I am a spider, a black widow,
Trapped in her own web.
I weaved it all around me,
With the purpose of trapping another.
My fly was so gullible, so naive,
It was easy, so easy to craft,
The fly falling for the slightest of movements,
The smallest strand of silk.
The fly lies trapped, but unaware,
Never struggling, just hanging there.
Ignorance remains its best friend,
Believing that it is free, opportunities abundant.
It doesn’t know that I have it in my grasp,
Slowly bending it to my will,
Unwittingly creeping closer and closer to its demise.
Yet as it dangles blindly,
I’m thrashing wildly, realizing what surrounds me.
A lucid dream it is, alert to my environment,
But dream control has not arisen.
Praying a dream is all it is,
Struggling against the web I wove,
Drowning in my man-made lake,
Denying all the lies I told.
Accepting my fate as into the web I fold.

It was in the early morning, blackbird song and
long wet grass, shuffling through making trails in dew
In the early mornings of my life.
Something of magic in the sun slanting
through wet dripping branches,
pearls of water drops in spidery webs enchaining
blade to blade in the long wet grass.

It was in the early morning rising from warm sheets
when hearing that cuckoo summons from
far distant woods, calling , welcoming me forth
into the dewy day, doors unbolted, stepping from within
dark walls, shadowed kitchens, cold and stony floor.
Stepping forth and catching at my heart.
They were.
Sun’s rays, dewy grass, pearls of water drops.

I am jealous of spiders
Those small, poisonous creatures

They don't care how small they are
Or how weak they are
They fight for their life despite the conditions

They hunt their prey without hesitation
Without pity
Without fear

They can enter any room
They don't need your permission

They all know their purpose
They all fight for their purpose

They catch or become food

They can create their world however they want
No one tells them how to connect their strings

They are clever
That's what makes them deadly
They are small
That's what extends their limits
They are selfish
That's what helps them survive

Their tiny-dark eyes
Those small marbles that extend their vision to places the human eye could never reach

Their infestation of twisted legs
Those agile limbs that move them with surprising speed and balance through any kind of frictional surface

They exist in every corner
Creep through every opening

They could crawl up your skin,
Plant their deadly kiss under the tissues of your outer layers,
Leading you to an agonizing swell of chemicals that tare and torture your nerves and muscles

The aftereffects are as countless as the number of their species

Pain
Nausea
Headics
Paralysis
And if you are lucky enough,
Death

You could have one of these
You could have all of these
They don't care

They are spiders,

And for them

You are a their predator

And their next victim

I. The Fireflies



There was once

a time when the fireflies

had made a home out of me.



One evening,

long after the sun

had surrendered itself

to the hazed horizon

and the pregnant moon,

they had come to my window,

golden freckles of light

twinkling playfully

in the dimness.



What exactly

prompted their gravitation

towards me,

I will never be entirely certain of,

though I have my theories.



Maybe it was the

warm glass of milk

sitting on my bedside table.

Or maybe

they had simply mistaken

the peppers of stardust

laced atop my eyelashes

for their own kin.



Or perhaps–

and most likely–

it had been

the murmur of poetry

on my lips:



…watch how they dart about the trees

in whimsical harmony,

how they rise up towards the dark sky

in the hopes that, someday,

they too will become one with

the constellations that blink

so brilliantly in the blackness.



Yes,

Perhaps this what had captivated them so–

a homage to the fireflies themselves.

Perhaps this is

why they had drifted towards me,

as if in some fanciful trance,

weightless as paper lanterns.



And how sweet they were

as they twirled about the ringlets

in my hair and

nuzzled their small frames

against my cheek

and fingertips.



How sweet they were–

that is,

until the bees came.



II. The Bees



They made lightning bugs

of my fireflies,

whose soft luminescence was replaced

with a violent stream of sparks,

one resembling something close

to the bursting of a fluorescent bulb



And so came the lightning,

the firefly’s only defence against

the approaching swarm,

their only ammunition

in the impending battle:

fireflies versus

bees,

both in want

of my nectared

marrow.



But the lightning

was no reasonable match

for the bees,

with their

large, gelatinous figures

and the persistence

of their stabbings;

annihilated were the fireflies,

carcasses crumbling to soot,

their innards,

still glowing,

smeared across my collarbone

like war paint.



Victorious and

humming menacingly,

the bees then crawled

into my ears

and my mouth

where they proceeded

to feast on their spoils and plunders:

the honey,

that they so cruelly

stole from me.



And once the honey was gone,

so were the bees,

bellies full,

antennae sticky,

their use for me

fulfilled and therefore

discarded.



III. The Spiders



The final hosts

were drawn to

what the bees had left behind:

the inconsolable emptiness

of my being,



They marked their territory

with cobwebs–

spun carelessly

into my arteries

and windpipe.



Breath dwindling and

heartbeat diminishing

I tried to remember the fireflies–

the light–

as the arachnophobia

threatened to devour me.

You pull the love out of me,
Like scientists harvest the silk of a spider,
Pinned down, days of freedom behind,
nailed to the bed arms outstretched,
How does it feel?
Nailed down there with precision?
Unmoving all strength gone,
Arachne's curse unbound onto me,
In me,
Out of me,
and in the walls,
You pull and you pull,
Weaving your own gossamer dream,
Of silken castles and fort walls,
Do you even want to feel?
No sirens for you to save.
Dancing with death at my traitorous embrace,
Dreams are so flammable,
and so is your heart,
The sparks of feeling,
Undo so much.
Last night somebody loved me --
and undid every word.

Alone in my dark room I sit,
as the spiders build their web,
trapping these brick and mortar walls
inside of it.
The wolf lurks outside my window,
his mouth waters as he is peeping in,
just waiting to sink his teeth
into my skin.
Creeping shadows
I mistake for burglars
are at the windows,
every time I pass them.
The wind whispers of danger,
as it hits the house with a running start,
it's murmurs seep through the cracks,
disturbing my fragile heart.
I hear the clash of broken glass
falling to the floor.
Who or what could that have been?
The wolf has broke down the door,
the spiders have made their way in,
and the man with the knife,
has just took my life.

m.e.

Cobwebs
in the eyes of the skull
long forgotten
left behind
in time
cobwebs
in the eyes of the skull
like an empty hour glass
bottom heavy with sand
as the hands chip away
as time passes by
as the spiders legs
weave its web
creating a symbol of death
but also... life
a pretty mirror
in which sits the grim reaper
his reflection
hidden in the strands
strands from which beads of life
do glisten
clinging dearly
and just like the web
reliant on a thread
life hangs delicately in the wind
like a basket full of flowers
in an abandoned back garden
the owners no longer exist...
hanging
and waiting
hanging
and waiting
awaiting its own destruction
a fleeting work of art
soon lost in the winds of time
and the forgotten skulls
sit laughing in the sand
a silent kind of laughter
only they understand
so laugh
while you can
says the sand
says the sand
*laugh
while you can
while you can
while you can