Dancing Dark Spiders
Dennis L. Siluk
Be aware of who you befriend, and what you watch, least you invite the wrong personage in.
Part I The Dark Thick
The sun raised on top the Galapagos, pouring down a tide
Of brilliant, gleaming sunlight: involuntary motions
Deliriums, riddled, puzzled: his jungle-entangled brain—
Down, down and around the tributaries—it seemed
The slow current lead the vessel: filled with nights
Goblin faces—obscure expediencies riding high, high,
As leering faces nearby [watching], sober trees: whispering,
'Death is painted black and green (dancing spiders can be seen).'
The walls of the islands threatened to crush the little vessel—
As it pushed and shoved, hugged and threw, tossed and blew
[In this year of l922], with only two on board: to row and guide.
Boa-like roots from tree to tree—all, all seemingly reaching,
Reaching like littered fall leaves—everywhere: here and there;
Had broken his toes, like coiled looped ropes over one another.
It was as though the plants were alive: as they enveloped him—
Side by side, with the hawks and doves, mockingbirds humming;
Lava Lizards eating; Marine Iguanas singing; giant prickly-pear
Cactus—everywhere; crabs, Sea Lions all about, penguins, gulls.
The foliage, undergrowth twisting his nose, eyeballs, clinging,
Clinging to his throat, blinding him at times: choking, choking.
Rambled his friend: "Look at the dark spiders dancing, on a root,"
Pointing to a tree; hence, in a hole came out two large spiders, dancing!
(There isn't much to tell: they jumped on top of him: sucked out,
Out from his pours—the marrow from his bones, his cranium; he was,
Was an empty pot now; Ambrose should not have looked.)
"Odd as it was—next: the long-black thick dark spiders, climbed,
Climbed the root of their tree, looking at me"; looking, looking,
Looking at his eyeballs (his mate dead, as dead can be) just eyeballs!
Uncontrollable convulsions began—for never before had a man
A man walked upon these sands, eye-sockets now hollow…
Part II Delirious Drifting
It was not a nightmare he assured himself: fever and all
Unmistakably, he was alive, alas, his friend wasn't.
(His delirious sounding voice continued with the story.)
And so in the jungle he was lost, no sight, no eyes
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 sockets, the spiders nest,
Nested—within his internal structure, dragging his yoke
Dragging his sight—with their eyes to his cranial lobes;
After much delay he now could see: dimly, hazily—but see.
(An island that sunk and rose at dawn: he had been on.)
An illness now was befalling Ambrose Ashton Keats
Befalling him, rigidly he tossed and turned, hands clasping,
Gripping all he felt within his craft: his knees, seat—clutching.
His monstrous eye-sockets deep-hollow inside
Pale-red eyes looking out: spider-orange, and demon size.
More appalling than this, if possible, his toes grew into webs
Like dead fish, web-foot frogs, akin to dead spider-ducks.
And then as he sailed across the sea, he tried to sleep—.
Dreaming of his sweetheart, he'd never again meet
Dazzled within, in his pain, weaving spiders in his brain:
Excreted-demonic beings, screaming wild within his veins
Buer and Gusoyn—sent by the henchman: Agaliarept.
[The victim's hypothesis was new to them, as he explained:
All this to the doctor's team.]
The current had grown wilder—as he vainly looked
Looked out about for landmarks—jungle islands and all;
Hopelessly alienated in a stranded boat—off some coast;
But he didn't know where he was, or how far, ebbing fever.
His mind shifting to and fro, devouring raw fish, 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 possibly—yet remotely—a demonic tenure?)
Part III Paroxysms
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, insidiously, like branches on trees:
Falling, falling—tossing them all about, inside the boat.
His heart beat vile, yet a prayer never leaves his lips.
He grabs his composure—ill will, fever and all, drifting
Drifting faster now—time has left his brow, an elapse.
Insects crushing his face trying to enter his hollow.
The moon was low in the heavens, coiled serpents bound:
Leaping, jumping all around his vessel, grotesquely.
Like an Army escort—down a hero's path, they drift.
He now can see the shores nearby, he tries to cry.
Self-possessed, sitting up, acompanied by those
Those gigantic holes, volcanic holes—socket eyes
Spiders looking out, he takes his anchor, uneasily
Tosses it in the water nearby, in the water he dives.
Part IV Dance of the Spiders
Looking for help, aid—or just simply people would due;
He gazed with reference for, up and down the shores.
Leopard face, deep-set cheeks, web-feet, death decaying
As if someone had sucked all the marrow from his bones,
Liken to his friend, slowly to die alone, like a bride
In a hundred years no one will know: "…know my name.
That I lived and died with demonic beings, in my veins."
All his veins now could be seen through his pink-like flesh.
(Dying: he lies there now, like a slaughtered cow.)
The demons had attained their nourishment: body milk
Lumps of pale skin—stretched reminiscent of a lizard.
The patient died as he went into a deep, deep sleep—
As the two spiders crawled slowly out of his eyes
His eye sockets that never closed or winked, just cried
And the demonic beings were said to be seen: dancing—
Dancing about, around his bedsides: hissing and pissing.
