I
Perfection — a diamond flame,
And a lash that carves the bone;
Every moment strikes the same —
"What have I become" — alone.
Cuts through muscle, burns the frame,
You would cast that cross aside,
Split the shimmer into nought —
Infinity won't lie.
Only the sting remains,
That’s all that will survive:
The human is dead —
Too human has died.
Only the sting remains,
A sick eye’s venomous
Gleam,
Screaming at the world’s far edge,
Echoing a measured pledge.
A soul locked in leaden clasp —
Scales and standards, measured gasp.
Rotten love is now concealed,
Blood and rage in chains are sealed;
Frenzied ocelot of lust
Bites the leash of lords unjust!
Crimson mouth — a shattered grin,
Human, human,
Orange scream — a beast within.
Among animals, among men,
A hermit and trickster — doom again,
Forever to hear:
“Hail, Brutus!”
II
Look — lift your head, be bold!
The sky is torn, no hold.
Its fabric shuns all law,
Its ceiling — a village stall,
Outhouse cleaner than heaven’s maw,
— Soiled by a hundred birds so white!
White — like spokes of solar light,
Like indifferent stellar fire,
White — a grapevine’s frozen choir,
White — a cluster of wrath entire.
White ravens, trapped in white,
Join them — no gain, no right.
Yet among betrayal and spite,
Here’s your dock at sea,
See —
No start, no ends —
No one
Answers screams into eternity,
Into dark,
The room is void, the home is stark.
Foreign in your native land,
Like a dream you don’t withstand.
See? White ravens’ flesh and bone!
Twisted flock, alone —
Outcast by their black-feathered kin,
Dark as
Pupil’s rim.
These birds — spasms born of rifts,
Leaps from void to “Not” they drift
In a war surreal and grim,
For form,
For breath,
For requiem,
And
(with no regret),
Triumph of mutations wild —
Mind of schizoid, strange and styled.
III
Perfection — golden cage aflame,
To live nine lives and lose the game.
To burn like lice,
A smoked-out brooch,
Thrown in fire —
Don’t touch,
Too hot, too charred,
It waits for its collector.
This is the will of cosmic fuckery,
It yearns for what can’t be held,
What can't be seen,
Or known, or spelled.
A height we’ll never scale,
But it calls —
Goddamn,
Try, wail,
Roar with the beasts!
We trace
The steps of dead-eyed kings
And hiss
At every clever sting.
(Understand: no trader will ever arise
To sell you out,
That blackened prize).
And on each of us,
A warning cries:
"Do not touch!"
In our souls, gold rye fields grow
(Field, oh field,
Endless field —
Let me forever in freedom go!)
The height — we’ll never scale —
But still it calls,
Pulls to the abyss like gravity sprawls.
I release white ravens high —
This is my family,
My sky.
IV
(They stole a bite from God's own plate,
By a thread escaped his wrath and fate.
A joke — with a threat in jest,
In God's own garden,
Mimosas rest.
They bloom in honour of you and me,
Of our souls’ clarity,
Of minds once bright —
That now
cease to be.)
I fight on three fronts:
Demons, go forth!
Beyond the righteous horizon’s curve,
Life dances in drunken mirth.
Beyond the rules,
Beyond too-kind Abels,
Behind each stands a Cain,
Releasing his serpentine bane —
A Voldemort gone insane.
A sly mouth grins and swears:
“I fucked you all —
Found a tear
In the fabric of the universe,
I’m betting
I’ll succeed!”
Another mouth replies in gloom:
“You stumbled on it accidentally.
You’re scared to lose —
And that
burns bitterly.
You fear to bow to the strong,
Or kneel to the meek.
You’re a slave —
hostage of your mythic streak.
A pathetic plebeian
Of Ubermensch’s lie,
I’ve hung a hundred like you
To dry.
You strain, you strain — and shit your cause.
Then scream, 'This is war!'
You fool — no applause.
A humble toilet brush
Will scrape you off the floor.”
The first mouth smirks in haze,
And in silence, hisses praise.
From the dark it raised its grin —
And in every scum,
A tune begins.
Each bore a saint and killer too,
Each bore
A pile of waste,
A monk, a fool,
A daredevil's chase,
Sabotage of self —
Rust-crossed disgrace.
A scaffold built
To be your own
Execution’s face.
But the blow,
The Gordian knot fell down.
The world arose.
And morning wore its crown.
V
Four stood on the cliff.
Rain and wind struck stiff,
But they bowed to stars above,
That ploughed the heavens rough.
Four stood on the cliff:
Liar, thief, child, and nurse.
The cradle rocked in fury’s grip,
The thief
Sang lullabies
In the storm’s fierce verse.
Morality broke like glass,
Became a broken shelf, surpassed.
Cain and Abel stood
At the brink, once more hand in hand —
Like children
Of the end,
They met on death’s own stand.
At the gates where one must die,
In bleeding womb of sky.
Guards stand at the hour’s mouth,
Waiting
For vengeance to come south.
VI
My flock — to the skies!
Tears the clouds, wings wide,
A white flock of white-winged souls,
Wanderers,
Echoes of cries
On eyelash-thorns, dark and cold.
Awkward,
Like snowballs in form,
But their feathers are kin,
And their blood — my storm.
Preserve them,
O Armageddon near,
Give them strength to stand austere,
Grant them love
And grant no fear.
VII
Cain looks upon Abel,
Abel meets his gaze.
One will be thrown into flame.
Who authored this maze?
Who wove this mourning braid?
I reject! I reject! I reject!
Both brothers echo each other:
“We don’t want paradise,
We reject! We deny!
Let it die!”
“He who kills himself is robbed,
He who erases filth is mobbed —
Blind tools —
Millions float above,
Their corpses
Drenched in dove.”
Cain and Abel stood
At the brink, boldly hand in hand.
Laughed in the abyss’s face,
The shore cried, wave by strand.
Rain sang a grieving tune,
The cradle howled at the moon.
Then they slept — in blizzard's clutch,
Woke
In dawn’s crystal touch.
VIII
And they dreamed near simultaneously,
Of a strange and crooked fair,
Where coal and brooches sold for fees,
Black as
Raven’s stare.
When they were lowered into ground,
Brooches grew like seeded flame,
And from each rose up a bird,
Flying
White on white again.
IX
That night, antonyms converged,
And melted into one.
No whip, no knife, no cursed word
To announce what had been done.
X
…That’s all that will survive:
The human is dead —
Too human has died.
— A cry from the fire,
Crushed essence defiled.
Someone’s proud flattery left,
I refuse to read
A single word in its defence,
I won't
Crawl
Through broken lines,
Of those who lived proud, and died hence,
Having drunk
The poisoned honey.
I go — the fifth —
To join the four,
To raise
Worlds on sand once more.
---
Published on 17 August 2019.
The text was written over several nights, fuelled by Lynchburg Lemonade.
The people I met back then asked what I was writing every evening.
When I said I was working on a poem, they asked, “What kind of poem?”
I replied with the first thing that came to mind:
“It’s called White Ravens”
(we were speaking in English)
— and briefly described its essence in a few words.