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The Spider Poems (from New Mannerist Tricycle)

Nothing believes Korea.

Nothing turns into it, & leaves your salt there.

For it to fade, for it to ask casually, how's your Rothko?
how's your thrift store

painting? how's that?     Nothing believes Korea.

& believing it believes also
that to be afraid is acursed, caseladen, peripatetic, inchworthy &
glown. That's what it believes.

Nothing much worse than that.

Nothing much worse than for it to fade that way.

 

 

In the second part Korea disappears, becomes

quasi-angular, like a filter, like a soup, like a spider

suddenly in your face. Suddenly, this is the poem
in which the sudden spider is suddenly in your face.

Like a spider.

 

 

These are spiders. They are happy spiders.
They fill the bugles of the nutbrained beaming
throughscape most happy to collate.

Other spiders live in the soft languish of the original underpants.

Come, live with the spiders, come, join them,
in the long hibernation dream of the original underpants, Mr. Jones.

 

 

Some of the spiders are not called anything because they are happy.

This is my new style. How do you like it?

It has caused me great personal anguish.

 

 

Franklin Covey & the spiders are coming down from the Natl Capital
carrying torches & poems.

Nothing believes them.

These are seeds being planted which are growing spiders.

Growing spiders need milk to make strong bones. I have no milk & so

they are mad. I have no milk & so

they are very, very, mad.

Mad spiders all over the place. I believe them when they say

"we are mad."

I go out immediately & buy lots & lots of milk.

I give it to them & then I run.

 

 

Once you've raised the expectations of the spiders you've imagined

You can then write things like "forms of forms are the reasoned mock
alone in the ice factory eating whistling homeless quesedilla" &

"be well, runt" & "what is love but a layered lookalike leaning on
your bauble"

Feel free to write these things like those things. & remember,
an ant the size of a rat may well be attacked by a hawk.

 

Part 2 (More Spiders)

After closing, & in closing, nobody's fault, & nobody's business
begin again to break, & having broken, to placate
the charms afforded by the first natural warm feels
& a cute abrasion, kind of
curly, & hicked, hurled through the roof-window
which allows the letters more-than-minute shack factory
to fill up & infold a facticity lunging upwardly languiding &
blue says & blue gentle rocks hurt
most of the often people 7 times, got that?

Having wantings of spiderlike facticity
& wantings also, awake in laundry, & laundry also,
awake in wanders which are very clean.

Having those you should have them & so do.

"I miss the urth."

Goodbye.

Spiders are very interesting folks. Most of them are thieves
who do not want anything. If you are thief who does not
want anything this does not mean you are a spider. It shows,
rather, your lack of creativity.

 

 

Nothing left, 'cept chapstick.

 

Spiders have needs of webbing.

If you are a network you are improperly loaded.

 

 

Dust on the old spiders & dust on the
resume, dust then & there,

dusty spiders all over the place. &

Small tacks. Unbrandished but highly & speckled, speaked
         spider
         the whilst lent dumb of
         spider

         it it left of spider & also
         stilt

 

 

it is a lazy spider to be placed on the fellow with the rat for a head

 

In my life o this life. yes, this one. o, it.

In it, there have been spiders. o, spiders.

etc.

 

Part 3 (more urth-voices & spiders & stuff)

 

The spiders have or can have all sorts of spilling.

Some of the spiders become violent at the drop of a hat.

Some of the spiders are getting ready to have been smushed

by that hat. Each spider has its destiny & pride. Each spider

is a clump of spider longings & thrills. The perceptions

of the spiders & the areas they retread. The perceptions

of the spiders & the long walks around the dam along

the cordon. One is stupid.

 

Clearly the detritus of spider-process spears the tiny yet flatulent
advisors. Let none say that anything said is unsaid, excepting
anything said by everything. We are the witch mission & the
drought. Everything is saying anything watching the flavorless
respite. What do you say we say? The spider-process spears the
respite. What do you say we say?

I hate the man who investigates hidden matters.

I hate the spiders.

 

Scared & infinite, the wipped, stunned spurts pop the placated junk-
spider, stoving. Watch yon spider yawn. Watch the furling wills
can the rasps of spider will. Each foretold tin is a lint spider rioting.
Each foretold tin injures the basket. Stand back in the spider. They
would not have known injustice if it were not for these things.

 

The spiders can or can't stand there at Austerlitz. The spiders can or
can't leave alone Springsteen's America. Fill your spider pockets,
if you have them, with
spider envy & lust. Saying why
is like saying spider. Fill your why with walks with spiders,
they will heave you, & each,
like lairs which are love awake in spider death & rebirth,

in spiders of melting, your brain, in spiders
of wanting, your heart, in spiders
of seeming, no beat, in spiders
of nothing, no wheat,

turn Austerlitz over, turn awake
the rabid spider
heart.

This poem appears in the 2001 Anthology
View all poems by Rod Smith