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Evil Incarnate

It has been less than a year, but more than half since

I last called you, my mind lost in more than just thoughts

To rectify my mistake, soothe my regret of never

Calling you for what you are, always blessing you with the covert

For I used to be too passive to say as I thought, as I knew

That you are more than just a man, infinitely worse

And the only word which particularly suits you is evil


I said what I said, and you said ‘’I know’’

Accountability in a morning sky

Admitting you knew

That’s when I knew you were less than a man

And no more than evil


I’ve known of one more evil when it was dancing in my throat

My serpent breath, and the cold of a comedown

While I came down with a down payment of whatever it took

For the serpent to come and take my breath away

Dabbling in the arts of pin-point pupils and

Dilation of the night into the yolk of a sun, fry it up, love

The beaches of Rusalka called my name

Its voices in my walls, telling me they’ll give me

Joy again, that it never left, that all I need

Is my one last trip to see the frothing of waves, beach huts, straw hats

Where the sky dilates into the sea

There are no serpents in the sky nor the sea

Only in me


A stroll away from the Rusalka libretto

Is the seventh sector of Bucharest – or of Dante’s nine circles of the inferno – home to cigarettes and apple pie

Which I haven’t tasted ever since I left (the latter, of course)

Excuses for orchards, walnut trees

Live among the filth of the evil of my city

They had a habit of saying hello to me every morning

And my walnut tree, four storeys high, would brush its leaves against my window

To tell me of love and peace and warn of serpents

And evil men and damsels in distress

Who could never say it as they know it is


Now I am away and whatever I know, I say

Walton-on-Thames, the south bank

The harbour of making peace with the sky melting into the river

Waterloo tunnel vision is no more and I see all which I want to see

In a city made of rage, the good kind, which keeps me

Sightseeing, people-watching in tender suspicion, thanks to you my walnut tree

Protecting me is my tamed serpent, no longer

Able to dig trenches in my throat, for both world wars are now distant enough

Or be the source of all my evils

I will never call up evil again, in fear it will try to justify itself

I may turn up spellbound once more, chanting that it’s all my fault

I’ve conquered them both but I tread in caution

Of revisiting the past

I am no Persephone, and refuse to be

Swallowed by the ground into

Caves of the underworld, to my Hades

I haven’t seen the beach in seven years

I am holding out for that

You burned into me unsalvageable desire. My flesh is scorched, arteries and veins ravaged (they hang in the space between what was and could’ve been), presenting me with my own sin – I must look it in

He is passion, etched desire, Unacquainted with a sun or moon Familiar with the pale fire That is often gone too soon A day without my love in arms Is waiting for the sun’s expansion That’s taking pro

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