November 1st, 2005 | xipetotec

The wood-panel-walled box in which I reside begins to disintegrate
into a tangled puzzle of knotted pine toothpicks
and tiny brown spiders of a dubious reputation.
I do, after all, dwell, temporarily, in a sub-tropical region,
a state where many hazardous to your health creatures exist.
Yesterday, for example,
I crushed the dangerous end of a defiant coral snake.
It was sunning itself, black, red and yellow coils,
on my front porch,
drowsily warming its poisoned cold blood
on the welcome mat at my door, in the young morning.
Watch that first step!
It lithely slithered all around my yard
as I prodded it with a three foot long steel crowbar,
simply imploring the sinister reptile to leave my little habitat
on this life-crowded planet.
Move along…
nothing to see…
or bite…
here.
Damn stubborn some serpents can be.
Scaley hissing transgressor even tried to escape my treatise
by crawling under the Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
It was obviously not in the mood to cooperate,
but seemed not to care for an armed conflict, so far.
Frustrated, I hooked it gently with the curved portion of my prybar
and lifted it cautiously, dragging it out from behind the driver’s side front tire.
The fiend allowed this with little fuss,
though it became more tense as I placed it
near the end of my lawn.
I nudged it a few a few more times
with the expectation that it would not balk to seize the opportunity
to get out of Dodge peaceably,
find itself a nice warm basking rock
at the edge of a spring,
and engender a new generation of Barber Pole Cobras
with a fork-tongued playmate.
Whatever…
Just don’t hang around my place.
Who wants an anguis in the grass as a friend?
I’ve heard the story about a certain viper and a fruit.
You can take that venomous concession stand off this corner,
if you please.
The striped villian turned its head abruptly my direction,
its flickering tongue tasting the distance
to Asshole-with-metal-stick’s leg.
I recognized the gesture,
hefted the heavy rod high,
and brought it down,
like Thor’s Hammer,
onto the adder.
That has got to hurt.
I felt a bit pukey
watching the long, slender body writhing
out of sync with the twitching head.
A kink divided the two distinct sections;
a highly distorted posture for a living asp.
I pondered it’s sorry state,
meditatively absorbed in the brutality of the world;
a strange, bald primate
(this is not quite accurate,
homo sapiens are the hairiest of the Great Apes,
covered with more fur than the mountain gorilla;
but less course,
finer than our forest dwelling kins’)
musing over the agony
of it’s dying prey.
Vini, vidi, vici.
Victim…
I’ll get mine one day, too.
I raised the rod into the air again;
and time stops with the palm-jarring strike.
The snake’s skull split.
A pinkish-gray gelatinous glob
sprouted from the crevice,
pulsating in the noonlight, between it’s vacant eyes.
The greater portion of the head hidden,
driven deep into the damp sand.
Some slow, jittery twisting still,
suviving neurons sending jumbled system exclusive code
through the sparse existing synapses.
I walked inside to the kitchen sink
and washed my hands of the matter,
like wiping dogstuff off my shoe.
The clock ticks,
the Earth rotates,
orbits,
and is orbited.
On my way to the car,
a short or maybe long time after the showdown
I witness a thick rope of ravenous red ants teeming
where the rancorous reptilian convict had been executed for it’s insolence
to a formidable tool,
thirty six inches of carbon and iron,
fire-forged by Haephestus in the U.S.
An intuitive, thoughtful monkey-man and his two fully opposable thumbs,
wasting his free time,
waiting his turn,
on a fine Indian Summer Sunday;
working out some pent up fury.
The insects have the situation well in mandible.
The clock ticks,
the Earth rotates, orbits,
and…