There is something so calming
About the spiders spinning web.
Something so comforting,
A song sung by the dead.
Hear it wallow in the distance
Like an unforgiven tune.
Sung by the rivers daughter,
The beauteous sunset muse.

Bask in the moonlit waters
Barely but blessed by shining sun.
Hold to your heavn'ly quarters,
The likes of which shall come undone.
For if you catch the spider spindle
You are likely to be safe.
In other wares, their finer fares
In absence, stay awake.

I speak not for the Titan,
Or God nor Goddess alike.
I speak not for the tongue
Of the mumbling friars might.
For Alas my hearers hear this plea,
Beware the nymph of sophistry

Inexplainable emotions,
Connected by spiderwebs.

Rather, the past and present
Webbed together by
Haunting cobwebs.

Regrets left to haunt,
The present left
For us to decide.

Steung together and
Streched thin

Who are you?
My haunting present?
My nightmarish past?
My bottomless imagination?

Or the black widow
Connecting it all,
And leaving the dust
To settle,
On my abandoned heart.

I yearn for the days
of me sighing at the spider
way up on the ceiling,
and you commending his skill.

“Look how high he got!” you’d say,
big old grin on your face, soft hair in my hands,
with kind eyes locked on the spiders’ hair
that dangled boldly from the ceiling.  

We’d play a game.
Armed with cup and blank paper,
evenly matched—
in the race to catch the beast.

I’d watch you win each race.
The satisfying sound of the cup slapping drywall,
it still rings in my ears.
How tenderly you’d speak goodbyes on our porch.

Where the hell is my goodbye.

Porcelain Spider Under the Cellar Door

She sees a person as spool of yarn,
Taking your lifeline and threading it through her own needle,
Round and round you spin as she turns you into something to adorn,
Such an excellent seamstress the mindful spider is,
Sowing painted backless dresses to give the illusion of a spine,
Missing fragmented fractions of her web, she’s blind,
Stark, stacked illusions of what lies beyond a cellar door,
In the inner shadows of the light,
She fears no height, though bore in darkness,
Leg and fang she fought,
Fighting for frail frivolity of position and pose,
******* parts of souls in her aesthetic but potent web,
Missing lines, lanes, but layered intricately allowing illusion of a periled princess,
On her painted round ****, a red hourglass turns to eyes,
Dancing with half dead perspective “insects” assigning value,
Whispering lies,
Clinging to, now, a somewhat familiar light,
Never letting her eyes adjust she refuses to rise,
Periled perfection is her guise,
Hiding in the cracks of the steps and floor,
Content under the rusty bolted hinges of a cellar door,
She never has enough, even at the edge,
The rough taciturn of her mind is never set,
Keeping half dead insects, so long in her web,
Sometimes they expire,
Other times they break and breach her bountiful cacoon,
Falling into the abyss laying underneath that cellar door,
Some recover,
Some feel new found darkness never felt before,
She slides and falls frailly when situations slip from sight,
Using partially passed insects to patch her ornamental paint and aesthetic might,
Having brushed layers of color with their guts,
Shriveled, they fall away from her web,
Her web a half living, half dead farm
And she wails at their loss,
While spinning,
Another web..
She see a person as a spool of yarn...

The Spider under my chair
                 Wasn't doing me any harm...
                             But I killed it.

I don't know why I did what I did
                  But I know if I knew
                             That Spider under my chair
  
Would still be alive.

Little spiders crawl on me as I try to
sleep. But I pay them no mind. They’ve
wandered around here for years,
claiming their deserved space, though
I’m sure they’ve been around long
before I moved in. I used to freak out
as their tiny legs made the trek across
one shoulder to the next and down my
arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps. It
was like a muzzle ****** to the back
of my head, or the first time soft,
caring fingers made their way across
my undressed skin. But now I could not
care less. These little ******* are
now my friendly acquaintances, and
they crawl around all they want.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow