Venenum

By Trista Woojin

Venenum is a collection of dark, avant-garde poetry.

Venture into dying worlds, clockwork cities and cyborg-powered dystopias. Delve through countless realms of fantasy, ponder the importance of coffee and consider the implications of political invective verse. Cast aside the chains of fate, watch the known universe disintegrat

• Language: English
• Publisher: .:X:.
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869210982

Trista Woojin

Trista Woojin writes dark, sometimes provocative (and occasionally bizarre, stream-of-consciousness-style) poetry (yes, most of her works do rhyme) about politics, alien worlds, cracked, fragmented, broken and twisted realities, fictional killers, imaginary cannibalistic dinner parties, broken dreams, lullabies of the cosmos, sapient stars becoming black holes, the universe being devoured, drifting through fog, apocalyptic ponderings, abandoned places, questions that cannot be answered, fantasy creatures, eldritch horrors, clockwork machinations, nightmares, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and much more. She currently resides in Texas, is fueled by copious amounts of coffee and owns a tuxedo cat named Twinkie.

Book preview

I

No Money In Poetry

There is no fucking money in poetry,

just paper and ink and words on a page

that no one wants to read or pay for.

The starving artist, the struggling bard,

we pour our hearts out into verse

only to be met with silence and rejection.

We seek solace in the beauty of our rejection,

finding solace in the catharsis of poetry.

We weave our pain and joy into verse,

hoping to connect with readers on the page.

But with the noise of the world, it’s hard

for our voices to be heard and valued

Yet still we strive to be valued for

our art, despite the constant rejection

and the knowledge that it’s hard

to find success and money in poetry.

We keep penning words on the page,

hoping that one day our verse

will resonate with others, our verse

will finally be valued and paid for.

But the reality is that the page

remains blank, the envelopes of rejection

pile up, and the dream of making money from poetry

seems further and further out of reach, hard

to grasp in a world that values hard

work over art, where our verse

is seen as frivolous, where poetry

is not seen as something worth paying for.

And so we continue to face rejection,

to pour our souls onto the page

knowing that the odds are hard,

that rejection is part of the verse

of being a poet in a world that values

money over poetry.

II

The Wastelander

My dearest friend, I write to you in darkness,

As the world around me crumbles and burns.

The skies are stained with ash and decay,

And the screams of the damned echo in my ears.

I have become a ghost, haunting this wasteland,

A survivor of the apocalypse, forever changed.

Once, I was just a wanderer, unchanged,

Roaming the world in search of light in darkness.

But now, I am a warrior of the wasteland,

A hardened soul with a heart that burns

With the memories of death ringing in my ears,

A constant reminder of the world's decay.

Every day is a battle against decay,

Against the darkness that threatens to change

Me into a monster, to deafen my ears

To the cries of the lost in the darkness.

I carry a torch, a flame that burns

Brightly in the night of the wasteland.

In the ruins, I search for signs of life in the wasteland,

For hope within the relentless decay,

For a reason to keep fighting as the world burns.

But my soul has been forever changed,

Twisted and scarred by the darkness,

Haunted by the screams that echo in my ears.

I have seen things that would make your ears

Bleed, horrors that lurk in the wasteland,

Monsters born of the darkness,

Feeding on the flesh of the decaying.

I have become one of them, changed

By the fire that forever burns.

But still, I cling to the light that burns

Within me, the whisper in my ears

That reminds me of who I was before the change,

Before the world became a wasteland.

I hold on to that spark in the decay,

Hoping to find my way out of the darkness.

So my friend, as the world around me burns,

And the darkness fills my ears with decay,

Know that I am forever changed by the wasteland.

III

Memories as Currency

I walk the streets, haunted by a past unknown,

Seeking truths that lay buried, overgrown.

In this society where memories are bought,

And sold like cheap trinkets, mere afterthought.

I find myself navigating a labyrinth of lies,

Drowning in a sea of deceit and cries.

But one fateful day, a revelation comes,

A secret hidden deep within my mind's dark sums.

I uncover a memory long forgotten,

A shattered piece of truth, left to rot and soften.

As I delve deeper into this newfound knowledge,

I realize the implications, the consequences of this pledge.

For my past is not what it seems,

And my present existence teeters on shattered dreams.

I confront the ones who sold my memories,

Demanding answers, fueling the fiery pleas.

But they only sneer and laugh in my face,

Their greed and deception leaving me in disgrace.

I am left to wander this wasteland alone,

A soul adrift in a world so overblown.

The weight of my past memories, now tainted,

Leaving me broken, lost and so faint-hearted.

In this society where memories are currency,

I am but a pawn, lost in the sea of complacency.

But I will not rest until the truth is known,

For I refuse to be another memory