Joy V. Sheridan writes

Apollo in Web

Lovely Artemis, won’t you lend me your quiver and your bow

Won’t you lend me the light of your celestial smile

For in a while I know just where I shall go, oh yeah--

Know where I must go!

Apollo in a sunweb has become enmeshed with an amateur Ariadne

He met her at a dance in the Old Caledonian Road

Esteemed Pallas, this dallying with an inferior

Is a motive perfect for hitting him hard on the posterior

Such a thing one daren’t imagine, it’s happened, dancing a hand-jive

Some dive, listening to golden oldies on the roadies’ glib tongues

He seems moondrawn and listless, watching the briskness of the high-caloried boys

With liquorice bow-ties, and slippery fingers on their flies.

Apollo in web, caught in a cobweb –

Hand that spider, she’s got those prickly lashes like Scarlett O’Hara!

Well, let me be Rhett Butler, that little harlot

Ain’t gonna take away from me my piece of heavenly eternity.

Apollo sits there, mesmerised by the flicker in her eyes

Whilst his hand jives and the rockabilly beat goes through his toes –

If this is what your musings brought you to, old son

Then it’s time to go

Well look at that, she’s stuffed a wad of cotton wool

Down her brassiere, the one with the points like Rita wore in Outlaw,  

Some desperado – he’ll let the stubble grow a la Clint Eastwood

The ugly, the bad and the not good enough good, huh?  

Now it’s coke spilling and she saying “Oh liddle Apollo, won’t you take a swallow

Won’t you lick a nibble from off my hamburger dribble

It’s a scribble that I’ll let you take me home, after all,

I got a bone I wanna pick with you . . .”

Apollo in a spider’s web, headed for the outdoor shed

To loosen his emotions, kicking up the sawdust best

The chequer boys and girls, the swansdown lick, the duck’s arse curl

And then a flash of pearls above a twin-set of mammary-engineered constructions

Now I gotta get me in that place, forget the oily face with a two-hundred pound

Punch in the palm, I gotta hunch I jus’ gotta say,

’Pollo baby, c’mon home, where you belong Na Na Na Ney

Snappin’ fingers in hypnotic animation: this rotation on the box is getting’ boring

Lovely Artemis, isn’t it appalling the state your brother’s in?

Pallas, can you hear me through this din?

He’s stone forgot ’bout his chariot and his brace and pair

Seems he’s mighty mesmerised with that baggage over there

Now I’m getting’ weaving: if it’s competition you want

I’ll best you yet – get behind ’Pollo baby

Unless you want to get wet, you’re wet enough behind the ears

OK sister – here: take an onion for your tears

Clear the floor for dancing, this squaw’s on the warpath

Clear the floor for trancing, this Rasputin gets the shooting right

Come on baby, I ain’t got all night: weave that coloured tapestry

Try and weave your threads round me

I’m tricky and I’m sticky enough in my own way

So you want this boy here, do yah? Well, listen well to what I gotta say:

You can rock around the clock, you can roll in the aisles

But underneath that hundredweight of make-up lies a funeral pyre

You’ve trapped your meal tickets upon the sticky wickets

Of your plastic femininity; you’ve mesmerised, you’ve hypnotised

You’ve spun a fine old web I see – moths in your pockets, skeletons in your head

Now tell me sweetie: what precisely lies a-festering in your bed?

Come on Apollo – this little lady won’t follow,

She don’t want to dance no more upon this sweat-drenched floor

I don’t think she’ll bother you further, I can always deter her by merely

Liftin’ my foot and crushing her, nasty little old creepy-crawl 

                                      nasty little spider . . . .