Cathedral

(for David)

He found the present discomforting

as it rarely met his needs.

Life was filled with small irritations

that grew large in his mind.

He was helpless not to keep track 

of the many personal slights

any given day would heap upon him.

Could he help having preferences?

After all, liking and disliking was the very

definition of freedom and self expression.

If he didn’t enjoy something

he was compelled to expel it,

throw it out or at least declare

it’s inferiority. So much of life

was not as it should be.

Walking down the city street 

proved especially frustrating 

as he was always calculating 

the crosswalk ahead of him, 

trying to time his footsteps 

to reach the corner just as the light 

changed so that he would not 

have to pause in his gait.

He also did not appreciate the sun

glaring in his eyes as he preferred

the shady side of the street, its darkness

felt so much less to live up to.

Restaurants proved difficult

if not impossible. Bad service

would put him in a hideous state for days.

Sleeping was a nightly challenge

as he needed 5 pillows to prop

himself up perfectly so that the tilt

of his head was at just the right angle

that his nasal passages could take in

the maximum amount of air.

He had a fear of suffocating…

if his breathing was not proportioned

and thoroughly thought out.

He was obsessed with having 

a daily scheduled bowel-movement. 

He wanted one shortly after rising

and if he failed in this, his day

was started off on the wrong foot

and he would stew so

that he couldn’t even focus

on reading a single page of a book.

The smell of his neighbor’s cooking

was an all out assault on his senses,

particularly the boiled cabbage

which often seeped under his door

like a unsavory intruder or seedy drifter.

Why couldn’t people keep their smells

to themselves? Such thoughts made 

him seethe with murderous 

rumblings in the pit of his stomach.

As he never learned to cook

he was doomed to consume

nightly frozen dinners such as

Marie Callender pot pies

and Lean Cuisines, all of which

he’d long tired of ages ago.

He would often binge on 

an entire box of cookies or

bag of chips as his compulsions

(when they met with twin approval)

knew no moderation.

Nothing in his apartment

ever strayed from it’s assigned

position. Newspapers, once read

spottily and without regard

were quickly ushered to the bin.

He couldn’t bare possessing

for possessions sake. When he 

was through, he wanted nothing

to do with a thing’s useless paralysis.

So much of life had been

flushed down his toilet that

the bowl itself had become

a kind of symbol of purification.

He displayed the same rigor

in laundering his dirty things.

Whites with whites, colors

with colors. Cleaning anything

was like a necessary evil,

a chore to complain of.

When he read a book it was only

to exercise the muscle of his brain;

he had a compulsive dread

of losing his motor skills.

Already words had begun to fail him;

a family name, a day of the week,

something he heard someone say.

The thought of losing his memory

galled him and he felt a victim.

He had no hobbies, no art.

He was amused by the game shows.

Even so, the man kept a miniature 

of Rodin’s The Thinker on his desk.

Unbeknownst to him a spider

had left a single thread across

the fist that held the chin.

The spider lived in a state

of constant amazement.

He was a genius of eight legged

self expression. The beleaguered man

did not know he shared his abode

with a creature who was so entirely 

contented with it’s own existence.

The one bedroom apartment

seemed a mansion. 

The spider lived slowly.

It’s every web,
the unconscious construction

of another splendiferous cathedral.

A straight line is its own art;

every intersection, a decision

of refinement and integrity.

The spider made sense of the world

via an expressionistic knack for math.

It’s joy lay in dark corners.

It’s hobby was resting in a shadow.

Every web a wedding quilt in progress.

One morning a shard of blue sea glass

on the window sill

had captured it’s fancy.

A veil was an evidence of love.

The spider has one pastime: it’s pleasure.

There was no such thing as happiness,

nor grief or sadness.

Absent of thoughts, the spider

accepted the world as it was,

as it found it.

Perpetual sperm was a way of life.

The spider escaped the man’s notice,

therefore, his ire. But the spider

was well aware of the man.

He watched as he wept at night.

He wished he might put him out

of his misery, but as all spiders,

he was a poet only. Every silky

trail a fine line; a miracle

of channeled engineering.

If they ever met, 

one would 

surely kill the other.

Peter Valentyne

July 9th, 2019