Excerpt from "Conversations with Persephone" by Taïs Bean

ADONIS

Persephone you’re like
            Tender steel, it is strange
Delicately bright
Craving for center stage.

You remind me in fact
Of a rotting lion
The king that one would track
When looking for Zion.

And something slowly dies
As you jewel your shield
Of all the precious eyes
Unearthed from your field

Your sad and thirsty teeth
Hungry out of sadness
Swallowing their beliefs,
You whisper to yourself

PERSEPHONE

Pour a world inside my heart
Help me pray

i think if we knew
there’s nothing about ourselves
we can’t be tender and forgiving with
truly l**e and forgive all that we are
i think things would be different

ADONIS

and then it’s light
like the air     
it comes in and out    
    it lives and dies        

and that’s all it is.

VOICE 3
Before reaching the Cliffs
You think about power
Possessing, standing stiff
You are your desire

And because you can’t hold
to anything inside
                    because you are possessed
Look at the world outside

Cliffs of outrage
Be discouraged
You have no hands
You are possessed

By me?
No
I am a friend you trust
I am you
You call me with sweet lust
I make you
I’m singing in your mind
Your mind sings your own songs
You’re guilty for your voice
Responsible and wrong
Over your own blind thoughts
actions and weeping tongues
You’re not your own victim!
You're a Godess, a Queen!
A nebula of secrets
you’re trying to unveil
Your own spaces unfold
away from your pupil
An infinite small whole
inside your eyes stands still.
and you’ll fall forever
behind your own forehead.
So don’t blame me or others,
from my songs you have fed
out of abyssal hunger
but willingly, my friend.

PERSEPHONE

It’s all built up in masks… Tours, avenue, cities…
Continents of wide masks, and when I start singing, when I draw on the rocks,
i see the eyes behind.
I hear you telling me, it’s not my own darkness, it is not me I see :  « Look out! And separate! »
A growing monster fortress, I have no power over, no arms for an embrace, a long lost foreigner.
Maybe I should trust you and I should be afraid, of the untold unknown, the threatening crusade.
Safely holding darkness, beyond a closed frontier, outside it won’t be me, I won’t be made to hear.

VOICE 3

I am the one reason, I do know for a fact,
I mind my own language, my argument’s intact
I logically make sense, the sense I know to craft.
I decide where it starts and clearly where it ends.
Behind your mind, muted body,
behind your skin, the room,
behind the walls, strange lands are empty,
more strangers’s mother’s wombs.
You are finite, therefore
alone at the borders
Make sure it is all yours, exist, trust my order.

I have greater knowledge of all the mysteries,
and thus I can predict quite accurately
why you should be afraid to do all that you do.
I know why it will fail, and why you won’t be l**ed,
I know why you will die, why you can’t rise above.
I know you don’t deserve, and you must be punished.
I do know for a fact, and the fact knows it too.
The Truth I hold and keep, I sing it loud and weep
and you ought to listen,
since I am the reason, I have all good reasons.
I build strong walls to hold a palace, unbroken walls of facts,
logically laid out,
exact architecture
to maintain a solid
argument of vapor.

I can foresee through memories,
for everything repeats itself.
A nicely laid out road,
I know how to drive on.
Your mothers knew how to be unl**ed and so should you.
Your fathers knew how to l**e wars and so will you.

PERSEPHONE, I AM
I have a voice, I am!
if you silence me now, I will cease to exist
and you’ll vanish with me, don’t try and take the risk
We will never be l**ed, for we are imperfect
our flaws are a thick mud
Any heart can detect.

You will not build a road
With stones you have unearthed
Or know which turn to take
Listening to your wombs
You won’t shake bones to make
songs calling older songs
You make no real sense, you can’t build a palace
but mostly, be certain it will take you somewhere
where you are powerless and where you will despair.
I can assure you now, I will suffer with you.

Crushed the muscles, the veins
Crushed the bones, the tendons
Crushed the organs, the brain.
You will feel it,

From your infinitely long, sophisticated, beautifully arranged
nervous system,
to every single layer, every obscure corner
of your heart
where an emotion sleeps,
it will awake and weep
your crushed body, your dislocated soul, squeezed, dried out.
Weep for your faith lost in collective flaws.

If the palace collapses, you will cease to exist. Take my word for a fact, don't try and take the risk.

I give you my word that you shouldn’t give anything.
Just hold, keep, grasp, seek revenge and spit out the raw ore that infected your veins in Tartarus.

Hold, it’s the only power you hold.

PERSEPHONE

For a moment, it was silent.

I saw a blown up toad excited with anger. It seamed huge and poisonous at first.

Quite terrifying.
But it was just gesticulating, filled with air, blowing himself up like a whole forest.
As I stared at him, he got tired and shivered to a cold seed.
A small, scared little toad.
I felt for him. But I’m no frog.
I worried for years. But I’m no frog.
I held it in vain, held it so it would hold itself, but its arms were asleep, and mine needed a rest.
Holding, holding, and I forgot why I was holding,
And my hands started holding on.

Without a body, I seek power to be moved.

Without a heart, I seek power to exist.
Power to hold, keep, grasp.