Memories of Broken Souls

by Christopher Leonidas

Overview

This non-fiction, narrative poetic book will serve to educate everyone on the moments in which you think you are doing the right thing, while it is really the opposite. This book contains many elements irresistible to readers: wrongdoings, pain, despair, regret, guilt, and workable grief.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468502015
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	05/06/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	116
File size:	318 KB

Read an Excerpt

Memories of Broken Souls

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By Christopher Leonidas

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2015 Christopher Leonidas
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-0204-6

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CHAPTER 1

Part I

Mirthless

    Lost

    What to write:
    that night, my mind went blind.
    For a blank sheet of paper
    proved my thoughts darker,
    darker than a blank sheet
    of paper in a hollow, dark room,
    a dark room that became
    for me a random living room,
    pushing me to be a dweller.
    I knew no way to describe
    my slithering snake's actions
    and the kisses of hell's flame.


    Fallen Ones

    As dawn rose,
    coughing blood blew out,
    and cells decomposed.
    I, the Octa, or the circle of eight characters
    who carried my own memories
    and seven other characters',
    remained confused
    by life as I tasted its sorrow,
    and time passed by.

    While grieving for unfair death,
    I made my way into the cemetery.
    I carried the world's disgrace.

    Feeling that the world was colder
    than fear itself in a sense,
    I hoped to show this existence:
    that killing each other is no better
    than just action like a rightful penalty,
    and, being a messenger,
    I should start over.


    Commotion Jaws

    Octa remained confused
    by the torments of his mind
    and stood still; he was being used
    by all who pretended to be.

    All nights and days,
    he conquered his thought
    to decipher and escape
    while he was lost in a maze.
    But he remained stuck:
    a broken tape.

    Believing that love was true,
    Octa sensed he was being betrayed.
    This led him astray to an illusion
    of a universe that he conveyed.
    He then remained in a dark
    hallway of commotion.


    Watery Grave

    I sparkle and
    burst into flame.
    The winds leave no mark
    of my ashes to claim.

    While losing the linchpin of my body,
    resulting in vaporization,
    disarray engulfs my land
    until I'm decomposed from composition.
    I should be unborn.

    This world fills me with remorse.
    Corpses over corpses
    honor the dead's tears
    at the tomb with no guide
    in which I reside.

    Dishonor leads me lost and astray,
    and this world is a wasteland —
    a watery death of disarray.


    Solemn

    As I noticed justice had been killed
    and left my family with no morrow,
    like a woman with no limbs,
    my heart dipped into sorrow.
    A flood of blood: I was fulfilled.
    The wages of their sweat
    were not awarded to them;
    they had lost the bet
    of their lives against Satan.
    Their boss refused
    to pay their monthly income.

    I endured pains like
    chewing glass with no end
    in a goat's jaws. In the toothed bill of the shrike,
    a small black bird, my breath of heavy sea, it heaved.

    My torments became a wind for my mind.
    My inner doors were dark skies.
    While all my past came in a blast of wind,
    I lived the rest of my life upon woeful melodies.

    Still, persecution was a dead body
    on a bench that faced me.
    Its smell went in circles around me;
    the dead body did not stay in place.

    I could not control
    these memories:
    I had a sensation of sinking in a deep hole,
    which brought many awful pains
    and flashbacks that I couldn't contain.
    I was an abandoned, old boat with cracks and holes
    of rotting woods on a cursed island;
    justice was undetected.

    My thoughts and concerns
    uttered a long cry,
    like cats giving birth at night;
    this was my lungs'
    last rhyme to unbound freedom.
    Still, my actions came from boredom.
    Until a few relatives died,
    they remained neglected
    on the surface of this dirt.


    Mournful Soul in Regret

    Octa rode on the line
    of his life in a cart,
    and memories of hers haunted him,
    like he owed the ghosts of his heart.

    All she had done for him
    was bloodshed on a killer's hands,
    and the ways she held him on her breast
    were snows of fallen leaves.
    Years of tears melted over his cheeks.
    His heart was made of snow.
    He fell into pieces.
    Broken glass deepened inside his bones.
    His flesh dried.
    His face was smudged eyeliner.

    He bled as wounded skin from blades.
    He tightly held his chest back.
    He dove into a sad state
    of his dark cave.

    His tongue whispered,
    "Grandma" every day,
    but he couldn't find her.

    He turned to be apart from love
    and naked in the middle of an abyss,
    while he lingered, a day could've come
    to perceive the gale of her kiss.
    But those cruel men burned her to ashen ashes.
    Why, so suddenly, did life separate her from me?
    he wondered.

    He was into her like a meth addict.
    He led his heart on false hope:
    oft he would see her returning
    from the journey that
    her soul went through.

    His eyes were heavy rains of a sky,
    as if he were hit by a drunk driver,
    causing his entire foreskin to obliterate.

    Oceans reminded him of her hair.
    The sky: of her smile.
    The gale: of her wise words.
    The heat of the dawn: of her love.
    The coffin: of the day she was gone.


    Aha, Aha

    He drove spikes into my heart.
    My father smacked my older siblings
    with his hands and with sticks.
    He pulled their heads against the walls,
    like he was breaking coconuts.
    But our mother gave up on us.
    She watched them being beaten up as thieves.

    He drove spikes into my heart.
    My father took their freedom
    like they were imprisoned parrots.
    They had sorrow as a best friend
    and the house as a worst fiend.
    But our mother gave up on us.
    She watched them being beaten up as thieves.

    He drove spikes into my heart.
    At dawn, I headed to school;
    he confronted me to walk
    in the wet grasses and weeds.
    He rushed against me with rage
    when I sneered and said, "No."
    Before he hit me, my right hand
    rested under his neck, and I pushed
    him away from me, thrice.
    He backed up. He threw rocks
    at me. My eyes changed as I looked
    back at my two little sisters next
    to me. I screamed at them, "Back up."
    He went inside. He came out.
    "Aha, aha," he said. "Don't come
    back in this house."
    But our mother gave up on us.
    She watched them being beaten up as thieves.


    On Your Hill I Want to Dwell

    Shall not I dwell on your hill?
    The prayers to free me from
    going through changes remain un-
    answered by God. This is fun
    for the people who wish to
    gloat over me and to glue
    me against the spider web.
    My strength and faith are all ebbed
    away like the water of
    a tide, like the climax of
    a man's life and like decay.
    Those people hate me without
    cause, Lord, and pelt on my route
    vigorous blows. My walls and
    roofs are a carbine that is
    assailed with missiles and winds.


    Long, You Do Have to Bleed Me

    Wake up.
    Tell me how long you
    have to rejoice my fall.
    You rob the royalty
    of dignity, but you still
    come forward to finish me.
    Sam, my former friend, you tend to grieve
    me with your mouth's stench.

    Wake up.
    You dig a hole and make
    stroll in crocodiles, as you make
    new friends. As you know, you and me
    have our own distance, though.
    I'm still loyal to you without flaw,
    but you repay me with rocks and galls.
    You place on my road, the gangster mob.

    Keep me in mind.
    My old friend,
    shall I keep calling
    you my brother? My cologne will follow you
    like stench of an o-
    pen grave, and surely
    your cloak to ruin me
    will be rewarded.
    No doubt.

    Wake up.
    Behind this mob, you stand still.
    But I track you by your shame.
    Walk toward me, Sam.
    Show me your face before this
    army starts war for your money.
    You mourn and weep and bow.
    You know the awaiting of the death's jaws.

    Wake up.
    Brother Sam, it's over.
    You make me run away in the street
    for thirty minutes, but we finally meet
    along, as I veer in the corner of a house:
    you tremble, you sing to me, you mouse
    me through your teeth as though royalty
    lightens on your torch, but the gnashes
    of my teeth blot my ears to give you divided
    attention. Ten seconds later, a bruise remains
    on his temple as blood sips down, and
    I run away.


    White Man, My Bones Are Crystal-Clear

    It bleeds. It has to stop.
    You contend with me
    as you dance in glee,
    gossip stranger of the morning,
    whom I bump into,
    entangle me with cord.
    You make my blood
    a sandy lake and my flesh
    a dry land until my bones whiten.

    It bleeds. It has to stop.
    You place me on the top
    of the yellow grasses and
    watch me wither from the sun.
    Is my will of refusing friendship
    so I don't have to attract hardship
    a reason to hate me?

    It bleeds. It has to stop.
    Though I walk away from him,
    though I put a line between him
    and me at work, his voice prepares
    a net of spikes and wall of bars
    on my daily road; this stranger,
    determines to rise against me,
    the dust of Egypt before the wind,
    and finds a base of enemies against me.

    It bleeds. It has to stop.
    You daily seek for my life,
    but I pretend you never plot
    my ruin in the pleasure of your depth.
    My isolated character repulses you
    to stay away from me, as a sheep
    from a lion, but the dregs
    of your action blind you.
    Though I am peaceful, you turn
    to make me blue, to cover me
    with sand, to darken and slip my path;
    but you didn't foresee that ending.

    It bleeds. It has to stop.
    On my way in, you jostled and shoved me;
    you awaited my stand to kick
    my skull, but you didn't get it.
    You awaited my stand to kick
    my skull, but now you do get it.
    The constant pit in your stomach
    swallows you as I rest a cold blade
    under your neck, and your eyes
    turn into watery lands, as though my
    eyes are the darkest clouds of my temper.


    The Cigarettes from My Nose

    I must stop.
    This childhood habit
    buries my mind with fear.
    I become a rabbit
    running away from the sneer
    and snare of my own mood.
    Daring to use smoke as a remedy
    when a person bleeds from the flood
    of the vocal volcano —his or her
    capability to not withstand a cloudy day.
    My heart sings in anger.
    My mind hopes to turn into a hero,
    but my left hand holds onto a cigarette.

    I stop.
    Leaving the past behind
    me holds back my mind.
    I tremble every night.
    I huddle in corners.
    I go in circles.
    I stop the smoking.
    But I haven't stopped thinking
    about craving smoke.
    The smokes travel into me;
    they are second and minute in clocks.
    My bed wets of sweat at night.
    My mind drowns from profuse frights.
    The blood of my body boils.
    The skeleton under my skin quakes.
    A decade of not having something
    on my lips leads me to insanity.


    I'm About to Go Down

    Help me.
    No one knows the gleefully
    horrible life I lived yesterday
    is not the one I live today.

    I stop returning fire against fire.
    I live on peace instead of dire
    disaster. I smile and sit away
    from people, but I still have a cloudy day.

    My surroundings consider my
    kindness as my
    weakness. Tears blur my eyes.
    I stay solid, but anger rises.

    I kick the chairs in my house.
    I repulse my spouse.
    I hold my head.
    It becomes a waterbed.

    My tongue starts to snake out.
    My neck moves like a turkey's.
    I sneer.
    I cheer.

    "You're not a bad man," I think.
    "It's just people who are naught."
    But the door is the eyes of the law.
    I go out with agony to befall someone's flaw.


    Silent Memory

    That illusive tumultuous night
    became tough as it compelled
    me to sit still on a broken bench,
    on which I angrily strove to fight.
    My broken thoughts wore out
    just like every inch of a farmer's hands
    in an excruciating drought for crowned lands.

    Sorrows thronged with penance,
    the waves of my eyes,
    and bereaved me in the withered pasture's entrance.
    They blotted my heart.

    While I stared at those doors
    that had infinite doors
    behind them,
    wars of silence slowly
    drowned my heart with darkness.
    I could no longer contain
    the memory of that night:
    pouring blood of that kid
    was all over my hands.
    The skin of Sam's sister marked
    with machete
    after getting beaten:
    Skin wide opened.
    Blood bathed the street.
    Guts dirtied the road.

    I couldn't maintain
    her justice as I arrived late
    to the murder scene.
    "What has your bro done?"
    I cried, "For his foes murdered you."

    As I sweated,
    I had been swallowed by a shaft.
    I'd drowned in a dark closet
    of a boat with no life raft.

    I became a spoiling, rotting apple
    that endured falls,
    affecting my inner door.

    My mind turned out to be a wall
    behind a lot of walls,
    and my body's temperature
    melted my bones.

    My conscience was bloated
    like fattened cattle.
    My throat, in my mind, was slit open,
    and my neck's bones were broken.


    Daily Welts

    Feeling hit by stress,
    stress that makes of my life a mess,
    people instill in my mind
    that I'm responsible for lying down
    alone and helpless,
    like the homeless person who ignores
    daily bread on the ground
    and a mother who abandons a child.

    People discern me smiling all day
    in a dawn that rises in May.
    Still, never think of all the nights' tears.

    My flame of faith becomes a weak torch.
    Surrendering surrounds
    my mind on a field of war,
    of a small forest; it shapes my inner door.
    All I have are tears of a fall,
    regrets of having been born
    to be played and bounced
    around like a ball.

    Still, I'm being plagued by injustice,
    Injustice of Haiti's communities —
    A place that I linger upon,
    my tribulation at an end.


    I Committed Suicide

    I stretched out weary hands.
    Melisa, who considered me like
    a big brother, quickly ran
    away from me.
    My heart writhed unto me;
    I longed for a swig of water.
    Noise danced, rumbled inside me in thunder.
    But the whirlwind heard the swoosh
    of the knife as my eyes blushed.
    But why didn't I die instead?

    I placed the knife back
    in my rusty pocket.
    I recalled she told me, "No,
    don't kill yourself."
    "Stress is like chess; either
    you play it, or it plays you."
    Vinegar boiled my blood, though
    my bones were hit by the daily rocks I ate.
    My suicidal act was lured with its bait.
    But why didn't I die instead?

    Swarms of flies consumed
    the skin of my throat.
    My fleshes were allotted
    to stresses atop a fire.
    My fur was tumbleweed and
    chaff before the wind blew.
    My mouth became a thirsty land.
    I turned blue.
    I cried sandy tears.
    My ivory screams were smokes.
    But why didn't I die instead?

    "Christo," I heard as I reconsidered.
    "Melisa bloodily committed
    suicide," an old man vociferated.
    I fell to my knees.
    The blood in my head was a rolling sea.
    Reconsideration ebbed away.
    I was a zebra running away
    from a lion's teeth,
    but in the lake, caught by
    the crocodile's jaws of death.
    My muscles fainted in decay.
    My soul ran away from a fowler's
    snare. Wails went higher than an eagle's
    wings.
    But why didn't I die instead?


    Within Time This Old, Honest Friend

    Glasses of tears,
    his white eyes cover.
    His inner door's stress,
    shaves the coconut of
    his body, and his hairs
    turn into sheep's fur.

    In seconds, the mirror of
    his face changes, but
    within time, it decays
    until his smile goes away.
    Inside his head,
    a shoreline caves in his blue bed.

    Tom's forehead beads
    with profuse sweat;
    his inner door recedes.
    He traps himself in a net —
    his conscience indented
    the shorelines of his skull.
    The stench of the people's graves
    that he created,
    slowly takes him to the heat waves,
    pulling Tom against the wavelike seas.

    Old webs trap his mind
    unto the past road, while
    the present buries the scene
    that paves with blood,
    sifts betwixt the pile
    of his stomach's spleen.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Memories of Broken Souls by Christopher Leonidas. Copyright © 2015 Christopher Leonidas. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction, xiii,
Part I: Mirthless, 1,
Lost, 3,
Fallen Ones, 4,
Commotion Jaws, 5,
Watery Grave, 6,
Solemn, 7,
Mournful Soul in Regret, 9,
Aha, Aha, 11,
On Your Hill I Want to Dwell, 13,
Long, You Do Have to Bleed Me, 14,
White Man, My Bones Are Crystal-Clear, 16,
The Cigarettes from My Nose, 18,
I'm About to Go Down, 19,
Silent Memory, 20,
Daily Welts, 22,
I Committed Suicide, 23,
Within Time This Old, Honest Friend, 25,
Own Shadowed Abyss, 26,
Abandoned, 27,
Deep Inner Door of a Killer, 28,
Burned Within, 29,
That Dark Rising Year, 30,
Morrow after Morrow, 35,
Perfidy, the Untrusted Friend, 36,
Octa Stood Still, 37,
Part II: Wanderer Rat, 39,
Wanderer Rat, 41,
The Coward Dastar Was Being Seen, 42,
The Young Girl, 43,
After an Occurrence, 44,
Shattered Soul, 45,
A Woman's Deadliest Moment, 47,
An Abis Victim, 49,
The Incoming Grave, 52,
An Old Man Dying from a Gunshot, 54,
The Seventh Dead, 55,
Part III: Regrets of the Shadows' Confessions, 59,
Past Confession, 61,
Sorrowful Confession of Abis, 62,
Witnessed a Dying Soul, 66,
Caught in the Dark, 67,
Redemption of a Corrupted Shadow, 69,
Deathbed Confession, 71,
I Walked Away, 72,
Realization, 73,
Broken Circle, 74,
Want to Move On, 76,
Part IV: Cries of Change, 77,
Let Your Soul Step into Dark, 79,
Depraved Proposal, 80,
Die, Lie, 82,
But You Did Want Be Blue, 83,
Keep on Dubbing Me Betrayer, 84,
Mankind, 85,
Crime, 85,
What Circle, 86,
I Long Await, 87,
Open Your Heart, 88,
Tiredness of Broken Souls, 90,
Government, 92,
Shattered World, 93,
"March Forward," Yell the Patriots, 94,
Dawn of Despair, 95,
Humanity, It Shall Be Done, 96,
This World, 98,
About the Author, 99,
Upcoming Novel, 101,