For five years I felt the impact
Of a single, raised spider bite
Like a secret lover, it’s mouth entered me one night
Upper pectoral, right
This one arachnid with a spirochete, lick
By doctor’s accounts, this condition solely reserved for The deer tick
Equivalent of a dirty partner’s kiss
Mandibular match
Within hours few, minor swelling
The little guys hatch
Without pain, only to wait
I never caught sight of my nocturnal mate
She will be with me the rest of my life
In my heart beat and gait
I often wondered how she was put together, a wolfish face, unshaven
limbs?
Maybe a big boned(Exterior though) starry eyed, Ballerina on point
A skilled tight rope walker and not caring for up or down
Holding court in a ceiling corner niche
Thoughtfully remembered as a red head, antisocial bitch
How long had she watched me?
Or did she take me on a whim?
I in her proverbial tangled web
Her saliva in my joints
Never to ebb
I sickened quickly
Maddening temporal headaches, spinal distortion
Eye twitches, fever and brain inflammation
Exhausted all day with drowning energy
Yet unable to sleep at night
Waking in pools of fluidity
For three months, I administered a daily Rocefrin I.V.
Legs becoming stalactite
Confidence reduced to timidity
Daily up and down on a different diet kite
Living on coffee to stay awake
Yet waking on the kitchen floor to find it brewed
and not remembering who
Yet still fighting with all my might
Devolving into an arthritic tree
Passing out in my food
Mowing the lawn, an impossible feat
Lungs in an ever bubbling sea
One Doctor told of my new enemy,
yeast
The antibiotics had allowed a colony within to breed
On all carbohydrate they would feed
On one day at my driveway’s
end, I would pull over and cry, lost
two hundred yards from my doorway
Three spinal taps revealed
a live viral beast
and I (of course) the ever entertaining host
Neurologists, Immunologists, Psychologists and Rheumatologists
all pulling me north, south, west and east
The cognitive tests administered
showed the damage the most
Short term memory loss and confusion
Like eating lead sinkers
Visual anomalies and hearing impingement
I owned a spinal leech, sucking on all aspects
of muscles, nerves, tendons and ligament
Tunnel vision,
Becoming the horse in Central Park with blinkers
Another doctor took me off pretzels!
Ended up visiting the Mao Clinic
A neurological picnic
I was the chicken… they the ants
I was moving slower
(Picture a moss covered sloth)
Fungally bitten
Osteoporotic
Relic
In a Surreal landscape, time cants
This, no exception
This (cob) web surrounds my mind
Causing loss of perception
I have been awake long nights with the Blue Heron, feeding
Femur’s involuntary twist and grind
Consuming all related reading
Nose bleeding
On my head, a wet blanket’s weight
Depression’s “Catch 22” dilate
With years to relate
Symptomologies slowly receding
Optimistic bait?
I’m back to drinking that divine solvent
A Starbuck’s repatriate
No longer earning for a personal beheading
A Starbuck’s repatriate
Reoccurrences negating
The Guillotine will have to wait
Since my epidermal meeting
Gone down is the brain swelling
She still remains in my heart beat
and my gait.
