By: Chuck Orloski

At annual Game of Low Thrones Awards,
large and star power tarantulas
awarded me the nick name, Little Tarantula.
Without Peter Dinklage famous looks
and minus five 0′ clock shadow fur,
I was born a midget, short changed
by this harsh terror age, where “size matters.”
Ah, yes… my life crawls day-to-day
in search for small insects to eat
while Contra Tarantulas feast upon
frogs, mice, and even a wild Lady Bird.

For me,
horse flies are a Vegas Bacchanal Buffet,
a cicada a day keeps the hairy undertaker away.

Hungry, one day I crawled
upon a ceiling rafter of Lone Butte Casino
and an old pigeon lay helpless in my path.
Happy Birthday or feeble miracle?
Suddenly, I am strong, the prey is weak.
Calmly, with benign venom , I stung the pigeon –
There are no scholarly tarantulas around
to credit me with higher euthanasia values!

No one heard the bird’s final moans,
“coo coo, coo coo!”
and upon floor above, a gambler doubled down
with two Aces in-the-hole, on daddy’s debit card.

In no hurry,
I looked into the pigeon’s puzzled eyes;
it seemed we were inmates at the same casino.
Again, the maxim, “he who hesitates is lost,”
and from nowhere, a tiny tarantula appeared!
Closer, still closer, came my brother creature.

I claimed Darwinian turf, “squatters rights,”
the other aggressively claimed Manifest Destiny.
Each wanting “all or nothing,”
we fought for prey, until mutual extinction.
(Upstairs, the tramp of high heels and sneakers)
Pray, pray ye for the Little Tarantula’s soul?
The dying old pigeon managed a final leap
from off the rafter sill throne,
and fell into V.I.P. Lone Butte Casino parking space,
where big and little gamblers fought for advantage.

*In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche explained how resentment is the least considered of the primary human motivations. With lifetime observation bordering on insanity, Nietzsche branded such people tarantulas. Looking mercilessly back upon a personal work career which produced neither fortune nor happiness, I experienced how some co-workers delighted upon my failures, and I upon theirs. Unfortunately, the world’s 1% understand how resentment thrives in the hearts and minds of tarantulas of all classes & creeds, east and west, and mastered the controllable basis for creating division among both big and small.