Selected excerpts from:
                 A BREVIARY OF TORMENT
                     Poems by        THOMAS  CASHET

WISDOM

You were so green and gullible,
You stupid Johnny boy,
Behind the time and out of touch,
The day you came into the torture room.
Since then we made you wiser, far above the mark.
That fatal wisdom after all
Has lamed your wings.
Now you are hand in glove with torturers;
You can no longer see the
Looming, dreamt horizons
Of free perception.

Imagine you get very, very old;
You'll still be wrung with anguish,
Dragging your life in torment and distress,
Malicious wisdom riding on your back.
Eventually you will collapse
Under a leaden weight of unwished for enlightenment,
Gasping for air and for redemption;
You'll feel the vulture chewing on your neck.

You're anything but deaf, my friend!
Yet any whispers coming to your ear
Will have to be translated.
No longer can you understand the sounds;
Your thoughts are wandering about:
Torture wisdom is your ear.

You are not blinded either,
Yet your glazing, glowering eyes
Tell us that you can see only
What has been set in motion
By your new mistress, the wisdom
That you got from us.
She is your eye.

Nor are you dumb,
Yet you can only guess
The meaning of your world;
Distorted as it is by wisdom,
It has become a masquerade of senses.

You've always been a dreamer.
To find the meaning of your dreams
You spin around in circles.
You've only that damned wisdom
To prompt you to the world.
She is your dream.

One day your heart is set
On slavish acquiescence;
Then it will be too late;
Your door cannot be closed.
Wisdom will live with you,
A witch, a shrew,
A second soul,
Forever.

BROADSIDE FOR
DONATIEN ALPHONSE FRANÇOIS,
MARQUIS DE SADE

Who would not bewail the iniquitous fate
Of the Marquis Divine, when the story is told;
How they buried him deep in a dungeon so cold,
Celltorture pursued him with political hate.

Captive for thirteen endless years,
Jailed in a stronghold, freed and later
His head was shrunk by a soul curator.
What more do you need to jerk your tears?

The Powers that be, they detested him,
The moralist who knew too well
Their evil motives, grimy and grim.

They cast him out by a toady spell;
He fathomed the secrets they wanted dim.
In a madhouse graveyard they rang his knell.

Donatien, Master of scato-analysis,
You showed up our rulers as dirty pigs,
Perverting their power in squalid frigs,
Throwing us all into socio-catalysis.

You opened the sewers of power and pain;
Everyone saw the vermin teeming,
Oh, how they panicked, outrageously screaming
Mortal terror, escape in vain.

Once and for all you made it clear:
Those who rule us with shams and flaws
Deserve to be hit with dung and smear.

Rightly you cursed those rapists of laws;
Nothing is safe from a privateer.
Foul was their play, they caught you in their claws.

                    Blessed Sade,
                    Pray for the Masochists
                    Now and in the hour of their passion.

EMPATHY

You're going to feel pain, my darling boy,
You know that, don't you?
When I look at you
You are like a flower
Whose leaves I may pick
One by one.

How often have I
Been tossing in my bed,
Lying awake,
Eager to come and torture you,
Yes, painstakingly, dearest one.

Often I meet myself in you,
Feeling again the helpless child I was,
Unable to flee from his father
As little as you can flee from me.
No, you will not escape me.

Sometimes I sense myself the pain
I am inflicting on you, time and again.
When you double up in my hands
My whole body embraces you,
Like flames in the fireplace
Enwrapping the log.

You know, don't you, that the flames
Have strong ties of affection
For the log they consume.
They eat it and purge its substance;
So I will ravish you.
My torturing hands
Will purify your body
By torment, until it
Merges into me
And is no more.

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