Poetry Of Evil: The Mental Health Poetry Podcast

Welcome to the Poetry of Evil: place w here mental health intersects with poetry.

I’m your host and the author of these poems, Daniel Viragh.

It’s a beautiful night, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and I am so glad that you are joining us, from near or far away.

Be sure to visit poetryofevil.com for all of your evil poetic needs, including:
- transcripts of the poems
- ways to comment on the material, and submit your own material
- and (of course) our store.

Tonight we will look at how pain, especially psychological trauma, is stored within the body. So the first poem I will read is called “My Body still Remembers” and it’s from the first book I ever published, called “You, Who Creates”, which came out in 2018. I think what inspired me to write this is a book called “The Body Keeps The Score,” which I heartily recommend to anyone recovering from physical abuse.

My Body Still Remembers

My body still remembers
the frozen waltz of time:
your rings instead were embers;
your fingers, they were nine.

My body still remembers
my penumbral sense of shame;
the solitude of mercy;
your rancid stench of pain.

My body still remembers
the protean shriek of death;
the degeneracy of escape;
how in the morning, you’d defect.

My body still remembers,
but my mind, it soon forgets;
and shields itself with torpor,
with hallucinations and regrets.

The second poem is called “I Thought” and it’s from “Buddha’s Broken Fingernail”. It deals with seeing one’s own trauma from the outside, and starting to notice that one is not as bad or as worthless, as one thought.

I Thought

I thought you said, you were a loner;
I thought you said, you were the one;
I thought your friends called you a stoner;
I thought you didn’t care, about anyone.

I thought your Mother had said, you were ugly;
I thought your Father had said, you were lame;
I thought your sisters had called you monster;
I thought you had murdered, and you were ashamed.

And what do I see within me,
working for your own sense of pride?
Your patience, it’s infectious;
you’ve never had, anything to hide.

What then is it that deprives me,
of my meandering sense of shame?
Is it your beauty? Is it your kindness?
Is it the fact that you even came?

If I could but just, unadorn you;
if you could but just see me, without my shroud;
if I could just measure, and please, and adore you;
if I could still worry, and not be proud.

And yet, your steely gaze of wonder
requires that its strength be subsumed;
nothing’s more dangerous than contagion;
nothing’s more evil, than the open wound.

And finally, the third poem is called “I Went Back”: this one is also from “Buddha’s Broken Fingernail” and in it, we see how important it is, after much therapy, to go back to the places where people were mean to us — and, after a lot of therapy, without those people, to see those places again, and to make peace with ourselves, for what happened. So much of where we are is based on a sense of place.

I Went Back

I went back to the site of my own desecration
and I returned, what little, I had found.
I saw some unadorned crosses, and violence, and temptation;
and some molested rocks, amidst the crowd.

What I didn’t see was warmth and affection;
what I couldn’t buy was peace, one hundred times untold;
I thought of the truth of the meadows and its flowers;
I said a blessing for some griefs foretold.

I felt sorry for my death, and my casual sense of disrepair;
for my angst, and the ruinous grooves on my brow;
I absolved the past of its shards and I gathered,
some milk and some bread for my sow.

I maintained a dignified sense of elation,
that I was just a visitor to this here, my previous cell.
I returned all the shit that had waited to flower;
and I knew then, that all would be well.

Thank you so much for listening! It’s been a wonderful pleasure to share these meditations with you.

This podcast is meant as a collaborative community, where people can comment on the poems, submit poems of their own, and share their own mental health journeys. So please visit us at poetryofevil.com. We take your privacy seriously, and this is a safe space for you to share.