FINE! Fine. I'm doing it. Disco Elysium Poetry.
About a month ago I attended a reading by Samyak Shertok, and his invented poetry forms, including a "haunting," where each line in the poem must use at least one word from the first line. Long story short I ended up writing an entire series of hauntings using the postcard from Dora. Because something is wrong with me. Under the read more. Formatting is fucked of course.
“I wanted to write you a letter, so you can read it when you wake up.”
I want to read forever new words.
Letters recombining ad infinitum.
Write the waking world into sunrise,
Build a future from ‘you,’ ‘you’, and you
Wake up! Emptiness claims the horizon.
Wake up! You can forget it all.
Wake up! and smell a burning letter on the wind.
Wanted Written Woken
“Maybe it will make you happy”
Make you, you make maybe,
Maybe you, maybe happy.
Maybe collapses, makes ‘will.’
Fleeting, you are an ‘it.’
I make you, happiness makes emptiness.
It will, it will, it will.
“Every morning when I step out and you’re asleep behind me,”
I step into morning,
When you are out and
Sleep is behind.
Every way out opens.
You are asleep,
You are morning,
You are behind me.
Morning steps out orange mourning.
Every where I am stepping,
Out goes you.
“I find a little piece of sadness in me.”
Find me in sadness
Find me in a little piece of dirt
Find me old and aching and empty.
I am not in me anymore.
A piece, a peace, little sadness finding.
Of sadness: I find it.
“I carry it in my chest down Voyager Road.”
Road in my chest,
Down the column of my spine.
Carry it, carry it,
Voyager of my body,
Down to the gravel beneath my boots
I carry the Road.
“Every step I take it grows.”
I take every step
Yet it grows
I step every take
Yet it grows
I every take step yet it grows
Grow step,
Step take,
I grow, it takes,
I take every step.
“By the time I read the fuel station it has filled me entirely.”
Time filled me entirely.
Read fuel, swallow gas.
By my station, I fill nothing.
Entirety fills my time,
I reach, I reach.
Fill me, O fuel of nothingness.
“I step on the light rail and look back,”
Look! Light.
Back to nothing, back to empty.
Stepping on rail over it all.
I am the light, looking into myself.
I step, you look back and the rail snaps.
Light steps, I am back
But nothing is there to look at.
“Sparks fall from the bow collector.”
Fall far from bow,
Far from spark of collection,
Fizzle out, die in an instant.
Bow on strings unwoven,
Collector of sparks, of dust,
Kindle the bow in my lungs.
“I know it will be like this until late afternoon.”
I know knowing is like this,
Knowing knows late afternoon.
It will be late, no matter what,
It will be like this:
I am afternoon, you know me.
Too late, too late.
Know it wasn’t like this always
Afternoon is late in coming.
“When I get off the 42–”
When I get off the ride,
When off gets me,
I off myself.
The 42 gets
When will I get off.
I get off, I get: when.
“–and walk back to you.”
Walk back,
Come back and walk,
You and sky at your back.
Back to you
Walking into the water
And to you this is a gift.
Back to walking, roam the highways as a rover.
You walk to somewhere new,
I walk back to nothing.
Walk and you are back,
I walk alone.
“You, you.”
You, yo, yoy.
Uy, uo, yuy.
Yu, ouy, ooy.
“Every step I take will get lighter.”
I take your lighter.
I will get every step,
I will get lighter,
I will get to take.
Light on steps, I take a will,
I write a will to my lighter.
Every take gets me steps,
I take steps to be every thing.
Get lighter!
I get lighter.
“It almost makes me run!”
It makes me undo,
Running off the edge of the world,
Almost something, not quite.
Making you the sun to set into clouds,
Dense and running thick.
Almost worth it,
Never for me, never running,
Almost!
Almost!
“Sometimes I do.”
I do nothing, sometimes.
The do is don’t to never be.
When I am sometimes, I can do.
You are a thing I do in empty hours,
You are in my throat, sometimes
I do everything to hold it still,
I hold a moment,
A sometime never under the tongue.
Sometimes:
‘I do.’
“I can’t believe I met you.”
I believe you built foundations
Believe the wrath divine, believe I deserve it.
I never met you.
You can’t believe I did anything.
I met belief in gum and new life
Choking on what I can’t—you.
Believe? I can’t. I met you.
You believe that I can’t
You met you,
And the places where my flesh met reality crumbling.
Can it, meet it, believe it: you.
“I can’t believe the happiness I feel with you.”
I can’t believe in happiness.
You feel the can’t,
Feel empty belief I am.
I believe happiness was you.
Can’t feeling reproduce? Cells divide.
Believe, feel, with can’t, you
Taste the smog with your beliefs,
Swallow happiness, swallow me.
With can’t feel you I.
“You have a vast, vast soul.”
Nothing, nothing, a vast nothing.
Soul melted into ash.
You are an ocean of having and not wanting,
Your vastness a soul.
A full balloon pops—have it all.
You have a soul
I have vastness.
“And I will always, always, always, come back to it.”
Always, allways, always.
I will come and I will be it.
A last step, back to infinity,
Come back to ‘will,’
Back to ‘and’ and ‘always.’
Will you always come like this?
I back the ‘it,’ the thing of coming,
And always here we are,
Returned again a will.
Don’t come back.
“Kisses, kisses, kisses.”
Kiss is to see
Sissy-boy whispering
Is she sick on the thoughts?
Ses he doesn’t know,
Skie left bleeding,
Looks in the mirror: eek.
Spell it out, cutting kisses,
Still can’t touch it: seks.