Spider Ballad

Spider Ballad

There was a spider in my brain
eating things that flew–
hopes and dreams and artful things
and all my thoughts of you.

What little brain I had to start
made for meager fare,
and soon my skull (an empty bowl)
became the spider’s lair.

It spit its venom in my eyes
and puppeteered my limbs
with fish-line webs–oh watch me dance!
Yes, watch my graceless bend.

But now the spider’s been here long–
o, long enough to see
I was the spider all along
and, the spider, he was me.