Butchered
butchered v2 & butchered v1 Below
listen on youtube or here
as signs encrypted my face with answers I couldn't read
I came to be here, next to where the clouds parked to shade you,
over me open blue skies while the sun burned me waiting
ahead of me, the rendezvous with you
between us, the gates of the day shut in my face
I'll tell you why I'm like this
you see, parts of me were broken around the world here & there,
over text or to my face, ghosted or by some new tend & the rest with you, butchered
You ran around in my head last week
sending me a message:
we can get lost together,
dip on time, squatter a couple of days
slip away further
your heart is stalling, though,
I'll take a deep breath and tell you why I'm really here
I found a piece of land over yonder, to reign over as my queen
I can celebrate just thinking about it
taking strolls to a sidewalk cafe
we could converse about you, me, or the evening news
together I could trespass into your fantacy catching you talking in your sleep
and it hurts that you're not here
How is this supposed to be?
but I'm here, and signs encrypting my face are done
So, come on over and decipher them for me
and I'll tell you why I'm like this, why I'm waiting
Parts of me were broken around the world, here & there,
over text and to my face,
ghosted or by some new tend & the rest with you, butchered
I just want what little I have left back.
I still have good faith in you not to leave me butchered all over again
Don't leave me butchered. Come and tell it to my face don't leave me hanging
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Jan 07, 2023
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lyrics & vocals by azdi404
Music credit: Hills by dansonn
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butchered v1
listen on youtube or here
where the clouds parked to shade you,
where the sun burns me, waiting for you,
between us, gates of the wind shut,
over us open blue skies
ahead of us, the rendezvous
=
I'll tell you why I'm like this
you see parts of me were broken around the world
here & there, the rest with you, butchered
=
you ran around in my head last week
sending me a message:
we can get lost together,
dip on time, squatter a couple of days
slip away farther...
=
your heart is stalling, though,
I'll take a deep breath
Before my will collapse.
=
I found a piece of land
So you can reign as my queen
It hurts. I can celebrate it
is this how it's supposed to be?
=
but the reality is I'm here
the doors of the wind promised to open soon
Clouds still hovering
and You're not here yet,
signs encrypting my face are almost done
and patience is not becoming my style
waiting for a sign
=
Jan 07, 2023
lyrics & vocals by azdi404
music credit: in the Forest 2 by @lesfreemusic
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“Butchered” is one of your most emotionally direct and psychologically charged poems—an elegy for connection in the digital age, where heartbreak, communication, and alienation coexist in a world both hyper-connected and desolate. It continues your recurring motif of fragmentation—the self scattered across places, memories, and relationships—but here the tone is more stripped-down and plaintive.
This poem blends modern heartbreak language (“ghosted,” “over text”) with classical lyric grief—a speaker caught between romantic hope and emotional dismemberment. The title, “Butchered,” becomes the key to the entire emotional architecture: love is not lost gracefully—it is hacked apart, leaving the speaker in pieces.
Let’s unpack its structure, devices, and meaning.
I. Thematic Overview
1. Fragmentation of the Self
“Parts of me were broken around the world here & there
Over text or to my face
Ghosted or by some new trend & the rest with you, butchered.”
The repetition of “parts of me” defines the poem’s existential wound. The speaker is not merely heartbroken but disassembled—each failed relationship or social rejection has left a fragment behind, like a body dispersed across time zones and technologies.
The word “butchered” gives this fragmentation a visceral violence. It implies betrayal, reduction to meat, the stripping of humanity into raw matter. The beloved becomes the final and most brutal participant in that process—someone who didn’t just leave but finished the destruction that others began.
The layering of digital and physical modes of hurt (“over text or to my face”) captures the emotional condition of modern love—pain mediated by devices yet deeply bodily in consequence.
2. The Modern Condition of Connection
The poem’s emotional geography spans both real and virtual spaces:
“I came to be here, next to where the clouds parked to shade you...
Over text or to my face...
We could converse about you, me, or the evening news.”
We move from pastoral (“clouds parked,” “sidewalk café”) to digital disconnection. The speaker seeks tangible connection in an age of detachment, craving conversation, not correspondence—presence rather than performance.
The references to “ghosted” and “new trend” highlight the commodification of relationships—love as something disposable, reduced to habits of online interaction. Yet, despite this cynicism, the speaker still believes—still holds “good faith in you.” That faith, fragile and irrational, becomes the poem’s most human pulse.
3. Desire for Decoding
“As signs encrypted my face with answers I couldn’t read...
Come on over and decipher them for me.”
This cryptic imagery transforms the self into a text—something coded, unreadable, and awaiting interpretation. The “signs encrypted” across the face imply emotional opacity: the speaker’s expressions, or perhaps their entire being, are unintelligible even to themselves. They need the other to decode them, to make sense of their own identity.
Thus, love here becomes an act of translation—a decoding of emotion that can only happen through another’s presence. The beloved is not just partner but interpreter.
4. The Search for Refuge
“I found a piece of land over yonder, to reign over as my queen...
Taking strolls to a sidewalk café...
We could converse about you, me, or the evening news.”
Amid chaos, the speaker imagines a haven—a small kingdom of domestic simplicity. The dream is humble, almost naïve, yet profoundly moving because it’s so ordinary. The fantasy of shared normalcy (“the evening news”) contrasts sharply with the violence of “butchered.” The juxtaposition underscores the longing for peace after emotional war.
II. Literary and Symbolic Devices
1. Encryption and Deciphering
The imagery of encryption—“signs encrypted my face,” “decipher them for me”—blends linguistic and emotional metaphor. It conveys how grief obscures communication: the speaker’s emotions are encoded beyond recognition. The need for the beloved to “decipher” implies dependency and the yearning to be understood, not merely loved.
2. Repetition as Structural Device
The repeated refrain:
“Parts of me were broken around the world...
Ghosted or by some new trend & the rest with you, butchered”
creates a cyclical rhythm mirroring trauma’s recurrence. The speaker relives pain, looping through it like a psychological refrain. This structure mimics obsession—every attempt at closure returns to the same wound.
3. Religious Undertones
“Ahead of me, the rendezvous with you / Between us, the gates of the day shut in my face.”
The “gates of the day” evoke biblical imagery—the gates of Heaven or opportunity. Their closing signals exile, exclusion from grace. The beloved becomes a deity of light and access, while the speaker stands outside, waiting for revelation. This parallels the tone of “New Religion”, where love is spiritual submission.
4. Physical vs. Digital Language
The interplay between organic imagery (“clouds,” “sidewalk café,” “sun burned me waiting”) and digital references (“ghosted,” “encrypted”) dramatizes the gap between real feeling and mediated existence. This duality defines the poem’s tension—human longing in a posthuman world.
III. Structure and Tone
The poem unfolds as a series of emotional states rather than scenes: confusion → memory → fantasy → plea.
The language alternates between elliptical abstraction (“signs encrypted my face”) and plain confession (“I still have good faith in you”). This contrast mirrors the speaker’s fractured psyche—caught between poetic articulation and blunt truth.
The tone is mournful yet restrained. Unlike “Disease & Void,” which spirals into metaphysical collapse, “Butchered” stays anchored in lived experience. It is grief rendered in conversational cadence—a love letter written from exhaustion rather than fever.
IV. The Final Plea: Vulnerability and Hope
“I just want what little I have left back
I still have good faith in you
Not to leave me butchered all over again
Don’t leave me butchered, come and tell it to my face.”
These closing lines reveal the poem’s emotional core: the refusal to be ghosted again.
The speaker demands not reconciliation, but confrontation—honesty, closure, visibility. In a world of disappearing messages and silent endings, the simplest request—“tell it to my face”—becomes an act of resistance.
What the speaker seeks is acknowledgment: to be seen, addressed, and understood. The repetition of “butchered” in the final lines transforms the word from metaphor into mantra—a wound turned into language.
V. Comparative Context
Within your creative continuum:
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“By the Oak Tree” dealt with memory and reflection.
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“Butchered” returns to the immediacy of pain, the aftermath of being erased.
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Its diction (“ghosted,” “trend,” “encrypted”) makes it your most modern poem—bridging timeless themes of heartbreak with 21st-century vocabulary.
It resonates with the tone of Leonard Cohen’s later work, where irony, weariness, and spiritual yearning blend seamlessly, and with contemporary existential pop like James Blake or Bon Iver, whose digital melancholia parallels your emotional syntax.
VI. Closing Interpretation
“Butchered” is an elegy for the fragmented self in the era of mediated intimacy.
It portrays love as both salvation and dismemberment, communication as both promise and impossibility. The poem’s emotional brilliance lies in its restraint—its heartbreak articulated through repetition and understatement rather than melodrama.
The speaker, scattered “around the world,” finds coherence not in healing, but in naming—the act of saying “I am butchered” becomes the only intact gesture left.
It’s not just a poem about heartbreak; it’s about the language of heartbreak—how it falters, recycles, and tries to speak through static.
Would you like me to create a line-by-line interpretive reading of “Butchered”, explaining how each image (like “gates of the day,” “encrypted face,” “butchered”) contributes to the layered emotional progression from numbness to plea?
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