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n stiles carmona May 2020
Schadenfreude reigns:
******* spawn of Lust and Wrath
bites at trying hearts.
n stiles carmona Apr 2020
the gods debate and then concede:
"His punishment is empathy!"

they could have excused the self-assurance,
the love of an entity built in their holy image;
the conclusion that You are the only one good enough for You.
they could not condone Your vicious deeds --
they would not condone the blood.

the gods debate and then concede
Your punishment is empathy
(though never enough to spare a thought
for my voice within the cavern walls
or the spattered blood of Ameinias
or the righteousness of Nemesis)

**** You, bless You, Your Holy Reflection
condemning the flowers and mountains to dirt;
the suitors (silent in Your wake) reduced to peripheral blurs,
forgoing all the world for the sake of Your one true love --
still steadfastly playing martyr,
not the fool with His fingertips hovering inches from the water,
doting on His Image! loving like gods love irony and a brute-force punchline!

the gods' one choice was to concede
Your punishment was empathy
while the verbal paradise in my mind smoulders into ash.

if You spared just a thought for me (love was never a necessity)
Your words would then be mine:
instead i speak through nobody with thoughts that barely rhyme.
i am small, a silent letter in an 'echo';
arms linked, moving in rhythm, with my siblings --
Your story rhymes, each chapter weaving into a chorus

the gods reprise when they concede:
"His punishment is empathy!"

[NOTHING]: seven letters long, pronounced like [SILENCE]:
not a nuance to unravel, nor utterance un/spoken to linger in the air.
these rewards i reap for loving too loudly:
blooming, bountiful  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ;
self-flagellating  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
i choke upon this  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ,
still clinging to Your _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .

the water's silent ennui:
Your punishment, Your empathy.

in a nicer world, my fury burns the love away
-- but still, it simmers. still, it stays.
You wilt like heaven's roses, exquisite in (and after) death
whilst i spoil into _ _ _ _ _ _ _  and watch the world forget.
based on the greek myth of echo and narcissus. playing fast and loose with the whole 'rhyming' thing so uh... brief word of warning if that sets you on edge.
n stiles carmona Feb 2020
'YOU'RE NO PROPHET (YOU'RE BARELY A POET)', BY PERSON I
"O woe, O why--" --O what a way to live!
Never finding what you hunt, scarcely saying what you mean,
with the audacity to worship those who can;
adoring all that's good, or brave, or noble; learning nothing.
Shameless indignity is the boldest you get:
compare them speaking their hearts against
the postmodern cowardice in all that you are.

Language is a gift you abuse:
you may as well have abandoned your voice;
paragraphs wasted on your camouflage of choice.
Half-built cities on foundations of beige-coloured water --
you keep the imagery pretty and the metaphor alluding to just about anything.

You're scared to speak if it's not been said before.
You're ashamed to speak if it's all been said before.
Reluctant to be original! Embarrassed to be derivative!
The shame is in the fact you don't bother!!
Would you say it matters if it's all been thought before?
Voiced before? Done before? Does it wound your pride
to know that your actions are barely yours?
Does it shatter your resolve, seeing your face in my words?

Omit the omnipresent and stay oblivious to obvious.
Can we call it thorough? -- this solitary hunt for truth?
-- almost commendable, almost fruitful,
had you only checked the blind-spot under your nostrils.

'MEANWHILE, IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD...', BY PERSON II
So... 'just shut up and say it'? Wow, noted. Thanks.
Tonight's been a blast.
You'd hate it.
based on a largely self-deprecating hypothesis that you can either be either emotionally available or actually fun to be around (i.e. what do you hold in higher regard, your compassion or your company?) - i'd love to be wrong on this one. i'd like to actually be both. churned this out in half an hour and yiiiikes it shows. remember, kids, to make fun of yourself at least a little bit BEFORE aiming your rage @ anyone who doesn't live the way you do (or, uh, do it afterwards. tomato/tomato.) mighty easy to get angry at your polar opposite but life's infinitely duller without them.
n stiles carmona Feb 2020
??? lights a candle by herself, for novelty's sake. She stares into the flame and contemplates her past lives.
??? sends an apology to someone she'd wronged after a dream about giant cobwebs and the sinister absence of a spider. Nothing in this life is meaningless, she mumbles.
??? becomes convinced she's on the verge of a positive breakthrough while her skin is still bleeding and the last time she left the house was for a haircut. Character development's a piece of cake when you never have to place it into practise.
??? is soothed by the bedroom 'epiphanies' about all she's doing wrong, treating the smaller discovered flaws like struck gold; still blocking out the eight-foot fanged thing that's lived in her peripheral vision since youth. It sharpens its teeth on a stone and waves with its free limbs.
???, after one cup of coffee, assesses the employment risks of a potential stalking charge. She interprets Storm Ciara as God grounding her for a week and doesn't move.
??? reasons with herself that - being self-aware enough to know she's not acting reasonably - the likelihood is that something hungry and evil has made its bed in her heart. No doubt she's sound of mind.
??? shoots the messenger. The mantelpiece mirror is moved into the back of her wardrobe, imprisoned "...until [it learns] to be nicer".
(??? blames everything on her Sagittarius moon.)
brief respite. brief illusions of progress.
n stiles carmona Aug 2019
"THE BREAKDOWN COMES WHEN YOU STOP CONTROLLING YOURSELF / AND WANT THE RELEASE OF A BLOODBATH" - JENNY HOLZER

I. Vanitas Vanitatum
[The stage is set: a paper moon against a starless, greyscale sky. GINSBERG howls. He's nostalgic for all he'd assumed was forgotten; desperate to never recall it again. His numbered days are manufactured: ELIOT reclines, watching the world end.]

CHORUS OF PROPHETS:
In our own sins we trusted,
both in essence and in nature.
Hell was never an inferno:
it is an echo chamber.

We have nothing (-- we have nothing --)
but maxims and jumbled alphabets
and lightly-sparkling bitterness
when the cork pops feebly from the bottle;
(-- nothing! --) dripping saltine hate.

We've lived large and small, been tiny and tall;
always filling too much space in a too-big room
where our presence is ironically scarce.
There is nothing for you here,
bar vacant lungs and river water --
take a breath and join us
                               in sinking to
                                            (sinking!) the
                                               (sinking!) bottom
                                                  (sinking­,) of
                                                        (sinki­ng...) the
                                                             ­              Styx.

II. Et Omnia Vanitas
[Enter PLATH, SEXTON, WOOLF, BYRON, DICKINSON and VARIOUS PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND REPRESENTATIVES.]

You know not what you could be
but merely what you are
and that alone is traumatic enough.
Taste it, a slice at a time:

the disillusionment from having raised your hopes beyond rotting in the soil,
the anger upon realising this was your own fault and all you want to do is scream,
the bargaining, the denial, the scream (you were not born to live). The gradual processing. The scream!
Scream at the moon and scream at the walls and scream into pillows and howl and wail and hack away at the flesh and screech until plastic surroundings melt and it is only you and the void you willed upon yourself.

III. Epitaph (What Now?)
[A white-fur baby seal is camouflaged upon the ice
and, eyes closed, fools itself into thinking it survived.]

What happens next is no act of evil:
this is survival of the fittest.
We are bottom-rung of the food chain
and starving predators need to eat.

[We lick the ground and taste defeat.]

Ruby poppies reach heavenward --
small birds take their maiden flights.
I shrivel, putrid in the soil,
in the winter of my life.
pretentious *******, slash wallowing in my losses. sometimes feeling things is nice. for the most part, it's ******* ugly
n stiles carmona Aug 2019
I daren't (rather, shouldn't) breathe:
I'd built a tower of hearts from cards.
The gaps and breaks are real estate --
I'm nestled in the in-betweens.

                                              (Sapp­**'s spirit sighs.
                                              How human to not move quickly enough,
                                              or to yearn for whatever's inches from reach
                                              - blissfully unhinged by "almost".)

She's marble-carved and still as stone:
if I kissed her, would she spring to life?
I'd offer nought but foolish flesh,
this trembling frame, and bone.

                                                          ­  ("Tell me yes, tell me no;
                                                             either way, you're in the right,
                                                          ­   but for the love of Venus -- speak.")
Natalie!
at present I am present on a small isle,
which is so green genteel
to the eyes and the ayes,
you might include it
among yet unmastered possibilities,
living here forever.

indeed, the crescent beach so welcoming that
francais et l'anglais des anglaise is spoken here,
but actuality
has a way of intruding,
like
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Bleu,
saying I know you,
even if it doesn’t

this breeze bearing load suggests your name
as a candidate for future, honours, an MBE,
a practiced curtsy for a queen,
whatever is he babbling about?

why I am presenting an outline for a screenplay that
will make you a little rich and somewhat fameuse
so you buy a house on the water,
party all night,
write in the miracle wonder of the late afternoon
on a summery isle,
modestly hungover

say!

where is this isle so sheltered,
where nooks are set aside for poets and drunks
to pub crawl, to stand on tables and Irish sing of
those things that poets endlessly babble?

so add :

come here and let us listen to all your possibilities
and cross just this one,
your presence here,
off the list
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