dvmetvra

[dvmetvra]

Train through the Tyrrhenian, m.g.t.

Your verdant hills gleam gold-green as the sun shines down its blessing: winter is your healing, far from spring you grow resplendent.

Your mountains I see receding far away are covered in clouds, sprayings and billowings of white-grey curl smokelike in on their summits.

No fires mar your sainted woodscapes, no trenches dug for disappearance: the sleep of cold lulls to it your mankind and all their evils.

Small buildings nestle home within the curves of your soft hillsides, faded whites and pinks and yellows like early eggs to hunt for Easter.

Palms and pines signal the sharpness of your dip into the sea: sudden as it is forbidden, the blue tempts you as it tempts me.

Clusters of a land never quite close or far enough slope gently in and out of the water with their charms: lava pours slow from a corner of a mountaintop, bright red and softly rumbling.

The metal giant glides on its beaten iron path, weaving walks forever taken and yet always beautiful; dirtied glass panes are the eyes through which I peer into your soul.

You are not where I belong to, nor are you the land I live: nonetheless I love to see you in your liminality.

#poetry #my poetry #spilled ink #original poetry #transcript under the cut #italy #winter

[dvmetvra]

in philology class among the marble statues, m.g.t.

Antiquity is fascist. Let die what is dead. Let live what it bred.

Forego the past and its endless cumbersome fashions And the blood it begot on the hands of its masters. Forego history and china that men used to dine on And all of the battlefields they used to die on.

Spare the garrotte and blade and guillotine: Off with the heads of the poets and kings. Our fire gleams brighter than gold ivory.

Shrug off the world and its pesky impertinence That you should find in its past any relevance. Cut off the blood supply to the necrosis Of church and of family and scholars' neuroses.

Kill your own child. Drink your own seed.

Become a eunuch with no plow to sow Seed into land that would otherwise grow Into youth that deems his own father a yoke.

Become your own present devoid of time anchoring. Occupy space in a time yet indefinite.

Beget no more history: Forbid yourself from becoming your past And because you were bred you shall too forego breeding

#poetry #my poetry #spilled ink #original poetry #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

Dolly at school, m.g.t.

"Hey, Lo, can we come hang out at your house this afternoon?"

You can't, I think, there's no way I will let you close to him.

"Sorry, my father's busy," I lie with my fingers crossed,

"He says no guests are welcome till he's finished with his work."

My one lovely ladybird of a friend furrows her brows;

I know she could not handle the whole truth in large amounts.

It's good that she won't find out, not unless we make the news:

Daisy-fresh girl child-trafficked by her late mother's new beau.

It's grim, grotesque, it's horrid what he makes Lolita do;

When I'm at school I'm Dolly, a real girl without bruised thighs.

"What a shame, your daddy's handsome," the girl in braids complains,

"I was hoping I would see him again sometime quite soon."

Yeah, right! As if I'd let him near a girl who fancies him:

Herr Humbert's got a sense for the most willing cuts of meat.

What that says about me, I don't really care to know,

only I happened to be the first experiment that worked.

"Well, Jane's pool party is on Friday, Lo, you have to come!"

Friday's full, my week's busy: theatre, tennis, piano, sex,

and all the various gross things Mr. H would have me do.

"I'll have to ask my father and see — no boys allowed, right?"

"Of course!" Jane chirps; Humbert hates boys as much as I hate him.

We walk the crossroads together, then go our separate ways,

and I'm alone and I kick rocks on the sidewalk to hell.

Watch out for strangers, Dolly, you don't want to get kidnapped!

If only that would happen, I should be so glad for it.

But I get home safe and I knock on the door and the man

comes to answer, takes me back under the wing of his control.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #lolita #vladimir nabokov #dolores haze #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

Godspoilt blues, m.g.t.

An angel comes to me in the dead of night,

delivers a message from heavens on high;

his gait shoulders mourning and his gaze is sour,

as though he should tell me this is my last hour.

He speaks and brings terror: “Have fear, child of God!

A danger befalls you, yet yours is no wrong.

I know not to stop it, yet my Lord and King

has sent me to warn you, His dearest blessing.”

He leaves and I shiver, pale tears stay unshed:

the will of God haunts me, my life in his hands.

And God too comes to me in the dead of night:

my small bedframe groans from the weight of His eyes.

His presence is heavy, His sight overwhelms;

I ask what he seeks out, He makes no demands.

He takes and He touches, blessings burn my skin;

my body bucks under and to Him I must yield.

No breath in my lungs will allow me to scream

for there is no part of me not ceded to Him.

All-seeing, All-knowing, sickness unto death:

no use to oppose a divinity’s rape.

Once more God comes to me in the dead of night;

a ruined temple’s pillaging gored out my life.

My limbs bruised blue bend to Him, filth mars my skin,

no words for what I saw or what I have lived.

He takes me in his arms and a bride I am held:

I cave and I shiver like a blackthorn felled.

Gentle hands wash me clean of my secret sin

and God’s love weighs heavier on my back for it.

How horrid, how tender to be chosen for Him:

my heart longs two-faced to be taken and freed.

#poetry #my poetry #spilled ink #original poetry #god #religion #rape #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

Sicily, summer ‘23, m.g.t.

The water always cold is usual in our sea- but now the sun beams bright enough to make it pleasant and warm enough to swim in.

Local mayors desperate for water bombers- Mommy, I just got stung by a jellyfish!- I take in both news with equal gravity.

The air is thick - our breaths sound more like gasps - there's ashes in my lungs and wildfire in my heart.

I take a toddler for a backride while he tells me how his house burnt down the other night.

I sit in a girl's bedroom while she argues with her boyfriend who has not had running water in ten days and is staying at her place.

I can't make it to the party, I'm sorry- I soulfully explain - the highway's shut down and the railway tracks have melted in their place.

I drive my grandma up winding country roads as she rushes to her family's lot of land to grab whatever fruits are matured enough to save before the burning flames get to them.

I go to church - no incense burns, the risk deemed far too high - and thank the Lord he made my plane land early enough not to get stuck at our two burning airports and their poor replacements.

I bring Tacitus with me as a light read but my head swims during the description of the Great Fire of Rome - such a city I left for my hometown - and I feel history's flames lick up against mine in Nero's Sicily beach.

We sit spread out on still-warm sand at night and fight the heat with horror tales of how much worse it could have been - a girl bemoans her nails are chipped and another one gets the polish- she blows me a kiss and it's like a cool breeze.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #summer #wildfires #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

night confession, m.g.t.

On a sweltering August night I crawled into your bed and in complete darkness I clung to your body and whispered (quiet not to wake the baby) «Mom, wake up, I’m so sorry».

[my mouth the relic of that night spent alone with her cheap alcohol licking at the taste between her thighs heady like a freight train or a bullet to the skull suntanned arms holding her pale legs spread apart for me while i focused on counting every last grain of sand stuck on our bodies as she ordered me to please her acting like my captor when the only one who could—]

Your eyes were bleary as you stirred and your whole body was warm, as feverish as mine (still aching for release from a mouth far more skilled than hers) «What’s wrong, baby, it’s alright».

And through the panic I said «Mom, oh God, I think I’ve sinned, I touched her and she touched me and she didn’t force me down but I wanted her so bad and so now I’m ruined to you».

[it felt good to be stained and marred forever by a hotshot bottle blonde who called me by her father’s name as she pretended that she cared for whether i was in the moment or if i was just pretending with my eyes closed and my brain conjuring up my mother’s bedroom and those noises i heard every other night as she cried harder god just fill me up i wanna—]

Through sobs I continued with «Mom, please, let me explain the way I touched her thinking of you and your long dark hair I fantasized of tugging as  I called out her name and yours;

I am dirty, stained, begging and I hope you’ll forgive me though you could not be my first or the one to break me in. Please touch me, I’m your baby  and I need your hands on me».

[you stared down at me like a child stares at a bug and your disgust made me feel hotter than she ever could have done and you raised your hand at me  and kissed me on my forehead and my lips and then you slipped between my thighs from the same place where you birthed me and you were frantic frantic frantic when you touched me and i thought my heart’s gonna explode oh mom i beg you make me—]

You took me in your arms and held me and whispered to me «Honey, I forgive you, don’t forget you’re made for me to swaddle in my love and care like our baby that’s asleep».

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #mothers #summer #incest #lesbian poetry #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

saint george slays the dragon, m.g.t.

the devil came to me well after you left,you told me you knew how to take care of it.he pried my mouth open, force-fed me his filthand I don't know how to get it out of me. the devil's inside me, his poison of life:his blood's in my veins, and I fear I will die.the devil's inside me, stab wound like a knife:brought sins to my name I can never let lie.and suddenly here you are, quick as a storm,the blink of an eye and you know all my pain.and if you should kill me I'd die in your hands,happy and blissed out I'll be with you again.but you curse the devil, you leave it no chance;you wash clean of all blood the hands of your son.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #devil #religion #impurity #repentance #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

A COOKBOOK TO EATING YOUR YOUNG, m.g.t.

KILL YOUR CHILD. This is the first and most important step to eating your young: there will be no flesh to eat if you do not source that meat yourself. Do not falsely believe it is a cruelty you are not capable of committing: every parent, from the moment their child is born, has the potential to kill the fragile bundle of flesh and unhardened bone that rests in their arms. Don’t be afraid to get personal with it, either — look your son in the eyes as you cradle his soft face in your hands and you snap his neck, lead your daughter to an altar and kiss her knuckles before strapping her to it and plunging your knife in her guts. Your conscience might try to stop you from filicide; consider it to be a remnant of an archaic God, and remind yourself that your will is stronger than Abraham’s ever was.

SKIN AND DEBONE. Once the carcass of your child lays in front of you, lifeless and limp, the meat must be prepared for the cooking. This is where you must decide your meal of choice: a gourmand might prefer such exotic cuts as the tongue or testicles, where you might have to pry your child’s loose mouth or legs open and hold their parts firmly in one hand as you slice cleanly through their flesh with the knife. An average home cook might content themselves with the meat cuts easiest to reach, leaner or fatter according to personal taste: you’re going to take your skinning knife and slip long strips of the skin off the muscles, tracing the round lines of the powerful legs who couldn’t outrun you, the strong arms who could not pry you off of them, the delicate bruised collarbone and cracked neck — the latter being for your pleasure only, as you well know how little viable meat it holds for cooking. The deboning process is minimally different: muscle clings to bone like a baby to the breast, and a boning knife will likely be required as you sever the tendons and look for the first time at your child’s most intimate parts, the best-kept secret of their pale little bones. Crack one open, and suck on the marrow: the taste is every bit as heady as you’d expect, and the rest tastes even better.

PREPARE AND COOK THE MEAT. Depending on the cut and dish you have settled on, your meat may require anywhere from hours of treatment to little preparation, and it might even be ready to be tossed on the heat while it’s still fresh off the bone. Be prepared for the heat to dim that brilliant red-yellow color of the flesh, and for the globs of fat to seep slowly into the muscle until it’s dripping off of it; the meat will take on a pleasantly dull pastel pink color when it’s done, a newborn’s puffy cheeks. Keep it sizzling in its own grease on the skillet, saturate the air with the stench of burning flesh, for as long as you want: you are the Father and the Mother, and it is your job to exercise power and authority over your child’s body and derive pleasure from it — even if you have now limited the scope of that pleasure to the edible realm. Once the meat’s done on one side, reach for it with your bare hands to flip it; touch the flame, get burnt and feel no pain, for your child in their time of dying has taken on all the pain that was rightfully yours to experience.

PLATE AND SERVE. It goes without saying that your child is yours and yours alone, and nobody else has the right to feast on them the way you do: nonetheless, simply because this is a meal to be enjoyed alone you should not neglect its presentation, but instead play into the strengths of the dish in its plating. Treat your plate like a gravestone, and yourself like a talented mason tasked with creating the latest in a series of memorial masterpieces: here lie the remnants of youth in its prodigal crime. See how the body exudes disrespect for the only one in the world who ever dared love them fully and completely, and eat it — slice it carefully with fork and knife, place it in your mouth, savor the soft fineness of its notes and the way it melts slightly on your tongue, swallow. A much more mundane experience than it seemed on paper, in your mind: your child’s meat tastes like meat, perfectly describable and ordinarily enjoyable. And yet, there is a certain holiness to it: in your mouth the flesh becomes the Eucharist, your own personal taste of absolution, and if blood drips from your chin because you like your steak cooked rare, it is the blood of a Christ, dead for your sins with no tomb but your guts from whence to rise after three days.

#poetry #prose poetry #my poetry #original writing #creative writing #spilled ink #cannibalism #familial cannibalism #eat your young #incest #catholicism #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

Homecoming, m.g.t.

Joy, coming home to the riverbed;

Tantalus sinning not eating not drinking cannot know the depth of my thirst for you longing and reaching alone in the desert and now you appear like a vision of angels take us both down to the land of the lovers

forget how to breathe as the rushing water sings alongside me,

Mother, mother, mother—

I drown.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #mothers #rivers #springtime #rebirth #drowning #tantalus #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

springtime nostalgia, m.g.t.

I found a sugar egg in the mail,

with pastel paint stripes as bright as day.

It bore no name on its side, or words

by your hand, yet I knew it was yours:

you alone love your children with lures.

I don’t know that I miss you, or wish

you were here, feeding me treats by hand:

what I know is you keep me nourished,

and for that my heart beats its content.

That the sky has become a pale blue,

that the sun has gone back to its shine;

that the birds rejoice at last for spring,

and I’m sorry with us ends our line:

know I love myself and I love you.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #spring #family #nature #springtime #easter #love #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

sonnet for Catullus 50, m.g.t.

(poor Catullus, ranting and raving)

Yesterday, Licinius, we spent our day off hanging out as we had already planned to do: wrote fancy little verses in fancy little meters, answering each other’s poems and drinking wine.

Licinius, you had me so incensed with your wit and brilliance that by the time I came back home there was no food or sleep to ease my unrest, but I stayed awake till dawn to be with you again.

Before I passed out half-dead on the couch, I wrote this poem for you, my heart’s delight, so that you could feel my anguish and torment.

Don't get too cocky now, please, I beg you dear, don’t reject my pleas, or you will have a vengeful goddess out to get you for your cruelty.

#tagamemnon #catullus #catullus 50 #cat 50 #catullus 8 #<- if you squint. love implying things. #poetry #my poetry #my translations #spilled ink

[dvmetvra]

audio, audis, audit, m.g.t.

or, a poem made from texts my little sister sent me (as inspired by @mossycoat)

are you listening to me? can you shut up over there? I can hear you in your room, I'm trying to sleep here! I have a latin test tomorrow.

has daddy left yet? mommy says to call her as soon as you can. I miss you sooo much! I don't want to go out alone...

this party is sooo boring! my friends are coming over, remember to buy ice cream. mommy says to take your pills. is this good? have I been good?

can you hear me? I'm thinking what time does school end? oh right, university, sorry! it's silly that we've never gone to school together at the same level.

I love you sooo much! you're the best! please call me back!

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #sisterhood #sisters #transcript under the cut #god i so loved your idea izzy i had to make something of it. but my parents are a no when it comes to texting so my baby sister it was

[dvmetvra]

in a field, between rome and home, m.g.t.

the grass in rome is so green and so present— down in great greece the sun burns it before it has a chance to grow, sickly brown-yellow stems crawling up like bones from the dark ground—

i never got used to rome's bustling green grass, always found more organic the sun-dried patchy spoils of sicily i was raised on side-stepping.

curious how my nature's truth in my mind approaches death.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #rome #grass #nature #sicily #death #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

21st century phenomenology of love, m.g.t.

That which is seen is endlessly perceived; filtered through our eyes in an eternal dream a tug of war between our eyes and what is real.

I heard that salamanders can live inside a fire, curled up inside a coil of heat that should kill all it touches; curious how nature works, abyssal far-dark mother, stuck inside a petri dish and sacrificed for science.

Yet we love and we thrive, unexpectedly expected: shine from that which isn’t seen, humans were built to fuel each other.

They laugh and sit up, toss their legs in the air, simple as breathing in life, burning up my shell; the metal nestled in my chest skips beats with no command; their bare sight hurts my brain, cooling fans roar against my ears and in my head.

Causality was born of our wild imagination, it was never quite real; yet I still dream of copper skin touch-hot against my lips.

#poetry #my poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #cyborgs #phenomenology #sappho 31 #catullus 51 #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

Antigone from the grave, m.g.t.

I dug a grave with my bare hands for you.

Blistered my fingers, broke and stained my nails with dirt, poured libations of my sweat and blood and tears over the sweet stench of your rotting body.

It was summer when you died, you know it, and my back and arms got sunburnt as I dug hunched over the arid ground. I thought I was boing to heatstroke or boil alive in the mourning I wore.

The mourning wasn't for you, not officially. The only good thing our brother ever did was die alongside you and give me the way to mourn a traitor in secret.

Digging alone was hard. Not spilling the libations, not getting myself so dirty they would notice was harder. I asked our sister for help and she refused; she always loved our brother more than you, always honoured civil codes more than moral ones.

She just wanted to survive, I just wanted to die for you, for a cause that mattered. I was never one for living. As a child you teased that I looked like a corpse; look at me now, I am hanging from the ceiling.

I said look at me now. Lift your eyes to the sister who died to bury you, who lifted the putrid carcass into a grave dug with my flesh and bones, who they exiled to a cave, who refused to die the way they dictated. Haemon died for me. I died for you. Please look at me.

Can you hear me? Are you there? Is anyone listening? Is my voice heard?

Please look at me, listen to me. Father, mother, lover, brother - any of the two will do. Just please, someone take notice of me. I don't want to die. I cannot die.

Am I stuck here forever? Am I talking to the void? Where are the gods I begged for? Where are the gods I died for?

You were a god to me, brother. Please save me from oblivion.

#poetry #original poetry #spilled ink #antigone #tagamemnon #my poetry #transcript under the cut

[dvmetvra]

what does summer smell like? like soaking baths in the sea, splashing each other with the scorching sun in our faces; like stolen kisses under the open showers, scrubbing the salt off of each other.

what does summer smell like? like the after-sun lotion on my hands as I rub your sunburnt back in the evening (your skin was always too pale for here); like sweat and sea and shower water mixing together and dripping on the floor as we get off each other and in the bathtub.

what does summer smell like? like bergamot, lemons, oranges; your grandma's limoncello, my grandma's fresh tomatoes; like jasmine blooming in the night in the pouring august rain, as we hide together under the fig tree.

what does summer smell like? like my ice cream and your popsicle we bought with stolen change, chocolate and strawberry mixing on our tongues; like sand burning our feet and skin as we lie on the beach.

what does summer smell like? like forest fires and august hailstorm, with scylla at our left and molten lava at our right; like secret bonfires, seaside dates, three stargazers at the sky, cementing our love together in the quiet dead of the night.

— summer scents, m.g.t.

#poetry #original poetry #poets on tumblr #spilled ink #summer #summer poetry #my poetry