Acid Fizz 1 (Bethany Victoria Price Remix)

This is just a section of a really thoughtful and cool lineation Bethany did of "Acid Fizz - 1."

It extends another leg and both limbs

rapidly needle us and roll us into the web. 

We can’t move our legs or spine, our whims

are silenced. But no –  how can I be left

on the Earth, trapped?  How can I be

contained in matter when I am less

than ether?  The spider inspects me

and I know it will consume us.  The silk finesse

fills in over our eyes.  Its legs prod us, finally

wrapping us tighter and tighter.  Every

pause between jabs I expect to feel

its mouth on our head, to feel the acids

digesting us in its hideous body. We will be its meal, 

and where will my spirit go?  Deeper, placid

into this world, absorbed in the spider’s gut? 

Back into the darkness as an insect’s ghost?

For the first time I feel what I used to imagine death

would be.  No limbs to move, no eyes to see, just a host 

of sound, which slows then stops as I steady my breath,

and my antennas bind together. 

There’s no evidence there is anything

outside of my thoughts except that

I feel the bug’s brain still turning. I wish I could say something – 

I wish I could tell it that I’m sorry, a place mat

for his anger. It’s trying to breach my thoughts. 

It tugs my mind through its own

and shows me a path to something, to the chord

that released the toxic fog.  I hear a moan,

and it is put in front of me as if waiting for me to pull it, lord

of this machine.

I grasp it and I steam

from our pores and float

through the silk tomb. It seems 

I am a gas expanding into the world, a moat

between the ground and the sky. 

I waft above the cocooned millipede

and am pained to leave it behind. 

I must be acidic because I burn the spider, proceed

through it, as I engulf it.  It’s exoskeleton, a burnt orange rind,

browns and it writhes within me.

           

I expand further, rise above the battle,

then above the desktops.  The world

thins.  The desks, the shelves, the rattled

man at his computer, the walls all whirl,

blur together. 

I lose the Earth.  The darkness I’ve lived

in so long without making it my home

racks back into focus. My mind gives,

Only the radio follows me there, a sound dome,

then it dissolves away too.