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Cadmus May 23
🍽️

If I enjoy their attention today,
I remind myself of this:

They’ll call a nice dish “a ***** plate”
once they’ve eaten their fill.

Praise turns to pity,
desire to disdain.

The hands that reached for me
will recoil,
as if they never begged
to taste.

So I wear their craving like perfume
fleeting,
never mine to keep.

They were never here for me…
just the feast.
This piece strips away illusion to expose the cruelty of conditional attention. It’s a brutal commentary on how people often glorify what they consume, only to discard it with contempt once their desire is satisfied. A warning to recognize the difference between admiration and appetite.
Why are we drawn
to lust,
to the hunger of flesh,
to devour food
as if the body remembers
a hunger older than time?

Because we are soil!
And we desire
grain,
flesh,
which too rise
from soil.

Like calls to like.
Atoms seek atoms.

The universe obeys
its own silent gravity.

Our lust,
and longings
die
when we return
to the dust
we came from.
But even then,
it’s not over.

Our atoms will scatter
into soil,
into seeds,
into skins.

And somewhere,
in someone,
they will long
again.
Not with our name,
but with our echo.

Maybe, the bodies you see
are echoes,
of echoes,
of echoes...
of echoes…
…
..
.
Dust remembers the shape of longing...
dee May 13
When an equivocal mind is fed ambivalence off silver spoons,
the inevitable death from starvation will arrive.
For I will never taste the conclusions
of my own vulgarization.
Ambiguity is no nourishment to satisfy my soul;
Though being consumed is quite finger-licking.

I’m chewing on my own becoming.

Will I have the right to be fastidious about
my growth?
If dipping myself in gold would be more
palatable to the one’s surrounding the table
only I sit upon?
Another round of silver contemplation and napkins please.
perhaps I’ll just interrupt you.
White Owl Apr 21
Mostly I sneak about under cover of night,
Fulfilling my awful aims away from broader sight,
For no one must suspect
The beast that dwells within their midst.

I am a master of concealment.
Smart and somber fabrics shield my skin
From the painful sear of daylight,
And my complexion, I keep like porcelain—
For no clean and delicate doll
Was ever suspected of reveling
In baths of hellfire
And drinking them up as greedily
As the desert soil drinks up a monsoon.
This façade I employ lest the people discover,
And ****** before me their holy images,
Burning me as if with a branding iron,
And driving me far from their dwelling
Into solitary desolation.

For in truth, I am an agent
Of offense and pollution
To all that is wholesome and good.
I entice man to share my fate.
He invites me in and I infect him –
The Imago Dei – with Death.
Driven by this curse, this unholy hunger,
I live only to eat –
If one could even say I live.
There is no glory, no beauty in this state.
My eyes are as gleaming stars
And my skin is as a moonbeam,
But the flesh beneath is always freezing,
Always cold and always screaming
For more of what makes it sick,
The only warmth it knows being gleaned
From the bodies of its meals.
A quietly blaring reminder to me
That I am the Dead walking.

This night begins as many before it.
My clothes blotted crimson with fresh sin:
The stain of another’s flesh.
The latest meal to leave me ill,
And yet more hungry still.
I tread the gray and lifeless streets,
My dead frame mustering no defense
Against the chill of night.
All is dark and still, as no sound, no soul,
And scarce a light the night gives
To interrupt the feast within –
The Hunger consuming all thought,
And the Cold consuming all feeling.
My spirit sends out a silent plea
For, if not some kinder release,
A second death.

My wandering stops before the chapel,
The only structure affording light or color
To Nyx’s bleak realm.
The candles and lamps still all alight
Send cascades of rainbows
Surfing down upon beams of gold
Through the glass mosaics
To the ground outside.
Something in this ethereal beauty
Grasped something in my soul.
I wished to crumble, to sob,
As I felt so alien from whatever it was
That infused this light to make it good.
Yet I wished to float, to hope,
As here it was, pouring down before me—
Onto me.

Looking in then from afar
Through the colored glass,
I saw behind the altar raised high
On his execution tree,
The image of the Lamb
With sorrow carved into His face
And wounds painted onto His side.
My eyes stayed fixed to that solemn sight
Till they ran with salt.
“They say You came
To make clean the Unclean,
To wash away every vile stain
That corrupts Your Image,”
Said I.
“They say You were sent
To ransom the Dead;
To free the captives
Of Hades’ rotten grip.
To bring bread and water
That ceases all thirst and hunger,
And gives Man second life.
Were You not?”

As the question left my lips,
I heard from around the corner
A creaking in reply.
Curiosity spurred,
I crept around to find
The doors an inch ajar,
With a widening sliver of golden light
Pouring forth from within.
Such a peculiar glow it was,
So pleasant yet so frightfully strange.
It did not burn,
But was rather as a balm,
Or a mild, warm rain.
There I stood for many moments,
Rendered motionless
By a blend off sedative calm
And paralytic fear,
Until, carried on the streams of light
Came a gentle whisper to my ear
That spoke the sweetest, simple words:
“Dear wayward child, enter in.”
Apr '25
Pobres de nuestros paĂ­ses
Pobres de todas partes
Pobres de HaitĂ­
Personas pobres, desorientadas y locas
Ya no diré "pobre Haití"
HaitĂ­ es un paĂ­s lleno de riqueza
HaitĂ­, un paĂ­s lleno de recursos
Para otros
HaitĂ­ es un paraĂ­so y rico en recursos
Para otros
HaitĂ­ es un paĂ­s lleno de hipocresĂ­a
De gente desposeĂ­da, miserable y sufriente
HaitĂ­ es un lugar lleno de odio y traidores
¡Haití, Haití! ¡Qué vergüenza! Donde sus líderes son tontos, malvados y locos.
La juventud haitiana tiene muy mala suerte.
Porque los falsos lĂ­deres son codiciosos, repugnantes e insensatos.
Qué vergüenza para un pueblo que a menudo ha sufrido tanto.
Los cementerios están por todas partes, al igual que las iglesias y los calvarios.
Hay tanta miseria allĂ­ porque los ladrones, los estafadores.
Hipócritas, secuaces, bandidos, locos y sinvergüenzas están por todas partes.
Este es el paĂ­s donde demasiadas personas inocentes mueren por balas, por hierro
Por odio, por hipocresĂ­a, por venganza, por ignorancia y por pobreza
¿A qué santo debemos invocar por esta gente desesperanzada
Por nuestros hermanos y hermanas sin futuro que mueren de desesperaciĂłn?
¿A qué Dios sordo y ebrio debemos rezar para salvar a los seguidores de Cristo
Que se lamentan, lloran, gritan y ladran como perros?
¿Qué palabra deberíamos usar para fortalecer y revitalizar a estas personas debilitadas?
ÂżY al Estado que, lamentablemente, existe para castigar a las vĂ­ctimas empobrecidas?
Pobres aquĂ­ donde estamos
Pobres de nuestros paĂ­ses
Pobres de todas partes
Pobres de HaitĂ­
Pobres de estos Estados Unidos.

P. D.: Traducción de «Pauvre Peuple De Chez Nous, De Nos Pays».

Copyright © Abril de 2025, Hébert Logerie. Todos los derechos reservados.
Hébert Logerie es autor de varios poemarios.
SCHEDAR Mar 28
Walk along the city streets
butterscotch sky
sun-shower
bittersweet

There on the curbside sits an old painting

A Ballerina

lying with the rest of the trash
waiting to be picked up

The drizzle drains the color from the canvas but not
the natural light from the dancer
who
in all the noise and distortion
forgot her steps
along the way
Some people seem more interested in looking
for someone’s attention – rather than finding
Genuine love.

As they aren't truly searching for a person to
be their person; but just a person to satisfy their
Own hungers.
Syafie R Mar 14
The plate sits before me, brimming with light,
Yet I cannot partake in this feast of life.
The hunger is not born of flesh,
But a deep, gnawing void that swallows the soul.

It’s not that I lack—
But I recoil from the feast,
For each bite is a confrontation,
A war within my own skin,
An agonizing surrender to the unknown.

The world, a banquet of joy and color,
Serves me courses of hope and grace,
But I cannot consume what is offered.
Each morsel of love, each chance for joy,
I push away,
As if to touch it would fracture me further,
Unravel what little control I still feign to hold.

I starve not for food,
But for the courage to feast on life,
To swallow what is real,
Without fear that it will choke me,
Without fear that it will swallow me whole.

In the quiet spaces of my mind,
I am a ghost,
Floating above this world I once craved.
I am too numb to reach,
Too paralyzed to feel the warmth of the sun,
And so I exist—
Not living, not dying,
But simply suspended in this vast, unyielding void,
Where every dream is a phantom,
Every hope a cruel illusion,
And I am forever starving,
Yet unable to taste the life I’ve lost.
umar farooq Mar 9
If the world has no meaning, why do I stay? Is it not because, even in the bitterness, there is one thing worth waiting for? And if all sweetness is the same, why does my heart turn away from them, longing only for the one that makes it tremble in delight? Perhaps meaning is not in the world itself, but in choosing to wait—for the one thing that alone can quench your hunger.
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