There's a spider in the corner
Spinning silk into structure
I'm repulsed by this intruder
Just the same I want to touch her

I watch her distrustingly
I must admit she frightens me
Weaving an intricate canopy
Above my ficus tree

She thinks she's safe there but instead
For fear she may drop on my head
I am going to have to **** her
Creepy, calculating, dead

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

It’s really disheartening
The way people are being
They only love you at the beginning
And they chew you up the next thing
They spit you out after they use you
They forget everything right that you do
They take your air until you turn blue
Turns out, people are worse than you knew

It’s really disappointing
The way spiders keep you spinning
They bind you up till you’re hurting
Keep you in a shelf until they start eating
They make you wait for your death
Mercilessly, they take your last breath
What’s worse is you don’t even have a death bed
Your awake but all of you is spent

Like a lake without water
Like a pen without a paper
They left me like this, more alone than ever
I just wish I could be happier
But I promise myself, this is the last time
I’ll never again let them take what’s mine
My sanity is all that is left in my mind
And I’ll bury it somewhere even I can’t find

In tidying his garden shed he sweeps up
spiders’ webs without concern, like
so much dust and spiders too.

They wait for hours, patient as anglers,
their lines complex geometries of silk.
It takes a million years to get to this:
an hour to build a web that lasts a day;

With webs secure as safety-nets,
they lie in wait for acrobatic wasps to falter,
unsuspecting slap-stick moths to snag
their powder-wings on sticky silk…

He locks his shed.
Even as he’s walking down the path,
a ball of legs unfurls, fixes a line,
abseils down the window pane.

There're spiders
there're monsters
they live under my bed
but no one else sees them
so the monsters
they come and
when I cry in the night
you laugh and you say
“you’re too big for this nonsense,
close your eyes, lay down your head”
see that bed, it is mine
so I made up a plan
and this last time
the monsters came crawling,
the rain on the roof
drowned all other sounds...

and the spiders came out
(I said they lived under my bed)
oh! and the stories they know
look at the size of their claws!
let them tear you to pieces
oh! this time you'll see!
There're spiders
there're monsters
but no! they’re not one!
there was red
There was red!
but this time not me!
bet you wished you believed me
all those times I did say
there are spiders
there were monsters

and they'll stay under my bed!

We are afraid that there is nothing.
We are afraid that there is something beyond, even we cannot know it and so squash it into a box.
We are afraid that cats will scratch out our eyes and someone will release a wild fox into the house letting it scream intensely like the sound of torture.
We are afraid of the deep, dark ocean, that it will eat us whole and a megalodon will slow motion leap from the deep to swallow us in totality and to be followed by a ship wrecking kraken that will cover an island and make us pay for our sins.
We are afraid of God, that he is mad, that he is angry, that he does not approve, that he isn't really there, that he doesn't have a plan for us, that he gave up on us and our disgusting lives and terrible choices that bring ultimate self-destruction.
We are afraid of spiders.
We are afraid of the house setting alight whilst nobody is home and the neighbours hate us so much they stand in their front gardens and watch it burn and only then calling the fire brigade when ash starts to affect their own space, their own environment, and they'll complain till the cows come home about "what an inconvenience all this has been", how it has made them late, how the fire engine has blocked off the road so Saturday shopping will have to wait a bit longer. And they hate us, they hate us, they hate us.
Their dog ***** in our garden. It ***** on our grave.