I have built my own foundations.
And you parade above them like
Birds of prey, raving, ravaging, clamoring.
War drums within your scarlet beaks, scavenging,
Pecking at my fundamental hymns, my manufactured
Value system. You excavate my inner mechanisms and
Force them into your smothered puzzle.
You mock and isolate my anatomy as you try to adopt
It. You spread your gall and wildfires and self-denial
And self-sacrifice around my earth in the hope that you’ll
Get rid of it, yourself, your own destructive poison.
You evaluate me and I try to cling to my own heartbeat,
Not submit to my cerebral tormentors. I confront my own
Devaluation on mouldy carpets made of broken glass.
I stand disfigured by you, torn and pressured.
And I’ll manoeuvre my way through you, out
Of you. You and your dominion of butchery,
Catastrophe, detrimental loneliness. I keep
Climbing the cliffs of my sentimentality with
My bleeding pale hands in defiance of everything
You stand for and have lost your life to.
I will not give in. I will not give up.
You shove the endless numbers in my face and
I will recycle them into creative thundergods and gargantuan voices
Galore that you will never be able to hear or absorb from the hole that
You dug out for yourself with all that useless silly paper and your emptied
Ever-starving soul. And you’ll drill, drill, drill your godforsaken devils into my skies
And despair as my unshredded murals will never come undone
And become mediocre, meaningless and obsolete.
“Giovane ragazza con il collare arruffato” by Juana Romani (1867-1923)
Croque-Melpomene 