Tag: poem

FUTURE TRANS-GRESSIONS, Jay Best


Visions of Victor Frankenstein

stalking and hunting me through

bitter snows and

whipping winds

plague my waking and sleeping hours.


Pried-open eyes watch my creator

burn carefully harvested organs

required to recreate myself –

reducing desperation into

charred,

chastised,

chrysalid flesh

tumbling towards the smoldering scrapheap of Hell.


Desire to defend my worth

bleeds out

against His knife-like words

biting,

ripping,

tearing

their way through cells and sinew –

demonstrating such a body will prove

wretched,

monstrous,

abhorrent

to the world around me.


Warnings from His sharpened tongue

strike my eardrums –

reciting recurring traits of

previous, failed experiments like me:

suffocating,

blacking out,

overdosing

on syringes of toxic substances –

awakening to sickening acts

triggered

by their own hand or mouth.


But shall I be led to believe potential

future transgressions

give others the right to

prematurely banish me, or

bury me, forgotten,

beneath the frigid, unforgiving earth?

Hack axes against my foundation?

Throw stones through shattered bones?


Relentlessly, He ignores my

sleepless,

scrawled,

screaming

reformations to my body’s blueprints

to be seen as something far greater:

a safe, separate model of Man

frantically erasing its

primitive form

until no trace remains.


He shakes his head at the

alienated disturbance before Him –

neither resembling Adam’s seed

nor the egg of Eve:

my biblical inaccuracies enough to justify

power-clad policies,

pitiless preaching’s,

piercing pitchforks

propelled my way –

dangerously unaware

how a lazily angled mirror shall reveal

the true face of a monster,

rushing reckless weaponry

straight for His own rotted heart.



Reference: Shelley, M., 1818. Frankenstein.




Jay Best is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community currently completing a BA in Creative Writing and Interactive Design. They are an avid fiction and poetry writer who enjoys reading, gaming, and photography in their free time, with future plans surrounding publication, cinematography, and video game development.

PITY POOR VESUVIUS, Giorgia Woolley

There is a creature caged in my ribs.

It carves curses into prison bars of bone

for every instance there appears a nuisance: a taste

too poisonous for its deadly diet, or even a dish much-loved could

send it spewing! This volatile varmint

demands a volcanic outlet, and I cannot let it

shame and shape me again into no man’s island!

Oh please, let me be heeded:

don’t beg and grovel! Else, bed and shovel will be needed.

I know it is unsightly to be seen harbouring such a monster,

and they will tell me so, always. When I hear this thing has port-docked,

I must run and hide behind the door,

raise the anchor high to beat the creature down— Just kill it

choke it quickly quietly come now

sit encircled by waters still and silent,  

unwilling to welcome my waves upon their peninsulas pristine.

Peace and quiet falls and stifles

troubles trivial.

My plate tectonic

shifts beneath others and buckles under the weight, unstable.


Peas with dinner.

Not my favourite. Metal claws squash through soft flesh to

clink-clatter-TWANG upon crockery

scraaaaaaape against my ears with laughter, filthy canines chewing in their loudmouths.

‘what-a-great-meal-how’s-school-been-who’s-your-new-friend-when’s-your-are-you-listening?’

Vibrations ripple the beast’s blood flooding the floor

of my artery chambers—oh lord, it lives still! Be still!

‘is-she-always-this-rude-pass-the-dish-peas-taste-amazing-why-aren’t-you-eating?’

It roars inside and mauls my ears, building walls with brick-red blood, cell by cell

beating furiously against the pressure—

‘don’t ignore me!’

With those words it crawls it wrathful way up and out of my mouth and

SCREECH!

The parasite speaks over me, vaulting over my tongue:

‘here’s what you wanted!’

Little pearls floored by my fists

green bloodied fingernails, lava spewed across the table

talons rake the earth and stoneware

acid rainfalls lining grooves in my cheeks

ashen casts of faces caught in the pyroclastic surge.

Guttural glue hot garroting and burning me inside out,

the steam blinds me as I scream.


The judges’ gavel falls faster than my fists

upon the plate CRACK, cutting edge judgement follows:

I am too much for anyone to bear beyond myself.

Do so now, send the dog back out, quietly, quickly, go to your room,

childhood.                                         

And so this creature’s wails become whines become whimpers wept shamefully pleading

‘hold me’.

These are childish reactions in their infant-sized enormity—

but my claws comply with contempt

compression upon my skull. Oh, thought, your absence is noted

only when you return!

When did you desert us?

Or, did I, you?

No, do not retract these talons now

that the moon is high and fully frames them as mine. Its light what glistens upon my gashes

spotlights the source for me to reciprocate

my suffering upon it. Suffocate it

quickly, quietly. To me acquiesce and listen

for once

when I say they never will for us in this tantrum state.

A flood of guilty and ugly conscience rises—

with every hatchet buried in my chest,

I unearth another.

Giorgia Woolley is an autistic poet and writer who can find a song to suit every possible occasion. She spends her time writing experimental poetry pieces exploring things that are important to her: the preservation of information, neurodivergency, her emotions, and people being kind to each other.