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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
    for your eyes slay me suddenly;
    their beauty I cannot sustain.

By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death, my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
    your eyes slay me suddenly;
   their beauty I cannot sustain,
   they wound me so, through my heart keen.

***

Original text:

Your yën two wol sle me sodenly,
I may the beaute of hem not sustene,
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene.

And but your word wol helen hastily
My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene,
     Your yën two wol sle me sodenly;
     may the beaute of hem not sustene.

Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully,
That ye ben of my lyf and deth the quene;
For with my deth the trouthe shal be sene.
     Your yën two wol sle me sodenly,
     I may the beaute of hem not sustene,
     So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene.

death:  |deTH|
              noun
              the end of the life of a person or organism
doesn't scare me



death*: |deTH|
             noun
            the inevitability; fact that it will eventually visit everyone sometime; no way out; the waiting
does.

Do you want to know why I can't sleep at night?
Why every time I think of you I choke on my own breath?
Why I want to shake you, kick, and scream, untill you see this grated pain that I live with?
It is the love I have gifted to you
And it is dieing
A slow and merciless deth

Slow rotting in its own chest
The metal teeth of your lies no longer comfort it
No longer pacified the beast that hungers for more
The things you promised but stopped delivering
Blotted blue, a blood turned red as it falls
Having been starved of the nutrients that gives it vigor
The reciprocity of mutual  connection

The stale sickly bile of backed up emotions poison me
Taint me
Ready to explode
Wanting not to hurt you by showing you what you have done

What you have bottled inside me
A love that could have moved mountains like it has done before
Killing me

Brutally with each day I wake
With each expectation you no longer fulfil
With each I love you from your lips
I die, the churning clog of ash
And the unforgiving malice
Of pretty words

Waiting for you to withdrawal
Even more
As if I were some old wound left to rot
Decay
Decompose there at your doorstep
To long forever a mummified homage to the hopeless
The loveless
The ******

It approaches 
That's all that matters
It comes ever closer 
With a speed that none are clear of
But none can live with out knowing the result 
Death is coming
And I feel her hands grasping for my neck

I see her coming 
Not a threat 
But a promise from reality
She is hear to make the balance 
Her presents scatters all
But I wait for her 

My life I wish was worth more
But because of my own mind I never allow my self
To clim
To aprouch the heart of my existence

I sat never grasping 
As death Grasp for me
She is hear and it's all my falt
I have allowed my life pass me by
Just let the sand seep though my hand

I have forgotten the reson I'm hear 
Never venturing
Never gaining 
Just waiting for her to come
To clame what is hers

But as she grasp my through she stops
"why do u not fear me"
She said this to my emotionless face
"all Flea befor me and yet you stair at me
As if  You could cair less if I came"

"I do not fear you 
Since I knew you would come
I do not reglet leveling this place
For I got nothing for me"

She grasped my hand 
She looked in my lifeless eyes
Her eyes was not like mine
But the opposite 
Thouse eyes showed me what I missed
The crush I alow to flote by
The people I pushed away
She showed me what could of been

That crush becoming more
Her braking my heart
My frainds pick the peaces up
And me continuing my life

"I will be back one day" 
She said as her eyes reflected what I could be
But not because of you
I will come for what you owe
But not now"

She left me 
My complete oppiset
And I cried 
Hear I am seeing nouthing but love and life
And all I cared about was the death
The heartache

But she grasped the reality of life
Death knowing more of life 
Than the living

The morning after I cleaned my wound 
Life seemed just the same
But I still herd deth in my head
Tell Me to live
And so I did
I coted my wounds with a jacket 
And seeked what I could not see
With out death

I lay deep
Inside the Cenote
Eyes streatched out
Over earths cluttered sky
It was a collision of Life up there!
All arround me
And below me
My body now still
I let the bugs pass by
The fish swim calm
Through the water clear green
Arms streatched out
I move body through water
It swims and swirls arround me
And I float on!

I float away!
Watching sky turn into cave
My image of lightness
Pulls away!
I hold my breath and keep moving
I am sinking
I am rising
[my mind pictures deth and what it means to be free]

Splashing back towards the light
I thank Day I am Living
Watch the animals through trees
Hear this great Jungle Beat
Feel the fish swim arround
Look up
Look down
Keep breathing

Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I’m guiltless, yet my sentence has been passed.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign:
   Your beauty from your heart has so erased
   Pity, that it’s useless to complain.

Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
   Your beauty from your heart has so erased
   Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
   For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

***

Original text:

So hath your beaute fro your herte chaced
Pitee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne;
For Daunger halt your mercy in his cheyne.

Giltles my deth thus han ye me purchaced;
I sey yow soth, me nedeth not to feyne;
    So hath your beaute fro your herle chaced
    Pilee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne

Allas! that nature hath in yow compassed
So gret beaute, that no man may atteyne
To mercy, though he sterve for the peyne.
    So hath your beaute fro your herte chaced
    Pitee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne;
    For daunger halt your mercy in his cheyne.

quiet


























Rising
             thru

hard
  erecting

        deth

,spinal
bulging

knots knot

(the trees)



so dark between:









                                               ­










                                                       i cannot see























.

Meh derl'n, meh dere
who laid meh heer,
lait'ly on meh bak
ta stere et theh stars
frum theh windo clere
an mite ev'n been fruhm
mars

Laid here fair an squair
ta tuch an tuch, o yoo
an so much, on theh
uth'r side fruhm meh

Lait'ly dere, throo
a vale of teres) yoo
luff, quake b'nethe
me brethe an awl
theh uth'r stuff
weel cullit quite
like deth meh
dere

He was lost in the second verse when a hand settled softly on his chest. & if he knew then what he knows now, he’d see it not as gentle. Not as sweet.

He would’ve leapt from the sill of his second-story window if only to feel less perishable.

He’d mind the gap when boarding the train. Calmly staring out the window at the syrup sunset & a longhorn-shaped hole. A matador, too slow.

But it was the love J didn’t feel when holding him that sent him screaming down the street. It wasn’t serene. It was wet with love-deth.

&
d e a f e n i n g .

The chorus hit like an ice pick when the white car pulled up to drag his body away. The berbere dream euthanized and preserved in a jar. On display for strangers to gawk.