My pain loves me more than you ever will, She understands me like nobody else, And when my blood drips for her she pales, She knows that, for her, my hands could just kill.
She cuts my chest open to rip my heart, Out of the hole which now stands here empty. I can’t feel anything so I am free, Hope ends where with undying love I start.
I wouldn’t want her to be my enemy, I want her to be less scared of me, I want her to understand and witness.
Witness my shame and my sorrow for her, She will finally see me in her fur, And decay shall be voice of weakness.
content warnings: self-harm, description of physical pain
I
it seems to be highly recommended
to have your heart broken
your head broken
maybe your arm even
I’ve tried
but never found a way to be at ease
with the concept of self harm
cells do it enough by themselves
II
have you ever had a headache
a deep profound stomach ache
your period riping off your womb
the teeth coming out
even though you’ve turned 18 a while ago
your bones
your flesh
driving you mad
have you ever felt the pressure
so hard on your weak back
that you felt it was needed to remove all of your fur with the help of cold bands of cheap wax
taking a bit of skin with it
that’s how it goes
have you never had a moment of mourning
thinking back years from now
remembering something gone that left a hole that you thought would never be healed
have you never had someone hurting you more than you ever imagined you could hurt yourself
?
III
everything is left behind
everything is said alright
and if you’re not strong enough for us all
still I will ask you
to listen
to go to the core, to the root and think twice
the how and why
if you have yourself
I will have your back
§
§
the body shape
the body shape
i imagine
i embody the un-other
how far from the sheet
under
i go under way too softly
gentle
i knot my arms
feel the fingers on my back
this may work
i forget whose touch it was
what if
i can reproduce
the softness of uncertainty
the shake
the breath
fall asleep in silence
half awake
i lay still
§
§
there was a window
content warning: description of physical pain
I need to work on my saying skills
to try is not to be nor having any kind of interest towards you or you or you
I do not want to resist
I do not want to get stuck again
a year from now
will the stomach ache be gone
constantly trying to achieve the insatiable fantasy of existing
not even close
I never get the tone right
going out and running till stomach gets ripped out
feet on the ground
my back aches since I can’t move
§
§
somewhere behind your eyes
I would like to write a poem about you
maybe even
poems
about you
if you don’t mind me doing so
I wonder if you hated that I ordered decaf
I couldn’t drink it until it was cold
and I wonder
why I care
when we were drinking coffee I stopped thinking about
the taxes I have to pay
not that it was on my mind before that
but still
I do not know why I see the things you can’t see
you said
you can’t see them in your head
only somewhere behind your eyes
this is not a love poem but
I want to remember how you said it was awkward
how you asked if I had been anxious
and the relief to be able to say
of course
sure I was
it was not because of you
you didn’t ask
I saw the image in my head
so I wouldn’t fear anymore
but you couldn’t
I’ve said why already
before you asked you always said
like a song
can I ask ?
like a poem
I’m sorry I haven’t done the work in other languages yet
do you mind
if I take my time ?
we could keep asking questions and answering with blunt emotion
and make them all think it’s pure theory
The lucid idea that love was merely a concept ceased to exist little by little since the day our eyes first locked.
Six years of mutual unconsciousness of the other’s existence yet subsisting within that tangibly close proximity which served the sole purpose of leading up to that one ocular exchange.
It was that prelusive look we shared that perpetuated longer than requisite and that entailed a series of events that shaped our lives to prevail such as they are today.
The disappearance of the butterflies never came, it was instead superseded by the feeling of the ultimate piece in a jigsaw puzzle slotting immaculately into its emplacement; you are everything I never knew I always needed.
That bittersweet wait consisted of many profound twilight discussions, exchanging innocent affection and soul-reflective glimpses into each other’s eyes.
Up to that moment, I never had desired anything more profusely than to entrust my uttermost vulnerable proof of love with you.
From the time we took which claimed the extinct rush we were never in, rose up the question; “why waste the sweetest moments of falling in love?”
Were hectic bitter undertones of a first swig
steadying for the exclamation that our four
feet would trip through an all-nighter and
your former swarm?
Foam swirled into complete ego burial or
the censure of any comparisons stuck on
under chins like unsolicited spittle. One
spewed as fruit flies drowned in drink rings,
plucked, sponged, wiped
away by bartenders with the promise of a
blithe night, so to relinquish limerence was the
embrace of scarce sweet nothings as I secured
hair you once adulated from streams of bile and
the sticky grips of duplicitous people. Outside,
our collective reeling did not wane with the ease
of moons, yet we were tethered to your unrestrained
insistence it would pass. Just as one announces that
all the pigeons are vanishing from town tomorrow.
§
§
To come to a crabapple’s aid
Tannic throughout, the orchard’s
horse marine, a tart fruit scattered
across threadbare canvases of
eroded soil can be saved from
composting neglect in the shrubbery’s
shade. Chopped, it froths and slushes
above warm pans, strained for juice
then boiled into jelly. Perhaps that
seemingly unpalatable character
waits upon a baker’s time with the
heat of stovetop endeavors, before
revealing their sweet ambrosia.
I am the earth my mother walked on The chalky snow on my young stripped shape Her years of molding me The shores of my memory, breaking like waves in the night
I am a body Unknown scars, raw flesh, frozen bones Legs that will turn to dust, hands that could hold the skies I am a constant fading carcass, a peeling god Made of oak and gold My eyes are black stones in the long flood Muster every muscle I must To face the fear dwelling in my heart
I am a soul That smells like rain and moves like smoke The spirit of a herd of horses, the fervour of a crushing star Violent, young, wild It falls in the lands of the old stories Where men fought death in the final red sunset
These poems were written nineteen-hundred years ago on the rocks, trees, and Temple walls of Switzerland’s Jura Mountain, then under Roman occupation.
The poet was Honest Shores, a pagan hermit who begged for food at temples, lectured in the streets and often sang and drank with goatherds in the forested mountains.
Little is known about his life, except that he lived in relative poverty, despite having an education. He might have lived for a time as a tutor in a middle-sized Roman city, as he seems to understand societal ills that assailed the Roman Empire, even during its Golden Age (Cf. “Pax Romana”). However, all of this is speculations taken from the poems themselves.
This new translation of his work, despite being incomplete (This collection only including twenty poems, even though some sources suggest he wrote a thousand) significantly revises and updates the poems for a modern audience. Be not shocked if you see references to modern technology and problems, as the translator took some liberties to adapt old roman references for more contemporary counterparts.
Although he was educated, Honest Shores was derided at the time for using colloquial and vulgar forms of Latin in his poems. This suggests that, although he derided morals of his time, he never took himself too seriously. Likewise, the translator used an idiom that is clear, graceful, and neutral enough to last nineteen-hundred years more.
I am the end of everyone the last man
It doesn’t matter if it now comes to an
end It’s good for everyone to be dead
sometimes good to be alive again
I will dance on the wire and people will
be amazed I’ll crosswalk the air and the
light dance on the wire until I die and
dance on the wire one more time
I shall smoke the last cigarette
butt inhale the last breath of poison
look around the hexagram of the heaven
close my eyes and let the sun shine red
behind
one last time
II.
Nonday morning
Smoke on the verge of eternity
Alone in
the dead-end street world
Every day and every year the same stuff on TV
The Internet is choke-full of brags and misery
And I just don’t care
I don’t wanna spend the night on air
Ruminating that avant-garde cinema dream
I keep thinking there is
no music on a dead plane
“I used to blackmail the night just to get some
sleep” was what you used to say
But you ended up talking to yourself
III.
Words to be thought words to be said words
to be sung and words to whisper God’s
language is still to be found fashioned and
heard down there on Earth down there on the
ground there is no church and no temple down
there on Earth down there on the ground
bone machines and articulated minds
mortal spirits without any idea of time
Down there on Earth down there on the ground
for the first time shall I tread
Crossing my arms I’m facing the man
This is the only prayer I mean to utter
This’ll be the only time
I look into your eyes
IV.
I used to walk around so much I used to go
nowhere at all I grew aimless and shameless
Soared over the ocean and through the rain
My senses sharpened the distance between
the world and my eye narrowed seeing and
being became one single gesture and losing
my gaze into the above skyway whenever I
saw a star I’d wonder if it were dead or alive
I’d wandered and wandered got so stinky and
so filthy and so soiled that when I looked into
the mirror I saw a man I’d never seen in me
Lost absorbed life-washed
That was just another me
I didn’t know then but I’d started anew
V.
As open skies we moved………………………...
From a wing to another…………………………..
Skull and limbs all exposed…………………….
We needed nothing………………………………...
Bareheaded and free……………………………...
…We needed nothing……………………………...
…Toward eternity…………………………………....
………………………………………………...……………....
………………………………………………...……………....
………………………………………………...……………....
………………………………………………...……………....
………………………………………………...……………....
………………………………………………...……………....
………………………………………………...……………....
VI.
Behold the fireflies of the mind in pieces all the
colors of thoughts in motion across the scenery
of the allegorical meaning of yourself the crazy
geography of heaven’s truthful sin
These are roads painted on the canals of your
vanishing body the idle image of a world gone
mad roads that’ll take you into your own country
where seasons and hours are landscaped into the
mirror of your self
Now the silence will shatter
from the sounds inside your brain this is the birth
of the eighth day
Thusness widespread on the
planispheric memory of a day forever forgotten
VII.
When will I be taken away? How will I be taken
away from it all? What for a manner is to draw
someone away like that from their friends family
cats books clothes and whatsoever that holds
together the pieces of one’s very own private self
without any warning just like that gone as a dart
through the classroom of time?
Suddenly I feel so afraid when I think of death
22 only yet I feel so old when surreptitiously
I grow conscious of my own mortality
22 still alive When will I trespass? When will I
meet my other self? 22 still alive thinking of my
friends wondering who’ll be the first one to die
the first we’ll have to cry our hearts out for
Editor’s Note: Associated Artwork
Below you may find a list of artwork which this piece’s author associated with each sonnet. As some were protected under copyright, they were not included directly on this page. However, you may refer to the following links as you read the sonnets:
