I threatened a while ago to post an example of my own poetic… whatever, and with it being World Poetry Day I suppose it’s time I finally did that. Without further ado…
“It’s not that big,” he said. The hell it’s not,
I thought right back while hovering at a distance.
It’s not that big? The size is irrelevant
When you’re the sort of arachnophobe I am.
My housemate’s not, and that’s an excellent thing
At times like this when I need his assistance,
But I don’t think he quite gets how it feels
To have this evolutionary error
Somehow make its way into your house
And lurk unnoticed, not even suspected.
It was cunningly concealed behind the curtain,
Up on the back door frame, and visible
Only from an angle lying down
Upon the couch, or else I’d never have seen
The hint of arachnid leg, the bit of body
That “wasn’t that big” but didn’t have to be,
Because even if I had seen bigger ones,
It was big enough and it was in my room.
We brought the vacuum cleaner through the back
To suck our intruder up, but it had moved:
And then we saw it scuttle to the ceiling
And then fall down, and lose itself again
Among the rustling curtain… “There it is,”
He said as the fucking thing shot right behind me,
And paused upon my shoe just long enough
For him to draw it into the vacuum stick.
That was closer than I would’ve liked.
I hate arachnophobia, and I know
Just how irrational it is, and that
There’s little that I really need to fear;
I probably scared the spider somewhat more
Than it scared me. But I don’t particularly care;
It’s irrational, but that’s why it’s a phobia,
Not just a vague dislike of eight-legged things.
And so I suppose it’ll keep getting in my way
Whenever the next one comes inside to play.
So, that’s “Arachne”, offered here for what it may be worth, written in September 2021, and yes it was written after a close encounter with one of Ungoliant’s offspring in my room. (Parenthetically, Joe, my housemate, got one in his room a few nights ago, as I discovered when I heard him let loose a loud “WAAAAAARGH!”; Joe copes with spiders much better than I do, but get one big enough—as this one apparently, even he conceded it was “huge” and I’m happy I never saw it myself—and too close to him and it’s another matter…) If nothing else, I suppose this effort pretty much exemplifies the sort of thing I like in verse, e.g. not rhyming is fine (but ending on one is still kind of nice), strict-ish use of regular metre—I do like me some iambic pentameter—but not completely unyielding and unvarying ba-DUM ba-DUM etc. My body of work is not large (I don’t have a lot of ideas for writing), but this is one of the better examples of it.
