words

i live among arachnids great and small
and i have entered in to a conflict
with the greater and more terrifying,
their long thin legs stretching slow
and full of horror like death threats,
dark agony, filled with genetic wisdom
and necessity, these wretched bastards.

these many legged maniacs that drift
across the carpet, who emerge from between
the clefts in the walls, the dark corners
of the room, the spaces the mind neglects
and their spindles throb with thread,
with rotten acrimony and poison intent,
they crawl across the skin at night
and it is strange and it is terrible.

their black and bulbous bodies
dance within the confines of the night
and with every eye they judge fact from lie,
cephalothoracic nightmare blending black and white
and i have engaged this war with insight,
with respect and admiration, skill and cunning
and so i have made a truce with the lesser tribes
to eradicate their brethren entire.

you can see the aftermath of their battles
like napalm-scarred villages,
a quiet stillness on the river,
a soft memory fading from itself,
a genetic proof evident stark
among their heavy webs like smeared semen
caught in the corners of the room
where one crawls over and around the dead
of their enemy, a message to the others,
a head trophied on a stake,
a tremble in the mess of things,
a ritual fire built and burned.

in the blackness we converge
to an order beyond helix or structure,
a machine to push forward the breath of evolution
by violence and neglect, the usual suspects,
a fire in the blood to divide one from the other
and here we come to a greater understanding
in that i am a third party, a greater foe
and a friend to none and i navigate
espionage and undercover treason
to reach an ultimate terminus
whereby no spiders exist in my company at all
and i will war night and day
for no other reason than to do so.

-S.C. Martinez