D. B. DEVILLIERS

Poetry

Category: Poetry

December 21, 2017

An Approximation

All poets are liars—
it’s never as bad or as beautiful
it’s always better and worse than
the verses which
describe it

and this is worth wasting
words on
approximating, failing, worth it
you are worth it
in my bleak brain these
oblique sentiments actually pass for
romance
it’s the best I can do
and I hammer them into words as
water might be nailed to wood
and I hope it’s enough
I hope

because it’s never as bad or as beautiful
but in this case the words
are so much less
beautiful.

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December 16, 2017

If/Then

Maybe if I were happier
I wouldn’t be such an asshole.
Maybe I’d be happier
if I weren’t such
an asshole.

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December 3, 2017

Predictable Outcomes/It Didn’t It Couldn’t She Couldn’t Who Could No One

This will never work
of course
this is true because I already believe
it to be true but even
if I didn’t it
wouldn’t work

because I can’t change
or at least I’ve not yet
been able to change and
I have little
faith that I ever
will

I am not a happy man
I am not good at making other people
happy
how could I?
how could I even know how?
if I am anything it’s
sad
deeply deeply sad
for reasons beyond me
or maybe not, maybe I know why
but if I do
it doesn’t matter anyway so
please
fuck
save me if you can
but I know you can’t
and I’m so sorry.

I’m so sorry.

It doesn’t matter please don’t think it matters it wasn’t it wasn’t you it wasn’t your fault

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November 29, 2017

Words/Futility

I am Dustin’s senseless existential rage
directed via typebar hammer blows against
this blank page
for lack of a better target.
It bleeds painlessly in ink
a delusion of something less
impotent.

 

This works better in its original typewritten form but in any case, here we are.

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November 29, 2017

Or Rather, Don’t Bother—It’s Not Important

Won’t you please just
get to know me won’t you
please just tell me what
you find since I don’t
know a fucking thing
about me.

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November 15, 2017

Glamorous Drunken Poem Re: Clinical Depression—Merit Badge Of Writers Since Time Immemorial

I’m almost nearly drunk enough to write
so write I shall—
it’s strange
well not really
but it’s that time of year
when I breathe smoke and the
dormant shivering skeletal trees loom
and no matter that things are
going exceedingly well for me as of late
no matter
no matter
because it’s in my blood
or so they say
I wish it weren’t so
but in any case
there’s no hope
it doesn’t matter
even if there were hope
I’d die
die die
die
it doesn’t matter
it doesn’t
matter
these things end one way
I feel nothing but anger or at least I feel it
in the way that despair manifests
as anger
never been an angry man
but here I am
becoming what I never was
and always will be
these words mean nothing
even to me
just drunken non-meaning
because maybe I’ll live
and be happy someday
right
or maybe I’ll die and
never be
and still
it won’t matter.

It always comes
in the fall
the cynicism the dark fucking
turn of my goddamned
broken mind
and all I can do is write it
or what would I do
what would
I
do.

I’ll get past it, I will
I always have but still
I wish this was good
I really do
but it isn’t
and that’s the very very
best I can
do.

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September 5, 2017

Better Times

It’s not so bad
I make it out like it’s
something else but it’s
not so
bad—
after all I’m alive
and I’m not likely to ever
live again
and so for now
I can sit here
and write
and sip whiskey
and hear at high bitrate
through well-reviewed and expensive
headphones
the sounds I like to hear,
safe from the
cold and
the rain
and the war and famine and disease
and what the fuck am I complaining about?

I’ve made strides
for I believe
this is the first poem I’ve ever written
with a relatively clear head with
thoughts passing through my brain
at a normal pace and
not at the
speed of
speed
and I know this isn’t good
writing
I know everything I’ve already written
already beats the
everliving shit out
of whatever this is
and I know that I’ll
never again write as well
as I did
but if I don’t
I hope I don’t.
I hope I never do
because take one look at
my ruined smile and my
dead eyes and
see what that
cost me.

And I would’ve ended this there, in my draft of this poem
I wrote on May 30 2017
but these are better times. Or they’re
becoming so.
Anyway I have to believe they are now after
after longer than I’d ever gone without, after all if they
aren’t then why did
I do it at all?
or rather why did I
not do it?

these are better times
which I needed
because I
was at the end of my
fucking rope
strangling, dying
hanging from it.

Was.

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January 31, 2017

Nowhere

I’m going nowhere
and I’m going
very very
very
fast.

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December 3, 2016

What Peace I Know/Cynicism

It is my understanding that the
world does not very
much care about
me
which is all right, for
I do
not very
much
care about the
world
either.

…

This is a certain sort of
peace at which I arrived
upon the wings of
of what I’d known
to be pain
beyond reckoning,
or pain which
at least to me alone is
unreckonable.
It makes no difference.
So I wish with all the sincerity I’ve got left
no more pain, not for anyone, not ever again
and I ask you, please listen if only to this
I’m begging you, hear me, please
when I promise this:
this peace is dear to me and
I will defend it.

And so know I will burn your
skyward pulpit of paper
while you shout screaming slurred
still perched up on its summit—
it’s a righteous flame perhaps
that you’ll burn in,
but burn in it you will
to the whirling ashwhite
echo of time’s passage,
empty—
without shape or pretension;
if you aim to take from me my personal peace
making room for your hollow high
holy hegemony—
then I will with
all of my force
and my fury
drive you
down
dead
decayed
to the wastes
of eternity.

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November 30, 2016

Anhedoniac

I don’t feel
but I remember what it’s like
and I don’t know but
I can remember what it’s like—
felt this way for a long time
longer than I can remember,
felt nothing
any which way at all
and it’s pretty fucking hard to live
when you just don’t care
I just
don’t
care
not about anything
nothing at all.
It’s not living
not alive;
I’m breathing
thinking, doing, being
but I’m not alive, not living.

I’m tired.
I am.

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