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
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
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
nightly frozen dinners such as
and Lean Cuisines, all of which
he’d long tired of ages ago.
an entire box of cookies or
bag of chips as his compulsions
(when they met with twin approval)
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.
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,
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
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
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
A veil was an evidence of love.
The spider has one pastime: it’s pleasure.
There was no such thing as happiness,
Absent of thoughts, the spider
accepted the world as it was,
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.
