Ivan de Monbrison is a schizoid French poet and artist living in Paris born in 1969 and affected by various types of mental disorders. He has published some poems. A collection of his works “Brambles” has been published in June 2023 by Broken Sleep Books, in the UK, and a chapbook “The Other Self” by Back Room Poetry, also in the UK. 

A hole in the ground has the shape of a box

A hole dug in the ground has the shape of a box and there’s no one left there’s no one left there’s no one left in the room there’s a piece of mirror hanging to a nail and the nail is stuck into the ceiling of the room where you usually sleep there’s another piece of mirror this time hanging to a nail that’s stuck into the wall and you’ve been writing for a little while on a torn piece of paper and you’ve been looking out by the window at the dying birds at the birds that are all falling dead out there you’ve also been looking inside the window of this sheet of paper and thus at your own life your own past now deleted on the blank page outside there are still the birds falling dead but it is not of you that I think of anymore it is of the memory of you it is of the memory of the past when as the grave had been left wide open your own father suddenly had jumped into it to join his own father’s corpse and had tried to embrace the coffin and had tried to die there too lying down on that very coffin in that hole dug into the ground but it wasn’t me it was someone else at that time well it’s all the same in the end all men are all the same you close your eyes and you can see  absence into the dark you close your eyes and you can see an horizon you close your eyes and then you can see a sea and in the distance and on the sea out of nowhere a boat showing up a boat that has been drifting away for a long time on the sea like an ice cube in a glass in a glass of whiskey for instance you swallow the whiskey you smoke a cigarette there are no more matches left but one and you lit up and smoke your cigarette there is no more whiskey left too anymore and the glass has just vanished and there is no one left in the room  a nail is still stuck into the wall with a string hanging down from it and tied to this string a broken piece of mirror  hanging and swinging with this torn face of yours reflected in it this face torn to pieces that no longer looks like you that no longer resembles anything that is almost dead and that’s no longer anyone’s and obviously no longer yours indeed and this is forever, forever, forever, forever only what’s left of you like a torn piece of memory which has suddenly capsized into the night.