The Ambush

23 July 2014

It was just last night they paid me a bedside visit,

the spiders with little glass heads.

Digging furiously microscopic holes through my temples with

their many agile legs.

(Or are they arms?)

How unfair! that the spiders should have the

advantage of so many nimble limbs.

I pout and sulk because I only have two pairs of limbs,

none of which are so spry!

And here come the eggs, laid in the

shallowest crevices of my brain. A few fall between

my taste buds and I speak possessed in tongues.

"There is no use summoning the spirited fight a child

might put up.

(And be careful not to breathe lest they enter

through the mouth as well.)"

This advice is lost on so-called little ears.

They pin me to the paper cross I

built myself that day and set it ablaze. I

smile through chattering teeth and inhale sharply through my pupils turned white.

They call after me to wait as I ascend:---

more nails will be in order.

My limbs have doubled!

Author's Note

The speaker of this poem is, in a way, a parody of myself. I wrote it shortly after an episode of panic on the eve of my birthday.

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[Delmar Cooper]

One day, at lunch, Franz Kafka asked,"Would you consider a collaboration?" He got his answer after only a second's delay, "What a delightful notion," Dr. Seuss replied.