He lived in this ugly old slum
and uglier than him there were none.
With his black carapace
and his pincer-filled face –
though he was dearly loved by his mum.
Another twisted idiom from Italian, this time the Neapolitan ‘Ogni scarrafon’è (b)bello a mammà soja’, literally translated as ‘Even a cockroach is beautiful to its mum’. Not too far from ‘Face only a mother could love’, really.
Alex Valente fyi 
Are cockroaches ugly though? I just think people don’t like them. Most insects are amazing when you look at them closely. Obviously that does slightly miss the point of this piece, which I enjoyed! 🙂
I do not the idioms make, just twist them. 😀