Autoportrait w/ Skull
manic, electric engraving
Who could say you were born under a cancerous sign, your eyes holding the gaze of an archer, the bow drawn. Thousandfold fallen arrows shall be your tomb, your sepulcher the world with everything that’s in it. That’s the gaze of a borderer, indeed—you’re a descendant of half-savage yeomen, fierce men and women who slept with their horses and whipped their favorite sons. Pride is a mere entry requirement, and your enemies must know your spit is a blessing.
If only they knew that sweet August when Stefan, Domn cel Mare, drunk with fury, ordered the execution of the boyars that were dining with him—the dark hall screaming with its torches—then silent. Awe reserved for gods and monsters fell upon them all like a torpor, the cries of women drowned by the cries of men…and all of their heads on pikes while the living chased their hungovers with sour soup and blueberry liquor. That same blood, darker than all of the wines of Moldova, still boils within your heart. Indeed, your blood comes from the prince’s balls, the left side no less. All the acid and all the anger that’s been allotted, oh, their only outlet is your pen.
Your life nothing but a moment; all memories are lies—can you recall that never-ending banquet, that feast that remains unmoved, nestled in the back of your mind, rotting like a little piece of beefsteak stuck within your teeth?
Can you remember other summers from other lives, how you would pull out that red notebook with the sticker of a skull upon it, struggling to read your own handwriting, an eye closed, the other squinting as you read her your poems about corpses and electric gods? Vivid images of entire galaxies dying in bloodshed as your voice started to tremble.
Can you remember how you got drunk and pissed on the mausoleum steps, your ass bared to the nameless heroes that died not for your house, not under any banner that you would claim.
You reject all nations, you know only of the brotherhood that comes out of shared hatred—the first and the truest love of humankind. The first Männerbünde were the hunting parties that chased after Cain, before that all human relationships were bound by polite, sterile neighborliness.
But then, in those poems as many as the etchings in a calendar, you dared not speak such truth. Or you didn’t know it then—you cared only for your lust—all your scribbling nothing but literary pick-up lines. And all of that wildskirt chase was nothing but a mere training for rejection, not how to receive it—all fools and mortals eventually learn this rough art— but how to bestow it, how to reject both friend and foe, keeping only to the company of shadows, your only brotherhood that of those who have your boiling blood within their veins, who have wildbeating hearts, how to smile only upon excellence, for you are excellence, your excellency.
Spit out the lukewarm, for you are nothing but a demiurge.
Wake up those that dream of myths—let the stories of ancient days sleep like decrepit dogs. We have no use for them out here on this fierce range; the cliffs where the good baciu holds watch over those that have gotten this far with their flock of words and dreams. Cut the tongues of all false prophets who have no archon to protect them. Yours is the way of both pen and pike. Allow no ecopoet to sell fast fashion, allow none to soil the name of Zarathustra without first having kissed lightning, allow those who sing of fire baptisms to drown in the oceans of their metaphors.
Write & Destroy. Choose your own consequences. The best thing about freedom of speech is the right to hate everyone you disagree with. Write & Destroy. Not all literary legacies have been created equal. And once you’ve signed a compact with Eternity, now for that, you best need a good lawyer. Write & Destroy. Nothing’s new under the sun, but the night still holds its secrets for those that listen. Witching hour is still better than happy hour.
Terrible demons are waiting at the bottom of the seventh bottle of black beer.
And yet, all that fury will not draw out your sadness. Which Buddhist guru said that the heart of a warrior is perpetually saddened by all the evil thriving in the world? Doesn’t matter—just another fraud worshipped by white Americans. Put on a linen shirt and cry spiritual awakening and these people will flock to you. Do it, if that’s your thing, but some of us don’t need the worshipping, for we ride through parks, splitting concrete in half, meeting cyclopean core lords that provide us with dark tomes of repulsive splendor. Trust those that have spat at you when you’ve been a poser, trust those that saw how you kept your fire burning, growing sword after sword after sword in the furnace of your heart, trading money for maces, leaving all that is worldly to burn like dry logs.
The poems written on the Bucharest metro, the grey drone of the tracks, a heroin chic muse—her sweaty palms guiding your blue Bic, leaving smudges like a sigil of a rotting noble house—say, boy, can you remember a single verse? Or did they go back within your heart, like the spirit of a brave returning to the Great Spirit. Shadow returned to void, growing and pulsating like a mutant heart. Your fingers clenching with each of its beats, holding the skull like you hold the world—this crumbling domain of shit and ash, yours nevertheless. Inheritor of an ending world, your shoulders straight like those of your ancestors who proudly defended their acres of borderland. This fire you didn’t start, but want to keep stoking, for the earth is burning, but it’s all in accordance with some holy blueprint left for you in some heavenly room to read, when you’ve taken your manuscripts above.
a pasú could never understand
the rhythm is brutal. love the dryness of the language.
Stefan, I see your beef has compelled you to write fiercer than ever. Perhaps this is the secret to how you’re able to write about your personal life so well when I would never attempt to write about my own. I rarely have any qualms with anyone and I’m rather conflict-avoidant. I live modestly yet comfortably. I have nothing to write about beyond what I imagine for this reason. But you, you’ve harnessed your hatred well.