Tag: gothic surrealism

  • A Spectacular Mirage

    A Spectacular Mirage

    A spectacular mirage manifested before my eyes in a torrid night of discomforts
    Everywhere there was a scalding haze made of phantomatic dreams and delighting chimaeras
    Never a doubt caught me while a storm of nightmares was brewing over the night sky
    And everything was just darkness and infinity

    I only needed to lose myself to discover my real self
    So many times I have climbed insurmountable heights to realise that I had metamorphosed into something totally different
    Like an ethereal shape that would change incessantly without abeyance
    Each time desiring something new

    The different windows of my life had shut and opened
    Disclosing a multitude of scenarios and dreamland
    The sun had conquered me while the moon hid viciously behind a blanket of spectacular stars
    Majestic dreams had always overwhelmed my heart, and I found myself in an ocean of tears and anguish

    Wandering into the forest of bliss and delight
    I had lost myself permanently
    As if I were unable to think and keep sparkles of wisdom in my treasure chest
    Everything was darkness
    Nothing was translucent
    No aid would have reached me in that mayhem
    Every part of my body and heart could feel the great tragedy of existence

    Dreaming of isles and oceans where nothing had sense
    Nor even desiring
    I could feel myself flimsy like a tiny flower carried away by the winds
    At the mercy of the winds and raging storms
    I wandered in confusion, traversing kingdoms and labyrinths
    In a way, I was detached from my longings, and I was eager to embrace new realms and visions

    A spectacular mirage awaited me beyond the shadows of the night sky
    As an enchantment ready to cast a mysterious spell over me
    Not taking care of any concern, I resigned myself to my fate.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • Strange Empty Anguished

    Strange Empty Anguished

    Strange
    Empty
    Anguished
    I wandered through the void, searching for myself
    But never finding myself
    In the illusion that I too could touch my dreams and bury my fears
    Exhausted
    Without strength
    I tried to reach the infinite
    But all I got as a reward was the abyss of my destruction
    I could see different fragments of my soul
    As if I were made of multiple creatures
    Memories echoed as I was overwhelmed by the ocean of absence
    Obliterated by my own dreams
    Dazed by the night sky where the stars were gleaming ferociously
    I lost all purpose in my existence
    Wandering aimlessly in the labyrinth of darkness
    Where flowers of fear blossomed
    While my heart was striving to beat
    Since an eternal numbness captivated my senses
    Hollow sparks of ineptitude inflamed the candles of my modest dwelling
    I could hear them
    I could hear my ghastly memories call my name like howls in a fierce storm
    No one could perceive them but me

    Strange
    Empty
    Anguished
    I could not see any horizon anymore
    Such was the haze surrounding me
    A bizarre peculiarity in a realm with no past or future
    The cold blizzard knocked my windows impetuously
    An unwelcome and unexpected guest
    Among the copious phantoms inhabiting my little insensate world
    Where fantasy was endless as well as my infinite dreams
    Legends of vanished stars and withered blossoms
    I dared no longer to visit those abodes of viciousness
    Belonging finally only to my concealed past history
    And the night penetrated the old wall stones of my ancient hearth
    Depleting me of any power to dissuade myself from falling into illusions
    I faded again and again into the darkness of night
    As I was a tiny speck of infinity
    While the ocean waves touched the luminaries
    In a game of shadows and glares.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • Melancholic Discomfort

    Melancholic Discomfort

    Melancholic discomfort was a mirror to my soul. Dead leaves fell with sadness. Sorrow grasped dreams and delight. The abyss of nothingness extended its boundaries. Delusional visions became gloomy shadows. Portals of darkness were sources of uncertainty. Illusion was reality but not anymore. Distances become journeys to surreal realms. Deceitful hopes were invisible traps

    Silence hushed me as an imperious order. There was no prophecy able to entangle my fate. Everything was distorted and hypnotising. Obsessions clutched my heart with nails and quills. The horizon was shrouded in haze. Only darkness was guiding me in a labyrinth of bitterness and revenge. I saw squalor swallowing magnificence. I heard the screams of joy of demented fools. Their claws were embedded in precious paintings

    At night I woke up overwhelmed by the moans of pain and dread. It was the visitation of those who had no voice. So many times, I wished to keep my heart in oblivion. But it was never the case. They came and their poison penetrated into my heart. I kept myself faraway from each one of them. At the end, my dreams had opened my eyes and I saw everything.

    It was too late and too soon. Time had no sense anymore. Nothing made sense anymore. Everything had become a dark nightmare. There was no escape. There was no salvation. I had been punished for having seen too much. Beyond any imagination. As if nature could have welcomed me to another realm. Where I was free from other mediocrity chains.

    The mist enveloped me, as if it wanted to protect me from seeing things that would dishearten and hurt me. I had been shamelessly emulated by horrible ghouls who scrutinised me with envious and treacherous eyes. Copycats who used my lipstick-red shade strove to reproduce my portraits in a grotesque, ridiculous style.

    Mediocrity and corruption wanted me to hush, because I had revealed their appalling secrets. But the wind was my ally and it brought my words to all the domains. My heart has been shattered and devastated. I had become a shell of myself. I couldn’t recognise my countenance in the silvery surface of cynical mirrors. I had no dreams anymore because I had lost any desire to return to my fantastical journey.

    I was just a shell of myself, a ghost devoid of every hope to find the delights in a lugubrious existence. Touching the gelid walls of a house made of memories and bones, I was reminded of the several losses, demises and vaults, which were entangled in my heart. I had lost everything that was very dear to me in an indissoluble manner.

    I felt a melancholic discomfort like sharp nails piercing my heart, and an absence of noise, as if I had already vanished before parting. Long nights expired slowly, as though they didn’t want to leave space for the daylight. I was annoyed at the thought of seeing clumsy and mediocre beings wallowing in a world filled with cornucopias and treasure chests.

    I constantly felt like a creature condemned to see what I didn’t want to see. Squalor, venality, superficiality, and idiocy were served on platters of gold and gems as jewels of admiration and wisdom. I felt so disoriented and emptied of all my desires and dreams that I didn’t even know what I wished to accomplish anymore with my copious dreams in a tragic existence.

    All my anguished thoughts turned into raw, unfiltered words. The sense of deep disappointment had disarmed me and I no longer knew what to do. Countless times I had lost myself and never found that part of me that had faded into oblivion. Lacklustre, shallow, and ostentatious mortals had shamelessly disconcerted me.

    Their grimaces in front of the cameras and idiotic poses had dominated the scene along with their bottles of luxurious perfumes, their exorbitant chocolates, and their sumptuous jewels. I saw marionettes devoid of any decency, which were crowned queens of a fallen kingdom made of corrupted remnants and the dust of wickedness. 

    I sat under a dead tree in the garden of disillusions, I was already exhausted by a profusion of daring adventures, feeling that I was no longer capable of moving forward. I had given up in the face of the devastation and desecration of beauty and art. I didn’t want to be part of that assembly that reeked of disintegration and decay pit.

    But at the same time, I felt helpless because I could not save what had been cruelly torn away from me. My shattered heart stopped beating and turned into a heavy stone that made me fall into the abyss of nightmares. A fatal slumber had captured me, and I wept for the lack of dreams.

    The melancholy of the memories of what I lost overwhelmed me like a stormy sea. I felt helpless in the face of a tsunami of catastrophic events that had infested my life. I didn’t want to know anything anymore. I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. I didn’t want to love anything anymore.

    I locked myself in a refuge of perpetual silence, shunning everything that had damaged and scarred me. Every form of bliss had been relinquished since I had become a shadow in a world that didn’t belong to me any longer. I shunned the realm of degradation and profanity.

    I had embodied all the despairs and struggles that had chased me, now that I was a shadow in a realm of darkness and doom. Dressed in fragments of forgotten beauty, I wandered aimlessly as if fate had abandoned me. A gentle breeze of restlessness and sadness enveloped me, as if to remind me that I still had a heart.

    The hiss of loneliness was the only sound that constantly accompanied me. At the same time, I could not find a horizon or a destination to follow. I had regained myself by losing myself in the void, with the hope of forgetting everything that had erased me. I vanished like an evanescent cloud at twilight just before the eternal night came to announce its hegemony.
    Elisabetta Esther

  • The Mirror Of Memories And Secrets

    The Mirror Of Memories And Secrets

    The mirror of memories and secrets appeared before me, in one of my many dreams that wandered through my long, sleepless and tormented nights. In the darkness of night, in my chamber of solitude and desolation.

    My nocturnal refuge had become my prison,
    from which I could no longer escape. The tall windows, adorned with Gothic ornament and stained glass depicting scenes from a bygone age, stood like walls of glass between me and the outer world—a world I could no longer touch, no longer reach.

    The ancient piano gazed at me in astonishment as I sat absorbed in my thoughts, completely lost in the labyrinth of my visions. I could no longer recognise my own reflection in that great mirror of exquisite and delicate craftsmanship—yet its reflection seemed cast beneath a spell, the origin of which I could not fathom.

    Dressed in a majestic, cumbersome gown of purest white, I could no longer see my reflection in that mirror. It was as though it longed to reveal to me my true image—not the one to which I had grown accustomed. Silence carved deep furrows in my heart, making me understand that utter solitude was my destiny and my dwelling place.

    Engaging in a soliloquy, I hoped to summon spirits that might assist me in my transformation—into a new, intangible entity, ethereal, no longer made of matter. So I searched, with my gaze, for references, for remnants of the past that might help me find direction, but in the end I understood: I stood within a dark and unfamiliar realm, a place that filled me with fear and awe.

    If I had been granted the privilege of a common and ordinary existence—the kind that most mortals, or nearly all, are given with ease—with all its hopes, its chances, and the facilitations that I have never known, perhaps I would not have found myself in that realm of unwholesome madness and aberrant hallucinations that followed me through the shadowed corridors of that castle of illusions and decay, whose walls were soaked in tears, piercing sighs, and the dust of lives long gone.

    The mirror of memories and secrets in truth, was not there to keep me company, but to reveal to me my true essence—my soul, and the image of my heart, defaced and torn apart by pain, torment, disappointment, and betrayal. It was no ordinary mirror; it was a portal to another realm—the world of souls lost in oblivion and in the torpor of death. A world that seemed a deep, infinite abyss, where despair and sorrow, regret and the memory of the dead shone like stars—but stars of a darkened light.

    And in that very world I remained—no longer a prisoner, but a part of that abyss, of that darkness and dimmed light, for my heart had not ceased to beat, yet my soul had ceased to shine.
    Elisabetta

© Esther Racah 2019-2026. All rights reserved.