Writing | Spiderbaby by Danielle Willis

The murderer Gilles de Rais
would sometimes cut down
a boy he was hanging
and cradle the half-strangled child
in his arms begging forgiveness
until it occurred to him
to finish the job
then he'd fuck the body and eat it
but I think he really meant it
when he said he was sorry because
monsters always cry over their dinners
and don't pretend you don't know
what I'm talking about, Spiderbaby,
you who told me you'd like to
perch on the chests
of handsome young men
and sing them lullabies while
slicing their eyes open with razorblades
and don't pretend you don't know that
you are as revolting and pathetic to them
as I am to you
you with an asshole for a cunt
and me with a length of black rubber for a cock
I told you I wanted to be your boyfriend
that stupid night we did Ecstasy in Bobs bedroom
with Highway to Hell and Houses of the Holy
on endless repeat on the CD player,
candles shuddering in the greasy remains of dinner
and your tongue nervous in my mouth,
stupid because those four hours I spent
pawing your hatchling tits
and playing with your hair
were the best time I've had in my entire life
and don't pretend you didn't know
I wanted to drink your pain like blood
because you got me strung on it
like the opiate your name just happens to rhyme with
calling me up at four in the morning
to weep over dead cats and cab drivers
who might have looked at you five years ago,
calling me up because you knew
how hungry I was to listen,
saw how I stared at you
with the taste of bedlam welling
like tears in the back of my throat
while you droned on about men
who didn't love you and the high price
of transsexual surgery
and how you were never
going to get a record label
because your music was too slow and morbid
for a generation that just wanted
to rub crotches and hip hop
and I'd murmur words of comfort while
sneaking strands of hair from your brush
and scraping flakes of semen from your bedsheets
for spells I was too much of a gentlemen to cast
and don't pretend you didn't know what I was
because you use vampires
the way medieval doctors use leeches
and don't you dare bitch about feeling drained
because there's enough poison in you
to swell a thousand of us to bursting, but then,
monsters are supposed to cry over their dinners
and you and I want so desperately to be monsters
and not just a couple of ex-Catholic suburban kids
with the right kind of hair and bone structure
to carry off the clothes and the ghoul makeup