Chapter 1: To Make Them Leave
Summary:
They are too attached to you. They are at your hip. They would hurt if you were to die.
So. Harry. Here is what you're going to do...
Notes:
Hey.
I like the idea of Harry still writing poetry and/or prose even though he himself never became a poet. Call it a hobby, if you'd like.
Some of these poems will probably corroborate with the narrative of A Toast to the Pigs, which is really just a what-if scenario of "What if Harry didn't lose his memory and still had to solve the Martinaise case?" Most of what's here could probably apply more broadly, though. This is all for fun. We're here to have fun. That's what fandom's all about.
I don't know why I feel so shy about posting this.
Chapter Text
Sip the rum,
Sweetest wine,
The vast emptiness in you.
Numb the heart,
Grasp your soul,
Choke it out for all it's due.
Clench your fist,
Wear your grin,
Throw your hands to be disgraced.
Bare your teeth,
Gleaming eyes,
Your reputation's been defaced.
Break their hearts.
Break your own.
Break them by your shaking hand.
Watch them leave:
Let them go.
You love them far too much to stand.
Sip the rum,
Tequila Sun:
Party hard and party fast.
Wear the face.
Bear it well.
Enjoy it now, for it's your last.
Chapter 2: The Rites for Mercy
Summary:
Kim Kitsuragi: The King of Cigarettes and Mercy. It's not healthy to deify your passions, Harry. But you can't really help it, can you?
Chapter Text
Shake me to my marrow.
Steal my Crown from atop my head.
Turn my face to meet your eye
To remind me I'm not yet dead.
Your holy hand upon my face
To soothe me from my dread.
If I cannot bear to live for me,
Then I will cling to you instead.
I'd rather be who I am not:
I pump the world with poisoned lead.
I take and take until none's left
And burn with greater rage.
Your holy hand trails down my skin
To leave me center stage.
Take the key and swallow--
I beg, leave me in this cage!
Why hold my story in your hands
And slowly turn the page?
You've seen the creature that I am
And know the wars that I have waged.
I am not holy: I am sin,
Knit in my flesh and pride.
I am not worthy of ascension:
I deserve to slip the slide.
Leave me be all on my own
To slough my flesh and burn inside:
Else take the knife from my two hands
And cut me out from whence I hide.
This is my art--my coup de grâce:
To bear my pain and let it ride.
Show no mercy. Be not kind.
Show no niceties to me.
Why won't you listen to my pleas
To leave me unredeemed?
Tell me what it is that's in me
That I myself can never see.
This animal is feral
And this human a disease.
Why take the time to soothe me?
Why mend me at my seams?
Steal my Crown from atop my head
To place it on your own.
You've seen my worth where I cannot,
So I will bow before your throne.
O, King who rules my life;
O, God who claims my home:
This animal will follow you,
Still a thing that's yet alone.
Such patience you have shown me
Will break me to the bone.
Chapter 3: Disco King
Summary:
Disco is refraction. Disco is nostalgia. Disco is clingin' to the memory, baby. What does disco mean to you?
It's everything.
Chapter Text
My brain is fucking disco, man.
You would not believe your eyes: Twenty-four facets of my brain refracting like a thousand stars, in a hundred different colors to dazzle the world with disco. Catch me caught in the web of the past, stuck in the threads of the world's largest spider. It's history: It's madness: It's God among men, the face of war crimes and the smell of apricot bubblegum.
She left me here in disco music: The hand of God promising some kind of salvation from the cruel and wicked world we were each born in. She's a hundred lifetimes away from me now. She left me tangled up in disco and drinkin' malt liqueur love, singin' Tequila Sunset into the blood alcohol sea. She never liked my disco: She never understood its history.
And now--here I am: A disco man. Twenty-four or more refractions shining and spinning in a hundred different colors like a thousand different stars, chasing thoughts so fast I can never hope to keep up, each one just as me as the other as the other as the other as the other and so on, and so on, and we go on but why?--The world is always spinnin', and I keep on refractin' in my disco ball. Twenty-four or more glass squares are falling apart a million kilometers from the air onto the ground.
The discotheque is empty and has been for many years, yet I'm still here in the broken ball hanging in the air. The world I know is broken: My world is disco. I'm so caught up in the past, I cannot see the future. I'm so tangled in the web she left that I can't escape the love, the hate or the fear. My world has stopped spinning. The music's dead and gone: Twenty-four squares on my disco ball brain lie just as broken on the floor. I tore myself apart trying to understand my multitudes.
My brain is fucking disco, man, and disco is a false-hope limbo.
I never said being disco king is good.
Chapter 4: When a Frightened Dog is Cornered
Summary:
It's not Cuno. It's Cunoesse.
Okay. So what's the deal with Cunoesse?
Just look--while Cuno has no problem being near you, she always hides behind the fence, afraid for her life, like she's done something. Something very bad.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A dog that snarls with no regard
For what approaches in the yard's
A dog that's been kicked down to shit;
A dog approaching its last wit.
A broken clock's right twice a day
Because the time will pass away.
Like the clock, the dog's twice right
Snarling blindly in the night:
"One day," she says, "there'll be a gun,
A knife they have to stab someone.
It won't be me, my teeth are sharp.
I've had to train beyond my bark."
So with glinting eyes and gnashing teeth,
Heedless to what lays beneath,
She growls and snarls to save her life
Dreaming of her paradise.
Does she revel in the taste of blood?
She lives in squalor among the mud.
Her mangy coat, her rabid eyes
Always keen for some surprise.
How many ribs beneath thick fur
Exist beneath what's hanging there?
Who chilled the blood within her veins?
Who made her trust develop stains?
How do I fix a broken clock?
How do I help this dog to walk?
Notes:
Tfw you're casually thinking about how Harry sees himself in Cuno and then you realize that he's actually probably more like Cunoesse, especially pre-amnesia. The worms got me.
Chapter 5: The Fumbled Phoenix
Summary:
What happened?
You tried to kill yourself, Harry.
Did it work?
That's a stupid question. No, Harry. It didn't work.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Your coroner steps upon the land
With purpose in their stride.
The rigor mortis takes your hand.
You grasp the air with undue pride.
Your muscles seize and rot so slow.
Your temple festers with disease,
Bare skin frozen among the snow.
Your body slumbers. It is pleased.
Their finger lingers upon your pulse,
Seeking out that steady beat.
Your temple's empty of the waltz.
You're just an empty sack of meat.
Blood has frozen in your veins,
Or is it merely fast asleep?
A hollow city--empty lanes:
A hundred streets for you to keep.
There are no souls for you to meet,
And no more hearts for you to break.
Your last farewell--it tastes so sweet:
All the more to ease your ache.
But lo!--Sensation!--Uneasy lingers
Within the vigors of an empty dream.
You had the gun and pulled the trigger,
Mouth too occupied to voice a scream.
And yet, it seems, your ghost still feels--
Some part that longs to cling to life.
So play that tape to view the reel;
Rewind it all to live in strife
And wade through glass and broken dreams
Until the pain consumes you whole.
The light refracts through countless beams
To slice and cut and stab your soul.
The ship is fraught with empty sadness,
Buried in a whiskey sea.
To linger here would lead to madness--
To swim away, the death of ye.
Her siren's song calls you to light.
She'll leave you here to bask a while.
Her glowing lungs shine through the night.
Dei's false face lifts in gentle smile.
You grab her legs and drag her down--
Is letting go too much to ask?
If you hold on, you both will drown,
Catapaulting towards the porch collapse.
Is this not the death you've yearned?
You've pined so long to ease the pain.
Regardless, this is what you've earned:
Your sacrifice for what you've gained.
But, lo--sensation!
It drags you out from deathly sleep.
It fills your lungs with glassy air.
It billows in from off the street.
It howls into the silence here.
You close your eyes against the blast
And steel yourself to ease the ache.
Your organs sing in shattered glass.
You still long for your neck to break.
Await the death that's sure to come.
Your noose above's a swirling vulture.
Multi-colored thoughts subcumb
To all the arts that echo culture.
But, lo--sensation!
A pounding ache against your brain
That leaves you reeling and off-tempo:
A man is here, half-you the same,
To drag you from your self-made limbo.
You grasp the air with empty pride.
Whose life is this for you to squander?
Her face has fled from you to hide,
Off into that wild, pale yonder.
Notes:
Lowkey a poem for my AU fic, A Toast to the Pigs, a universe exploring the 'what if' of Harry not losing his memory in Martinaise but still having to solve the case.
Originally this was just going to be a poem about somebody performing a field autopsy, but then it sort of evolved from there. I'm rather pleased with how it came out.