OCTOPUS: A FISHY TALE

We never meant to become entangled
in its limbs that tickled, wrapped and strangled
round our arms and necks. I saw the bosun
go in first with his glittering harpoon,
aloft at the end of a sinuous
arm and saw it snapped in eight by strong legs
licking round the blade like eight generous
tongues. It thralled us all, twenty dolly pegs,
each clipped in place along a suckered snake
that slimed and writhed across an ocean floor.

What gave us breath? Who knows? Two hours or more
it raced over reef and bank. In its wake
a haze of bubbles shimmered, powder kegs
of sand exploded where its enormous
tentacles dragged the sand and lifted dregs
of wrecks like ours. Others too, courageous
in their effort, must have drowned. Only one
escaped. My muscle slipped the net, slick-spun
flesh that tightened vices where it angled
strangely hooks and knots and finally dangled.

SPACE INVADERS

for SM

The docile turds that curl from under skirting boards

at night, then labour round the carpets and laminate

like ponderous, fecal figure skaters, are pernicious,

though they seem dumb. I catch them by the fridge,

investigating seals with probing stalk-eyes, hunting

weaknesses in pizza boxes left in slime's reach.
Aliens, that come from Mars to drain the juices

of your fruit and veg, may slither by your genitals

as you sleep. You will know they've been by morning,

when a semen slick is pooled around your thigh

Their vapour trails that start and end at nothing are a threat:

you never saw me coming and will never see me leave.

HUDSON COUGHS IT ALL ON TAPE

It wasn't Nixon on tape in the White House over Watergate, but JFK
doing the voices, and wasn't shot in the Dallas motorcade in '63, Please!
He held two marbles and half a glass of water in his mouthto be Nixon. His impression
of Jack Ruby, who didn't shoot him or his doppelgänger (Ladybird Johnson's
illegitimate brother in prosthesis and wig), was legendary. Some said
he could be him, but I never believed them. Lady B J's brother was shot
by none other than Marilyn Monroe, the bombshell assassin, who overdosed
in Soho, England, seven years later than thought. Judy had been dead donkeys'  
and they couldn't keep up the carousel of drag queens who played her in shows.
They were damaging the brand. Of course they removed bones, the femurs,
to make Monroe fit. A stray Gitanes by the corpse almost gave the game up.
Judy smoked Lucky Strike (DO YOUR HOMEWORK BOYS!). That fag, Ruskee, Deans,
had to be silenced, "retired" to a haunted mansion in Cleveland. Princess Diana?
You mean you haven't figured that out? It was Mohammed Al-Fayed who drove
the white Punto through the Paris drizzle that night. It was jealousy and whiskey
that fuelled him. Nothing to do with me or Prince Philip, whatever you think.
There was no shotgun wielding motorcycle outrider, whatever you say.
Just a man and his grief funded by MI6, who class him as a double agent.
They played him. Which brings us to September 11th and Nixon again, with a beard
in an arid cave, crying for Allah, on videotape, his voice all marbles and water.

PRAIRIE STORY

Y'all know the bitch who ran from Güber's Farm,
the one lives in the forest
off highway fifteen. They say
she's got distemper, sure barks
at the wasps. One night I disturbed her
knocking over trash; she turned,
black,
          yes,
                 and foaming at the jaw.
I almost puked with fright, ran
to get my gun but she was gone.

Knew a man hit her with his Cadillac,
goes white as he tells it.
She threw no shadows on the moonlit road,
had been nosing the roadkill
when the headlights surprise her.

He'll show you dents — nine
thumps in the right side fender —
bitch must have fought back.
Güber told me she's as strong as tractors.

Folks are terrified:
Three young ones maimed in Lower Salem,
babies taken. High price
for the steaming corpse.

Dog Warden's been missing weeks. 
Can't catch a bitch like that. she can outrun jeeps.
I heard she's got a fetish for chicken wire and burger joints.

URBAN LEGEND

for SM

The only urban legend I believe
is that deadly spiders travel 
from the tropics in banana crates 
and are hiding under buckets 
in our cellar–head or shed 
to bite our fingers when we need
to mop the kitchen.

I have seen them, and their nit-like
bodies, pretending to be hands
in webs as wide as duvets
underneath the floorboards.
At night they come up
through the carpet like dragon's teeth
and scurry and creep up the walls
and in shoes. 
Our feet are afraid of death.

Nothing can kill them. They live
in my dreams and are covered
in neon stripes that say,
in flashes of yellow and red,
We are coming for you. We are coming
over continents in bunches
of bananas to murder you.