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Poetry

Regression Number X

​

Five small graves at the edge of the burrow

waiting for the ground to moan and rumble,

waiting for the fairies to take ya’ll home

my tiny angels going under

 

be brave, my darling, dig yet again

another bed of linen

my heart goes dim, my eyes go dry,

spite all the care you’re givin’

 

I gaze at you, my final sigh

at the eyes I will remember

I’ll take you up into the sky

into a golden cloud of amber

 

six and a half, in flowery lace

under the ancient willow tree

five and a half with your own face

and that’s how it was to be

 

with pretty flowers and words of love

I became next to kiss the moon

and you, my love, you put me there

and joined me very soon.

 

 

 

- M.L. 21/11/2018

The Vulture

 

I wish I could come here and say all the shattered pieces

of diamonds, of lead, a sharp explosion,

Where I go, how I will go, the world floating on me

and a soap bubble, a toothless griffin,

that there's nobody yelling too much to stay quiet,

some notes repeated until death,

that the petals have fallen and the garden is upside down.

I wish I could go quickly to where I would go, 

sliding on ice, pierced with lights and rockets,

shimmering like the aurora in the utter night,

and reach you,

I wish I could disconnect myself from what weighs and tell you

in a crown of wounds a burning crystal,

I wish to be your restless murmur,

the exaggeration, I want insanity,

I will not stop for anyone, not even for words,

in the torn visage of the journey

let the masts come tumbling down,

the big curtains outstretched,

and in front of the island 

I want to give you water,

a conch shell jewelry, the arcadian blue.

 

Nostalgia glued to the sky, I wish

to pierce it out into a bigger sun, 

I wish I could reach you,

and tell you a shock of copper, glowing bright,

who we are, the ingratitude of asking questions,

of saying forever, forever,

of walking barefoot.

 

To be all and give everything in the perfect fall

straight down, without doubts,

and why there are ghosts, charity and waltzes

in the spiral as if they would devour us.

 

The music never stops.

The repetition of me in it,

disconnected, secret, in the voice of thereafter,

and what does it matter...

Afterwards there is no thinking or remembering,

neither the wind nor the roses,

neither the words nor the promises,

nothing,

the annihilation of hours

was time grabbed, pulled out of every hair,

where did your face fall off, I never saw it,

who do I dream of,

ten thousand verses would not be enough to tell

this constant silence, no,

the denial.

A river of mirrors continues to spring from a dry stone

no,

from the additional greens that are climbing,

talking trees of incredible messages

say that it's alright to burn, so let it burn.

 

And I wonder what I do with you.

The music never stops.

At night I see all sorts of shapes,

they shake me and I go their way, up the red hill,

back bowed,

over me a vulture with stuck claws

watches me and keeps me…

Written in the Sand

​

I write these lines because it is so much what dazzles me… I hate you with all my strengths and weaknesses. I hate you as much as one can possibly hate. From the inside out and from the outside in, and it makes me lose sight of all else, of paths and precipices.

 

A star is almost born from this fertile and burning feeling. It’s almost a comet.

 

By your lips and by your sweet poisons, I hate you a thousand times per second. When hours slip into slumber, and in every dawn is born from it.

 

I hate you.

 

And, without it, I couldn’t live with myself.

 

Time goes on, incessantly, never losing pinch… Not even the knowledge of being alive leaves me any scrap in my pocket. As if there were some kind of world out there. As if, perhaps, there were anything, at all, beyond us.

 

Every single gesture of yours hits me through the core with precision. I hate you for space and hope, for every stacked sheet of paper, for steps, and dances, and covenants, beautiful words, and for my cold veins where only the rain keeps flowing.

 

I hate you mercilessly for every time the world is turning and, if memory was anything but smoke, I would touch your heart with my soul, and you would be water to my image.

 

I can write to you without ever saying enough, and everything is excessive, because words are always too few to feed me. All truths are defined by the lack thereof. I hate you by drinking from the source where I resurrect myself, I hate you in the infinite red sunsets, in each skin that I shed, in every single birth pain, and I hate you just a little bit more.

 

Because you taste like honey and salt.

 

I hate you without end.

 

 

Categorically.

Devotion

 

To love is devotion, a constant prayer,

a mantra rooted in the middle of the spine, a common thread.

A prayer in awakening and sleep,

during the lucid intervals between one thing and the other,

one loves to the exhaustion of the soul,

until all words are consumed and new ones are formed.

To love is an habit of ecstasy,

the profusion of colors coming out of the pale white,

to love without destination, emancipation as a path to zero,

one lives on the water currents and waves

the foam of words and kisses,

so many dreams,

one lives ageless in absence and longing,

and praying over this idea, projected fantasies like flowers,

 

until the night becomes a poetry garden.

Goodbye

​

I cringe

I become cold,

the hands, the feet

I have more branches than I should

the dew, the fog

I have falling leaves

I have woodworm

I have no limbs to feel

a meow

the night here and I

not even a hoarse voice, I un-stay

I loose gravity and cringe

I don't want the world

I don't want myself anymore

I pick trivial shapes

a cup, a table,

and everything is silent

not even normality came in

an uninteresting letter

a schedule

I don't want to go where I go

I un-go

and all the square

says V and O, I and D

If I were my own house

I would be made of windows

without doors to open or close

without walls to keep

whatever inside

the music passing on the outside

and it touches me through

as if I were nobody

the ghost is no longer

the ghost who was who

and the longing for tears.

I can keep looking at where

at here where nothing

or at there where not

and I turn from zero to zero

I know that in time I will

hear again the voices of things

of the cup, of the table

of everything that now lays in shock

of everything that just dropped dead

and I will be someone turned outwards

knowing the schedule of feelings

I will hop again on their rumps

for the illusion that is life

but always

with something that un-remains

like the tears,

goodbye

the heavy, suffocating air

and the doors, goodbye

to a world of blue air,

where I created wonders and gathered a pile

of precious stones for you,

which everyone saw and desired

but only the sea overthrew them

and the foam embraced them, goodbye,

like waves.

The Fool, The Other, The Third and The One

​

I, Love 

behold the One and the Other 

and realize 

You shall never understand me

or be complete in my absence. 

You, who have absolutely nothing 

besides being each other. 

I, Love 

could wish for so many things, 

for change and enlightenment, 

and for your eyes to open, 

while mourning in pain of your pain. 

And, to set you free

I, Love 

sometimes so weakly, 

slip into myself and wish

For you, Beloved 

Who are sleeping. 

under my gazing, passionate shadow 

sleeping and dreaming of nothing. 

 

- The Fool

 

...

 

Beloved, in a distance,

Like the Truth.

 

The Abyss, so clear in my sight,

while leaping without fear

into the illusion and over

the pile of discarded hides.

 

I, Love,

came to terms with it

in every possible or impossible way

and, disregarding everything but myself,

wrote down this Law.

 

- The Other

 

...

 

The primal force of the fall, Beloved,

One, finally, facing the Other

inside of the mouth of the big black Beast.

 

As close as your soul, I, the One,

leave you to wander as far as you wish.

 

- The Third

 

...

 

The Abyss, there – as it always shall be?

as once I chose to exist in time...

while that which has been also failed to be, you see?

 

The respectable Abyss – one must look it in the eyes – it’s there, and cannot separate anything from anything.

 

Maat’s wings exuding the permanent essence

over your slow, warm breath...

 

Found at the bottom of all imaginable nothings

You, Beloved,

lay as nature demands.

 

Caught in the mirror,

how many are there, gazing at each other

as the world fails the end?

 

-   The One

Ariadne Castro Artwork

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