Three Poems by Ivan de Monbrison

 

The thieves

 

the face is turned upside down

hell is right outside the door

you close your eyes and you cry

a madman ran down the street after killing somebody

you forget your own name

she had said something horrible

and you could never forgive her

a madman just killed somebody

and the corpse still lies split open

all red on the sidewalk

like an abandoned bag of bones

in which the wind could blow

a little bit  to make it fly away

it has been so cold last night

the ground must be almost frozen

and this morning the sky is white

you lie down on your bed

your head is cold

but heart is burning

you need to leave the door open

so that the thieves can come in

and can take whatever they want

you keep a knife well hidden

and an axe in the kitchen

let them come in and take whatever they want

you will give them for lunch

their own finely chopped off hands

loneliness is just tasteless

and you never had any friends

for you it's another meaningless word

like these sentences said to hide a

real ugly reality

I've beheaded my memory

and left it on a table

I can watch it easily in the dark

but with my eyes at the rear of my skull

I need to lie on my belly

wipe those stains of blood from your clothes

as life is just a dead body

left to decay on a sidewalk

that a madman has just murdered

you don't care about anything

friends like all the others

as you have left your door open

in order to kill all the thieves.

 

 

The fire that follows me

 

Threshold anger wind you don't speak you don't say anything the world is made up of little things we've forgotten everything you don't speak you don't say anything the sex is open time is wounded there's no more fire someone has stolen it there is no longer a house someone has burned it down there are no more days there are no more friends you have forgotten everything about your own childhood silence is black like a painting the thought is hanging upside down in the void nothing just hold your dick in your mouth forget everything you don't know anything anymore your sex is open thought is dead I don't know you anymore you're not going anywhere I don't know you anymore thought is dead your sex is open your bloody sex is open you don't know shit you're ain't going nowhere you've burned everything down you've burned your house you've burned your dog you've burned your dead you've burned your body you've burned your children you've burned your wife you've burned your memory you've burned your past you've burned your future you've burned your death you've burned the end and the beginning your sex is open you're ain't going nowhere you left the house in ashes nothing remains but black paint on an empty canvas and yet there is a white line that indicates where the windows once stood and where the front door was and where was the room where you used to sleep with always open eyes and the white bones of your own thought that you've burned the corpse of your shadow that you've killed and the corpse of oblivion that you've burned you are no longer anyone you don't have anything left human in you anymore silence is blind but death has always been blind I don't know your name anymore I don't know my name anymore silence is burning red tonight in the dark someone is speaking but it's not you someone keeps on speaking in your head but it's not you someone is screaming in your head but it's not you someone is telling you that you're crazy but it's not you now time is a hole closed and sewn up an open sex time is closed and bloodless silence time is blood silence sex absence time is suicide sex knife wound oblivion time and banishment, not to be.

 

Masturbation

 

Winter is here. It's still not snowing, today the sky is blue but it is very cold, probably got down to freezing last night. You can hear the sounds of the neighbours coming down the stairs, going to work, or taking their children to school. These neighbours so bourgeois, with whom you have nothing in common, and whom you never get to see anyway.

Today there are workers outside, they are working on redoing the little street next door, you hear the noise of their machines early in the morning, they had first to cut down all the trees, and so the birds have left.

Last night you thought of all those people who write or publish poetry. Publishing no doubt gives meaning to their lives, a bit like others go to war, with just a bit less courage needed.

Still some other humans, hidden, deep down in their beds, are probably fucking in there to make children, whom they will model into their own image later, in order to feel a little less lonely in this world.

You, you just paint pictures or you lazily strum your guitar, it's nothing more than some sort of masturbation, you are very well aware of this fact.

But, ultimately, at least, masturbating alone has  never hurt anyone up to now, except probably yourself.

 

 

Ivan de Monbrison is a poet and artist born in 1969 in Paris. He has been published in literary magazines globally.