Thursday, December 22, 2005

The Poetry of a Tortured Soul

Not me, believe it or not!
I'm kinda tortured--ok, I'm a lot tortured! But I'm also significantly snarky. I'm full of piss and vinegar, and I have a really strange and ridiculous sense of humor that keeps me going.
Click the title link to meet the person who wrote the poems. I didn't meet him in time to give him a Piss and Vinegar transfusion or a Snarkiness donation so sadly, he died too young.
I quite by accident discovered him while doing research for my story. I didn't intend to feel such intense sympathy for him. In fact, I didn't intend to like him one bit. I'm ashamed to admit that I was actually targeting him as possible fodder for some ghoulish humor. But the more I learned, the more sympathy I felt and I think I need to kick myself with a steel-toed boot for even considering such base actions!
Shows to go what you can happen when you bother to get to know someone, even if only through research. A person whom I originally thought of as pathetic, malevolent and probably psychotic and I now see as highly intelligent, basically good-natured (although being tormented throughout youth brought forth intense anger in some of his poetry) and sadly mistaken about the true goodnes of his soul and how much some people cared for him.
See more of my thoughts on this.
The author of the poems was Swedish. His English skills were basically excellent but there are occasional places where his translation is somewhat rough. This doesn't really effect the larger context of the poetry and I find it somewhat charming. However, I've always been a sucker for things that are somewhat aberrant. The author and his poetry both fill the bill quite nicely!

This is my favorite one:
Life Eternal
A dream of another existence
You wish to die
A dream of another world
You pray for death to release the soul
One must die to find peace inside, you must get eternal
I am mortal, but am I human?
How beautiful life is now when my time has come
A human destiny but nothing human inside
What'll be left of me when I'm dead, there was
Nothing when I lived
What you found was eternal death
No-one will ever miss you.

(Cie sez: Apparently lots of people miss you, Dude. I miss you and am pissed at you because you never let me meet you! Suicide is usually a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I've played with the idea more than once. Sometimes the thought still tempts me. But it's the wrong choice nine times out of ten.)

Here's some more work:
Buried By Time and Dust
Visions of that no morning's
Light will ever come near. I'm too old now.
The dark is so near, will I ever reach the land beyond
This is where we go when we have to die
I've been old since the birth of time. Time buried me in Earth
Centuries ago I tasted blood
Buried by time and dust
Many years has passed since the funeral
Missing the blood of human throats
So many years, ages ago
I must await, feel my body's stench
Wanderings out of space
Wanderings out of time
A world out of light, death at the end
Only silence can be heard, silence of people's tears
No one knows my grave
Buried by time and dust

Ancient Skin
In these nights of magic
Where great pamis obscured
By the fantasy dragon made real
By the powers of lingering trauma
I looked beyond the dawn of day
Beyond the angst-ridden faces
Into the mind captured behind
Living the lie of the weakened ones
I captured the moment given
I denied the sickening love
Turned to the purity of anger
I saw myself in the abyss
Complete fullness I now own
I return to Earth a demon race
Denied by man through ages
Now I walk the dying soil
Atrocities turned to beauty
Machines of torture turned art
Beneath your cities I sleep
At dawn I weep

Cursed to Eternity
My name was written with
Fire in the place you only
Can see when your time has come
When you walk down in the
Land of shadows for eternity
The demon flies in the blackened
Starless skies and crawls in
The bottomless depths of Hell
The name which will be a
Thousand times cursed in eternity
Condemned to wander, until it comes
To the cruelest snake that crawls
The demon flies in the blackened
Starless skies and crawls in the
Bottomless depths of Hell

(CH Sez: I like the unexpected line breaks. Poe did similar stuff on occasion.)

The Freezing Moon
Everything here is so cold
Everything here is so dark
I remember it as from a dream
In the corner of this time
Diabolic shapes float by
Out from the dark
I remember it was here I died
By following the freezing moon
It's night again, night you beautiful
I please my hunger on living humans
Night of hunger, follow its call
Follow the freezing moon
Darkness is growing, eternity opens
The cemetery lights up again
As in ancient times
Fallen souls die behind my steps
By following the freezing moon

From The Dark Past
A face in stone, decayed by age
A man who has returned to tell of his damnation
Fears so deep, the mouth open wide
The scream died away before dawn of this time
The eyes stare so empty
The mouth screams so silent
Tell me! What did you see there?
In the darkness of the past
Ancient times legends stories so dark
Blackened his sight now not even memories are left
Back after such a long time, the stone is cold as death
But what formed its true fears, only the wind is able to tell

(CH sez: You can really see the image and feel the dark, cold surroundings. A few simple words convey intense atmosphere.)

Funeral Fog
Every time this year
This dark fog will appear
Up from the tombs it comes
To take one more life that
Can be near
In the middle of Transylvania
All natural life has for a long
Time ago gone, it's thin and so
Beautyful, but also so dark and
Mysterious
Once again the priest is messing
May God bless us all
The fog is here again
That'll complete the funeral
From a place empty of life
Only dead trees are growing here
As it comes from afar
Only dead trees are growing here
Funeral fog

(CH sez: The odd line break was a bit awkward here, but the atmosphere of the poem doesn't suffer. Inspiring indeed to a horror novelist!)

I am Thy Labyrinth
They speak
In the garden of the prophet
Divine madness
The order of the cosmic immortal
For what is humanity
If not forlorn
And crawling in my hands
When the moment sings
For I have read the signs
And I have solved the riddle of eternal life
The Jinnah have spoken
For I have read the signs
And I have solved the riddle
Of eternal life

(CH sez: Envisioning some demented Arab sorcerer preparing to bring devastation to the land. Again, great fun for those of us who enjoy horror fiction.)

Pagan Fears
The bloody history from the
Past deceased humans now forgotten
An age of legends and fear a time now
So distant
Less numbered as they were in their lives
So primitive and pagan
Superstitions were a part of the life
So unprotected in the dark nights
Pagan fears
The past is alive
The past is alive
Woeful people with pale faces
Staring obsessed at the moon
Some memories will never go away
And they will forever be here

(CH sez: The metaphysical student in me says this guy had something horrible beyond belief happen to him in a past life. He didn't resolve it before reincarnating and it made this life miserable for him as well.)

Symbols of Blood Swords
All the stars in the north are dead now
All the morals of wasted human debris
Walk with me into the night
Do not remove the cobwebs
Of war clinging to your face
They will tell of pains unknown
All the stars in the north are dead now
All the morals of wasted human debris
Torn to pieces--handcrafted delirium
One war remains, War of everything
Tanto magis infra se cecidit
Quanto magis so contra gloriam
Sui conditoris erexit

(CH Sez: I'm thinking H.P. Lovecraft. I'm also thinking he knew Latin far better than I do. Don't ask me to translate--I can't.)

Granted, these are the hand-picked gems.
I did this so I could include him in my Poets I Like links. 'Cause he belongs there!
Sweet dreams, Dude. And mark my words, when my hour comes, we have an appointment to talk or go haunt something. Be there!

With Deepest Regards,
Cie

2 comments:

Neo said...

TC1 -Interesting ;)

From JBI to you, have a fun, and safe Christmas.

*hug*

Peace,

- Neo

Cie Cheesemeister said...

Thanks, Dude! And the same to you!
:-)
Best wishes from:
The Great Cheesy One