The Araneae of Dream

© 1998 E. P. Allan
All rights reserved.

There is a place where spiders
scurry on ebony legs while carrying
little pieces of the mind
into holes of darkness—

their bodies, loose sacks of night,
creep into sleeping ears, steal
the bleeding edges of memory—
shards of pulsing light.

Then slipping quick as cats' paws
first one leg, then another
on the unsuspecting night—
dead tongue they emerge

Their webbed sacks leak
fingers of time and days and
longed for words in little
pools of liquid pain,

stain the sheets,
the carpet with the bitter
blood of untasted moments
hoarded in the sweaty night

& leave a beaded trail leading
into antiseptic dens of insanity
where they snicker with voices
thin and cold.

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