Clinical,
surreal emptiness.
Chocolate-scented wood.
Smell of new and
non-alcoholic intoxication.
Life as art for art’s sake.
Neon light flickers as you blink
infected by dizziness.
No longer tone-deaf to the harmonies
of your own soul,
you don’t shrink for someone else to grow.
An invisible corpse in the plastic bag
winks at you from the corner-
madness, it grows
in sanity.
Lifeless but intense:
you don’t pray for another,
you prey for yourself.
A silhouette merging with the unknown-
all that is left is your breath in the cold air
as you exhale in slow motion.
I speak in shadows,
you respond with specters of light,
haunting every word-
making sense of it all;
I choose to live in the now,
but if you whisper in my ear
I will take decades to figure out
why you chose to disappear
that day
when I ran down the hallway-
gargoyles staring from above-
for a second I thought I could hear
another set of footsteps
under a different weight
even after I accepted your longing
for the netherworld.
The statues were grotesque,
threatening, demon-like in thunder and lightning,
and still, I hoped that hallway would never end
just so I could hear the sounds again and again
and convince myself they weren’t merely
echoes of my footsteps into the unknown.
The vanishing words,
the vanishing images,
the shedding
of selves like autumn leaves;
of withered lives on wrinkled paper,
dust off the treasure chest
in the desert, next to a snake
regenerating its skin
polished,
your porcelain appearance melting into
the undefined-
does the new verse annihilate
or build you?
perhaps it is the fading portrait
either that, or the smile in between
either that, or the infinite encounters
with the ineffable
You write, you cross out
another identity and over to
another vision.
Awaiting ❅
Butterflies spiralled in silver –
petals sleeping on the floor
Eternally moved, I quiver-
Tenderly pressed against the door.
Of the senses ❅
Nostalgia persists
soft as velvet,
sad as lace,
sweet and intoxicating
as your scent sliding down my spine.
The fragrant city ❅
Through the alleys,
scents of old seasons
scatter in the urban rain.
Guided by our roots,
the long-withered dreams of being
seem to be reborn from pain.
Midnight ❅
Weak,
gently wrapped in white
I seek
a cure for the night.
Purgatory ❅
I feel
I love
and then I hate
my fire and my demons,
just before I see your celestial smile,
you icy devil
bringing me back to life,
to an illusion of life
which I knowingly accept as truth.
My complicity – dispersed in time
until it is forgotten
The world – no longer in black and white
it burns
I am only ashes.
Identity ❅
Fragrant relics of the heart
crown you as the faerie queen over
the land of forgotten whims
with a rose delicately smothered in your hands
and pearls hanging from your pale thin neck
A down-to-earth Snow White is what I see in you
when all that matters is how you see yourself.
Elevation ❅
When the past smells like dust,
its enchantment is upon you no more –
The future glows in sight
on the island of apples
where you dwell feasting upon eternity
and upon everything born out of a lavish ground.
everything – corporeal and incorporeal gathers up
and you find yourself among nymphs, dryads, witches,
heroes, mad men of both virtues and vices,
unearthly fruits and singing crystals,
air and waters sprinkled with glitter,
and a crystalline laughter travelling with the wind.
Memories of snowdrops ❅
The snowdrop-scented incense extinguishes
It smells like childhood dreams
It smells like us
in a cornfield
or in our garden
laughing and uncaring
just before I went on the hill
with my kite
laughing,
uncaring.
Carved ❅
Red wine, dripping down your lily flesh
like paper tingled by tears of blood
from the wounds of your carved spirit.
Pulse ❅
You lay on the river shore
Half awake and spellbound
by the water flowing
rhythmically,
echoing the flow of blood,
mirroring the flow of time.
Illusions bewitch your mind and body into acting strangely-
The past creeps up and there you are:
Standing still in the infinite white space
of children unborn.
As below, so above ❅
This place is a crypt and, while you’re all waiting
to go on a long journey,
you admire the countless tiles
bearing the scars of the bodies in front of them-
their motionless, diffuse shadows
never making you wonder what they hide
for, as you see their faces, you can tell
you’re all made of the same substance
and that’s all that seems to matter down there,
on the Underground platform.
No mystery in your flesh and bones,
no light at the end of the tunnel,
no heaven to dream of inside the collective tomb,
you are in this together.
Addiction ❅
My shadow on your wall, crumbling
as you wake up from the shivers
entering you like poison-
slowly, from your mouth
passing through your stomach and
limbs in silence,
then back to the skull
By the moon, my black hair
is cast behind you,
Your sickness now caught in my spider web.
DM, 2014-2017
I gather tokens of death
in appearance fragile-
with thorns hidden
underneath.
A hand reaches out…
Blood lingers
on thin skin.
Petals burn,
Smoke intoxicates:
you breathe it in.
Funeral words carved
in marble skin-
paralysed,
you listen blindly
as they inhale life.
DIANA MARIN 