(unfinished draft may 2017)

THE TRIALS 
OF THE 
SOLIFUGE

the abominable solifuge is caught in a stalemate with the desert ---
   the loss of momentum for natures' own pessimist gladiator,
      eight-legged abomination;
the solifuge is stranded in the outskirts of the biomes
   and, having been compromised in the natural hostilities,
   it is weakened;

the broken solifuge stern and ominous
   walks about Job-like, unhealthy, unwealthy, unloved;
   it crawls atop the hillocks to gaze the might of dunes;
   it seeks the cooling refuge; the shadowed path of deceit;
     the repose in the damp and the cold ---
     a dwelling-place for the scared and hunted ---
         so that it can tend,
     tend to its offspring, its hundred disgusting eggs of nihilism
         in order to atleast assure its continuation
         into the future of all things
         before it abdicates from life as a failure
         spirited with the desperation and discouragement
         that broke Enheduanna and left her for dead
         at the sight of her great temple falling to dust and shards of clay;

     though it reproduced, it did so in meaninglessness ---
     the anxiety to end all anxieties.
   this solifuge claims only pyrrhic victories
   in this hopeless belligerency against the universe.
   caught in a battle no-one winds
   against the burning orb of light ---
   death-sun of Šamaš; glorious disc of the sun
   which never discriminates, nor privileges, nor excludes
   anyone nor anything of this earth.

         sun, o mighty sun ---

all systems fail and all biologies bankrupt
with the fluctuations of its surface:
   all species die off no matter how kingly or slavelike:
      so with the elephant also with the hyena;
      so with the dung-beetle also with the lion-majesty;
   death is inevitable and all-pervading like the albatross
     scouring a forest-fire earth:
     being cleansed top-down
   on the command of Šamaš, foul extermination-campaigner of mankind;
   cosmic schutzstaffel purge door to door
     all the galaxies from every living cell and every trace of oxygen...
    
   the engineers of the universe die
   with the memories of collapsed star-systems;
   the waters swallow the coasts
   and the coasts respond with submission;   
   the emperor scorpion, the opiliones, the ticks and mites
           hold hands
        in a final moment of essential brotherliness ---
           and all the while
      the solifuge wanders about
      sad and lonely
      staring upward
      into the infinity of everything outside of itself
      immured in the forgotten catacomba
      of existential contemplation.

   surely the simple arachnid is pathetic in the grander scheme:
   uncared for by the universe; disgusted and killed by the humans;
      yet it weeps
      and yet still
      it is also a center of the universe.

   cataclysmic astroquakes change the course of whole worlds;
   upsurges of dark energy clip the strings of all fucking theories
   and violently redraw the aesthetics of our beloved constellations;
   planets die off and
   the space expands indifferently;
   galaxies wither like flowers
   and the stars collapse into the swallets where even light drowns;
   majestically incomprehensible in grandeur
      all this is:
      as the puniest of mites can not fathom the earth(, only its tiny corner of it),
      as can I, the strongest of solifuges, not fathom space...
  the happenings of the farthest cosmos
  and the -mysteries of the outside
  breaks the philosopher in half
  and leaves every true astrophysicist
      in religious crisis,    
yet in the heart of the solifuge
the problem is how to find its oasis ---
   when your throat runs parched, water becomes everything.

the solifuge endures on
    his trepidating perils
as the great clock of the ages tick on!
   the deserts expand their territories and out here, the caves get rarer by the minute,
   the shadowless sun belches aforth the warmth
   and the oases dry like menopause (here is no lushness and here is no idyll);
   the qanats and the aquifers no longer serve the needs of the people
   and the water has become old enough to even threaten the bugs with disease;
   and the cadavers of the dromedaries wither like love in marriage and
   the cobras are pinched tight in the beaks of starving vultures
   but the questions none can reject
               lives on
               in the heart of the solifuge;
      the questions whose answers
      would disarms the anti-theist
      in the swiftest blink of a moment
      with the revelation
      that no living thing can easily brush off, or even at all.