This the first installment of a serialization of respected Canadian poet Dan Lukiv's collection The Lead Guitarist.. Lukiv's work has appeared in poetry publications around the world, and we are pleased to feature his work in *spark-online for the first time.

The Editors *spark-online

The First 7 Poems

TARANTULA

Far from Scythian
Females, in
The Amazon-

Jungle of monster-
Leaves, where
Nobody severs
The right breast
To make the bow fit,

Little-clad
Men-folk eat
Tarantulas.Held
Between two sticks
Over flames that burn off
Leg-hair, the
Salty meat sizzles
And steams.

Tang and season are as
Foreign as a Visa card
Or an army helmet.But
Tarantulas abound. Crack
Open

The crustacean shell
For the jungle-
Candy.

An entomologist on CBC
Said you cannot compare
The meat to anything--
Not to rabbit or chicken:
Tarantula is to tarantula
As bullets are to bullets
And hate is to hate.

These people love tarantulas.
They love the spicy
Meat.

WINTER-REPTILE

In the dawning valley,
A cloud-snake--
A bread-dough-viper--
Lies along the
Ice-mottled river,
Sliding from sand cliffs
To beach-homes,
And back,
Like a fickle breeze,
Or key-jumping
Jazzman.

It's a vapor-tunnel,
A wintry plume on its belly,
A vertebrate hiding from the sun
That awakens people
And burns fog.

WHIRLPOOL

Glacial water/
Blue-green silt spins
A whirlpool,
A twirling eyeball
That slides--as mindlessly
As a bullet--between
Diluvian boulders of
Discarded mountains,

Spinning, spinning
Like a planet
Or a dream,

But the raw current
Grabs hold,
Unwinding the weird screw,

And then it's gone;
As quickly as life
Leaves the eye
At death,

It's gone.

NIGHT-LOONS

The night, like this dock,
Is mine:
The dark waves of Green
Lake Look oily--
Hardly a ripple--

As loons cry
(Their voices disturb me),

And I wonder:
Would I be happy
If I could remember everything
I've forgotten?

Another loon cries:
The sound is hollow and cold,
Like echoes in a barge.

I wonder:
Have I ever actually
Seen a loon?

I can't remember.

ARCTIC KILLER

Polar bear:
Hiding,
With a paw,
Your black nose
(Ingenious)
As you stalk prey.
You're eidolic,
A Portuguese man-of-war,
To the flesh
You eat.

Photographer-pilots
"Captured" you
In your white desert:
Click.
But you,
In an 8 by 10 paradox,
Weren't there,
Like a Hollywood vampire
Without a virtual
Image.

Even infrared fails

To capture you
Who,
Like a black hole,
Harvests solar heat
That black skin
Absorbs.

Ultraviolet film
Exposes you:
A great,
Black amoeba,
As unphotogenic as
The small,
White seals (They too are
Heat-absorbing miracles)
That you eat.

You stalk men--
You,
The most beautiful
Of all bears
(Some say)--
Just as Nimrod
Stalked me

In war-play.

In a zoo-cage
You're adored
By awe-struck children
("He's so cute!"),

But in the wild,
Face to face,
You're a gargoyle
With teeth
That kill.

THE GOAT

A cream goat,
Crusty with manure,
Has a full bag.
She butts away
Smaller goats.
She wants a mouldy orange Overlooked in
Black mud.

THE LEAD GUITARIST

From a winter-scarred porch,
I peer at the skyline--
I'm a radar
Scanning for altitude
(Not that you should steer
By radar: that's like inviting rocks
Into your hull).

I see lines of Trans Atlantic
Clouds
As grey as poor rhythm
And as long as Beethoven's ninth. But I imagine them as
Simply grey beasts,
Or ship-punching fists,
Or strings of blue hearts lost
In Les Paul-pickups--
Pickups that change finger-licking Scribbles
Into electric licks
And screams.

I scan the blue sky above

The grey lines;
I'm a Malibu surfer
Sighting a dream-wave,
A Cariboo logger
Attacking lunch,

And a sunbather
With red shades.

Before my day ends,
I'll turn the color blue
Into an overdrive-
Feast,

In spite of the ache--
In spite
of Me.

Copyright © 2000 Dan Lukiv All Rights Reserved

Dan Lukiv lives and writes in Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada.