4.5 Bestiary

Oh choice enigma, fear-flecked,

Bone-clad in fulsome sheets of red!

Your amber brain drags rainbows down,

As eye-holes blood turf’s seedless dead;

With fierce craft you apple-wreck:

Thick hail-clouds stoop to swipe your mane;

Hoof’s riot courage stones mere truths,

Relentless fetlock scatters pain;

Then skin-lashed sweat betrays brute force,

Silk tail alive-flays sickened seas;

Eternal ears rouse witless rain,

Unburden sap from weeping leaves;

Fire-granite muzzle shrives the meek,

Insane tongue neighs fate’s futile words;

While whip-crack croup-dance thraldom wreaks –

This Horse-god’s name burns dappled worlds!

Shall I compare you to an octopus?

Your tentacles are so spectacular,

And though I've rarely seen you drive a car,

Not often either do you catch a bus.

You dart about and never make a fuss,

This lack of transport modes your fun can’t mar,

To your free motion there appears no bar,

Therefore, you never have good cause to cuss.

And so, dear twisting squid you dive and duck,

Within abyssal depths deprived of light,

A queen, you pirouette with eight arms strong,

Whose graceful motions are much more than luck;

When frightened, teuthic jet-squirts give you flight,

Then in a surge of ink-black, you are gone!

Lack’s old insistent storm sheds acid streaks

On love’s dumb face, cloaked thick with memories;

Want’s bronze typhoon, relentless, wet-flame fresh

Twists ice-cold lightning key in heart’s dead lock,

Its sharp snap sensed by weeping weeds alone;

And single sun-crazed toucan, which cares not

But swoops hot-hued through rough-hewn mangrove isles

Rich-grown in messy, fertile swamps of dreams;

Buoyed up by promises unbroken yet,

Of fragile feelings heedless as it falls,

Enamoured still with brittle whitewashed lies;

In time’s deep soothing spray, lost to the world.

Obsidian vaults ring Her quantized name,

Rutile spikes aquiver with whispered crimes,

Caterwauling first night when I lung-scorched came,

Trailing comets from Orion, torn wings aflame:

Thrilled witless; on spoor of other-worldly game.

Her spring-heeled fangs round compass wend,

Tear guiltless chunks from alien soil,

Whose looming labyrinths loose proud dead,

Exhumed limbs littering graves’ expanse:

Eyes pebbled yolks, yearning still to dance.

Six lime moons leer in dark-mattered skies,

Wild tentacles greet their scar-tissue grins:

Love’s steely teats spin noxious webs,

Lewd promises kept by razor tongues:

Ultraviolet dawn spawns mucoid young.

But all Sirens smelt in the same soup-sea,

Recycled afresh through time-sieves’ rime;

Futures fossilized on irascible pyres:

Mutations enmeshed in filigree wires;

She, spore-squirts, crenulates, swift expires.

So, hush! Space shall warp as I force wormhole door,

Fleeing seared wastes of acid-etched loss,

Where desolation’s haze floods volcano floors,

Dousing spent nest, flaring larval fears:

Oh! My spine-studded face sheds vitriolic sap-tears!

Now, those ammonia geysers never wane;

Calcite honeycomb moans on hyperbolic plain,

Rueing the conjunction when Chimera lay slain,

Her craw-cloying cackle, triple heart’s cruel bane:

Big-banged – eternal – greased with umber-gored pain.

“Science Still Can’t Explain Why These Tarantulas Are Blue”

Months ago whilst youngster minding, wet and windy Woundsday winding

Paths of stimulation into Hellsgate's own Animalary fair:

There I stroked a spider’s belly, poked a stoat, got scared to jelly

When one heart-faced barn-owl smelly, soared o’erhead and fouled our hair;

Then began distracted musings, half a mantra, maybe prayer...

Creeping nigh dread creatures’ lair!

Little did I know that morning, I’d be with arachnids fooling:

Hairy, spineless, poison-tooling; Family: Theraphosidae –

Three inch bod and six inch legspan, prosomal front-part, hinged to abdomen,

At waist-like pedicle in their body plan. Opisthosoma’s abdomen dry;

Prosoma’s cephalothorax spry; after moulting, soft-bodied they lie:

Whole exuvium’s shed – but still they just don’t die!

Eight legs have coxa, then trochanter, femur, followed by patella,

Tibia, tarsus, and pretarsus; two or three retracting claws;

Legs first and third move on the one side; then on the other, two and four glide:

Contracting muscles cause a swift stride; pumps haemolyphic, leg-stretch force,

In scuttling prowl for prey – or intercourse! And more – burred scopula crown each paw,

Gripping even sloping, glass-smooth floors.

Book-lungs two-paired hide folded tissue; slender heart round sini pressures

Cell-less haemocyanin, cupric, with its neurogenic pulse;

Two spinnerets (or four) squirt silk-threads; hissed stridulation’s first line of defence;

Striking attackers through with chill dread, obviating need for fanged impulse;

Barbed itchy hairs cause urtication, when rubbed or kicked off back leg stations,

Vile wasp or caterpillar predators to repulse.

Those spiny setae feel vibrations, and sniff sweet pheromone secretions;

Eight poor eyes help them ambush insects, even arthropods scurrying in plant debris raw;

Then venom through chelicerae rushes, masticating fang-force gnashes,

Whilst pedipalp pair grips, rends, crushes – leaving shredded food-pulp dripping gore;

Digestive enzymes slathering pour – stomach muscles depressurize craw:

Liquefied prey’s then sucked up through a straw!

Enticing signals lull a female, sperm-glands secrete a string of semen;

Epiandrous fusillae build silk mat to catch the dripping gunk;

Terminal pedipalp absorbs the offering, to lady’s spermathecae proffering,

She awaits male’s lunges, hovering: injection suffering from the horny hunk:

Job thoroughly done, the frightened geezer, away from hungry momma does swift bunk:

Lothario wandering, brazen, in lonely post-shag funk.

Aggressive mater guards eggs, brooding; most small blokes die soon after maturing,

Are they blessed to end up human show-things,

                                                                     in far-from-tropical South-West-Kimbric zoo?

Where probed I, with finger wiggling, head with bird-poo guano glistening,

(Young charge sleep-lulled by stoat-fact-listening);

                                                           musing on the lifestyle of this motley spider crew;

Perhaps he thought, o bucking beastie, my tender ticklings – for all I knew –

Were true sweet love-dance, of some needy spider comrade,

                                                                                             blue ... blue, blue, blue ... blue!