Spiders sprinkling down a crooked spine

Can you hear the whine of a brain stem dying

One hundred and eighty days of pain

have metamorphosed this corpse into something deranged

mangled and tangled in webs of perception

razor-sharp enough to cut straight through the gut's deception

and when the vile heart succeeds in silencing the eyeballs

emptying the sockets of life-long pitfalls

maybe the spine-spiders will finally commence to release

the good soul that remains trapped inside this tree.

Grow tree, grow, for you are all I have ever known,

If it weren't for your protective shade, who knows where I'd have been blown.

You may be covered in cobwebs and leaves long decayed,

but I'll keep my promise to save you someday.

You may not grow to be the big oak of which you dream,

perhaps you will end up as kindling in the fiery gleam

of a thousand spiders cremating in my hearth

as I look on, a corpse consumed by an angry spark.

Lovingly your ashes will be placed

beside the oldest river, the one you once graced.

There will be no more spidery-spinal veins

to screech and rattle and bring about the worst pain.

Changelessness is not a virtue, a concept you most despised,

in the spidery spinal tree's search for life of a better kind.