Poem — Haraquiri

How many nights
without sleep are necessary to kill a man
who gave up his own life?

If you could see
the wounds contained in my soul
would weep for all eternity

Nor could you endure
a single waking night

Without imagining their guts
spread all over the house

If death
fell in love with life the great tragedy
would be to bury her every morning

- Don’t you have dreams?
questions amazed me

I own the most terrible of nightmares
and in all of them I’m a dead man

Who smiles at life like a satyr
holding the dying body of Christ
on an altar of disbelief

- Don’t you believe in the gods?
You keep screaming for my salvation

The gods?
nor do I care about metaphysics
or the sublime reason of sciences

What good are you? For a dead man
the passion of false gods
or the reasons for a flawed intellect

- Seek love
Fall in love with life

You keep on kicking
in a failed attempt to save my soul

Love?
what good is passion to me?
if I can’t feel

Snakes and cockroaches
were born in my heart

In my bowels live the traces of death
and the dreams of life

- Shut up!
This nihilism will get you nowhere!

You scream in anger
with hatred of the ancient philosophers

Is it the nihilism?
I gave up philosophy!

Take the thoughts of men
away from me

My pain
cannot be described in mere words
what I feel transcends nihilism

I am the messiah
of my own dead

Will on my own cross
but without the followers of Jesus

’Cause there’s nothing
that I can teach men
that cockroaches haven’t already done in my place

- Then kill yourself at once!
You shout with no hope

What good is suicide?
if I’ve never been able to love…

The emptiness in my soul
is so deep
that the act of committing suicide
becomes insignificant

Soul!
I don’t know if I have it either

And if I did,
you’d sell it to the devil as a sign of sacrifice!

I’m not interested in the daydreams
of men or the passions of the gods

I only care about death
and the end of all things!
- Gerson De Rodrigues