Dancing Dark Spiders [a Poetic Mytho]



Dancing Dark Spiders

Part I

The Dark Thick

The sun raised over the top of the Galapagos, pouring down a tide of brilliant, gleaming sunlight: involuntary motions, deliriums: riddled the jungle, and my puzzled-entangled brain—.

Down, down and around the tributaries—it seemed the slow current lead my vessel: filled with night’s goblin-faces—; obscure dimness, riding high, high as leering faces nearby—from somber trees: whispered: ‘Death is painted dark and thick, we are the dancing spiders of the haunting trees of the Galapagos.’

The walls, embankments of the islands threatened to crush my little vessel—as it pushed and shoved, hugged and threw, tossed and blew, blew us two on board, to the islands shores. Boa-like roots stretched from tree to tree—all seemingly reaching, reaching like littered snakes—everywhere: here and there; reaching like broken toes, coiled looped-ropes over one another.

It was as though the plants were alive: as they enveloped us two—us two invaders, now side by side, with the humming hawks, and Lava Lizards; Marine Iguanas singing; giant prickly-pear cactus—cactus’—everywhere; crabs, Sea Lions all about, penguins, gulls. The foliage, undergrowth, twisted around our torsos, eyeballs; clinging, clinging to our throats, blinding us at times: choking, choking us, like frozen mimes.

Rambled my wife: “Look, look at the dark spiders dancing, dancing on the root?” Pointing to a tree; hence, in a hole came out two larger spiders, dancing, dancing—hypnotically!

(There isn’t much to tell: they jumped on top of her, and sucked out, out from her pours—the marrow from her bones, her cranium; she was, was as empty as an empty pot now; Ambrosia should not have looked.)

Odd as it was—next: the long-black thick dark spiders, climbed, climbed the roots of the tree, to get a better look at me; looking, just looking at my eyeballs, looking hypnotically (my mate dead, as dead can be) just eyeballs! Uncontrollable convulsions began—for never, never before had a man, a man walked upon these sands, my eye-sockets now hollow…for they had jumped within.

Part II

Delirious Drifting

It was not a nightmare he assured himself, with fever and all; unmistakably, he was alive—alas, his wife wasn’t.

(His delirious sounding voice continued with the story to the doctors.)

And so it was, in the jungle he was lost, no sight, no eyes, and broken toes— swatting flies wherever he’d go. “The boat!” he found the boat. Down and around the islands he did float. Dead inside his eyes, his, his eye-sockets, now a spiders’ nest, whom nestled within his internal brow ridges: dragging, chewing his bones; sucking up the yolk of his eyes; dragging his sight—castrating his cranial lobes. After all this, all this—he could but hazily see— through his hanging veins and webs, and the roof of his brows.

(An island that sunk and rose at dawn: he had been on; a demonic island, where spiders gave birth to hell’s henchmen.)

An illness now was befalling Ambrose Ashton Keats—befalling him like a dying thief; rigidly he tossed and turned, hands clasping, gripping all he felt within the boat: his knees clutching to the seat—.

His monstrous eye-sockets looked like deep-hollow pale-red caves; with demonic spiders orange and red—looking out upon his knees.

More appalling than this, if possible, his toes grew into web like toads, demonic things. And then as he sailed across the sea, he tried to sleep—; thus, dreaming of his sweetheart, he’d never again see. Yet dazzled within, within his brain, were spiders weaving, weaving their malicious game; excreting demonic beings; while screaming with birth like pains; screams that fled from vein to vein; hence, the birth of Buer and Gusoyn—henchmen from hell was arranged.

[The victim’s hypothesis was new to the doctors, as Mr. Keats tried to explain.]

The current in the sea had grown wilder—as he vainly looked, looked out and about for landmarks—just jungle islands were all he saw; hopelessly stranded in his boat—; with an ebbing fever, his mind shifting to and fro, devouring raw fish, floating, just floating.

(Said a doctor within the team “This is surely not a dream, nor an earthly thing, could it not be from an alien world? Or perhaps, remotely I say—perhaps, a demonic tenure?”)

Part III

Paroxysms

[As he and his boat drifts aimlessly within the sea]

Automatic twitching, convulsions—spider-webs weaved, laced within his eye-sockets; bony-bloody sockets, raw wired to see what was not meant to be for human-beings. He wipes them clean, recklessly. He is like branches on trees: swaying, falling—being tossed back and forth, to and fro, inside his boat. His heart beat vile, yet a prayer never leaves his lips. He grabs his composure—ill willed, fevered and all, drifting, just drifting—time has left his brow like an elapse; insects now crushing his face, trying to enter his hollow as he swats and swats them—food for the spiders, as they drift upon the sea of peacock green.

[His mind is like a melting glacier, losing consciousness; as he looks, and drifts about.]

The moon was low in the heavens, coiled serpent shadows: leaping, jumping all around his vessel—or so it seemed—grotesquely. Like an army escort—they pulled his boat to shore.

Self-possessed, sitting up, accompanied by those, those gigantic holes, volcanic rims—socket eyes, with spiders looking out, he takes his anchor, uneasily, tosses it in the water nearby, in the water he dives, in the water he dives.

[And thus, this is where the story changes, for he is found, and in the hospital has told the doctors this very story you have just read; but now for the climax.]

Part IV

Dance of the Spiders

Looking for help, aid—or just simply people would do, so he gazed up and down the shore: leopard faced, deep set-in cheeks, web-feet, his life decaying as if someone had sucked all the spirit from his frame—likened to his wife—he now was dying.

All his veins now could be seen through his pink-like flesh, demonic beings hidden within his chest.

(Dying: he lies there now, like a slaughtered bull, in the hospital, as the doctors look over him.)

The demons had attained their nourishment: body milk, lumps of pale skin—stretched reminiscent of a lizard. They were now assigned to help man sin.

And for Ambrose Ashton Keats [patient], he died as he came out of a catatonic posture, into a deep, deep sleep—as the two spiders (surrogate agents for demonic births) crawled slowly out, out of his eyes-sockets, over his eye-lids, that never closed or winked, just cried and cried for relief. Now by his bedside the eight-legged beasts were said to be seen: dancing—dancing, just dancing about, around: hissing and pissing.

Note: Written: April, 2004; revised January, 2005 [prose poetry], “Dancing Dark Spiders”