Les Murray

The Head-spider

The Head-spider - meaning Summary

Numbing Spider of Desire

The speaker recalls growing up beside a roller coaster and a claustrophobic social scene that both excites and polices desire. A persistent "spider" in his head symbolizes a numbing force that kept him detached, misread as morality, and linked to a suppressed, ambiguous sexual experience. Rituals of female protection and male resentment shape him. Later urban change and a claim to a "new body" suggest renewal, while the final line questions love and divine ordering.

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Where I lived once, a roller coaster's range of timber hills peaked just by our backyard cliff and cats undulated scream-driven round its seismograph— and climbed up to us with an indrawn gasp of girls. Smiles and yelling could be exchanged as they crested then they'd pitch over, straining back in a shriek that volleyed as the cars were snatched from sight in the abyss, and were soon back. Weekdays they rested, and I rested all days. There was a spider in my head I'd long stay unaware of. If you're raped you mostly know but I'd been cursed, and refused to notice or believe it. Aloof in a Push squat, I thought I was moral, or dead. Misrule was strict there, and the Pill of the day only ever went into one mouth, not mine, and foamed a Santa-beard. I was resented for chastity, and slept on an overcoat. Once Carol from upstairs came to me in bra and kindness and the spider secreted by girls' derision-rites to spare women from me had to numb me to a crazed politeness. Squeals rode the edge of the thrill building. Cartoonist Mercier drew springs under Sydney. Push lovers were untrue on principle. It's all architecture over there now. A new roller coaster flies its ups and downs in wealth's face like an affront. I've written a new body that only needs a reader's touch. If love is cursed in us, then when God exists, we don't.

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