The Influence Of Gaudi. Poem by Geoffrey Fafard

She poisoned them a little every day. Just enough to soften and ripen, but not to kill.They were her collection.Her pride and so much her joy and her main reason for living.Her grande design.
The web she weaved was silky, strong and treacherous, perfected over the decades of her dark existence.An art taught to her by her mother, long gone now, just a dim fading memory.
Neatly in rows they hung in the humid hallway of her home in an old Gothic section of the city, deep in the little known lane way behind the busy museums of the maritime sector Navel De Catalunya near the Govern Militar. Here Gaudi influences abounded all around her.
Here she was safe, safe in anonymity, safe in shadows, safe in streets where she lurked unnoticed.Here she could pick her prey in the shadows of evening and under the blanket of night.The perfect location to snare those too foolish or too drunk to be out on the cobbled streets of Barcelona on a cold and lonely evening.
In the shadows of the old stone building she would play with her captives.Dangling with an elasticity born of much practice she would prod and poke and hiss and laugh at the dozens of baubles suspended and hanging from the ceiling, some of which would groan. Others would moan. One or two would even venture to croak out a simple sparse curse.Now and then she would pick one to eat.She ate less as she grew older.Just enough to keep her energy level sufficiently high to keep up with the task at hand, high enough to hide six of her eight legs, camouflage her worn and stained old fangs and make up her face just enough to suppress any accidental screams from passers by caught unaware by a face to face situation.
And then there was the project, life long and all consuming.The bits of bones and coloured clothing and bling… the work of her life.The mosaic patterns, the bringing of it all together, this design, this creative genius. The room, the sacred room, her accomplishment.She was proud, so dam proud. Her room was out of this world.Sparkling in its creativity, years of work culminating in a fusion of intensity and strength.Design before death she would chant.
So long ago it had all started almost a forgotten dream when as a young thing she had dragged that one out from under a tram.That night of the accident when no one came and she sat over him till he went cold.

AS Recorded by...
Geoffrey in Catelano Espana.