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At last, a sensible response to my poem. I hate people who don't take my writing seriously.

I am not going to make the standard academic response: everything you say times a hundred and no returns. I think your comment deserves a more detailed response than that. Times a million, maybe.

Not many people know this, but I began life in a woman's womb, with all the messy biology that that entails. By an astounding coincidence the woman in question was my mother. I have spent my life trying to make sense of the experience. Why was I chosen? Of all the mes in the world, how come I am this one? Everybody thinks they are me, just ask them, yet I am the only one who wakes up every morning with My face on. I am the only one who goes to My kitchen to make My self a cup of My tea. I am forced to conclude that I am the One True Me. Sometimes I was born in Japan.

Now we come to spiders. That's enough about them.

Cheese, on the other hand, comes in many varieties. It occurred to me that if you have a spider on the one hand and many varieties of cheese on the other, you can tell which is which by making two fists. One hand would close easily with just a mild squishing sensation whereas the other would meet considerable resistance and you might find yourself unable to complete the process without the assistance of a chef. That is, of course, the subtext, back story and grotesque rationalisation of stanza three.

It is said by many that a cat has nine lives and a Windsor has merry wives. Lives and wives. They rhyme, as a person of your unction and unguent will already have distracted. Coincidence? I don't think so. Everything happens for a reason; to each reason there is a season; mice enjoy a bit of cheesin', in winter it's bloody freezin'. You will already be thinking: mal de mer, and I find myself unable to understand why. Steve Mal de Mer plays a guitar with only three strings. The symbolism is slight.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than skulls to dig up and soliloquise about. Nine time nine shall be the number of their long divisions, yet they rip only what they sew. These timeless words of wisdom make cowards of us all, for can we not put a girdle round the hurdle without a single jot of blood? Need I say more? Yes? Um - ladies go: nim, nim, nim.

Now we come to the part where I get bored with this and try to find a way to wrap it up. Imagine this: you are on a desert island with nothing for dessert but a deserter. His name is Frank, for reasons that are never made clear. Maybe he has always been called Frank. Maybe he became Frank in an unrevealed misogynistic incident with a gargoyle. Maybe his name was mis-spelled on his passport and he never filled out the forms to query it. Maybe he had severe toothache that day. We may never know.

That is why I end my poem:

We may? Never! No!