I can hear you in the other room,
your pounding heart
and your pounding fist,
one pounds in your chest,
one pounds on your ****.
You think you are quiet
but really, you aren’t -
your heavy breathing
penetrates the walls
and whispers into my ears:
“I’m not sorry for doing this”.

I hate this world
of noise
and greed
That grows
much smaller with
each day.
Terror
Is the dawn
Of light,
Solitude serves
To shape the clay.
I fight
Though there is
Nothing left,
Struggle yields to
Slow decay.
Remember me
As darkness blooms
Know
My heart has
gone away.

Little faces
Staring with empty sockets.
Constantly screaming;
Awaiting their destined ****.

I don't sleep.
My heart is too restless,
it's been pounding out your name.
So I lie awake next to lovers
I don't love,
pretending I don't taste our forgotten promises
in their mouths.
I act like their strange hands
don't leave fists in my gut,
and I'm not really choking
on their unfamiliar tongues.
No, my eyes don't burn
when they close theirs,
and in the morning
yes, I slept fine.
But I'm just pretending.
My heart was racing all night,
beneath sheets we never shared,
trying to forget your name.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn
The flames’ red wings soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after.  I am she
Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it.
Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath—
Forever since my maidenhood to sow
Sorrow and blood about me?  Lo, they keep
Their bitter care above me even now.
It was the gods who led me to this lair,
That tho’ the burning winds should make me weak,
They should not ****** the life from out my lips.
Olympus let the other women die;
They shall be quiet when the day is done
And have no care to-morrow.  Yet for me
There is no rest.  The gods are not so kind
To her made half immortal like themselves.
It is to you I owe the cruel gift,
Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,
To you the beauty and to you the bale;
For never woman born of man and maid
Had wrought such havoc on the earth as I,
Or troubled heaven with a sea of flame
That climbed to touch the silent whirling stars
And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.
Have I not made the world to weep enough?
Give death to me.  Yet life is more than death;
How could I leave the sound of singing winds,
The strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,
Or shut my eyes forever to the spring?
I will not give the grave my hands to hold,
My shining hair to light oblivion.
Have those who wander through the ways of death,
The still wan fields Elysian, any love
To lift their ******* with longing, any lips
To thirst against the quiver of a kiss?
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again,
To make the people love, who hate me now.
My dreams are over, I have ceased to cry
Against the fate that made men love my mouth
And left their spirits all too deaf to hear
The little songs that echoed through my soul.
I have no anger now.  The dreams are done;
Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see
Aught but my body’s fairness, till the end,
In all the islands set in all the seas,
And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,
Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,
Men’s lives shall waste with longing after me,
For I shall be the sum of their desire,
The whole of beauty, never seen again.
And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake
With “Helen!” on their lips, and in their eyes
The vision of me.  Always I shall be
Limned on the darkness like a shaft of light
That glimmers and is gone.  They shall behold
Each one his dream that fashions me anew;—
With hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars
Dark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow
Like burnished gold that still retains the fire.
Yea, I shall haunt until the dusk of time
The heavy eyelids filled with fleeting dreams.

I wait for one who comes with sword to slay—
The king I wronged who searches for me now;
And yet he shall not slay me.  I shall stand
With lifted head and look within his eyes,
Baring my breast to him and to the sun.
He shall not have the power to stain with blood
That whiteness—for the thirsty sword shall fall
And he shall cry and catch me in his arms,
Bearing me back to Sparta on his breast.
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!