<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[John Ape]]></title><description><![CDATA[I write poetry, and I write about the dreams that I have.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R-1_!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg</url><title>John Ape</title><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2026 15:57:56 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjohndebussyleape.substack.com%2Ffeed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[John Ape]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[johndebussyleape@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[johndebussyleape@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[johndebussyleape@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[johndebussyleape@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[Devil Deprivation]]></title><description><![CDATA[Wrathful sight, upon seeing what it created.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/devil-deprivation</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/devil-deprivation</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2026 10:05:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Wrathful sight, upon seeing what it created. So far down, its muses fell.</p><p>God of gods, with sight upon earth and words of divination; &#8220;Here be demons, here be hell&#8221;.</p><p>Living in his world, my only solace is my daily mantra; &#8220;I&#8217;ll be okay, I&#8217;ll just kill myself tomorrow&#8221;.</p><p>My pooling tears are a mirror that reflects sorrow.</p><p>Human touch was my only human need. Desperate affection is the only thing I greed.</p><p>I am without all, I feel unseen, so very small. I write my own rose tinted love letter to myself as Venus and my veins bleed.</p><p>God stuck man in muddy land, for dirty are your souls. With your fluids and earthen soil, he made a nasty brew.</p><p>He added his eyes he tore out with a single cork screw, then he made the potion your blood. EVIL IS YOU!</p><p>Wrathfully rhyming rending reveries of ripping of my rainy life&#8217;s repulsively and rancidly unromantic remains.</p><p>Shackled by black brimstone chains. Tainted by glowing red veins. Isolated, forever, so I&#8217;ll blow out my brains.</p><p>A person who&#8217;s fingers are sewing together holes in the sweater of my heart. My insides are dead, I won&#8217;t come back.</p><p>Pressure building, exploding ventricles. My heart popped like the balloons in the celebration for my death. Popped by a tack.</p><p>The thrums of my cuddle craving weeping, played by heartache&#8217;s lone and single stringed harp.</p><p>The notes are languidly wistful, sorrowfully somber. They are stabbing, pointy, rigid and sharp.</p><p>Such is my suffering, and so is the essential existential requisite for our god&#8217;s lust of burning bracken, and living char.</p><p>The bite of nightmare, and the lascivious touchful caress of hellful torture, all rampaging in our earth, as hot as a star.</p><p>God demands bloody drink to go with the splintered souls he gluts.</p><p>God got drunk and played a joke called life. So I&#8217;ll rip out his stomach. I will dance in his guts.</p><p>Nothing but delightful embraces can reach past my black and into my heart. All of creation, it&#8217;s un-remarkably insufficient.</p><p>The sum of my personality is the pain. I long for sensual tenderness, but I died while still achingly hug deficient.</p><p>Dubiously diabolically delusional, the thought that I&#8217;ll ever feel cradled in arms that aren&#8217;t strangling me. In death, I&#8217;d revel.</p><p>Deprived of my human right for love, I ended it all. I stabbed horns into the ground, for this land is the devil,</p><p>and so, in my lonesome, I will get to kiss, still. My soul&#8217;s worth is a silvery coin, because my life was so very young.</p><p>I&#8217;ll whirl and swirl with the burning witches, and eat the thorny blackberry bramble from Satan's silver tongue.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Willow]]></title><description><![CDATA[Tearing into wakefulness, with my eyes in my hands.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/willow</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/willow</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:15:26 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Tearing into wakefulness, with my eyes in my hands. I squeezed them into goo.</p><p>All days begin with finding out what was lost in the night. My being is untrue.</p><p>Circles of black, closing in on my vision, like dull guillotines slicing my sight away into gratefully permanent relief.</p><p>I am kicking and biting away my life. Defunct and departed, a heart beat away from the all engorging grief.</p><p>We are ill and sickly, permanently enduring the chilling shivers of shade.</p><p>Everlasting aches, chronic shaking and shivers that only come from waking. Pain persisting, even after we fade.</p><p>My Willow, I use her as a pillow. She&#8217;s as broken and twisted as me, for only the mad could love the starkly wretched.</p><p>Our souls forgot each other&#8217;s and our own names, from maggots of undoing. Now we lay down in our death dread.</p><p>She turned as cold as the moon, as pale as its alabaster.</p><p>We&#8217;ll stay here, both as rotten as two pumpkins in an overgrown pasture.</p><p>Bugs and worms inside our skeletons, fluttering dirt where our hearts were. Our bones are intertwined.</p><p>Our dreary wisps of breath, slowing and cooling. To rock and mud, soon to be confined.</p><p>Striated light through the cracks of molding wood, foggy air full of warped gloom.</p><p>Binding roots of rot, and wrapped in chains of silver. Plants siphon and drain our bodies, while pretty flowers bloom.</p><p>Demons haunt the ghosts haunting me. Bloating on the taste of my spirit, quintessence forever spooky.</p><p>Gears a&#8217;turnin, hope a&#8217;burnin. A clock in my head, ancient, and a&#8217;rustin. Moldering memories a&#8217;dustin. We&#8217;re deranged and kooky.</p><p>Stygian shards, falling like arrows in my suffocating night sky.</p><p>Decaying day by day. Withering and wilting as they&#8217;ve all gone by.</p><p>Life is a spider, crafting the web of my world, made from gossamer silk, shaped like a noose.</p><p>I&#8217;m swinging from a branch, with fangs of venom and silken burns around my neck. My solemn solitude is beyond abuse.</p><p>Eaten away, like burning stars, by my state of horror. My love is ethereal like the lying whisper of her echoing voice,</p><p>one that bounces off the tombstones in our glade and scratches words into rock. Words that tell how the people died, without asking them for a choice.</p><p>I am like water. My feelings evaporate into the air, leaving behind something barren and dry.</p><p>Then they fall down in torrents, drowning the land, flooding nature, bleeding the sky.</p><p>My body ripping out of itself in chunks, and the rest in atomized scraps.</p><p>My eyes glaze over. Every once in a while I come back to reality, only from impatient snaps.</p><p>She&#8217;s dead and I&#8217;m dying.</p><p>She&#8217;s gone and I&#8217;m crying.</p><p>Bleeding, pleading and screaming. Cradling a corpse. I ended my life, rending my flesh with a craven brack bite.</p><p>I&#8217;ll hold her still, and we&#8217;ll sleep together. Joined and mingled in a forever lasting raven black night.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[My Despair]]></title><description><![CDATA[Prose]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/my-despair</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/my-despair</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:32:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My despair is when I realize the ones who I thought were my friends thought I was their aquantance.</p><p>My despair is when my friends I thought were my friends forgot me, but only after they destroyed me first.</p><p>My despair is when my blood family tried to claw and drag me into death, when they hurt me just to quench their boredom.</p><p>My despair is when I lay alone at night, and my chest burns like there is a hole in my heart. My despair is feeling as my tears fall, but not making a sound because I can&#8217;t bother expending the energy it would take.</p><p>My despair is when I remember that I have nobody, and nobody has me. That I have gone my whole life never having a single real friend. That I am alone, as I have been forever.</p><p>My despair is when I remember that I could disappear, and no one would be concerned, no one would remember.</p><p>My despair is when I remember that I have never felt love, that I have only felt the absence of it and the feeling of it fleeing from me like I am some sort of monster.</p><p>My despair is when I realize I may never get to feel it, that I may never find a single friend.</p><p>My despair is the endurance of existing with no other human who wants to hold me when I cry, no other person to listen to my thoughts and who I can listen back to.</p><p>My despair is knowing something must be wrong with me for having nobody, for being this way my entire life.</p><p>My despair is the thought that the coldness that replaces my love will never end.</p><p>My despair is knowing death is more likely to end my suffering than anything else.</p><p>My despair is my lone exaltless misery.</p><p>My despair is my dancing skeleton&#8217;s glee.</p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Frantic Slicing]]></title><description><![CDATA[Content Warning: Suicide]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/frantic-slicing</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/frantic-slicing</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2026 23:48:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every day I wake, my vocal cords are sliced. I am left frantic, pleading.</p><p>Every morning, the air in my lungs, quickly depleting.</p><p>I awake to the hollow. My eyes are empty of light, my bed empty of warmth.</p><p>Surrounded by reminders of what is left inside of me, nothing at all.</p><p>Greedy hands slipped into my gushing scars, like bottom feeders to a rotting whale.</p><p>They feel around to grab and steal. They are too late. Life itself already ripped everything out.</p><p>My voice sounds like a violin made of copper and melting iron.</p><p>A violin that makes an unbearable sound. A sound that makes the liquid in my eyes vibrate.</p><p>It vibrates like shaking hands on the arms of a person who only has them self to hug.</p><p>The same hands that will still be shaking as they wipe away my tears, before the blades they hold wipe away my heart&#8217;s blood.</p><p>Every day I fall asleep, my vocal cords are sliced. I am left with nothing, and loved by nothing and no one except hollowness and my own blood.</p><p>Every night, air bursts into my lungs. It feels like mustard gas and acid. It gives me the oxygen to live one more worthlessly isolated and nightmarishly lonely day.</p><p>Until the torture is too great, until the frantic need for the misery to go away steals my soul. Until the calm frenzy of escape takes over my shaking body.</p><p>Until my own death becomes water to my unendurable thirst. And until I frantically drink the oceans of it that I will squeeze out of my arteries.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Exquisite Corpse; Simulacra of Despair (Surrealist Exercise) ]]></title><description><![CDATA[Staring into stares, eyes red,]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/exquisite-corpse-simulacra-of-despair</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/exquisite-corpse-simulacra-of-despair</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2026 01:32:34 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Staring into stares, eyes red,</p><p>my only solace is a pen stroke away, but my fingers are frozen.</p><p>The ellipse was</p><p>the fallen feathers of a bird soaring, one leaving me behind to reach the heights.</p><p>Life is abuse to the materials that were stolen and combined into jarring sapience,</p><p>they were reflections of reflections barely anything at all.</p><p>My hope is frozen,</p><p>from agonizing despair,</p><p>strangled by thorny vines.</p><p>My liquid thought turned to crystalline ice before I could form any idea.</p><p>I watched.</p><p>And climbed a tree.</p><p>The only warmth I know is like the one felt before hypothermic deaths.</p><p>Rotten fruit,</p><p>like my sacrifices of chances, and turns, fall into each other, looping into the circles of the holes in </p><p>my Swiss cheese heart.</p><p>Flying in the sky, in ecstasy and pie, eaten by venus, stolen from the heavens, now I will die.</p><p>My pain is expressed as the letters in a language that only has words to describe its own uselessness,</p><p>so I&#8217;m falling forever, like a snowflake adrift, one that will melt before it finds ground,</p><p>one hearing the agonizing screams of the past, through the calamities of today.</p><p>I hated</p><p>the replicas of already dull shapes, simulacra pure,</p><p>echoes of meaninglessness, shown in the refractions of broken class,</p><p>like the light in the mirror of the water pool</p><p>I was</p><p>in the garden of.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Misty Haze]]></title><description><![CDATA[I built a cage around myself,]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/misty-haze</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/misty-haze</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:38:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I built a cage around myself,</p><p>with a rusty iron door that only works on Mondays,</p><p>to trap things away.</p><p>I reside in a void of my own creation.</p><p>I am a mossy rock</p><p>in a burned forest.</p><p>A rock that is unknown to people,</p><p>and hidden away in ash.</p><p>Unknown until they make the trek through my burned home,</p><p>flip me over,</p><p>and get eaten by the spiders that I hide.</p><p>For this special moment, this special feast,</p><p>I come out from behind the door of the dead.</p><p>I watch, I weep.</p><p>And a red misty haze comes from my evaporating tears,</p><p>covering it all in blood.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hardly Subhuman]]></title><description><![CDATA[Taunting and jaunting are the screams in my skull.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/hardly-subhuman</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/hardly-subhuman</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:53:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>Taunting and jaunting are the screams in my skull.</p><p>Laughing and lying about the things I need most.</p><p>To be less than human, alienated and opaque.</p><p>My skin can&#8217;t feel, my tongue is broken.</p><p>I was born to feel, born to speak. Made to be like the rest.</p><p>Yet I&#8217;m now a faulty product, begging to be a real person.</p><p>To feel the same needs as the rest.</p><p>To long for connection, and to have no sense of it.</p><p>I am a bat with no hearing, a frog with no croaks, a bird with no songs.</p><p>A watcher. I observe life as it is, and I ask why mine is no life at all.</p><p>I must be monstrous to have been left behind by my own species.</p><p>They must think I should be separated, for I am hardly even subhuman.</p><p>I watch people&#8217;s smiles, and wonder why my mine looks like a gaping hole.</p><p>I see happiness in icy reflections, and I ask why I was born with no soul.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Bottomless Despair]]></title><description><![CDATA[Falling to the center, through bottomless despair]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/bottomless-despair</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/bottomless-despair</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 20:44:03 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Falling to the center, through bottomless despair</p><p>The weight of their choices, they force me to bear.</p><p></p><p>They are star shaped, and star sized.</p><p>The holes in my heart, forced to be excised.</p><p></p><p>Fierce and jagged, the edges of my sight.</p><p>What I see is utterly bitter, with sadness and blight.</p><p></p><p>No future to behold, no past to ponder. </p><p>I'm dead and burried, spirit a'wander.</p><p></p><p>I'll haunt the world that tortured me so.</p><p>Crazed and burning, red eyes a'glow.</p><p></p><p>Fowel and vile, the words of the choir.</p><p>Scorch their church, blaze with a hellish fire.</p><p>I'm burried and dead, lost and alone.</p><p>Scalding and singed, for what they've done, they'll atone.</p><p></p><p>My ear drums rip, for my ghostly wails rend. </p><p>I'll shriek and shout, into the void of my closureless end.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Existential Dead]]></title><description><![CDATA[Hands come out the back of my eyes to pull them in.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/existential-dead</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/existential-dead</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 05:13:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hands come out the back of my eyes to pull them in. My skull, to swallow.</p><p>Laying under a blood moon I can&#8217;t see. Hands of the black, and stolen sight. To wallow.</p><p>I try to make sense of a world&#8217;s worth of insanity, and just make my own.</p><p>Where are my answers? What are the reasons? I only wish I had known.</p><p>My gaping chest, burned and hollow. My insides naught but ashen char.</p><p>My last fibers twitched to escape, then they melted. I am passionless tar.</p><p>Being born into such a world, it was bound to disappoint. A foregone conclusion.</p><p>Any good I have ever known has been twisted, a contorted and gutting illusion.</p><p>My face&#8217;s flesh under my broken finger nails. My body falling apart, falling away.</p><p>How far I always was from anything real was all I could think of on my last day. </p><p>I&#8217;m ghostly and gaunt, but I still feel boiling tears burn my skin then steam.</p><p>All I can do is sit and cry, and scream, and scream, AND SCREAM</p><p>After my fading, all feelings are replaced with one meaning; essential dread.</p><p>After death, my memories are replaced with two words; existential, dead.</p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Meningsløs Smerte]]></title><description><![CDATA[Jeg har ikke norsk som morsm&#229;l. Jeg lage mange feil, beklager.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/meningsls-smerte</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/meningsls-smerte</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 26 Jul 2026 23:11:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Livet min er for alltid dyster.</p><p>Jeg se bare darlig ting, &#248;ye min har cyster.</p><p>Jeg legge p&#229; sofaen, og jeg kan bare skrik &#8220;faen&#8221;.</p><p>Jeg er i hevete, men jeg ser gjennom himmelens l&#229;gen.</p><p>Vi alle trenger mer en vi har.</p><p>Vi alle forventet mer en vi fikk i alle v&#229;r ar.</p><p>Hvis livet min var en sang, &#248;rer min ville bl&#248;dning.</p><p>Hvis livet min var en bok, det ville slutt med en d&#248;dning.</p><p>Jeg skriver er meningsl&#248;s.</p><p>Jeg river i stykker, smerte min er en sl&#248;s. </p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ceaseless black]]></title><description><![CDATA[I despise with my little eye the face in the mirror that&#8217;s starting to cry.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/ceaseless-black</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/ceaseless-black</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:18:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I despise with my little eye the face in the mirror that&#8217;s starting to cry.</p><p>I jeer and laugh at the joke of my tears. And I just stop trying to try.</p><p>There is a living darkness inside my brain, it makes me justify my own existence.</p><p>Miles and miles I run, swim, fly. I drag myself away. But it always closes the distance.</p><p>The only thing my flesh cuddles are my own cracking bones, until I&#8217;m naught but rot.</p><p>My life is a dark sensory deprivation chamber of affection. Torturous screaming, upon death, I&#8217;m wrought.</p><p>My skin forgot how to feel touch, mouth forgot how to laugh. My tears bled me dry until my eyes forgot to work.</p><p>Oh, to never know happiness, but to know it&#8217;s shape. I despise being alive in life, being dead is its only perk.</p><p>There is a living darkness eating my soul. It feels a type of hunger that it&#8217;s hungry for more of.</p><p>It devours my thoughts and rends my nerves. I&#8217;ve never known language I because I&#8217;ve never known the word &#8220;love&#8221;.</p><p>The dark lets me ask one question, only so it can answer. Where did it go wrong? &#8220;At every chance to get better.&#8221;.</p><p>My chances have lead to choices where I&#8217;ve always chosen the wrong one. My last words will be written on a suicide letter.</p><p>I wait for the sun to rise and make my empty sky star-full and bright. But the void-full night has just gotten blacker and blacker.</p><p>I&#8217;ll lay down in a room and stay still until I&#8217;m dead. I&#8217;ve lost the energy to lift a gun to my head. The dark is my attacker.</p><p>If it were a squirrel, it wouldn&#8217;t eat acorns, but entire forests. But it is the dark, and it has eaten my entire universe.</p><p>Stuck in a ball, my shivering body is curled. It is just me and it in the void it has left us. FUCK MY EXISTENCE, IT IS A CURSE</p><p>My brain, my heart, my soul. They are gone. Now the empty shell of my being is left. Small and glooming.</p><p>There&#8217;s nothing left inside my husk. All that the dark left was ceaseless black. All consuming.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Pale Path's Period.]]></title><description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve limped this forest path indefinitely long.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/the-red-paths-period</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/the-red-paths-period</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 07:41:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve limped this forest path indefinitely long.</p><p>I&#8217;ve outpaced the living, there is not even bird song.</p><p>My spheres of recollection turn alive, information they glean.</p><p>A red curtain in the woods, floating. Serene and clean.</p><p>Through the branches, coldly whispering wind rips.</p><p>As limbs tear through the curtains, pupils dilate over my irises, eclipse.</p><p>There are suddenly too many arms with too many faces.</p><p>Too many eyes, too many fingers. I am stuck in their inescapable embraces</p><p>Out from under the red, they all grab and tug and pull, and pull, and pull.</p><p>My face is red and my eyes are teary. My freezing heart, scaredness full.</p><p>I run and claw and crawl my way into a coffin kept glade.</p><p>A place where color goes to fade, a place where memories can&#8217;t be made</p><p>I&#8217;d have never outran this forest&#8217;s scythe&#8217;s reaping. I hear linen folds, and soft creeping.</p><p>Wet pitter patter on a mossy stone grave, coldly whimpering, frigidly fragile weeping.</p><p>The path has ended in a graveyard. I look out into the dark forest of trees, I freeze.</p><p>Surrounding the glade of graves, slow moving curtains, and a chilly breeze.</p><p>The world&#8217;s gone as pale as my drained skin. Curtains cover the universe in myriad.</p><p>There were three pages in my life, and I&#8217;m stuck reading the last period.</p><p>You never know what is waiting beyond, on the last page.</p><p>You never know what&#8217;s hiding behind the curtain.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Left Alone]]></title><description><![CDATA[Left alone, to watch the morrow on a petal.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/left-alone-d5c</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/left-alone-d5c</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:55:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Left alone, to watch the morrow on a petal.</p><p>All alone, to see my sorrow fall and settle.</p><p>I found a way into a quietly rainy realm.</p><p>I&#8217;m bound, next to a charred and scarred witch elm.</p><p>Forever churning soil. Growing, a toadstool.</p><p>Never, the sky clear, so I drowned in a rain pool.</p><p>A fairy ring on dirty dust, over mossy bone.</p><p>Right above my cozy coffin, my lowly throne.</p><p>Left alone, and so it is. And now I&#8217;m dead.</p><p>All alone, to be eaten, by a flower bed.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Gloomy Are the Depths.]]></title><description><![CDATA[Gloomy are the feathers of starving crows.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/gloomy-are-the-depths</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/gloomy-are-the-depths</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 04 Jul 2026 04:52:41 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Gloomy are the feathers of starving crows.</p><p>Wilting are my smiles as I smell a dying rose.</p><p>Such thoughts make my heart beat fast. I fear, my heart will spill.</p><p>I dread that I&#8217;ll panic, that my blood will gush faster still.</p><p>I wish I was as calm as a dead flower, a falling feather.</p><p>But my wound is gushing torrents, as I hear thunderous weather.</p><p>Oh god, it&#8217;s going too fast. I don&#8217;t know how much longer it&#8217;ll last.</p><p>I just need more time, to outlive living&#8217;s wretched grime. Forever agast.</p><p>Beating of hearts, swaying of waves, pattering of rain.</p><p>Sounds replaced by the ticking of my death clock, and the red pain in my vein.</p><p>The ocean has a rhythm born of the moon, but recently it has been silent.</p><p>I imagine all the things that could disrupt nature&#8217;s rythms, they&#8217;re all violent.</p><p>I have to investigate. So into the ocean, straight down, into the void, I&#8217;ll dive. </p><p>I dove too deep, but I have to know. I&#8217;m not coming back up for air while alive.</p><p>I can feel the pressure against me as I swim down and down into the depths.</p><p>My ocean is a teary red. Waterlogged are my last lung crushing and gargled breaths.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Exaltation in Death]]></title><description><![CDATA[Skeleton a&#8217; dancing, flesh a&#8217; prancing.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/exaltation-in-death-a11</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/exaltation-in-death-a11</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:59:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Skeleton a&#8217; dancing, flesh a&#8217; prancing.</p><p>The cold in my limbs, slowly advancing.</p><p>I am in a chrysalis of carnation, waiting to be free.</p><p>I can&#8217;t wait for my skin to fall away, my skeleton, me, to be an escapee.</p><p>I wriggle and tear, bruised body tissue softens.</p><p>When I am out, I will go to the coffin store to buy decrepit coffins.</p><p>To be dead, to leave muscle and blood. Now I forever smile.</p><p>I have always found life to be disgusting and vile.</p><p>I could not take it anymore, I wanted to be happy. So I made a deal with a fairy.</p><p>It ate my soul and said I would smile eternally. Nocturnally, to bury.</p><p>He was right, now my crimson skull grins.</p><p>I thank him, as my dull ribcage spins and spins.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Homunculus Derangement Syndrome]]></title><description><![CDATA[I created a homunculus, and I keep him under my bed.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/homunculus-derangement-syndrome-c09</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/homunculus-derangement-syndrome-c09</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 19:23:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I created a homunculus, and I keep him under my bed.</p><p>He is in a cage, and I only feed him moldy bread.</p><p>I keep a chest full of rotten apples, to huff the fumes.</p><p>Then I beat my homunculus, with broken and jagged brooms.</p><p>He is vicious and rabid, dead eyes, a little demon.</p><p>He whispers in my dreams, asks me to free him.</p><p>My horrible alchemical tinkering&#8217;s. Finally gone awry.</p><p>I make him pray for me, all he says is; &#8220;THEE ARE THY&#8221;.</p><p>And so I ponder my orb, thinking about things of change.</p><p>Wandering and wondering, why my homunculus acts so strange.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[ Autumnal Atomization]]></title><description><![CDATA[Flowers are unripe rot, and I&#8217;m stuck in an autumnal atomization.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/autumnal-atomization</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/autumnal-atomization</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:31:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Flowers are unripe rot, and I&#8217;m stuck in an autumnal atomization.</p><p>I crumble onto the ground. Being conscious is my mentally dull aberration.</p><p>All the arms to ever give warm hugs are just dust that has not been born yet. Such disgust.</p><p>The sanity I had left, alone too long, flown away like leaves, by an autumnal gust.</p><p>There is no escape, there are no ways out. I am divided by space, and severed is my love.</p><p>Nothing jives, and my life&#8217;s dysphoria thrives. Don&#8217;t expect a rhyme, be as disappointed as me.</p><p>I tumble down a staircase built to walk up. Carrying my own weight is no longer worth.</p><p>I crash and fumble down this staircase of existence, down into the crushing center of the earth.</p><p>Silent horror in tired eyes. I don&#8217;t have tears anymore, they were eaten by despair.</p><p>Now it gnaws at the sound I hear, the words I give, the life I can no longer live. Oh, to care.</p><p>I beg for depth in a shallow world, while I am suffocated by my empty coffin.</p><p>I passed out in pain, and I can&#8217;t lift my mouth above the water. My soon rotting eyes, to soften.</p><p>Some of us don&#8217;t get solace until the day we die. Soon I&#8217;ll be rotten.</p><p>Soon I&#8217;ll be nothing and forgotten. My bone&#8217;s powder as white as cotton</p><p>Yet the tree&#8217;s will still turn orange, and the leaves will still fall, into autumnal rest.</p><p>Until they turn orange from flame, and fall from death. Like the atomized burning in my empty chest.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[In Darkness, Let me Cry.]]></title><description><![CDATA[In Darkness, Let me Cry.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/in-darkness-let-me-cry-88a</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/in-darkness-let-me-cry-88a</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:57:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In Darkness, Let me Cry. I&#8217;m shattered, broken. Irreparably marred.</p><p>A husk of what I ever was. From the light of stars, eternally barred.</p><p>Wandering in the black too long, it seeps into my tissue.</p><p>I&#8217;m too deep into the madness, I cease to see the issue.</p><p>It&#8217;s so vast, it has replaced my future, and my past.</p><p>I used hear voices in the void, asking why I&#8217;m so downcast.</p><p>My smile was stolen by a parasite of hate, and it eats my happiness.</p><p>Forgetting to inhale. Drowning in the murk, I come up for air less and less.</p><p>As my lids close, and my tears run dry, I reluctantly give my final breath.</p><p>In darkness, I scream. As I am hugged one last time, by my final death.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cruel, Shattering Loneliness]]></title><description><![CDATA[Wishing to be dead, cold and quiet.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/cruel-shattering-loneliness-531</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/cruel-shattering-loneliness-531</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 02:20:34 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Wishing to be dead, cold and quiet. Coffin hugged body to be hauntingly posed.</p><p>Lungs full of dirt, can&#8217;t feel, can&#8217;t be hurt. My orbs of sight forever closed.</p><p>Crunchy orange leaves, on top my grounded bed. Blanket, covering me, forever dead.</p><p>This disgusting world deserves no colors, but raven black, and blood crimson red.</p><p>Sleeping trees, hidden breeze, starting to flow. Starting to freeze my drowning river.</p><p>Unfeeling skin. No soft hugs, no nightly grin. Sharpened knife, stabbed myself in the liver.</p><p>Green moss on gray stone. Dirty dust on white bone. Forgotten here, left forever alone.</p><p>Ethereal tendrils of nerves, coming from my soul. The agony they feel, outwardly unknown.</p><p>I was a reflection of the universe, and I forgot myself.</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cheeky Riddle]]></title><description><![CDATA[It hides in the unknowable essence of a shadow&#8217;s edge, yet shines as bright as the sun when we let it into our hearts.]]></description><link>https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/cheeky-riddle</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://johndebussyleape.substack.com/p/cheeky-riddle</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[John Debussy l'Ape]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:52:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="iframe.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2F%24s_%21R-1_%21%2Cw_256%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252F110c1110-1b11-480e-95d2-88dfa266b4d3_720x960.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It hides in the unknowable essence of a shadow&#8217;s edge, yet shines as bright as the sun when we let it into our hearts. </p><p>It has eluded catch for as long as thought, and as wide as time.</p><p>The more you muse, the more of it you shall lose.</p><p>For the needy, it will never choose.</p><p>It will never find some of our souls, while driving others insane.</p><p>It is as formless as water, as sharp as a claw, as vague as a shrug. </p><p>It is as hated as the beholder hates themself, and as loved as they love themself.</p><p>It lies in truths and conveys points of inanity. </p><p>It rhymes with nothing, for it is like only itself. </p>]]></content:encoded></item></channel></rss>