a child stands before you
begging to devour your wit
praying to steal your eyes.

he is looking at you,
he who no longer has a body
no longer has a voice,
he who was made translucent,
he is looking
through you
and howls his white-hot heart:

'how does one live,
how can one love,
if one feels no anguish?

first, there lies death;
then, a massacre of void-kissed beliefs.
and then, only then, can there be life
which bears little importance.'

the sage muse of tragedy
holds in her forgiving palm
the secret of your
divine-poisoned sap,

she kisses your bones;
tied together by vine branches
born from the hands of fervid dionysus.
you hear her inside your skin:

'i know how weary your throat is
of singing (screaming) the same hymns.
dip them in terror, see them
drip with slaughter and doom
and ablaze cries and a
long-forgotten deity’s roar and —'

the last words die off
between your soiled fingers,
on the bloodstained ground.