Colm Galum is the author of a slightly misguided book of poems about Spider-Man; Colm Galum is himself one of those slightly misguided poets, still convinced lyrics topple dames, or at least fairly attractive ones.A lawsuit is likely, as a consequence of our publishing this. Please tell our girls, if you will, that we may be gone ‘til November, our lawyers that we’ll take two years if there’s a chance of parole, and the history books that we had a thing for cats, doughnuts, and legends.
Take it away, Mr. Galum.
I Leap Into Darkness; Spider-Man confronts a new and deadly foe. What makes him the most beautiful crime-fighter ever created, is how terrified he really is…
Young pilgrim! – aband’ning all the fond delights,
That decorate thy supper plate,
Bold pilgrim! Rash comrade!
What right dost thou exercise,
In aband’ning once more suff’ring mate?
At haphazard, wanton rate,
You take to flight! Your cutlery clatt’ring,
For he calls again, thy old friend fate;
Nothing else for a moment matt’ring,
Not even th’ full meal thou almost ate.
Though ‘tis early, and not that late,
‘Tis a wicked Halloween evening,
Full of sickly prospect and tenacious cunning,
(From looking at thy TV screen,)
Which must be why you depart running?
Dost thou retire for sleep, young Parker,
In spandex and never soft pyjamas?
I can’t help but imagine armour,
Being quite hellish in the summer…
Do you only dream of villains darker,
Or hast thou real hopes and fears,
Made of real joys and salty tears?
After all these crazy years,
Hast thou lain down thy head and said,
‘Karma: I have my penance paid’?
As Mary-Jane’s well-wishing kiss,
Dissolves, evaporates,
Does super-duty make thee miss,
Thy lover's perforating state?
Do you see her trembling fingers,
Cradling together where she lingers?
Do you hear her solemn prayer,
Beneath those timeless Irish layers?
And does your heart-beat clamber so,
Against a chest that heaveth-ho?
What’s it like to open windows, and then blindly plunge,
Into a silent, plotting darkness,
That soaks thou up like starving sponge?
Mary-Jane at last retreats,
Covers up your clueless meal,
Sees to all the unclaimed sweets,
Since it is unease she feels.
If fear beholds thee, Spider-Man,
You both are one, plunged into darkness;
And if you don’t feel it, Spider-Man,
Then I, with you, plunge into darkness.
For a moment I am the Spider-Man,
Halloween night, thou rooteth wrong!
I am the Giants! the Knicks! the Yankees!
I am the Empire State Building,
I standeth tall and lanky;
Lay down thy arms, I waiver not,
All set to collide and smash thee,
Like a New England Patriot;
Your allegiance stinks,
The stars revile, recoil from you,
While noble moonlight watching thinks,
‘I oughtta place a bet or two.’
Glaze me, Lady Lunar! Sing a hearty song –
Make spiders of those luscious beams,
And cheer with all the pumping throng!
The wind is preoccupied,
And haughty in its fleeting,
Or perhaps my glissade prompts it thus,
As I come to that hot-lit urban aspect,
Where the away team and I are meeting;
‘Trick or treat!’ I shout in greeting,
Descending on a bit of curb,
Just outside a jewellery store,
I accost some odd, sphere-headed man,
His visage lit by nothing more,
Than a glimmer I’ve seen someplace before.
I wrap in web that crystal-ball,
That in costume sweepstakes conquers all,
Then, since I've his vision now impaired,
He rubs my gum off in a fury,
And draws from it not locks,
But legions of regal, flowing hair.
My lungs are like thumping speakers,
Either side of a stereo,
The world turns a blinding white again,
And I re-unite with Mysterio.
I shoot some rope up from my wrists,
Shimmy to ascend,
But can’t, in the milky expanse vast,
Find a point to apprehend;
I can’t make out a trace of home,
My loving crowd is vanished, gone -
Like a light turned off,
To cast a dead and desolate room...
It’s back again, and space refills,
With the Coliseum of my fantasies:
New York, New York, you bless the senses.
My ears suspect fresh fallacies,
For like a lion’s deadly purr,
Comes a quaint, familiar whirr,
Hand in hand with manic laughter;
At once a thousand gonging bells,
A long and painful yarn foretell;
For an eternity I would be the Spider-Man,
But for all these grinning pumpkins,
Lighting up the halls of hell.
The goblin lives!
*
My City, This To Thee; a song for New York City, and its perennial mastodon.
New York City! thou art an endless carnival!
Patient nest of the ascendant living,
Willing playpen, of all the hyperactive dead,
Who shun heaven’s tame attractions,
(In favour of thy satisfactions;)
Thy omnipresent Ferris wheels,
(Their lax dismissal of the skies),
Wall Street’s perpetual teddy prize,
For cotton-candy-easy enterprise;
Dare I not mention, Apple large,
Your green and red and yellow skin?
Your own spectrum minute, dainty, and simultaneous tint,
That would put the ripest peach to shame,
And snarl in the face of any orchard;
Drunk with colour, though I’m yet to quaff thy streets;
Oh, thy supernova sprawl!
Brighter than the Milky Way, in nook and cranny, from
Wall to wall!
Still you envelop thy lip, in uncaring drawl,
As if your ageless gorgeousness,
Were a bold investment scam, or not a single thing at all.
New York, you giant cherubim;
Racing to and fro about thyself, in quest of misplaced halo,
That thy lights would soon embarrass,
With their effervescent shine,
And visual lyric that exceeds mine,
For its sheer electricity;
Generated from serendipity,
That gives ol’ Hudson kindly current,
Illuminates thy fingernails,
And dispenses wide its compound accent,
So that all heartbeats sound the same.
Your title throughout the world resounds,
Like a deafening ringtone;
And when the gentle tide brings pilgrims new,
Towering Lady Liberty,
Hoists her eternal flame a little higher,
In friendly greeting, and in victory;
For she claims another heart,
With her omnipresent art,
Ensnaring you in the joys beyond her.
Chief among which must surely be,
That mayoral red and blue resplendence,
Rising up and swooping down,
From its trusty set of slings,
With whose aid it zips about and zings,
Like the neatest bug you ever saw.
New York! theatre of defiant stars:
Where’s the wandering comet gone tonight,
The red and blue one I describe?
