IconElegies

I knew that winter would be my last. The day I died, I coughed up blood, the same blood I wrote with. God showed me a passage from the New Testament. Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Thus the prodigal son departed. The man who survived his execution, lost everything gambling. I allowed it to happen. Poet's Note. Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the classic writers of literature.

Sadness lasts forever. I know that. I couldn't stand it, and neither could my soul. I couldn't wait. I felt peace as I walked through the meadows for the last time. The pain had always returned. I didn't want to wait. I knew I would be great someday, and I knew I wouldn't see it. It was time to say a long goodbye. I couldn't wait. Please forgive me, Theo. A poet's note. Vincent Van Gogh is a world-famous artist who only sold one painting in his lifetime. His brother Theo was his most important supporter.

You will never know if there was a great love in my life or why I didn't let the doctor see me until it was too late. I decided my own fate. I will remain an enigma to you forever, that's how I want to remain. Alone with my stories. In them you will see me. Poet's Note. Emily Brontë died at only 30 years old, but managed to write Wuthering Heights.

My name was Elisabeth Stride, but I was called Long-Liz in the street. The gentleman  who later became known as Jack the Ripper, murdered me in Whitechapel. He didn't mutilate me like an animal, but I couldn't have known that. He left me like trash in the street anyway. In reality I was Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, a peasant woman from Sweden. How I ended up living in Spitalfields,  as a drunk whore in the middle of the filth, is a long story, which would have been forgotten long ago  without Jack the Ripper. Poet's Note. Elizabeth Gustafsdotter, later Elisabeth Stride, was one of Jack the Ripper's victims.

I, an orphan boy, Billy the Kid, had met men face to face, but never seen my killer. A coward from the dark. I do not know who shot me, though my killing was boasted of and I was put on display. Billy the Kid, no one remembers my real name, hardly even myself. Even in my grave may lie the wrong man, but what joy, that even the tombstone of a thief like me was stolen. Now the tombstone is behind bars, as a thief should be. Poet's note. Billy the Kid, real name Henry McCarty, was one of the most famous gunfighters of the Wild West.

I was the emperor of Mexico. For a while. I assumed that the people wanted me, that's why I accepted the crown, after all, my brother was the emperor, but I was a commodity. The people hated me, even though I improved their lives, or at least their instigator. I asked my executioners not to shoot me in the face, so that my mother would still know me. I asked and I forgave. A poet's note. Maximilian of Austria-Hungary was the emperor of Mexico for a while.

 It was my divine play in the mental hospital. The actors were crazy, the director was crazy (me), everything was crazy, and the Parisian nobility loved it all. Of course it had to end. That too was taken from me, the bloated, sick sadist. Oh. All those manuscripts of mine, which my son destroyed. A note from a poet. The Marquis de Sade, was a writer.

My heart did not burn even in fire, in my life it burned, without thinking about anything, and I obeyed. My wife kept my heart for decades, and that was the longest she had me. My heart could not withstand the storm at sea either, and stopped beating when it drowned. It washed up with its master on the Italian beach sand. How else could a poet have died? Poet's note. Percy Shelley was one of the most famous poets of the Romantic era.

They sold me as the Elephant Man because of my ugly appearance, even though I was born clean, like everyone else. I was really Joseph Merrick, a human, even they though I didn't look like one. I was saved from a freak show, but I wasn't made human. My skeleton wasn't buried with me, it was studied for years,  but never my soul.  I just wanted to sleep like everyone else. Poet's Note. Joseph Merrick was called the Elephant Man because of the deformities of his body.

People don't like monsters, even though ugliness brings them joy, even my mother she abandoned  her disgusting child on the steps of Notre-Dame. The bells of God rang  so that I could no longer hear. I hoped for love in vain, because who would love a monster. And then came Esmeralda, the gypsy girl, whom everyone wanted and love awoke in the Hunchback of Notre-Dame too. The monster also had love and when they killed Esmeralda the hunchback also died of grief. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a fictional character created by Victor Hugo.

What a tragic end. Not in itself. I had fought many duels. It was logical  that the last one on Blackriver would be my fate. There was too much gossip about Natalya's relationship with the Frenchman. The Frenchman hit me hard, in the stomach, but I hit him too. Natalya hit me in the heart, I forgave her for that, but in the two days that I still lived, I managed to say goodbye to everyone. A note from the poet. Alexander Pushkin died after the duel.

Was I a crazy king, a dreamer? They gave my crown to my crazy brother. They thought I was crazy, but how crazy is it to love beauty, to build beautiful castles, which people admire centuries later, to sleep by day, to live by night, to live in the embrace of sweet melancholy, alone, without formalities. Yes. Such a crazy king was I. Poet's note. Ludwig II was a very special king of Bavaria.

I was a beauty without equal, but my beauty did not save me. My mother locked me in a dark closet. I died even though I lived in all that dirt and smell, naked and ugly like an animal in a cage. My crime was to fall in love with the wrong man. I brought shame with my madness. The century changed and I knew nothing about it. My love kept me alive, but not in my mind for 25 years. When I saw the light again, my eyes could not stand it nor my soul nor my love. Poet's note. Blanche Monnier lived locked in a dark room for 25 years.

My short life was crazy. One day, I delivered a challenge to a duel, and I got shot myself. The emperor's cousin shot me. He couldn't wait, I guess. And the madness didn't stop there. My death was to start a revolution. Even crazier, women rub my bronze penis in the cemetery,  thinking they're getting pregnant. Not me, of course. Anymore. Poet´s note. Victor Noir was a French journalist who is buried in the Pere-Lachaise cemetery.

 They found me wandering in the street in clothes that didn't fit me. My end could have been written by myself, dark and uncertain. As I lay in the dim light of the hospital, dripping with feverish sweat, I had repeated: Reynolds, Reynolds! Then I went to that land, which had always been true to me. Lord, help my soul, if you help the wicked, and you will. Poet´s note. Edgar Allan Poe was a brillian novelist. 

A girl drowned in the Seine. She was lifted from the river with a happy smile on her face. Only sixteen years old, it was estimated. She survived. She was a death mask that adorned the apartments of dark artists. The most famous anonymous in the world, even after all these years. Why did she smile when she died? No one told us, because no one longed for happiness. Was death a joy for her? She remained the most famous unknown. Is that why she smiled? Was she unhappily in love? Had life never had time to begin, did she not let happiness come? She knew it.

When I died in agony thinking I had been poisoned in the middle of a deserted sea, they took my heart and penis from me. My heart had already been taken, it was Josephine's, who played with it as she pleased, making me, the Emperor, crazy with love and lust. In my last words, I missed France and Josephine on my distant island in the middle of nowhere. I conquered Europe, but the Emperor was not poisoned by enemies, but by love.