red spider


red spider pokes out a leg
it is time for his walk
the curtain rail breaks
and a melon segments neatly

with a sound like kerfuddle


***

which reminds me

why must spiders be so prescient he wonders
and what must it be like for centipedes


***

be frugal
says red spider remembering his spider proverbs
and good things come to those who wait

if I could only remember where I left my web


***

a fly

at last

as an orphan what the fuck am I supposed to do with that


***

I am making love to a melon pip
because I feel sorry for it

***


I thought spiders had six legs
mutters red spider

something's up
perhaps I'm an octopus or a leaf

it is an interesting fact that spiders don't have mandibles


***

red spider meets a puddle and calls its bluff
over the surface like enamel

continuing his religious education


***

the sun is my diagram
shouts red spider
widowing the moon and it clouds over
like a magdalen drawing the curtains at a golgothic eclipse

so it is hard to know which way I'm facing


***

I am like a henge red spider gives in finally
and a girl hangs herself on silk in the distance snapping the curtain rail

mist occludes red spider because he is in mourning

a clock
or a place of worship is just a misty spider
spinning in a turret
he muses

red spider is not even that red in his moments of illusion.
he knows a two-tone spider is the greatest thinker with as many beards as legs
and eyes in the front of his head






my master

my master is the master of the foldback of the double negative.
as thoughts go the quintessential corduroy trouser weaver
claiming the truro shroud.

singed with lobster thermidor and fishing stories
he is like a dog's memoir of chewing choir stalls fills with sawdust

the way he's shaggily rolling a pilates cigarette.
my master lies full stretch
in a continuously compound noun
customising a learning curve in a foreign accent

the very essence of spyware.






tuna melt

lines his pockets with arrows in another language
he downloads from the internet
he is only interested
in the peripheral of the screen which completes his competence
imaged tiptoeing round a swimming pool

colombus the cat behaves as an inspiration for which tuna
exhales heavily like pipe-smoke
he has begun
collecting doorframes to store in his loft space
around a memory stick it is a new spare time hobby
before that tuna
potholed the cracks in pavements and skim-read cornelius agrippa
emptying magic tables to scrub in the black spaces of crosswords with ellipses

the clue

a bench is only so long as the sandwich sitting on it

is one of his catchiest phrases it edits out
the nets around a tennis court

asking who he is to butter up the centre of his day
wilfully picking out the sellophane






artefactor

workmanship articulate as a gleaming change of tack interests the real spit and polish merchant he has been sculpting nationalities out of sawdust since he was old enough to tool up and his results embrace sheen and water like a plastic paddling pool he will always be heard in the running of a finger over the surface burning a light memory trigger threats to puncture the skin and really get under it become collectable as fat but in all the right places this latest a rosary of wine beads in a sickle cradle resembles






breath

snow lost on a garlic clove cools profligately my serene pout in lipstick exchanged with it a bargain befitting the deal slitting deep and red beyond the flavoured surface a falling buoyant as acupuncture the sinking kiss


© Nathan Thompson 2006