computer or i Phone in a starbucks. But I don't know why. The bitten apple could be a double image and also reference the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. If we stick with the phone=cancer thing, then wanting the phone brings death just as biting the apple brough death ... ? We are so dazzled by the attractions technology offers that we ignore the health warning, "you will surely die"
22.I have no idea.
23.I have no idea, unless it's a grave.
24.
25.Is "bud of life" another eden reference? Coffee is bad for some parts of you, so it could be another wanting to eath the death fruit. OR recent studies have found that coffee helps prevent some types of cancer, so is drinking the coffee symbolic of eating from the tree of life?
26.Escape, get out get free get past
27.I have no idea.
28.??
29.A striking image to end with. If it is a culteral reference, I will never know because I am not googling that. But since we began with wishing for childhood and we've dabbled with various illnesses, I"m sure it has something to do with the overall theme. Perhaps that no matter how hard we try, we can't hold on to childhood???

I loved working on this. Whether I got anything right, or totally went overboard and listed you some serious nonsense, either way, the poem is fun, intriguing, shocking, and contains unforgettable elements. I wish I could help offer suggestions, but you have to know what the sentence means before you can tell the person how to fix it. Look forward to reading the next one!

--Quix