“The first time it is a mistake”

Tribute – Rypa

I’m bristling with hate again.
I’m edging on destruction.
With no one else to blame.
My own folly my own actions.

A wolf tried making friends with prey
by going vegetarian,
as if once you had changed your ways,
they suddenly would let you in.

I filed my teeth down hoping that
would help me fit among them,
as if they’re able to forget
that I’m a fucking monster.

A living mummy from the bog,
a relic of extinction.
They’d hunt me down like a dog,
making no distinctions.

My brother Rypa is correct. We can’t relate to humans. To them – we are an artifact. To us – they are a nuisance.

They are destructive like racoons
and vicious like chimpanzees.
Primates that learned to kill as soon
as they climbed down from the trees.

The very code by which we’re bound
is obsolete to them, and thus
there can be no common ground
with those who outcompeted us.

I cannot win a long lost war.
I cannot bring my species back.
My magic’s powerless before
relentless pecking of their packs.

The first time it is a mistake. The second – it is self abuse. If I have any bread to break I won't be breaking it with you.

They repay loyalty with betrayal.
And god forbid you do them nice.
Turn your back to their females –
they’ll slit your throat, gouge out your eyes.

Hairless apes out of control.
His Godship’s harbingers of hell.
They have no tolerance at all
for those who differ from themselves.

They have no tolerance within.
Get them together – and guts fly.
I’m not their kin, I don’t fit in.
I am ashamed I even tried.

The first time it is a mistake. The second – it is self abuse. If I have any bread to break I won't be breaking it with you.

My brother Rypa is correct. We can’t relate to humans. To them – we are an artifact. To us – they are a nuisance.

I think I’d rather go extinct
than feast with you in your mead-hall.
I will not touch the blood you drink.
I’m not a cannibal, that’s all.

Thank you for all the fish. Be well.
I’ll shut the door on my way out. First born of Lilim, Genviel.

P.S. And to you, Rypa, a shout out!

You…

Like prison sentences, end to end,
sixty millennia, all in all.
Here’s what I cannot understand –
how come I haven’t learned at all?
How come I’m as defenseless now
as I had been in that first life?
I ‘m buying words wholesale, although
I know they’re often lies.
You said “I want it all”, and I
had opened up and let you in,
although I knew you wouldn’t like
what you would find beneath my skin.
Although I knew I didn’t have
that indescribable, fragile, raw
ability to shift and bend
that men value in their females so.
I had believed – I did believe! –
have mercy, Gods, I have no words
to scream my pain – that you had lifted
the curse from me. That I was yours.
I gave it all! I gave it all!
Hysterical, stupid and naïve,
a child out of control.
A child drowning in grief.
I begged and prayed. I prayed and begged.
I have held back for so long!
My pride, my power, my intellect –
all of it – simply to belong.
You offered me such precious things
as hope, as love, a chance to live.
I swear, I gave you everything,
but this, which isn’t mine to give.
The thing that shapes my every step.
That I will not do. Can’t be done.
My loved ones, that I must protect.
The word I’ve given to my mom.
She is my mother. In this life,
this last lifecycle, she alone
gave herself so I would survive.
She saved my life. I cannot turn
on her, for anyone at all.
Not me. Not you. It is a debt
of decency etched in my soul.
A sacrifice I won’t forget.
And it is not about trust.
Or closed mindedness. Or spite.
It can’t be either her – or us.
It cannot be. It isn’t right.
Your vision, your passion, your dream
those things mean so much to me,
but i don’t know by what means
I can express it. How to be
simply supportive, simply there,
without wanting to learn more.
How to show that I care
without trying to explore
your thoughts and plans, without trying
to offer you skills I possess
in service to your cause. I’m tired.
I’m lost. I’m cornered. I’m depressed.
I didn’t mean or want to fail or
let you down. I want to be
your sword. But I cannot betray
those I love. Those who raised me.
It doesn’t matter that I’m shattered
into small shards, that all I touch
turns into ash. Here is what matters:
I failed you. You asked too much.
I know I promised, I know I vowed
that I would back you in this fight.
And I don’t know what to say now.
And I cannot tell wrong from right…

Hunger

Your hunger is a beacon in the dark,
a mirror image of my own spark.
I close my eyes and I can hear your call.
If this is hell, then, god, please let me fall!

Rip off my dress, my morals at the door.
Allow the prairies to replace the floor.
F*** modern age, with all its fancy gear;
unlatch the cage, let’s both disappear.

There is no evil here, no good,
only the small prey scatters underfoot,
only imprints of toes in frozen grass,
claws digging into frost as miles pass.

The pale moonlight outlines your face.
Heart pounds, caught up in its own race.
The night is primal, black. Your pupils glow.
and our sweat sizzles on contact with snow.

The quick neck bite replaces the romance.
Day chases night in an eternal dance.
Crisp morning air. Brittle underbrush.
And nothing can compare to this rush.

In this landscape and on this night
There’s no escape, it’s flight or fight.
There’s only moon. There’s only stars.
There’s only lust. There’s only us.

My own footsteps deafeningly loud.
Adrenaline flows through my blood .
A tinge of fear rises from within.
I know you’re near. I can smell your skin.

There are no thoughts, no need for shame,
No use for words, there’s nothing to explain.
The oldest game that anyone can play,
Where one is predator, the other – prey.

There is no evil here, no good,
only the small prey scatters underfoot,
only imprints of toes in frozen grass,
claws digging into frost as miles pass.

The pale moonlight outlines your face.
Heart pounds, caught up in its own race.
The night is primal, black. Your pupils glow.
and our sweat sizzles on contact with snow.

The quick neck bite replaces the romance.
Day chases night in an eternal dance.
Crisp morning air. Brittle underbrush.
And nothing can compare to this rush.

In this landscape, and on this night
There’s no escape, it’s flight or fight.
There’s only moon. There’s only stars.
There’s only lust. There’s only us.

A flare of tempers greets the first sun ray.
The darkness scampers out of our way.
The fading stars. The sound of your breath,
as each one of us dies a little death.

Send a cold shiver down along my spine.
Right in my ear, growl – you’re mine!
This need for hurt mixed in with our bliss.
F*** modern world! It cannot give me this.

Copyright @ Julie Deshtor 2020

Denny – Original lyrics and song

Dedicated to Denny

Somewhere in a distant land by a vacant sea,
Stands the wreckage of the building where you’ve danced with me…

I never gave up loving you, I buried you inside.
I close my eyes and see the poplar trees and the sunlight,
The gravel of the road by the cemetery gate,
And all those black cars in a row in a motorcade.

I was eleven, you – fourteen, the year the war began.
Back then – I thought I was a teen, I thought you were a man.
The children’s dance at the resort. The longing for romance.
My palms got sweaty, my heart stopped, when you asked me to dance.

Your hair seemed golden, your eyes – quartz. I’ve never danced before.
The band had played a slow waltz. We swirled across the floor.
The sapphire waves. The orange sun. The glow of the sand…
It took two nations and a gun to make a girl’s dream end.

The year was 1989, before the Wall came down.
The next day, everything seemed fine, you rode your bike to town.
The first news of gunfire came in. Our peaceful world was gone.
People were afraid. Nobody knew what’s going on.

I won’t forget the terror in your parents’ eyes that day,
Or how your sister’s hair turned from black to ashen gray.
They brought you on a stretcher, and the sheet was stained in red.
I blankly stared, with the waltz still playing in my head.

Denny! – you are a part of all I am; both love and hate.
I should’ve saved you from that brawl between two bickering states.
The old regime would soon collapse, and the free world would win.
That victory was bought by us: one boy’s life, one girl’s dream.

Somewhere in a war torn land by a vacant sea,
Stands the wreckage of the building where you danced with me,
The cemetery, and your grave, to which I cannot get.
I know the poplar trees are waltzing there at sunset.

Your hair seemed golden, your eyes – quartz. I’ve never danced before.
The band had played a slow waltz. We swirled across the floor.
The sapphire waves. The orange sun. The glow of the sand…
It took two governments, one gun to make a girl’s dream end.

Copyright @ Julie Deshtor 2019

War Hawks

 

I’m so tired of human wars,
Never-ending holocaust;
All the futures that are lost
In a single blinding flash.
Missiles raining from the sky.
Buildings crumble, people die.
Nobody questions why.
Corporations count the cash.

Local conflicts over oil.
Blood is seeping into soil.
The unburied bodies spoil
Picked apart by wild birds.
Terrorists are chopping heads.
Graves are filling up with dead.
Politicians march ahead
Eloquently trading words.

War hawks, war hawks,
may your bones grow soft,
may your skin peel off,
may you learn the taste of pain.
May you all be cursed
for the hell you’ve caused,
so that this Earth
never bleeds again.

I’m so tired of human games.
Diplomats have lost all shame,
Passing back and forth the blame
For the nations destroyed.
Pockets keep on getting filled.
Tears and guts keep getting spilled.
Special forces hone their skills
Sending souls into the void.

Killings carried out by drones.
Rubble left in place of homes.
Walking over crunching bones
In the name of greater good.
Cholera and dysentery.
Multiplying adversaries.
As the packs of mercenaries
Paint the skyline black with soot.

War hawks, war hawks,
may your bones grow soft,
may your skin peel off,
may you learn the taste of pain.
May you all be cursed
for the hell you’ve caused,
so that this Earth
never bleeds again.

I’m so sick of human lies.
There’s no limit to the price
They will pay to maximize
Their power and control.
Setting decency aside,
The elites from every side
Are engaged in genocide,
Choosing profit over soul.

Presidents and dissidents,
All add up to dividends.
Global politics descend
Into fog of total hate.
Humans, you have lost your mind,
Feeding on your own kind,
Lappin up the blood behind you.
Stop, before it is too late.

War hawks, war hawks,
may your bones grow soft,
may your skin peel off,
may you learn the taste of pain.
May you all be cursed
for the hell you’ve caused,
so that this Earth
never bleeds again.

Copyright @ Julie Deshtor 2018

The Chronicles of a Collapse

This is not a fairytale,
not a cautionary tale.
It’s a chronicle of a collapse in all of its details.
It’s the freedom that you sold.
It’s the freedom that we bought.
It’s the stories of the lives of the people we forgot.

He was a 40-year-old
army colonel and a dad.
Served his country in two wars, gave it everything he had.
Then one lovely summer day,
at the height of his career,
he came to work to find out that his homeland disappeared,
That the medals he received,
and the oath that he swore,
And the code by which he lived didn’t matter anymore.
So he packed up all his things,
and he drove himself back home,
And he sat there on the couch, sat there thinking all alone…
And he looked down at his hands.
And he looked up at his gun.
He thought – This is not the end, because he still had a son.
Well, the army fell apart,
and he had no other skills.
Finding work can be quite hard for someone who’s trained to kill.
He had picked up washing floors,
so his family could eat.
All was well until he ran into four punk kids in the street.
They were bored and they were drunk.
They were in the mood to play.
He said: I’m ‎a colonel, son, please get on out of my way!
Just a soldier on his own
against four kids with a bat.
They had shattered every bone, and they left him there dead.

That’s the freedom that you sold.
That’s the freedom that we bought.
That’s the story of a life of somebody we forgot.
It is not a fairytale,
not a cautionary tale.
It’s a chronicle of a collapse in all of its details.

A physicist wi‎th a world name
He couldn’t figure ‎out the math.
The university had not paid scientist salaries for months.
Of the research assistants that he had
three left, one wound up dead.
There are riots on the streets each day. There are four hour lines for bread.
Equations blooming in his mind
are so precise and so right,
but he cannot afford to pay his bills. His wife cries every night.
He focuses on his research
in a futile attempt to cope,
though all his funding has been pulled. He cannot buy a microscope.
When the bus drivers went on strike
the state had budget for their checks,
yet the nuclear submarine research somehow fell through the cracks.
He doesn’t know how to fight.
He’s no good at commerce or crime.
A foreign firm expressed an interest – he thought it was genuine.
So excited there is someone
willing to discuss his work
he talked‎. They listened, and they‎ nodded, and they wrote down every word.
He had been brought up on ideals
of human progress and world peace,
as the result, he sold nuclear secrets ‎to the terrorists.

That was not a fairytale,
not a cautionary tale.
It’s a chronicle of a collapse in all of its details.
It’s the freedom that you sold.
It’s the freedom that we bought.
It’s the story of a life of somebody we forgot.

Her nickname was Babe. Me and her
used to hang out after school.
She said: I want to be a prostitute, because that shit is cool.
I asked her: Are you sure
that’s the life you want to lead?
She shouted: Don’t preach to me! I’m not your daughter, not a kid.
I didna ask for your advice,
and I don’t care what you think.
All my classmates are doing it. They all have cash and nicer things.
I’m sick and tired of being broke.
I want to live like everyone.
It’s just a little bit of work. Besides, I can help out my mom.
I begged her: Babe, at least let me
set you up at a nice hotel.
She laughed and told me to butt out, she could take care of herself.
She went and got her hair permed.
Red mini skirt and red high heels.
She tried so hard to imitate the hookers from the Western films.
This was in 1992,
the year the Iron Curtain fell.
The government disintegrated. Streets descended into hell.
My parents yanked me out of the
country to give me a better life.
She was eleven. That’s the last time I saw my best friend alive.

That’s the freedom that you sold.
That’s the freedom that we bought.
That’s the story of a life of somebody we forgot.
It is not a fairytale,
not a cautionary tale.
It’s a chronicle of a collapse in all of its details.

Copyright @ Julie Deshtor 2017

Archetypes

I am calling upon all my monsters and beasts out there,
on the glimmering eyes and the silent footsteps in the dark;
There are few of us left, soon we will disappear forever.
Well, at least we have lived to the fullest, and made our mark!

Brothers, do you recall when the grasslands reached to the horizon,
and the deafening roar  of countless wings overhead?
Back when Rome was a village, and Britain – the Emerald Island;
before we gave up on our future, and buried our dead.

Where have you been hiding? In nightmares and in fairytales?
On the pages of fantasy books, and in video games?
Barely scraping along in the wild, and working retail? –
Trying hard to forget what we were once, and our shame.

I will not let you have it your way! I will not let you go.
You are all that is left from the battles that we fought and lost.
I have made it my calling to reach out to every lost soul,
Offer each wraith a home, and a cloak to each bare-threaded ghost.

We are ashes and dust of the Inquisition fires.
We have seen our loved ones ran down and burned at the stake.
We were here to witness the rise and the fall of empires.
And you, humans, are set on repeating all our mistakes.

You extend your lifespans, but without death – there is no progress.
You are toying with plagues. You are aiming your guns at the stars.
You deny our magic, yet meddle with magical forces.
It’s as if you are eager to fade in extinction, like us.

If you had seen the wars we once fought– Oh, the glorious slaughter!
Our endless rebellions without a purpose in sight….
None of that matters now; it is ash that’s been washed off by water,
leaving only an ache in the wounds, and a void inside.

There is so much we could teach you, if you’d only listen,
but you will remain deaf to our words until it is too late.
Like teenagers, young races don’t care for ancient wisdom;
satisfied to exist in their ignorance, and in their hate.

Well, you cannot erase us. Our flesh has been mixed in with soil.
Dying screams of our women and children have seeped into stone.
It is our blood you seek every time you are drilling for oil,
and beneath the asphalt of your suburbs are fields of our bones.

Orange glow of a campfire and pale electrical glow –
both cast our shadows, as our legends unfold.
We are the archetypes that exist within every man’s soul,
and we will live forever, or as long as stories are told….

Copyright @ Julie Deshtor 2017

The fear had pecked a hole inside…

The fear had pecked a hole inside

With its long pointed beak.

My fists went limp – I couldn’t fight.

My mouth wouldn’t speak.

‎

I saw a threat beneath each tree,

Behind each closed door.

I chained my will and tossed the key,‎

Then I padlocked my soul.‎

‎

‎It’s not for me that I had feared –

I’ve seen it all before.‎

I‎ts just that those I held dear

Became pawns in this war.

‎

I censored every step and look,

I questioned every smile,

I fled my castle, burned my book,

I went dead for a while.

‎

And I had tried, I truly tried

To learn to lie and hate.‎

I failed at both. I’ve gotten tired

Of always being afraid. ‎

 

I still have friends, I still have strength,

And truths worth fighting for.

I cannot let this happenstance

Consume me to the core.

 

I’ve played the fear game and found

That I am not impressed.

It’s time to ‎get up, don my crown,

And do what queens do best.

 

Copyright @ Julie Deshtor 2015‎

Lot’s Wife

I have been turned into a pillar of salt.
The sky is coming down.
It’s raining ambers. All around
Are falling shards of our shattered world.

Our city, our city burns.
Our palisades succumb to hungry fires.
Bodies light up and fade, like fireflies.
The streets glow crimson, paved with molten stones.

Our garden and the house where we lived,
The little church where we had stood before the altar,
Beyond my grasp.
A statue carved of grief,
I am inanimate, I cannot alter
The judgment that’s been passed
On everything we’ve spent a lifetime building,
Too horrified to not turn back and cast
One final glance at our doomed city.

Defiant, disobedient, I forgot
The Angel’s warning.  ‎
I refuse to go.
So full of love, I’d rather turn to salt.
And there’s no species of God
That could command or force me to abandon
This city built with our sweat and soul.
‎

Copyright 2015 @ Julie Deshtor

‎Я мечусь, как зверь за решеткой

Я мечусь, как зверь за решеткой, ‎

бьюсь об прутья, пугая толпу.

Ярость жидким металлом в глотке:

“Отпустите, я так не могу!” ‎

Этот век, этот мир – все чужое.

Всe равно я порву эту цепь,

и монгольской свистящей стрелою

устремлюсь я в далекую степь.

Оставляю вам ваши знания,

технологии и прогресс.

Здесь усыпан простор цветами,

здесь курганы хранят молчание

под лазурным шатром небес. ‎

Здесь монголы и скифы дремлют,

здесь полынь на крови взросла,

здесь ласкает могилы тень от

пролетающего орла. ‎

Здесь пронизана тьма ночная

конским ржаньем и пением птиц.

Здесь могучий поток Дуная

Рим от варваров отделяет,

словно призрак былых границ.

Ветер здесь заглушает стоны,

дробь копыт, эхо битв лихих. ‎

Здесь‎ ‎веков пласты – в чернозёме,

в азиатских чертах‎ моих.

Отпустите меня на волю,

здесь, в степи. Дайте мне коня

без седла (ничему седло мне),

и оставьте в покое меня.