Doctors Report That Spiders Spin Slower After a Morphine Dose
Will you walk into my parlor? (said the spider to the fly);
’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did contemplate.
Actually, the whole place is a shambles— an arachnidean mess —
But nowadays, Fly, I care about housekeeping less and less and less.
Anyway, come into the garden, Maud,
for the black bat, night, has come back again.
And that’s the way I like it, Maud,
half-light and half-truths.
Me for the drowsy numbness, for inky visions floating off
to a nebulous infinity on foggy and uncertain clouds.
Stomp your feet as you come, Maud,
and try to shake loose some of those inevitable dewdrops:
for when jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty whatnots,
those pearly blobs give off prismatic reflections
that are damnably hard on the eyeballs.
Time was, Maud, when I would have rolled
you up into an anticipatory pie —•
a silken, gift-wrapped, postprandial tidbit.
But not anymore.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Flies is my motto.
Maud, I have some Stuff here
which, taken at the flood, leads on to all sorts of things.
But, first, a word from our sponsor.
Observe this giddy habitation, this dubious domicile, unstuck
from a mooring far, far away up in the top left-hand corner.
And a stitch in time saves the whole caboodle,
as Mother used to say, interminably.
Darest thou, Maud, now leap with me into this unholy mess
and swim to yonder point, and there with gossamer thread
knit up the ravell’d sleave of something or other?
But on second thought maybe you should do this thing alone,
for this anthropomorphine person isn’t what he used to be.
Here, my buzzing beauty, my pygmy vivant air conditioner,
take this thread and fan yourself with afterburners
to the site of the circumferential mishap.
And, Maud, I shall ready a Little Something against your return
. For I know a bank whereon the wild time flies,
and there, running repairs made, heavy-lidded and recumbent,
we shall grow our hair long, sleep in our clothes,
whisper measured obscenities to the passing proletariat,
and sniff our way down the soft, silent river of oblivion.
’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did contemplate.
Actually, the whole place is a shambles— an arachnidean mess —
But nowadays, Fly, I care about housekeeping less and less and less.
Anyway, come into the garden, Maud,
for the black bat, night, has come back again.
And that’s the way I like it, Maud,
half-light and half-truths.
Me for the drowsy numbness, for inky visions floating off
to a nebulous infinity on foggy and uncertain clouds.
Stomp your feet as you come, Maud,
and try to shake loose some of those inevitable dewdrops:
for when jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty whatnots,
those pearly blobs give off prismatic reflections
that are damnably hard on the eyeballs.
Time was, Maud, when I would have rolled
you up into an anticipatory pie —•
a silken, gift-wrapped, postprandial tidbit.
But not anymore.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Flies is my motto.
Maud, I have some Stuff here
which, taken at the flood, leads on to all sorts of things.
But, first, a word from our sponsor.
Observe this giddy habitation, this dubious domicile, unstuck
from a mooring far, far away up in the top left-hand corner.
And a stitch in time saves the whole caboodle,
as Mother used to say, interminably.
Darest thou, Maud, now leap with me into this unholy mess
and swim to yonder point, and there with gossamer thread
knit up the ravell’d sleave of something or other?
But on second thought maybe you should do this thing alone,
for this anthropomorphine person isn’t what he used to be.
Here, my buzzing beauty, my pygmy vivant air conditioner,
take this thread and fan yourself with afterburners
to the site of the circumferential mishap.
And, Maud, I shall ready a Little Something against your return
. For I know a bank whereon the wild time flies,
and there, running repairs made, heavy-lidded and recumbent,
we shall grow our hair long, sleep in our clothes,
whisper measured obscenities to the passing proletariat,
and sniff our way down the soft, silent river of oblivion.