"The Fire" and "You already don't exist anymore"

The Fire

Silence is dead you get out of your place there are noises in your head but no one but you can hear them you carry the fire in your pocket you take it out of your pocket you put it in a fireplace the fire flares the wood the fire warms up the room you put the fire inside a painting it lights up the characters inside the painting it lights up the landscape of the painting the fire warms up the room you look out the window the world is cold there are so many people whom you don’t know no there are so many crazy people everywhere you’re afraid of the world you put on a disguise you put on a horse’s head you don’t look like anybody else anymore you put on a dog’s head you don’t look like anyone else anymore you walk alone in the street with your dog’s head with your horse’s head you walk into a public garden there are children playing now it’s spring it’s hot you’ve been sick for a very long time it’s been a long time that you haven’t visited this public garden you've stayed home alone in the dark lying on your  bed for weeks your brain was sick it wouldn’t let you go out now you’re in the public garden once more the trees are green the children are playing and their mothers are watching the children kick on a ball laughing and also there are couples young women and men who are walking under the trees of the garden in the shade of the trees you've remained seated on a chair you watch the people passing by the couples the children who hit the ball you watch the blue sky you observe the branches moving in the trees and the green of the trees so tender against the blueness of the sky and the colors of children’s clothes the skin of children’s faces the skin of couples men and women kissing each others there are also some adults  playing tennis who hit in a smaller yellow ball and with rackets here the world is simple like it used to be someone gets up and goes to buy a bunch of sweets in a nearby kiosk to give them to its child you remember that you were a child too that you did come to the same garden more than forty years ago almost fifty years ago you are old now you are alone you have no children so you simply watch the children of others in the garden you know that your brain is sick it won’t change it won’t change anymore the past is heavier inside of you than the future the more you advance in time the more the future wanes away so you leave the public garden you put the horse’s head back on yours you put your dog’s head back on yours you come back through the streets you get home you take the fire out of your pocket you put it back in the fireplace and it warms up the room you put the fire back inside the painting it warms up the characters in the painting it warms up the landscape in the painting you put the fire back again in your pocket you look outside no it’s not spring it’s still winter the trees have no leaves you have fantasized all this you have just but recalled that garden where you used to go as a child you have imagined being back there once again  in this garden but it was an illusion there is he fire burning in the painting and you lie down on your bed and you watch the fire burn in the distance on the hills that you have drawn inside your painting, and this, for eternity.

 


 

You already don’t exist anymore

You pick up your body like a dirty cloth but no one listens to you the sheet is a square placed on the table like the square of the window like the square of your madness the memory returns in the flame we are no more I’m afraid don’t say anything I’m afraid we are no more you go back there is the square of memory there are other silences the puddles open the bodies disappear we are nothing here someone has built a house and this house doesn’t exist and I don’t exist tomorrow either start over or go back live forget suffer I don’t know not I’m starting again the lamp goes out the day comes in there are crazy people who are playing a play there are crazy people no they are not crazy they are actors here you draw a face on the sheet of paper and this face represents someone you have forgotten a stranger whose facial features you still remember in a strange way as if forgetting and memory were one and the same thing but turned inside out like a glove no forgetting and memory are not one and the same thing they are two different things but united by the vocabulary of the obscure who does not don’t know how to stifle the silence comes  forcefully I don’t know that’s not true shut up neither  paper nor silence you say you don’t know you know you tell me you don’t know you know here’s silence the painting painted the wall painted the face painted by the sex by the blood it takes time not here you start all over again you don’t know here it all starts all over again you don’t know here I forget you too I don’t know anymore who I am I wasn’t born I didn’t go to meet the dead I didn’t come out of my madness I didn’t go to meet my own self so that I am not the one you believe that I am and all this has no importance in the end because there is only madness left and everything goes back to being back and to go back there and notp here is the silence of the past the lost night and so much and yet but not so much time remaining despite everything and which barely lost already remains forever and mine.

 

 

Ivan de Monbrison

Ivan de Monbrison is a schizoid writer from France born in 1969 and affected by various types of mental disorders. He has published some poems in the past. He's mostly an autodidact. Ivan recommends the World Wildlife Fund and Sea Shepard Conservation Society.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Sunday, April 16, 2023 - 20:01