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I should have killed myself so long ago…
It’s way too late, now. Might as well live on,
if only to annoy the powers that be
and hate our guts. They’d fain have us all killed,
or subjugated to the tyranny
of stinking pleasures and degeneracy:
for we’re so keen to dive into the worst,
quick to embrace as virtue villainy.
(Can you betray someone whom you don’t know,
have never met and never will? I guess
you have a right to be unfaithful to
the twisted image people make of you—
distorted or revealing picture, right?—
while I’ve no obligation to deceive
myself in thinking I am owed the truth,
the secrets of your inner mechanisms.
But I might be the one betrayed, misled
by sights nocturnal stretching hours away
in decades, living as another bloke,
and having house, a lovely wife, and kids,
and finding joy in all my labor under
a sun oneiric—but made all the same
by God Almighty. Well, what do I know?
I want it all: the Good, the Fair, the True.
I can’t be humble when it comes to that.)
“You’ve got to know that, of your young years’ dreams,
not even one will ever come to life.
You’ve got to make some art, and then you die,”
a buddy told me once. He was dead drunk,
but he was right—then threw up Jelly Beans,
the stinkbug-flavored ones, for no amount
of beer could wash the nasty taste away.
The second passage probably was more
obnoxious than the first—it sounded like it.
But Truth and Beauty are no one’s concern.
Let things be fun and easy, let’s forget
that life is shit and waste, that in exchange
of pleasure, you get robbed of dignity.
Relinquish decency and revel in
what you have got in common with the mob.
Let throngs dictate your tastes: a billion mouths
without a proper voice just can’t be wrong.
(I must have died some time ago; that’s why
there’s nothing I can feel. I’m but an echo
reflected from one mirror to the next,
in pink and shiny corridors of marble,
in the weirdest place you can imagine.
I’m stuck and can’t go back. It’s vast in here.
I can’t see where the light comes from, and time
is like suspended, or accelerated,
in webs of senseless data, prison of
irrelevance, delusion, lies, excuses.
My guide allured me here before I could
provide her with my full, informed consent.
You’ve taken me on such a journey! Yes,
I do consent. It’ll end as expected:
in failure, disappointment, solitude.
I’ll strive to love this fate I chose. I’m grateful.)
I do not feel compassion for those folks
of whom one cannot tell if they’re mere pixels
and made-up sounds, and shadows on our screens—
or people walking through a living hell.
I have compassion for the guy who lives
upstreet: the dude’s convinced he is a girl.
I can’t help laughing at him, though. That’s pretty
much the extent of love I’m capable of.
Will it be laughing matter when he gets
his dick chopped off? Have fun with that. I’ll weep
for him and wait to hear he’s drowned himself,
or something, afterward. That’s not my problem.
Am I my brother’s keeper? He’s got parents;
isn’t it theirs to talk some sense to him?
I wonder what has come of her—his sister,
the middle one, on whom I had a crush…
Just hope she’s not a nutjob, that she’s happy.
We would walk home and talk about the books
we’d read, and I was too much of a fool
to understand the situation. Pity.
To hell with memories. The neighbors come
and go, and I remain, my presence un-
suspected, faces all forgotten, old
and new—and mine as well. It’s all for good.
Romain P.-A. Delpeuch was born in south-west France, where he still lives. He is the author of Hypnagogia.