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Amanda Kay Hill Feb 2017
You can recycle a
Lot of things like
Papers and cans
And boxes can be
Recycling
When you recycle
You can fun and
Makes a games out of
Recycling
So you kids recycle
That a young age and
If you make it fun they
Love to recycle and
They will continue to
Recycling
In their adulthood
And they also teach
Their kids too recycle
And to save the only
Planet earth we have
To live on and we all
Share it so if we all
Do are part we can
Save it planet for the
Future kids and make
The air saver to breathe
In fresh air and have not
Worry about get
sick from the air
Recycling
© Amanda Kay Hill
2/5/17
Establish a research and development facility tasked with recycling 100,000 commonly used household goods or packaged products back into the original base material needed to remake it into new product packaging. Pass legislation requiring all companies selling products with packaging to buy their source materials from a registered public-private venture allowing any firm willing to participate to do so. Companies must then manufacture packaging locally using source materials supplied by one of the public-private companies. Companies will also be required to hire locally using a diversity and economic income model incorporating or locating the participating companies in the poorest rural counties in the state.










Society grows great when Old Men plant trees.  -Socrates
Toni Seychelle Feb 2013
The ground beneath the stiff leaves is frozen. The cold, brisk air invades my lungs, I exhale, my breath visible. I step over fallen branches and tugged by thorny vines. A red tail hawk screeches overhead, this is a sign of good luck. There is no path, no trail to mark our way, just an old, flat railroad bed surrounded by walls of shale, blown up for the path of the train so long ago. The only ties to remind of the rail are the rotting, moss covered ties that once were a part of a bridge that would have carried the train over a small creek between two steep hills. I see a fox burrow, and it's escape hatch is one of the hollowed railroad ties. I want to be a fox... The trek down this hill is not easy, thorny blackberry bushes and fallen trees impede progress. At the bottom, the small, bubbly creek is frozen at the edges, traveling under rocks and continuing its ancient path. I look up the hill that I just descended, and wonder how the return will go. Keep moving. The next hill will be easier, there are no thorny tangles, just treacherous leaf litter that will give under my feet if I don't find the right footing. The trick is to dig my boots into the ground as if I'm on steps. These hills are steep. Finally at the top, I look back at this little spring valley, I'm not that high up, but what view. Here, there is a dilapidated tree stand, falling apart from years of neglect and weather. Surrounded by deep leaf litter, there is a patch of rich dark earth, a buck has marked his spot, his round pellets are nearby. The saplings catch my hair as I walk by, and at these moments I am thankful for this cold snap that took care of the ticks. A creepy feeling takes over me, so thankful for this snap. A few feet further, as I watch where I am walking, another tussled bit of earth and I notice some interesting ****. It's furry and light grey; I poke it with my stick and find a small skull when I turn a piece over. Owl. I continue my walk, I didn't come here to play with poo. The last time I took this hike was three years ago, on a similar frigid day. It was a lot easier to make it through the shale valleys. Last summer, a wind storm felled trees and took out power for two weeks. The evidence of that derecho is clear here in this untouched forest. I remembered a tree, which now is a fallen giant, that had lost it's bark. The bark had separated and laid around this tree like a woman's skirt around her ankles. Now the tree lies with it's bark. I pass another tree I recognize whose branch extends out but zig zags up and down, as if it had three elbows. The tree signifies my next move, to descend from the flat railroad bed, down to a creek that flows through the tunnel that would have carried the train. The creek is considerably larger than the last creek I could step across. Descending towards the creek leads me over moss covered rocks and limbs, still bearing snow. Outside the tunnel, the hill walls are large stones, covered in a thick layer of moss, some of which has started to fall off due to heaviness. There's a sort of ice shelf in the creek, it's three layers thick and can support my one hundred and twenty pounds. Laying across the creek is another derecho-felled tree. Some sort of critter has crawled on this, using it to avoid the water below and as a short cut up the hill. His claw marks are covering the the limb, a few are more clear, it looks as if the creature almost slipped off. His claw marks show a desperate cling. I walk through the tunnel, in the mud and water; the creek echoes inside. I look above. There are drainage holes lining the ceiling, one is clogged by a giant icicle. I imagine the train that used to ride over this tunnel, I pretend to hear it and feel the rumbling. The last time we were here, we found cow skeletons. We placed a few heads on branches and one over the tunnel. We stuck a jaw, complete with herbivore teeth, into the mossy wall and a hip bone on a sapling. The hip bone reminded us of Predator's mask in the movie. All these bones are turning green. When I was here before, there was a bone half submerged in the creek; I had taken a picture of it but today, it isn't here. I'm sure it was washed away. After our exploration of the previous visit, we turned back. We are cold again, can't stay in one place too long. I climb through the deep leaf litter and over the rocks back to the railroad bed. Passing all the things I've already seen and spotting things I missed. I find two more fox burrows. They utilized the shale rock and burrowed underneath the jutting formations. Hidden coming from the south, the gaping openings seem welcoming from the north. My friends, the spelunkers and climber, want to descend into the darkness but I remind them, it is an hour to sundown, our trek is hard enough with overcast daylight. Wisdom prevails. We pass a tree, we didn't notice before, that was struck by lightening. The cedar tree was split in two and fell down the shale wall. I see the evidence of the burn and a smoldered residue at the base. Nature has a cruel way of recycling. The downed tree still has snow on it and the path of a raccoon is visible, I like the paws of *****. Though the way is flat, the walls of shale tower above us, limiting routes. At one point I can't see through the fallen trees I have to pass through. I have to crab walk under, crawl over, duck again and find my way around the thorny collections of bare black berry bushes. Finally into a clearing, still surrounded by sharp shale, there is another wall covered in inches of thick, healthy moss. I place my hand, taking time to stroke the furry wall. My hand leaves an imprint. I wonder how long that will last.. Back down the steep hill up and up the thorny tangle. I know I'm on the right path up, I see the fox's hole through the railroad tie, and his entrance burrow up the hill. Going down was definitely easier. The summit is literally overgrown with thorns, there is no clear path through. It is, again, impossible to see through the tangle of limbs and saplings and more thorns. Somehow we make it through. We are close to breaking off this path. We know this by the remains of a cow skeleton that more than likely fell from the top of the shale cliff. Femurs and ribs and jaws abound. On the last trip, we placed a hip bone in the "Y" of a sapling. The young tree has claimed it, growing around it. We add a piece of jaw to the tree's ornamentation and move on. We climb down from the railroad bed to our car - parked on the side of the road with a white towel in the window so that no one suspects a group of people walking through private property, past faded NO TRESPASSING signs.

When I undress for bed later, there are many small scratches up and down my legs from those ****** thorny vines. I'm okay with that, it's better than searching for ticks in my head.
I couldn't write a 'poem' about this hike. It was too full of nature.
itsall iwrite Jul 2018
barnet recycling area to be removed 09.07.18

praise to the lord
the drop of penny
will all locals applaud
the green brigade is not many.
the fly tip is leaving
now a clean street will parade
storing waste indoors will leave you heaving
getting you at it was easy to persuade.
all *******
from cardboard to food
weekly bin collections did vanish
are you putting together to conclude.
less services are mental
especially when we are doing all the work
next for recycling i'm expecting rental
are any tempted to go berserk.
cleaner clearer streets
very much like barnet borough
the government to all local councils send tweets
this recycling plan or lack is thorough.
Ahmad Cox Apr 2012
Sometimes we can get caught
Recycling old feelings
Getting caught in old ways of doing things
Not allowing ourselves to move forward
Recycling the same habits
Over and over again
Even sunflowers need the rain to grow
Like recycling scar tissue you refuse to show
Like holding the words to a cookbook containing the recipe for disaster
Like the blood of an open wound placed by the whip of an unruly master
Even sunflowers need the rain to grow
Like when you finally learn the meaning of you reap what you sow
Like a magnificent sand castle washed away by the sea
All the sand becomes one and denies the right to be free
Even sunflowers need the rain to grow
Like the sting from the phrase I told you so
Like a deer caught in headlights frozen dead in it's tracks
Like gazing the stars if we could just climb the smoke stacks
Even sunflowers need the rain to grow
Like excluding truth from what you think you know
Like playing life in a game of poker, and the *** is everything but cheap
Karma has the high hand, face up, read'em and weep
Even sunflowers need the rain to grow
Like running through red lights because all you want is to go
Like a jack of all trades who can't fix his own heart
Like the tortoise that took off before the race even start
Even sunflowers need the rain to grow
Like a hundred oars and no arms to row
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.how  dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...

)            that's all i wanted to disclose...
what comes now,
is all the unnecessary details
that would constitute a prose piece...
albeit in cascade - for the ease
of the eyes bunddled up in a
claustrophobia of a paragraph:

i know: the mere word 'dignified'
seems rather obnoxious...
but... how dignified it is,
to take a walk at night...
esp. when one is recycling leftover
bottles of whiskey, whiskey,
beer... whiskey...

after reading Knausgård vol. 1 -
with his father strapped to the house
with his mother drinking himself
to death...
perhaps i'm also akin...

but... there's "****" to do in between...
good god! mein gott!
greta thunberg! run! i said run idiot!
run to the recycling center with
those glass bottles!
success though: cutting the ingestion
by over a half...

current bank balance?
nearing 2 thousand pounds...
and there's the garbage to sort between
the recyclable and the non-recyclable...
there's the tending to keeping
the house clean...

there's a remnant spark about giving
a toss about some sporting event...
there's cooking a dinner...
but... it seems i miss the man who would
find about an hour and a half
to walk the streets at night...

somehow i missed it -
but... i imagine the sight of a week's worth
of empty bottles in the wardrobe...
i've had enough and...
i call the dog that's the dignity to take
a walk at night...
to never overthink anything except
thinking - that i can leave in the basket
of nothing...

sometimes the ego-automaton jumps
in and makes my walking meditation
fuzzy... that's where i find this mythological
ego of psychology -
ego the anti-narrator...

which implies: not myself... reflexive...
not my, self... the reflective circumstance...

and there's no familiar presence
of an mp3 player (broken, ****** lasted
for 3 years, good enough lifespan)
and no headphones...

perhaps i was anti-radio some time ago...
i've amassed a decent personal library
of audio... but now i rarely use it
having made a discovery of the gramaphone
and vinyls...
and being the late 20th century colt...
i should still be ripping c.d.s onto
mp3... but...
i just wanted to check out what i was
missing...
perhaps... the crazed sound of passing
cars, will indeed, never replace
the cobblestones and hooves...
but... there's a right to heave a sigh...
for no apparent reason other than:
i've met myself this very first time
having aged...

this is not a time for west coast
1990s pop punk or punk rock or whatever
they called it... when you would
either run in gallop jumping
in a jonathan edwards style...
or looking down and walking into
a lamp-post... this is no time to be
refreshing the cinema of youth...
with the offspring's ignition...

not when you're walking: and trying not to think...

also of today: my jewish newly converted
to islam neighbour came round
asking about my mother's slight bout
of depression concerning...
her recent hip-replacement...
and what's still in the post...
the aesthetic surgery...
after all: what surgery, proper...
is also a plastic surgery - an aesthetic...
obviously the muscles and the bones
are intact... but there is always a chance
that waste tissue will be removed...
fat... etc. and it hasn't even been 2 weeks
since the surgery...
and she said: your mum should look
at my surgery scars...
i lifted up my t-shirt and turned
to show her my back... namely my
right shoulder-blade...

and i said to her: you know why i didn't
get aesthetic surgery on this mark
of cain? that's the same reason why i don't
have tattoos...
nothing against tattoos...
i have the only tattoo i need:
a mark of cain and some historical tattoos...
dates... that i keep close to me
from my time in the pedagogy meat-mincer
effort... how it began with the romans: per se...
later began with hastings 1066...
but it would never begin with:
the first battle of Tannenberg (1410)...
so you don't know how i think my mother
is exaggerating?
it's a good thing she's my mother...
she can have her ******* pass...
i'd give her the same ******* pass if...
we were married for 35 years and...
she was a woman i could grow with...
otherwise? the ******* pass i reserve for
children...

i subsequently signed her will...
yes... she came round looking for a second
witness for her will being made official...
or ****** bureucratic paper...
but nonetheless official...
i didn't mention the fact that...
the two witnesses that have signed the paper:
need to be present simultaneously...
i asked her... what's my occupation?
oh... right... i'm a scribbler...
a chicken-scratcher... writer of no
guild... a writ pusher...  

but all i wanted to write was...
i'm not a fan of the haiku...
esp. the western haiku... or a maxim:
i abhor maxims...
but if you put Kant into the juicer
and you spit out the congested
categorical imperative...
and it doesn't sound like the original, should:

act only according to that maxim whereby you can,
at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

id est:

act only according to that haiku whereby you can...
at some distant point of time,
convene for it be a shared experience
in the ratio of a 1:2 point of seperation...
2:4 4:8 8:16...
but that's not really a categorical imperative
to begin with... what sort of "idiot" would strive
for a maxim to become a universal law...
universal laws are maxim spin-offs...
or i'm just blah-blahing too much...
waiting dear god: for the razor's edge (and drowning)...
or a punchline on stage in front of a dumb / mute
audience...

o.k. 5-7-5...
syllables... given the japanese don't use
letter but have syllables instead...
again: i'm not a fan...
if it took my long enough...
i'd find my 5 syllables and my 7 and again
my 5 syllables...
but i am a westerner...
i deal with letters... i don't deal with syllables...
unless they are prefixes akin to trans-...
meta-... anti-... post-...
the western adoption of the haiku implies
the boredom achieved from too many
sonnets... is the haiku the new sonnet?

i'll try... but i'll need to open a dictionary
for this effort...

water knee deep truce (5)
to the drowning man imploring (8)
signature the soul with this last breath (9)

or however many... it's just a passing thought:
i don't know how it would be worthwhile
to think inside a box... standing outside it
to begin with...
a haiku and no punctuation:
if you're going to be puritanical about it...
no punctuation?!
no diacritical markers?!

the Kant reference is just to ease up on:
who the hell would live by a maxim,
a stand-alone maxim at that...
one maxim to make it into the realm
of gravity...

there's the plethora of aphorisms that
are observations that... well...
let's just say it's no an imitation game... (

since how the hell does:
how dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
all of the above?
darwinism in images:

stopped climbing trees...
stopped being furry...
stopped dreaming about snakes...
stopped fearing snakes...
stopped wrestling with tigers...
stopped king kong versus tiger gorgon...
jumped into a whale...
came out sonar Jonah with hell'io Job
to boot...
stopped climbing trees...
took toward the complexity
of climbing rocks...
esp. boulders... later desired
the great big button of a cookie i.e.;
desired the moon...
brewed some moonshine...
build the mirror corridor
at Versailles...
dug up lazy dinosaur bones of
that thick glutton splodge and...
retired the horse... drove a car...
etc. etc.: came across
the happy birthday of death by
gregory corso and said:
that be one of the best recitations
of poetry i have ever heard...
in youth and Paris and Paris was
the signature...

all of this but there's still...
how dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
more to the point...
how dignified it is, to walk at one's own
leisure...
a bottle of england's finest ale...
theakston's the old peculier in one hand...
a marlboro cigarette in the other...
how dignified it is...
to walk: but to also walk... at one's leisure...
not running a marathon...
not... running the concrete or the tarmac
dry with new year's even resolutions
to loße mass... (yes... since weight involves
gravity blah blah)...

this auto-correct science factoid rubric
around each corner...
i can only admit that walking...
is a sport for gentlemen...
cognitive ping pong ensues...
a solo game... perhaps...
it's not a matter of sport...
or attempting gentlemanly stature...
which could be the case...
say... if i were 75... years old...
but...

that's all fine and dandy... the psychology
behind darwinism 2.0
not even copernicus made it that far
with his "revolutionary discovery"...
or not that Ptolemy was still...
index... bibliography and historical
constipation when attempting to be
democratic and historical...
in a single poo'em... with no rhyme...
and certainly no overt-technique biases
to: "identify with"...

it's still an image burning in my head...
the gorilla that would / could wrestle
a lion to sleep with a ripped-off jaw...
the thumb-king of the jungle
and the savannah...
and of course the donning of the conquered's
mane...

but beside all the discoveries in the past
and the present...
i will find myself smirking...
laughing to myself...
that someone will find this too...
i can't stress it enough:

when i see people driving their cars...
some fast, some slow...
walking onto a bus is not a leisure activity...
it's not even a dignity...
it's a time-warp... a short-cut...
besides the point...

even this brain sometimes allow for
the dignity of walking to be eclipsed...
what its sometimes-odd bursts of egomania /
megalomania or all those other:
traits of the rational man...

perhaps this is the first day i've truly
appreciated the sensibility of walking -
much more in that: it became a dignity...
like the time i found the antithesis of narcissus
in my shadow...
once upon a nightly promenade
in the english outer-suburban labyrinth...
20 minutes walk from the fields,
grazing horses... foxes, badgers and...
no wordsworthian naturalism... i.e. the idyll...

superior intelligence, the fork,
the knife, the screwdriver the *****...
the hammer and the nail...
the scythe, the sickle and the lollipop...
the telephone the radio the television
the soap opera addicts...
the bedsheets the bed the cushion
the shampoo and soap...
all of it... but none of it at the same time...
with what comes a priori and with
what comes a posteriori...
the dignity of walking...
perhaps the only state of grace...

perhaps less "abilism" and more - upon reflection...
a mother strapped to a bed
after a hip-replacement surgery?
i.e. in a personal, very personal,
non-Teheran specific vicinity?!

perhaps the most basic meditation is required...
nothing grandiose...
nothing temporal or non-temporal...
something basic...
i.e. spatial... a meditation on cross the street
like a mindful hedgehog that you are...
and not panic driven like a mother goose
with her nursery...

walk long enough and you can even
experience bouts of spontaneous amnesia...
which is not related to actual memories
and their totality...
more in the immediacy: amnesia ex cogitans...
amnesia out of thinking...
10 minutes apart and you can almost
forget what you were thinking of...
10 minutes more pass... the labyrinth spits
you out and you recover from that temp.
bout of crucible amnesia: to forget what you
were thinking about...
which is a variant to that other escapism
of day-dreaming...
since you're walking... and no day-dreamer
is synonym of the thinker who also walks...

this variant of escapism comes of its own
accord... perhaps it's an ontological built-in-mechanism
that when you couple walking with thinking...
you'll most certainly experience these
bouts of "amnesia"... which of course doesn't
include walking in circles... but in a labyrinth
of your unconscious motives...
that the body is dissociated from a conscious will...

since... what sort of thinking exists
on a treadmill... or during running... to begin with?

how  dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
dignified in that: one is not so much able
to come across one's best ideas there...
but that one can simply come across... cogitans per se
-

yes... i.e.: to be free from cogito ergo sum...
to come across the res cogitans medium...
only while walking...
and not like Descartes imagining oneself
sitting at a desk of doubt...

i find no better alternative: walking opens up...
thinking-in-itself... sometimes that's merely translated
as: being... it does not specify / reveal itself
as a: necessity of narration...
thinking is not narration is not thinking...
if you have experienced the ugly spontaneity of
the ego... in that vein of psychology's
three-tier meta-brain dissection of the mind:
subsequently the soul... blah blah...

now i see... this has become a sit-down meditation...
it has to end...
now that the arms have been employed for
a period longer, than the legs were employed
for, prior.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.do you really need a disclaimer, for this sort of work? no, not really... it's not exactly being allowed the equivalency of dropping an in excess of 2000mg of paracetamol.

the one aspect of legacy media, that still has some viability, akin to rekindling the famous extract from the movie: all the presidents men... is concerns for metal health issues of youngsters, who didn't have, the, "privilege" of being exposed to internet ergonomics, other than within the confines of gaming, they came far too late for, what replaced mp3 sharing.... ideas are not exactly sound-bites of copyright infringement...

**** me... do i really have to slap then punch
myself in the face, to remotely stay
awake while drinking ***** like pepsi
sharpshooters?
     i guess so...

   i too, "suffered" from roman bulimia,
the classical kind...
   don't ask me how i managed to make
the esophagus contender of the heart,
muscle...
                 at first it was cheap choc down
the throat, missing on brushing my
teeth for 48 hours...
   then... ******* down the throat,
like the ****-style gimmick of the Watergate
informant...
       came back up, bundled in quasi turds
packages...
               classical Roman bulimia -
eat, regurgitate, eat some more,
hell, now you have a Pompeii style
banquet of the coming of age...
laxatives?
that's no bulimia...
  bulimia is an extension of an ancient
Roman practice, akin to throwing yourself
****-naked into a nettle shrub area...
to get the "itches"...
     that method, involved in energizing
the neuron extension of the skin...
              it's a "placebo" itch...
   nettles, ancient Romans,
and bulimia like the rite of a loss of
virginity of kings...
      festering at its core... of the French court...
with a *****'s teaching apparatus,
leveraging the use of, a single "tool"...
           and even though the ancient Romans
never reached my people...
i get to abuse their phonetic encoding stratum...
bulimia... sure... i, "suffered" from it...
not really, no... i ******* enjoyed
the regurgitation process...
   anti-Grecian pederasty gimmick...
(a) taking a ****
   (b) oral regurgitation
   imitating an ancient Roman banquet
(c) / (d) ensuring the two entry points
are filled by an external source -
wishing for vanilla custard *******...
none to be...
    oops...
               so no one taught these girls
about ancient Roman bulimic
practices?
   you work on the esophagus...
                       by the time i finished
the transition period...
  i automated the esophagus reaction...
like training gymnastics for a six-pack...
no longer ******* down the throat...
you say charge? i think of
a rhino juggernaut...
           so no one bothered these girls
introducing ancient methodologies
to their predicament?
    no training of the esophagus,
no two (index + middle) fingers down
their throat to ease their larynx from
a gagging order?
    none of it?
   they'll grow out of it!
i did...
       drink a liter of ***** per day
and i'm feeling: shimmy!
          upon each nocturnal investment
that i translate into writing...
      anorexia?
    give them excess coffee...
              or strong cider...
      the most pristine aperitif...
    you can't cure anorexia with either
drips or syringes...
   you need aperitifs...
                     but please don't give them
white vinegar...
           you need a balance of alcohol
overcoming the sugars...
     strong beer is alcohol overcoming
starches... won't work...
     coffee and sugar helps...
  both simulate the pristine form of
the marijuana *****...
             it's not poison...
so why should i care?
   oh but i do care... reading this article...
troubled teenagers dodge Instagtram
   curbs on photos glorifying self-harm
...
ever tried burning out a cigarette tip
on your knuckle?
   ever wondered about
    warming up a hand of scissors and
giving yourself an indie tattoo?
   while at the same time...
relying on the mouse principle?
i.e. remaining pipsqueak clean from
making any noise?!
              cutting is so crass...
so unimaginative...
  you will not achieve the adrenaline *****
status of a stab-victim...
   there is no element of surprise...
but...
     if you really want to ingest pain?
hmm... hmm?
            heat up a scissor arm...
   and put it against your skin...
            and then... EAT... the pain...
with what you can surmount in and with,
silence...
                   cutting is too... dramatic...
at least burning yourself you have
not achieved the stature of a shedding blood...
cleaner, more effective,
think of orange recycling bags
collected at the start of the week...

              **** me though...
you seen the comradely behavior
of competing athletes, at the european
championships in Berlin,
   with the pole vaulters?
   Armand Duplantis -
congratulated for having crossed
the 6m benchmark of respectability...
now... that's sport!
football, soccer, basketball,
call it what you like...
   that's not sport, that's business,
that's advertisement...
     that's concussion cover-ups...

Epke Zonderland? also a doctor...
communist Poland believed in
sport, sport on the side,
   sport was never to reach status
of a mono-career investment...
            most of the local football
players from my hometown,
also worked less hours in
the metallurgy plant...
                  that's sport...
   a healthy balance...
which, mainstream sport is lacking...
oh look...
   the women doing the hammer throw,
or the discus...
   not exactly Vogue / Chanel catwalk
material...
    mandible beauties...

    to be honest? the doping affair
in the Olympic sports?
   but a minor setback of credibility...
     i rather watch that...
   than those pitiable 22 ballerinas in soccer.
michelle reicks Jun 2011
I am his soda; he drinks me in

caresses me with his hands

brushes lips against me

for the period of bliss, life is heaven

                                Pure Ecstasy

I am his soda
  
Until one day, unexpectedly

he drops me

on the pavement- Crunch! with his foot.

he tosses me carelessly  

into a bin. He threw me in.

He threw me away.


I am an empty, crushed soda can.

The recycling man soon arrives

melting me, molding me back into myself

He fills my soul with something
  
bubbly and sweet

So here I'll wait

for a boy who won't crush me up

But instead, pour more Love into his cup.
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
i know, rubbed off reading Pound, but scout's honour, but scout's honour, yet again: but on scout's honour it was a collage, and and and that's what could make Ezra's too a moment of weakness with a rainbow of subjects, a page ripped out from an encyclopaedia.

night cinema, and films from to preceding decades
this the current, 2nd of decade of a seemingly
never-ending September -
first - the disappearance of alice creed (a british
                                                         ­                            film),
second - the firm (                                            "           "   ),
the other two american, one an ageing classic -
sleepless in Seattle, and the last one the devil wears Prada -
already the differences are so relentless,
modern british cinema loves to capture grit,
graffiti on estates, meaningful f-off conjunctions,
and boy the slang in *the firm
is as good as any -
one of the few films worth rummaging with at sunrise
with it fresh in memory (preferred it to
trainspotting given one face value:
Bex is way more sociopathic than Begpie, and
he doesn't end up living the easy life in
Miami or whether he is being an artist),
but the problem is... the library is too big, it's the sort
of library you'd find in heaven, although less grand,
already outside the realm of sensible reality,
beyond 2 to the power of 83 (named yogibyte),
we have this library, right now,
the 2 to the power of 3.321928 of a googol,
i.e. a Nikolai Gogolplex... but! it's not technically
a library, it's also a stock market, a phonebox,
a ***** booth, a casino... HMR & Customs, banking,
so technically we're not talking a heavenly library
(add to the list cyber warfare,
everything apart from a librarian's shush
is acceptable here)... but it got me
thinking, that film the firm (set in the 80s)...
three strands of music that interest me from the 80s,
synthesiser music (sounds really cheap now, i know)
but at least it sounds better than castrato rock
of the 80s... the synthesiser music of pseudo echo e.g.,
but these instruments were picked up by kiddies and
it was like a harpsichord to them, given previously
Bach's organs and the grand piano: a pool table
compared to a snooker table...          
and the third strand of music from the 80s... post-punk,
Joy Division (i'm not exact on the dates, blurry lines)...
Bauhaus (the man with x-ray eyes)... Staatliches...
well... post-punk... punk-entrenchment, all that
pre- post- proto- pre-fixation post-fixation...
the darker side of punk...
                                              god, this library is too big!
it's a bit like walking into a bookshop and falling
on your knees in desperation:
you can watch the aesthetic of winter through
to autumn no problem, hell, you might get a mystical insight
into this recycling bin... but when it comes to
the aesthetic of mankind's recycling bin, everyone
breaks down not having read or bothered to
read Melville or something: the price of creating
civilisation and moving away from tribalism -
and again onto cinema... cinematic warfare with
gaming, or cartoon cinema, gaming cinema,
in Seattle in 1993 they still used babysitters, now
the grown-ups sit at home while the babies
go out swinging - games less about joystick
button indentations on the fingers and more about
cinema... cinema more about games than about
meaningful conversations - take that word
games in two ways: social gaming, you know
what i mean: ******* people over;
but seriously, can you believe a band like
the soft moon exists and released an album in
2010 with such seminal songs as
parallels and sewer sickness among others?
two thousand and twelve... i was as much
gob-smacked when i realised
that godspeed, you black emperor! released
their album f# a# ∞ in nineteen ninety eight! 1998! i thought
progressive music from any genre died with punk
and the impatience at yet another solo from
robert fripp when no one wanted to do an air guitar
version of his solos (which largely borrowed from jazz).
Israel Baker Apr 2016
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
But I'm serious, so very serious.
I wish you could hear me.
I am happy though, so lavishly gay and bright.
I wish I knew what it was like so I wouldn't....
I want people to trust me. I don't want people to fear me, to see the disgust that I am, I want them to see innocence, and girlishness and and see me as relatable. I WILL NOT JUDGE YOU! I WILL NOT! I love hearing about you and your struggles, about your sorrows, and I can understand it, because I can feel just like you can feel and I love to feel what you are feeling for that is my only feeling.

I try to justify everything. If I do something I can't explain, or say something I might not like, or think that a person might not like it, I try to justify it with some kind of reasoning. Such as, "It's poetic" or "sounds pretty" or "be worth is someday."

I just want to be understood, and I want to understand you. Can you not hear the gentle bass of the Milky Way galaxy, slowly turning, and us, a virus, an atom, a quantum, a tinny tinny thing doing silly boring things like brushing our teeth, walking, reading, writing, doing things we don't understand, doing things we can't understand, being in love, being out of it, eating candy, having ***, giving ***, doing homework, cleaning, worrying, eating more candy, drawing pictures, thinking, holding, creating, destroying, recycling, creating destroying, recycling, creating, destroying, recycling, can we do nothing else?

Turn, world, turn, sun, around in a slow beautiful bbbbbmmmmmm....
you are so beautiful!
Hands that know what to do,
feet that say things and tell you that life is precious and nothing is funny. Beautiful!
Life is so serious. We do things that are VAIN. To be vain means to do things which have no good purpose. We wash things so they are clean only to make them ***** again.

A man will, in winter, put his heavy coat on, zip up the zipper, pick up a hat and smooth it on to his head across his hair, then, take his left glove and put it on his left hand and take his right glove and put it on his right hand, put his left sock on his left foot, then put his right sock on his right foot, next he puts his left boot on his left foot and puts his right boot on his right foot, he reaches over and tightens the laces of the left boot then makes an "X" with the laces and puts the end of the right most facing lace under the left most and sticks it through the hole and pulls them tight to create a knot, next he creates a long ear-shape like that of a bunny using the right lace and wraps the left lace around counter-clockwise, next he sticks the sideways left lace through the passage that was created by looping the lace around, creating another ear, then he tightens both ears, he makes another "X" with the ears and loops the right most ear under and trough the hole, then tightens them by a process called "double knotting." He then takes this process of double knotting and applies it to his right boot. He stands up and goes to the front door, walks down the driveway and goes into his heated van so he can drive to his temperature controlled desk job. We are creatures of habit. We do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ov.......&...^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&...

I'm tryin' to teach a chair how to walk,
they have legs, but they just can't use 'em.
Ken Pepiton Aug 2018
******. No white guy can say that, right.
People who can truly call themselves ******* can. *****-***** ****, W.O.P.,
maybe they can say ******, okeh. But they say it mean,
knowaddamean.
What'sbout Jewboy?
Can the Kaffen kid say ******?
Sand-******, but not ***** ******. Hecan say ****, too. And *** and *****.

Oy vey, okeh. We can take it. We can take it all. Rules is rules.

That's right. Wanna fight? Wanna be my enemy?

--- Grandpa had a play date. ***- Where's the Fun?
These kids got no guns.
And no enemies. Except imaginary ones.


Greedy little master mind sprouting odd fruits from Pokémon.
Can we make this work? Perfect it, in effect?

Marbles, maybe we can teach that old game and go from there to the funnest parts of FTA... Findtheanswer, like God and Adam played. The rules are some same, bounds, fudges and such. Keepsies, ante-ups and such, too.
Risk is right if-I-can-tation.
Losses can be baked, clayballs,
while momma bakes our daily bread.
Poor kids can make marbles in the sun, since forever, I am sure. Rolly-polly patti and johnny cakes roll marbles into spoons,
Momma knew that stuff. She could shake butter into cream, singin' along Que sera, sera, whatever will be
will be,

but it won't be the death of me,
watch and see,
babu boy oh boy
---
We can play war until we die, but don't tell the children.
They are the price we are to pay. They must believe.

We swore allegiance for security. We thought it best
for the kids to lie.

You know?
I believe, you know. It's unbelieving I need help with.

Can't you see? We swore allegiance and taught it has become the  honor-us-course-us-po-deserve-us ritual. A rite we pass for the protection of the eagles gathered around the body.

We are proud of our children who die taking
the courses called for, we never ask why,
except when we cry. Silently, inside.

It's our role to remember the glory
of our children dying for the IDEA that lives
in the statue of Freedom
under which our laws allow
might is right, if God was ever on our side.

You know what I mean.
Say so. You know the lies are being told.

Stop believing that is okeh, eh?

---
Mussleman dominance meme manifests once more to battle the flood of knowing being re-leased or bought, outright, to aid the seekers seeking the meta game.

F.T.A, remember? Find The Answer. Same rules as Hide and Watch,
"All ye, all ye, outsiders hidden in our midst, in free."

"Send me your- poor, huddled masses",
remember being proud of that idea.
Poor thing, lady libertine, so tarnished now that not even Iaccoca's glory loan could gild the actions she sanctioned in the name of the republic for which she (a proxy mate, feminine aspect of God) stands. Sig-n-if-i-cious-ly.

Seig Freud, we say, with the statue of freedom watching over the legislative body, she stands
quite similar to Diana of the Ephesians,
in her role as mob solid-if-er, if I know my mythic truths been told.
---
Trink, trink, trinkits gits the good good luck,
light m'fire witcha spark and see
a light in the night when the noises pending terrors flee.

Rite, we passed those places ages ago, now we hear echoes, only we know them, for we have been taught,
what echoes ever are.
Our own terrors screaming back at us.

Alot of lies are taught wrong
and a sleeping giant in a child may dream
of other ways to see.
New windows on new word worlds expressed in
HD Quad-processed reality
simulations. You know,
child eyes see right through those.

Exactly that happened. Slowly at first.
Good is more difficult to believe
you are expert enough to try doing than is evil.
Read it again.
This couplet or line, as time will tell.

Don't ignore known knowns,
stand up under the weight of knowing good and knowing evil.
Be good.

We know from conception,
we think,
whatever it takes means
take what ever we think right,
pursue happenstances in the favor of my father's world,
provided for me, the kid.
\
The son, a first-man son,
some several thousand generations removed.
Lucky some body stored the good stuff in the mitochon'orhea, right.
We'd be powerless. O'rhea, double stufft, blessusall.

Otherwise lies are left for kids to learn,
but not to
be left true,
as when they first was told.

Our sibyl e-gran mals tol' em true,
as they knew what they passed through, to the moment, then...

Around the fire, dancing shadows, make them play.
All ye, all ye outs, in free!

See dancing shadows, en-joy my joy, be strong,

long strong, sing along, long, long song

and laugh until you die.
---
Some con-served ideas will land a man in a prison with no keys.

Imagine that. Take your time, it is no passing fancy. Be here,
with me, a while. Pleased to meet you I am, no comma needed.
Now, we may wait, whiling away a time or two is common, in mortal pauses. Are you dead or alive?

Is it dark or light? Do you see in color here, or in gray?

Who built your prison? I built mine. You'll love it, I imagine,

whenever forever flows past those old lies striving for redemption,
recycling-clingy static hairballs and ghost turds
touch, once more,
*** potentia amber atoms in cosmic chili for the soul
of the loaf-giver, warden of the feeding forces life lives
to give dead things. There's the rub.

Spark to fire? Watts to fuel the favor, Issac, can you lead us in a song? A con-serving song for when the cons a fided or feited,
defeat my sorrows and my shame,
let me see Christ take the blame.

Confidencein ignowanceus. Worsen dignitatus evawas.

Blow on it. Soft. The spark landed in that ghost **** you thought you swept away or ****** into a vortex of hoovering witnesses,
if you whew too strong, you blow yer own little light out, and have to wait for lighten-loadin' bearers
to take care from you.

That can take time, too.

It always takes a while to get deep enough to see the bottom.

Cicero, old friend...

ne vestigium quidem ullum est reliquum nobis dignitatis 

[not even a trace is left to us of our dignity]

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignitas(Romanconcept)>

See, from a single spark,
touching a volatile bit o' whatever,
you may see the root of the Roman canker sore
yomamma kistyawit.
And be on yo way,
satisfied minded there do seem to be a way, each day, just beyond the evil sufficiency we find soon after the morning's mercy's been renewed.

And may, if it may be,
ye see a rich man wit' a satisfied mind
and may that man be me in your mirror, as it were.

Carry on, as you were.
Or walk this way, a while,
mind the limp. I'll set the pace.
It ain't a race, y'lil'squirt.

Wait'll y'see.

Waiting is time's only chore this close to shore.

What manner of men are we, who could be our enemy?
What name makes me your enemy?

What peace can you imagine when no words carry hate?
Can you imagine evil peace?
Cromwell n'em said they could make peace wit' war.
They lied.
Their lies remain lies,
evil knowns
good to know, on the whole.

Knowing makes believing count for more than idle
oaths of loyalty to memes mad
from the first of forever to now.

now. stop. This is the bottom. I know the way from here.
Do you?
You can say so, but you never know,
if you never make the climb.

And that can take forever, I've been told.
Fun, for fun. Bees in bonnets and such archaic antics, no pun un intended.
The N word test. I chickened out, but under protest. If I say/said a word to hurt a childlike mind, or an innocent ear, I am not being kind. And the black magi said He could care less, he's moving back to Kingston.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
they (yeah, the paranoid pronoun, esp. in how it's used for abstract coordinates, concretely? conformists) decided it was easier to fill a psychiatrist's gob with my presence, and for psychiatrists to pay the mortgage with someone who they termed schizophrenic, forgetting the fact that the person in question was bilingual - odd how humanists confuse bilingualism with schizophrenia, maybe a coin flip later and we'd get biphrenic? that's pushing it, but it just might work to describe an atom evolved into a human form... basically in two places at the same time: confederacy of archaeological theology - and by being in two places, behaving differently in each stated sphere of observation... that's it though! theology translates as archaeology in science, excavating the designation of the argument of the spider and the spiderweb, the perfect yoga instructor, one position fits all... because scientific positivism is dead... it's dead... we're experiencing a transition into scientific negativism, mainly because there's a plumber's conundrum of a blocked fact-machine... which turned out to be a fat-machine... we're just hearing the same ****, over and over again.

i never knew it, but when humanism was born
it came across the challenges of
Darwinism (Aristotle's footnote),
with all due respect for humanism
though,
             humanism gave us
the most apathetic formulation of
any faith at all...
and do you see a rebellion happening
anywhere concerning this?
i see a bunch of ****-naked Amazonian
nomads singing the huh? huh?! song...
esp. when they see safety-hats and
tractors... me? i live in the
outer suburbs of a Greek city-state...
when you're walking down the
street and see a bare chested driver
of a tractor, and a loser (me) drinking beer
while the police pass by in their cruiser
and don't give a ****... well...
welcome to the Fe (iron) Fe Fe feral land...
(almost a sneeze, but not quiet)
metro-****** pinkies anywhere?
no... root that **** into your brains
you urban wankers... stay there,
rot... keep up the debauchery of
Beckton's recycling centre...
oh sure, keep the theatres open,
with Simon & Garfunkel applause of song...
like ballerinas and fat operas needed
an exercise regime...
Darwinism is brutal enough,
it's brutal, it's not pretty,
looking at it from a creationist perspective
you'll only get brutality from it,
only an Zimbabwe born englishman would
care to champion it... oh look!
a monkey ******* a ferret!
i cried today... my female cat was inspired
when a squirrel started doing gymnastics
on my garden fence, one paw tucked against
its chest... i haven't seen a squirrel in my
garden for a while, i've shown her a hedgehog
once, but a squirrel? try catching a squirrel!
it's like catching the ******* of a mosquito
wearing boxing gloves... or Zeno...
i cried my eyes out, by a squirrel...
acrobatic rats that hate throngs...
the simplest of things bring the greatest of joys,
and a consistency in thinking about
death make the simple assurances of mortality
so much more appreciated...
of course i think about death... why wouldn't
i? so this homeless man has a tent...
they're dragging them in, he says:
i haven't done anything wrong...
the military-industrial complex isn't secular at all...
psychiatrists are the complex's priests...
they're looking for subjects to ensure they earn
while giving oral *** to pharmaceutical companies...
and that's the *cul de sac
truth -
no, wait... humanism's religious doctrine is
Darwinism, can't deviate from that,
keep a kettle and a sun on the same timescale,
i'm Caribbean lazy though...
you with beer and joint, me with beer and another
and another beer and an Apache echo impression
of echoing-yawn,
we have evolved past mating calls of animals...
all we have are warring calls... la la la for simplicity...
or in verse of new Zealander Haka:
                           ****, have no funny lyrics...
where was Darwinism when mating calls became
subtle and we exchanged mating calls for warring chants?
where was Darwinism then?
you telling me i have to own a watch, a mansion,
a nice car and enough money for a child's private
education to make one at all? pretty subtle
and all the more less colourful... you can ask me:
where was god when the Holocaust happened...
i'd reply: where was a decent joke?
apparently Moses died from laughter...
now i'm stuck with having to proof read
the first print of my book... that's going to be
agonising... i hate rereading my work...
and aren't we in a standing still position,
on an escalator, or the journalists are gullible,
i mean they're worse than pigs, they're eating
regurgitated facts... they're the ones that always
end up saying: if it ain't broken, break it...
that's their magnum opus fixation, and
the recycling bin... that's what they're there for,
i bet you a hundred quid that Putin's tears
would have turned into diamonds if they fell
on St. Basil's onion domes...
all these ****-incubating-real-emotion
calculators of the English parliament are worth
a psychiatric sketch show... punchline?
you ain't ever ever getting out, ha ha!
Darwinism is cruel, and people sort of like
the whips of a static history, sometimes they come back
to the 17th century and make a television program,
sometimes they have a chance encounter
to cite something from the only century that can
be experienced with anatomical dissection skill:
namely the 20th, or to be accurate, the 2nd half
of the 20th century... most of the time they haven't
the foggiest about history these days,
they're either electron-clouds of electron-orbits,
ping-pong between these two conceptions...
they're always pro-neutral (proton-neutron
centre) - and indeed the tetragrammaton invested
in Ke$ha... ka-ching! sz sh sharpener of wit...
got to love tactical pop, or the caveman ontological
obituary of buying alkaline batteries...
i bought alkaline batteries last year,
which technically makes me a caveman...
compact disks make me a caveman...
books make me a caveman... i'm a ******* caveman!
drag my woman by her hair...
what a great Darwinism provides,
we're all comparatively stone-age...
i love how we just made all history between that
into cf. snippets, and how the caveman attitude
is supposedly a ****** pill to supercharge our
attitudes into beastly thumps and gurgles and
elbows up the **** thrills...
Darwinism is cruel, Darwinism is currently the
theology of humanism... but once upon a time
the religious aspect (or in humanism's behaviour prescription)
was ascribed to one hour on Sunday...
now we're sorta stuck in a church, 24 / 7...
now we're all our own ritual makers...
we have the holy communions of buying a certain
type of coffee in a shop, or it's called curry Friday
and Saturday takeaway randomisation,
gathering the ready-meals Sunday to Thursday...
everyone having the busiest of lives...
if religion is dead, then i must be a nun.
i don't think Darwinism actually attacked theology...
some people are proper pranksters with
the notion that Darwinism attacked theology,
some get to play Jesus in some biblical theme park...
what i think Darwinism damaged, primarily,
is history... if journalists keep spanning
historical references from here & now and
that greatest ontological excuse: caveman once,
Chanel model no. 2, we'll surely sell many
more shaving equipment tools and sanity pills as we go
along into 24h / insomnia society...
me? i'm out... i'll be keeping my imagination
honed toward the Faroe Islands, along with my sanity.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
.perhaps in my company we wouldn't be... opening a bottle of red wine... to let it breathe... or pouring it into a bowl to give it more air to breathe with: otherwise on life-support machine through the bottle-neck... right here, right now, we have... a glass bottle of beer (13, guinness hop lager) and 4 cans of stella artois (the wife beater's lager, so they say)... yes... beer in cans... for all intesive purposes - a good way to transport beer... in aluminium cans... but we're not bums... we don't drink beer straight from cans... we pour our beer into a tall glass and wait... so the beer can exfoliate like aladdin's jinn in the glass... away from the confines of the can... we don't drink beer from a can... we can drink it straight from a bottle... but if it comes in a can... we pour it into a tall glass... just so... so there's some head on top... we're not english in that respect either... of cutting the head (of foam) off the beer... which is probably why i always order a stout in a pub... you can't pull one without the creme de la creme on top... a head on a beer is what makes it look less like carbonated **** or concentrated lemonade... we're not bums... we drink beer from glasses... never directly from cans - the metal gets in the way... a beer like a wine needs to breathe too.

i found that there are only two types of music styles
that are suitable for drinking -
that's... drinking and not going out -
playing a cat with an imaginary fireplace...
the less imaginary fireplace being:
a stare confined to... watching a pillow...
and the general schematic of a bed...
and sitting hunched in imitation: all crow because
no crow doesn't get you far
on golgotha of daydreams: if only i...
humble servant of dusty feet - the tourist,
the pilgrim - would set off...
         on an amphetamine riddled skew into
a messiah complex adventure...

                     but not me...
                once upon a time the only music
worth drinking to was the blues...
            a long, long time ago...
                hell: once upon a time any music
would do if we all decided to go dancing...
or at least waited for the dance to come of its own
volition and not mine: i.e. the me in i would
just be dragged under the teasing waves
and slurped out to sea...

                   a thousand waves are all but the single
tongue of some swindling kraken...
drinking and random shamanic interludes in
the youth of the night-club...
when there wasn't a tally for score or...
the ones shot down by manfred...
good thing he was called manfred...
   and not some swabian helmut! oi oi!
                                             von Richthofen!
and that was when...
           until came the five beers and on
the 4th it became apparent...
                                  the red garland quintet...
soul junction...

   and it's not... a gerry mulligan's night lights...
piano sentimentality and the ode
to all things urban, cosmopolitan...
                        yes... it's not grenadine in that
sulk of yours... it's cranberry juice...
the city and... the sewers and...
                                 jazz for the urban scenes
of: anywhere but the park...
the graveyard... a choo-choo slowing into
a station... and billy joel come:
mid-life crisis and a new york state of mind...
while over 'ere we have...
     teasing the woods: where concrete ends
and mud begins... thus we can have our Adam...
and...

only today i was walking past his bride...
doing my odd citizen duty of recycling glass...
and buying the amber sedatives (carbonated)
for an evening with some cannonball adderley
or some donnie byrd... or a horace silver...
that's the beauty of jazz...
the music is all there is... the names come and go...
sonny rollins and the story behind
the bridge... and how he would pretend to
but not pretend to... retire and go off and practice
on the bridge so as to not disturb his neighbours...
all the details are there: on the vinyl sleeve
from 1963...

now that's jazz... i don't even want to mind
how pretentious this might sound...
but... it doesn't in that: jazz is jazz in that there
might come some great improv. -
after all: it's all somewhat improv. -
   but you can't really make such basic
generalißations...
        speedy-shoom-of-a-choo-choo whizzing past...
schematic!
   classical music is all a priori...
                              jazz... it's all a posteriori...
how? when people phone in between
1pm and 5pm to classic.fm and they make requests...
they sometimes ask for something specific...
but usually... they vaguely allude to... a feeling...
something "uplifting" - play something "uplifting"...
ergo... there's this... a priori "item"(?)
in the music that's... an expectation...

          i do know what jazz sounds like
a quintent: drums, bass, piano, trumpet, sax...
yes... the guitar... asking the algorithm:
a quintet is five - what is six?
        sixtet - d'uh... sextet... well that's the basic
"i know what jazz sounds like"...
but with jazz there's always this lag...
it's this lagging behind:
    i don't exactly know what i'll feel until
only after i've heard it and in the meantime too...
jazz is all a posteriori -

while classical music for me is all a priori...
given that... it's not exactly improvised:
there's the orchestra, the movie, the script...
   and it's such a music that doesn't worship
itchy fingers of improv. - the stale or rather:
the head-about-to-explode of scoring the music like
a dissected **** of beef...
the cuts for the violins the cuts for the woodwinds...
more so: the almost shy drumming...
the wet-drumming... like rain playing
rattle fingers on tin (roofs)... or what rain would
sound like... if it was made from sand...
either way... jazz is a baggage...

hardly any sort of envisioning a journey from
(a) priori through to (b) posteriori -
and at least with jazz... you never have to really
cite who's playing... in a passing gesture
for all necessary bookmark purposes
of: where i am in the library of jazz...
unlike in classical music... where...
it's either Mozart, Beethoven or then again...
some obscure composer... perhaps ola glejlo...
but it's less about the music per se:
it's about the music of THE composer...
bonus marks for keeping to a rigid diet of one
and completing the herculean task of digesting
his entire oeuvre...

-       so i was walking past the most usual scene...
a car stopped... and she got out...
she must have been no more than 16 pushing 18...
the heavy make-up hid her otherwise boyish
contorts... a short black dress...
and as she got out of the cab...
she had her high-heel shoes in her hands...
   she was walking the cement barefoot...
i peered into her eyes... the lights were out...
perhaps her soul was screaming - perhaps this was
her first disappointment - and it was only... what...
not even 10pm on a saturday night...
my nights of youthful regret usually came after 3am
having to wrestle a berserker...
or how a dog looks like when it takes
to beer with a fond heart and only three legs...
god forbid but "they" would also cut my tail off
to further throw me off balance...
the walked passed and i looked into the cab...
a very, very nervous asian was looking at me
and then her... this didn't exactly look like...
she was ***** or was fighting to escape...
           aren't those scenarios usually stage in and around
woods - without any pedestrians walking past?
call it a trainwreck a carwreck...
                      or just running mascara...
that bad, eh?
at this point... society is a cruise ship...
and i'm stuck with ottis and none of that sentimentality
of the dock: running away with a bag of
chips wrapped in newspaper away from
seagulls... who... are apparently prone
to kleptoparasitism - a real thing... i swear to god...
the animals that want to eat in the realm
of trans-species... dogs have had their
kleptoparasistism repressed: crumbs from the table...
the chicken bones with hopes for
cartilege and someone who... is bad at
cleaning the flesh off the bone: pucker up...
move aside leech... watch this slurp...
ol' hank mobley and wayne shorter...
        one cascade after another...
5th beer in and...

yeah... so that's what a carwreck looks like...
for a girl in her late teens...
the cute black dress...
   getting out of the cab holding her high heels...
walking home barefoot...
she wasn't crying just yet...
but i could see puffy tender demon baron
of the soft cheeks readying to turn into
medussa's stare-grip... but not there yet...
this must have been her first time at "life"
and the night life and saturday...
         the cab driver looked scared shitless...
as if frozen in time... about to have his photograph
taken by a more sensible shadow of his...
i did think she just escaped a bad
session of prostitution...
but not even prostitutes look so ******* gloomy
as she did...

the ******* ***** it up -
the pundit ***** it up - the show goes on...
stage or no stage... an audience or no audience...
those eyes though... not yet crying...
but they felt... like wheeping oysters nonetheless...
you know when eyes are like that...
teasing bulging out... they appear dimmed
at first... but that's a dimming before
the sparkle of tears...
it's the 29th of febuary - yes...
mr. zodiac wasn't kind to those who still believe
in the horoscope but never tried
gambling on a winning team or horse...
it's still winter and those poor feet of hers...
she must have told the cab driver to stop...
hell... half a mile before she would get home...
a 6ft2 115kg sore thumb up with a beard
up ahead: stop! let me walk past him...
that's why i gave an inquisitive stare at the cab driver...
the cab driver was looking at me...
aren't the **** victims the ones jumping
out of the cab as it speeds off or whatnot?
so this was... staged?
              i read the "situation" wrong...
well no... i didn't find a lancelot in me...
there was no door to be held open...
           not tonight...
                                           i was in a mood for
beer and jazz... and luckily for me...
marvel of all marvels...
     haig club (1627) was sold at a bargain...
                        down from 25 quid to 16 quid...
goodbye excessive drinking the cheap *****...
hello: clubman haig... is it whiskey...
is it ms. amber... or is it chanel no. 5 -
                   is it whiskey or is it a perfume?
a snapper of a dinner standing-up...
   the scent of the last bite still on my moustache
even though i had washed my teeth...
the beer bottle opened - a drizzle on the hand
and then the hand smearing the liquid all over
the stinking hairs from an unwelcome scent...
i don't mind stinking like hops...
                  but hops is better than smelly food...

- regrets? ah yes... the "what if" universe at large...
that "whaf if" this and "what if" not...
"what if" yes and... when a man takes to walk
the street at night... he's only looking for empty
streets and... the hope of not seeing his reflection:
which is never about abruptly stopping
a cab and taking your shoes off
and walking in a tight-knit black dress
having met the world and...
                     was it heartbreak or just...
disappointment that... there are no unicorns
and she isn't daddy's precious?

any of the rudy van gelder editions...
                      "what if" i had more than just these
words... a barren wasteland of a flat
with no furnishings, not a book to call it a genesis
of a private library... not a single record
to play... no bed no curtains...
and she was the: honey-catch and snare and...
what if i were still in my late teens and
didn't have these invisible tattoos of historical
dates and the tattoos that riddle bones
that are... "habits of hygiene"...
      by hygiene i imply: ontological fixtures...
immoveable objects of accumulating my mortal
years for this formal circumstance of
the worst magic trick of all...
                   transient and... packaged elsewhere...
apparently going nowhere...

if this was a truly urban scenario...
but we're talking essex...
the outskirts of greater london...
if i bothered myself tonight i might go
to a place where i'd sit on a throne of a stump
of oak and listen to owls...
spot a rabbit, spot a badger... the foxes would
come of their own accord...
and perhaps even a deer or two... or three...
there's no glit of a picaddily circus romance:
when a girl decides to get out of a cab early
and put her porcelain toes on the wintry cement...
as if: supposing she be enticing me...
as i was thinking about the scared-shitless
cab driver...        

to have once upon a time believe in love:
the sort of love you'd see in movies...
but that's of course...
before you'd get a chance to see love...
in opera...
blue pill red pill... spiderweb of fiction...
blah blah...
watch the sort of love in movies...
then go and see an opera...
most notably verdi's la traviata...
  the movies fizzle out and you don't really
need to read this to begin with...
        i was in love once...
it was a love that was in love with itself...
          a mirage a carrot on a stick...
probably something akin to this sort of impromptu...
rescuing a girl walking barefoot home...
oh sure... happens almost every other saturday...

- the beer is for these musings, for the jazz
and for... cleaning the kidneys and a work-out
for the bladder... the shot-at-a-crescendo
will come with the haig club whiskey...
is 70cl really worth 25 quid?

- there's a difference between food with a USE BY date
and food with a BEST BEFORE date...
most notably goat's cheese...
once the best before date expires...
which is way way down the line from
the use by date... the cheese starts to taste
like... ash...

i should know since i know of the alternative
to doing shots of tequilla...
the salt is replaced with licking some cigarette
ash...
the tequilla is replaced with *****...
and the slice of lemon is replaced with
black peppercorns...

so i do know what ash tastes like...
piquant tastes: this omelette of an octopus and
of tongue...

- society is a cruise ship and i'm waving it goodbye...
welcoming a sunset of a sea as calm
as a mirror... telling my feet to take root
and stand... inaccessible...
otherwise... i am barren when it comes to having
some (h. p.) lovecraftian sensibilities from
maine... aloof and anemic... anemic with bloodshot
eyes...

- of course she isn't a mystery...
the narrative would run: the little match girl...
hans... hans! hans?! hans andersen is drilling
a hole into my head about... a woman walking
home barefoot...
yes... but she is walkig home...
unlike the little match girl...
and unlike the little match girl...
this girl was carrying a pair of shoes with her...
it's not my problem whether
i'm the sore thumb that "got in the way"...
a fork in the road: like any other fork...
like any other road...

do you have to reach being 34 to see these
teenage break-ups and regrets come and bump into
you after you've done...
that most spectacular feat of towing a backpack
full of glass for recycling?
where is one to recycle bones?!

- right not all the ***** in the world is...
something of an adhesive... a hitchhiker pollen...
a hard-on of: ****** yourself for a hard-on
just because even flapping a pancake will do right now...
to ease constipation whenever necessary...

- it's a torilla... but it's wrapped like a burrito...
well... it's a torilla... kultur shock -
sarajevo - the entry level shock-awe and
blitzkrieg of drinking from the fountain
of the Haig...

- second tier... to treat pornographic movies
like... early cinema... silent...
otherwise a return to the magazine form...
and the ripe imagination readied for:
improv... or... when was the last time
my left hand didn't feel like an oyster...
and an oyster didn't feel like a leash...
and a woman's ****** stopped being
an hour worth 120 quid? -

             - third tier... the haig club whiskey
is not worth 25 quid... it's over-rated...
you're basically paying for the bottle...
i'll stick to my guns...
only the irish know how to make whiskey
on these isles... bushmills: mellow, tame...
the picts have decided to lodge
a smoking salmon into their barrels to die...
i'm supposed to have an aftertaste of vanilla...
with all that smoke... i'd be happy to taste
hungary and smoked paprika! that would
be a bonus to boot! -

- i can appreciate the picts for trying...
but let's just leave brewing whiskey to the irish...
and let's keep the english away from hops...
they'll make an undrinkable ale from it...
never the lager...

   - armed with balkan rock... standing before
the h'american monolith of tongue and culture...
or... just before what's filtered for the export...

- no... of course i don't think h'americans are dumb...
i just think there's only a naive majority...
i'm going to find the vermin and huddle among
them...

- sooner or later we'll be calling the germans
come spring... for winter provisions...
"keeshond" or: hund... i much prefer the latter...
from under the iron curtain forged from
a broken jaw when biting the curb of:
under the silicon veil... nowhere else to go...
beside Ishrael...
                        
          remains of the ottoman - which is hardly
me put into an iron maiden of akimbo...
where's the geisha and the samurai?!

- is your beard long enough?
      like mine... i tease it... catch it with braille
cardinals: the thumb the index and middle fingers...
twirl it... wait for some thread to tie it together
into a hanging ******* of a bundle...
while at the same time:
          before you... a throng of vermin...
this beard... a magic flute!
the zenith of my thinking...
and ultimately: the nadir of any narrative
that might be inclined to escape and
not become 3D...

- i listen to songs in german...
i put on airs of pride - my chin starts to contort into
the moon's scythe and sickle...
even if the night is overcast with beard,
or cloud...

- then i put on a record that's 20 years old...
deftones' white pony...
and i remember being a teen...
hungry for hormonal diet...
a diet to stop the bones from aching
as they grew extra sprouts:
adverse to the skin and photosynthesis...
bones that were expected to grow
entombed... not in flesh...

- sketches from the gasoline additive when
it comes to a beer, starter...
otherwise: elite... gonna breed on top
of the general... pucker up the tremor for a vibrato
kiss and leech her lips off...
to expose her most pristine:
todlächeln -
                           not a chelsea grin...
the joker lapse... i mean... extending the shaving
lines and just, completely, forgetting there's
any botox involved to grow a peach
from a duck of the reinvention of
the deflating balloon...

   leave no selfie without it...
                   herr grinsen: die / das / die / das...
i keep forgetting the definite plural and
the definite singular... feelz... feels...
maximum impromptu: das bösartigwimmern...
anything in german at this point...
sounds better than...
wenigbruder englisch...
                       dies, mein krawatte beste...
alle schwarz alle weiß:
      say to me... nein pinguine willkommen...

anything to keep these mosquitos these
zeppelins away... alt vater großartig Schwab
from this... herd of minor dicta
of the children of the house of ßaß...
translated nomad from the high pressure
***** basin of:
later, trajectory... later... the yawn and canyon...
and the sky above...

- beer first... whiskey after...
shrapnel... and gasoline... no car... no speeding...
fast but otherwise still walking...

            - a hurrah and the cohort of a hum...
to match the echo of the centipede...
         the silence and otherwise the simplified
complications of a conversation...
the bed torn between *** and sleep...
between saturday sunday and monday through
to friday...
   and the need to drink with someone else...
"the need"...
          
the skulls breaks at the sight of sea-riddled-and-*****
cliffs... daggers persuaded to be forever sharpened...
the fiddly parts of ***** as accountants when
it came to the pennies, copper, and granules
of sand... seized: the rivers of time...
constipated shock value elevated...
                            
                                am i to find a lover when
the orchestra tells me...
these words will never find a dear sir / madam
or circle round for a yours sincerely...
                godzilla... the theme i remember from
the days when the japanese still had control over the beast...
otherwise... an overweight t-rex with...
arm extensions... the lotus feet of the chinese...
which also includes...
the savory diet of... tendering dog meat...
i.e. beating the dog to a plum softening...
which is: then again... not curing the already dead
curated meat...
life aware needs to be involved...
brick by brick brick on brick...
the status quo: made in china...

         cheap whiskey... although in an expensive bottle...
that is the haig club whiskey...
        so much for ezra pound admiring
the ******* ideograms...
what's to admire... when...
it ends up being a crude...
current latin emoji-infiltrated grafitti
equivalent to: CUL8R...
               chow-chuckle-mein-hong-shui-chew?
all that intricacy into the ideogram...
and all that remains is...
bat soup... and an advantage at playing
poker... omnivores...
you'd think that Islam would be...
more geared to break ranks among the omnivores...
like all the fickle gods... a good joke...
they abhor / are told to herd sheep
because: what sort of pig would survive the desert
and not become crispy bacon...
camels are fine too... as are their testicles...
never mind the pork leather shoes and pork
leather belts...
but the chinese omnivores are fine by
Allah: Muhammad & Co....

                               khadijah **** khuwaylid..
wrote the first surahs of the quran...
she was the literate:
the stephen vizinczey epitome:
                          in praise of older women...
last time i heard... muhammad was illiterate...
pray! that i've exhausted sympathy on
him being an orphan...
but not a ******* oliver twist thrown into
an orphanage! b'ooh h'oo...

                     the end... the whiskey isn't going
to drink itself;
as i have exhausted the patience of my bladder...
while there's the remaining concern
for a bewildering and a simultaneously
bewildered peacock... on the hunt for coy;
which is not exactly the darwinian daydream
of the short-hand greek alphabet...
the α-β male thermodynamic...
          the Σ-Δ female harem...
salmon swimming up-stream to spawn...
                             and... Ω-man / unicorn...
                     sha! schtil!
Yozhik Apr 2017
The best part of being an older sister
Is the recycling.  
When a little sister comes to you
Wanting clothes which you outgrew
Looking bright in style.

When a little sister comes to you
With math homework; without a clue
And you can make her smile

When a little sister comes to you
Going through what you’ve been through
Seeking understanding

When a little sister comes to you
And you weave words that still hold true
Never reprimanding

When a little sister comes to you
And you know she’ll never have to do
anything the hard way
alone.
Girard Tournesol Oct 2018
The bright blue bottle hit me like a hint of death
      on the breath of Spring.
I imagined it being tossed out a truck window
by underage teens fancying themselves clever
      and mature and immortal

as if the earth had willed upon them
      that her stolen treasure, Aluminum,
be returned or she’d cause their truck keys
      disappear for all eternity.
      I picked up the blue bottle

tried to feel resurrection
      in a recycling sort of way
felt instead only the hollow emptiness
      of mindless eternal reincarnation.
Winter had been long this year and lately
I fantasized resurrection more than usual

at a field where I stopped to listen to meadowlark and field sparrow calling for mates or alerting everyone to the sin of the blue bottle.
Several deer grazed the unseen first greens of Spring near skunk cabbage and coltsfoot.

At a small stream, I cupped my hand into the icy fast water and raised it to my lips, then splashed my face, then splashed some more, more,
then knelt, both knees at the streambed and submersed my face and head,

in self-inflicted baptism
      for my own blue bottle sins,
opened my eyes, exhaled all my blue bubbles, for the longest of repentant moments,
      pulled out of the water
      gasping the holy Spring air
      for dear life

and thereafter walked each step
      in the garden of resurrection.
> As published in The Watershed Journal.
> As published in Dark Horse Appalachia
> Winner Editor's Choice Award, North/South Literary Canon
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
the torso of stars of the constellation of scorpio is dying, it's weakening; the venomous scorpion tail still shines brightly, and the pliers are bright enough to see even with immediate light pollution: but no street lamp shines brighter than the stars, even the the distance disparity, and indeed if the last constellation of the zodiac becomes dim, i'll begin to worry.

i was given three christmas presents this year,
the third i can't immediately remember
but the first two i can:
two houses side by side,
one had twelve black bin bags and one orange
recycling bag for collection -
the other had a skip in its driveway
with a sign in the skip:
PLEASE TAKE YOUR DOG ****
FROM MY SKIP AND NEVER DUMP
IT HERE AGAIN!
ah... the third present, it's january
and i'm walking without gloves,
in converse, with a short sleeve shirt
and a hoodie and nothing else:
newspaper "dialectics" section writers
say northern england floods of recently
are not due to global warming...
i wonder how much this writer gets paid
to say the floods were caused by orangutan farts,
or the dairy factories of ukrainian methane punch
politics; i really do wonder...
i guess newtonian physics' principles
died with einstein's theories
stuck in the deep end of einstein's parabolas
of solid objects dipped into: speed of light
indeed, it gains momentum because it travels
via parabolas rather than straight lines,
hence the parabolic acceleration: up-down
up-down trigonometry linear functions of
either sine or cosine... the third trigonometric
allowance i cannot explain but it doesn't really
matter when it comes to what i'm trying to say:
relativity of immersion as a sinking into:
time relative to space means it equates at some point,
either death as a point of departure
or life as a point of constant engagement -
and as for those who say the theory is too difficult
and your interpretation of a theory in a different
medium is stupid... well... do the mathematics,
my mathematical + and = are equivalent to adjectives
and verbs (e.g.).
no, what really bothers me with this problem
of the global warming debate is the synchronised
activation of denial with doubt missing,
if it can't be doubted (cause & effect), and if
nothing is to be done about it... the only solution
is to deny it: block a punch... get a tsunami back.
it's bothersome on two levels...
english as the language of globalisation (
not exactly the old lingua franca), but rather
the encircling language, the language of constraints,
lingua amplexa / lingua stasus quo, hardly a language
of trade, a language of monotone -chromatic politics...
is very prone to bombastic expressions:
it has not philosophical narrative in the sense
of a book of philosophy - it merely ushers in
a maxim to stop any philosophical narration or dialogue.
on another level though, it's immersion in darwinism,
educational darwinism of post-colonialism is horrid,
if all that scientific positivism was the zenith of science
between the 18th and 19th centuries, the nadir
came with darwinism... because with science being
tricked to encapsulated popular imagination
the greater proportion of the populace had the easiest
of accesses to a scientific theory (aristotle kept in
the **** in the dark all this time), an with a popularised
imagining of darwinism hell broke free in the 20th
century... indeed darwinism killed off scientific positivism,
and by doing so... all noble and human ideals died
with it... came the mechanisation of society,
the death of the rural life, a detachment from nature
as man took to live above nature rather than parallel with it;
and the new zenith that's the zeitgeist of today?
humanistic negativism, humanistic negativism...
the death of the novel, the death of an interest in
philosophy in the english speaking world...
take as you like...
but when you're a sensitive drinker as i am,
and you watch the 2014 film *i origins
and don't cry...
well... then i guess anaesthetics won't work
when your heart can't feel the calm good apathy
with your many stage frights concerning your
next ingenious plot-line over a little hurt or a little
scare... not courageous enough to hurt the one
that hurt you, but simply passing the hurt onto
a stranger.

p.s. YOU RENTED THE ******* SKIP!
       AND DOG **** IS NOT REALLY ASBESTOS!
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
sample precursor: there are three binding directions of a chemical group (e.g. CH3) to the benzene ring - the ortho-, the meta- and the para-... but i'll ask a different question: what is copernican north what is copernican east a copernican west or a copernican west without a "flat-earth" / how else to read / navigate a 2D map going from point (a) via vector (c) to point (b) along the short-cut of the hypotenuse - which, isn't a short-cut, but the logical conclusion of walking neither the middle path nor the right path, but the logical path? we're no astronauts... we didn't see the proof... we can only entertain the "idea" of a 3D object we live on, but we're still strapped to a "flat earth" in order to navigate... endless stories of how GPS tech. fooled people off the edge of a cliff... "flat earth" is no reverse psychology ploy... i'm no ******* astronaut... i never stood left right or center on the moon to have the foggiest sense of admiration for that awe-balancing moment that leaves so many deluded in it being otherwise: first come first served, last come: what's there's to serve that last man if not merely the drudge-report of a commute? besides... trans- and cis-, why are people borrowing from chemistry and attaching gender to what is exlusive to chemical compounds? look at them... pop chemistry... cis-trans isomerism... fine, let these people have that... my new n.e.w.s. (north, east, west, south): orthography, something clearly missing in the anglophone world (no diacritical markers, i and j do not count)... ergo? orthography = east... paranormal = west... since the west is obsessed with either aliens or hush-hush military projects... now... both north and south are meta- coordinates... on the basis, on the basis of what? two words really work well to establish a foundation: from ars poetica? metaphor (borrowed from a change of mind - meta- and -phren - mind, a change of mind, all mental illnesses are changes of the mind, alternatives to alleviate the stranglehold of the commune of the greater picture known as society)... but... there's also metaphysics... which is in the interest of philosophy... how else not to explain the obvious, how else to treat both the reader / audience as the well informed genius(es) but mistreat them as would be grander genius(es) if the socratic endeavour of "pretense ignorance" was not to be established? it's a hard juggle... east is already well established in orthography, west in paranomal... literally: metaphor - a change of mind, literally metaphysics - a change of groundwork physicality of things... a rock remains a rock in either "heaven" or in "hell"... metaphysically there seems to be a direct translation... this is why i'm terrible at crosswords, this whole puzzle structure of either working from a direct definition to the word itself, some random geographical posists, some historical posits, some outdated out-of-vogue words related to specified period idiosyncracy, a tinge of the therausus... my current crossword is an interchange: meta-phor, meta-physics, meta-phot, meta-physics and on and on it goes: even with the isolated prefix of meta-, if i return to the words: as they are... would: denoting a change of thinking (state of mind) or... denoting a change of physics, i'm met with metaphysics, i.e.: a branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles... sounds like a priori physics, yet all i can fathom if i wrestle this word to its casual use: isn't it a posteriori physics?! the what comes after physics? i should think that most people understand metaphysics on an a posteriori basis rather than an a priori basis... hence the question: what happens when we die? last time i checked: death happens last... birth happens first... any question-worthiness (according to heidegger) should begin at: the beginning rather than begin at the end, in the same way that all questions should be sought in a medium of predating the dates of events, rather than with a spirit of hindsight, hindsight belongs to the "what if" of history in that dynamism of expressed time... on the canvas of an infinitely expanding space: we seem to be riddled by a very cul de sac concept / expression of time: our quill - given that ****** didn't learn from napoleon when it came to russia... perhaps finding out what copernicus found out: "we" figured: get me off this ******* celestial carousel where i can't even feel the dizzy immediate of a ferris wheel! again: i'm terrible at crosswords, sudoku? no problem... but words: if not gushing out of me, waiting like a lizard predator for a linear narrative spew? count me out... i don't play with words, i use words... i'm a wordsmith, hence the ethnic origin denote: słowianin: slav - i don't know where these west-saxon punks derived their etymology from: słowo = word... *****-liquor juice teens thought it was: oh fo' sho' smart... still: metaphor, metaphysics... metaphor... metaphysics... disgruntled with the immediate compound readied for pop use... meta-physics... the vector is the prefix... why do philosophers push metaphysics so much, but in turn rely on the crutch of metaphor? to change their mind, if metaphysics is an abstract theory with no basis in reality, then the schizoid / metaphorical mind is an abstract in an abstracted theory of the mind - which has "no" knowledge of reality, or rather: "reality" excludes such a mind from ever absorbing an expression in it... a schizophrenic can't explain the reality of a person who can solve crossword puzzles... just as someone who solves crossword puzzles with a fear of alzheimer's: who treats the fatty tissue that's the brain as a muscle... given that the cells of alzheimer's disease are killer proteins... proteins as the antithesis of white blood-cells that feed of fat tissue... after all: what else could the brain be if not fat and water? slow burner... first the sugars, then the more complex carbohydrates, then the fat: last? the proteins... the process of starvation... you want up? you want down? again: metaphysics / metaphor... ta meta ta phusika... the things after the physics... so what's with the inverted: prior things? hence people associated a life after death... hence how philosophers have to escape into the poetic realm to quickly change their minds on the definition... a change of mind is much easier than a change of what physicality entails... most spew metaphors but keep on course... after all: given the genesis of the metaphor, a metaphor is just a tool, a humble stop-off pause... born from humble poetics: it's only a literary tool, it's not some grand pillar of morality associated metaphysics, which nonetheless dictates: first principles come last and last principles come first... here's my crossword puzzle: metaphor, metaphysics, meta-alpha, meta-beta, metaphor and the meta-alpha, metaphysics and the meta-beta... etc. etc., i will not solve this crossword puzzle, even though it doesn't look like a crossword puzzle... it's a narrative crossword puzzle, i'm just looking for the sort of fixed point people associate with prime words: red, left, blue, right, up, fox, dog... words of readied vocabulary, readied vocabulary dissociated from puzzled vocabulary... i want to established a fixed permanence of the dissociated close proximity grounded in the meta- prefix of the words meta-phor and, meta-physics... i'm starting to find this impossible, given how the words have dissociated themselves from the grounding in the meta- prefix... phor alias phren (mind) and the whole gush of isolated metaphysics of beginnings: meta a priori vs. meta a posteriori - and of course: meta a- apriori... hell if i can't solve crossword puzzles: since i already have a crossword puzzle in my head... what am i to do? try writing pop?! a dog does what his master orders, a jester tells a joke his king would find amusing... i'll just treat this enclave of an audience as a bunch of people subscribed to ulterior forms of voyeurism (dissociated from pain / pleasure gratification, esp. that of a ****** nature).

.you know like in latin you had the interchangeable tongue twisters æ and œ? well... english resurrected one more... au... oh stralia... auntie; ******* hell i've been speaking this since aged ate and i still can't get my tongue into that phonetic plughole... or what's that onomatopoeia for: it really hurts? awe... nah... aw... aw... well no cute kitten about to say aww.

well it began with the usual... i wish i didn’t...
sitting in the autumnal garden
drinking coffee and eating a nicotine croissant,
watching the fog recede into nothing
while the earth showed its naked cleavage
after what seems like centuries of arcane dryness
befitting a story of an egyptian idol...
then the panic set in...
what to cook?! what to cook?!
my mother is away visiting her parents in poland,
who celebrate the feast of all saints with the usual
tackle formidable in poland:
forget the paris fashion week, forget the london fashion week...
forget the next gucci advert...
all the action happens in poland’s annual all saints’ fashion week...
through the cemetery (ahem) cat walks
(more like death on rollerblades donning a tutu
and looking fatter than size 0 models)...
because that’s when the fur coats are worn,
the make-up is heavier and everyone comes
to discuss the materialistic jealousy of a small town...
it is a small town after all...
death knocks with all the nine cat’s lives just to prove
the point...
anyway, so i’m the head chef, and in panic
i search for a recipe... i’ve only got pork on the ready
in the recognisable frozen state...
but i also have shrimps... tiger prawns...
so i look through the usual suspects... thai green curry...
ah ****! no coconut milk!
what’s it going to be? prawn korma curry
(better mild than hot i say, with all this maple syrup
and honey colours about... talk about decay),
active ingredients? chilli powder (1/2 tsp), cinnamon
(1/2 tsp), turmeric (1/2 tsp) and ground almonds (2 tbsp),
there ready... looking suntanned my gorgeous twirls of seabed manure...
enough to spare my father making himself sandwiches (i always
disguised my “dyslexia” by associations... sandy witches...
the t broke the barriers and the floods entered)...
with toasted nannies / au pairs... relatives of some sort...
then onto writing my father’s invoices:
project plaistow hospital and some housing development near
the city airport... beckton we call it... backwards and forwards
stink crowned with drinkers regurgitating on the pave...
now that is a *******... recycling centre or horse manure?
then to tesco... for the nightcap...
oddly enough tesco has become a friend of mine once more,
i divorced the turkish shop, they added 10 pence to the polish beers,
now i’m on the sedative medication of this bottle bavaria beer
and whiskey... 1 quid for the former... 10 quid for the latter -
i’ve sold my soul! never mind...
then to the beacon that’s home... it’s night... it’s spooky...
it’s essex: that non-touristy place in england people with passports
never dare to visit, shambles.
well one thing came out true... none of the above though:
you ever consider the theory of the aeroplane syndrome in writers?
you know, like with rock stars you get the full package,
you get the aeroplane and the retrieved delay of the engine mushroom,
but with poetry (which is competing with music,
philosophers just wait in that queue for the cheese, wink, whine and wrinkle)
you only get the sound... that delayed mushroom...
you see the poet but never hear him...
it’s a typical delusion i’d call parallel or even adjacent to narcissism,
you walk down the street and the closest you come
to someone recognising you is a stranger uttering out: ‘hey richard!’
‘name’s matt mate.’
‘oh... sorry.’
it’s this aeroplane syndrome theory... it’s perfectly acceptable...
you have the image but don’t have the delayed sound...
you have the delayed sound... but you only get a photograph...
you have the english national health service mental health unit crisis...
and then you have people shunning intellectualism
trying to cure people by burning / not reading philosophical books;
the day ends with drinking and reading
an article about keith richard’s antics in the sunday times’ supplement
and the thought: well i gave her a stabbing chance
at feminism... she thought the active ingredient in anti-contraception
pills was placebo... she phoned and gave birth to me...
i said abort... you’re no post-teen mum at university, you won’t be...
******* was great but i’m not that much of a match from a cosmopolitan magazine quiz
(as duly taken on my way from st. pestersburg to moscow to see
metallica play), plus there are no roofing jobs in scotland...
the scots have mountains already... there’s no point building
scratched sky skylines with mountain ranges nearby...
so even though i went to a catholic school...
i did my first redemptive act by reading about gnostic heretics...
and not getting confirmed being the second...
i would have not taken first communion... but playing the xylophone
at the nativity play was too much fun...
plus it is the only salvador dali bit of the story...
after that you have st. sebastian...
plus you see where this is going... the greeks translated
the tetragrammaton into the gospels
of st. matthew, luke, mark and john...
and the romans were duped into the legality of
things... first name, second name, confirmation name...
surname.
ottaross Aug 2013
Once it was garbage, refuse, trash.
A jumble of foul-smelling detritus hauled to the curb
And removed by sinewy men
Contributing a harder day's work
Than anyone else in the city.

Our energy now removes its entropy.
Sorted and classified into coloured bins,
We add order to our rejected matter.

Specialized trucks arrive to collect
The date-synchronized bins
Emptying them into functionally compatible mechanisms.

Most desolate is the black box of paper and cardboard.
Brochures and flyers, old magazines and letters.
Annual reports and cereal boxes.
Once these were enameled with crafted sentences,
Painstakingly typed, edited and debated,
On the monitors of copywriters.

Now they are just millions of words printed on flattened fibre substrates,
Jumbled into the bruised and scarred black box,
Entering into the recycling stream.

The nouns and adjectives,
Prepositions and gerunds,
All jumble together.

Fragments of precisely-crafted sentences and paragraphs
Are gradually broken, shredded and pulped.
Incomplete thoughts, broken phrases
Like those of a rejected stranger
In an lonely, unknown country.
Then words without context.
Then just disparate letters
Are all that remain.
Their  M  ea  N inG
G  r a Du all y
is re mov
e d
.
Zach May 2014
When I walked in to biology class a couple days back,
I found a gum wrapper
sitting on my desk.
It was torn in half, with the remaining piece folded
right side over left.
It became apparent that someone had left it there,
deeming it unimportant.
As I sat there in biology class, bored as hell,
I began to twirl that little piece of paper
between my fingers.
All of the Wrigley's, printed across the outside,
became acquainted with the space between
my thumb and forefinger.
But when the wrapper fell from my grasp
and on to the floor, I realized
how easy it was
to let it.
Hours could pass, even days,
and no one would bother to look
at the crumpled piece of paper
sitting on the floor.
When I extended my foot to guide it
back within my reach, it came to me
how appealing the green box of recycling
looked too.
Here was a gum wrapper, an inanimate object
of no apparent value, forgotten by a student.
But it was not the breaking of the no gum rule
where things went wrong.
The real prize, most would argue,
was within the wrapper.
The rest should be trash.
But, despite the laws of recycling,
the wrapper was left here,
sitting on my desk,
in biology class.
I decided to pick it up.
Lawrence Hall Aug 2018
I.

         “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

                      -Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

            -Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day
Mateuš Conrad May 2017
11
.ich bin der feuer, das bloß isst, und isst, und isst... und... isst; ein feuer das für immer verbrauchen!

i counted...
you know how many times, it takes a male
sparrow to approach a female sparrow,
            to impregnate her?
                                                 11... ELEVEN -        eh-lé-ven...
                            é-le(h)-ven...
­             times...
                                          it's almost like
******* for the darwinists...
                                   at least the marxists say:
                                 woman ≠ mantis ≠ black widow spider...
the biology of marxism is stated, plainly:
we exclude all other biological products
of this earth... we accept a case for bio-diversity...
    but what will transgender ever do for us?
as asked, simply an e.g.
                       marxism doesn't draw conclusion
from the animal realm...
     it's not supposed to...
                          you want to compare yourself
to a mantis?    **** me! go right ahead...
       "eat" the man in the legal courts...
                   bite his head off... or at least make
his head focus on the vector alimony.
                 marxism is species exlusive...
            social darwinism? it's species inclusive...
hence the comparisons...
                                 women as black widows...
       it's ******* sick... at least compare yourself
to a ******* serpent...
               which, i'm trying to find the ****,
and eyelids on...
                                    huh?
                  ­ last time i heard snakes don't blink...
and that's auto-suggestive of the question:
   how do they take a ****?
                      i can't call the cards stating a
"cultural" marxism... since what is cultural,
                                      is actually darwinism.
by now, marxism says: stop the ******* comparison
of the highest form of mammal (human)
                with the lowest form of reptile (insect)!
*******!               and if that's not what's going on,
then i'm either dead, writing from beyond the grave,
of plain stupid...     the self-raising flour type
                                                 of argumentative(s);
the moment they stop denying that cultural darwinism
doesn't exist?       that's when you have an excuse.
me? i have my whiskey, and my cigarettes,
    and some fleetwood mac...
                                     and i live on the borderline
between an urban environment, and the countryside...
       what's one of my favourite hobbies while drinking?
sorting oout the trash... i have this fetish for
     recycling... i get all itchy fingers, like an octopus
when it comes to sorting out the trash...
          like a german with his wind-farm's worth turbines...
i love recycling... those orange bags...
                   you know that marxism was born from
             the meagre material of hegel's lecture notes, right?
and that mongolia was the first communist country?
     yeah, they experimented the ideology in mongolia, first.
anyway... getting drunk, and taking out the trash...
        recycling...    for some reason, i can only compare it
to riding a bicycle in the english countryside...
    or the sound of a french horn... compared to a cow farting.
a maine **** farting:
**** me, that's like seeing the taj mahal!

p.s.
i find it uncomfortable to find millenials
faking praises of the gen-Z...
ping-pong in the modern labyrinths
of shopping, really?
you said your bit, let me say mine...
   people are not made to become
precursors?! really?!
   problem...
as a male... an older woman drunk
looks pathetic:
an old man drunk: eh... that's just normal...
an 50+ aged bachelor:
no problem...
a 50+ "maiden": that's terrible...
a solitary man ageing doesn't
look half as bad as an ageing woman...

   who looks better:
roger moore "vs." helen mirren?
too many predictions /
past the common spreschen:
predicts in association to
a respectable lingua...

what are, "my" precursors for the worth
of completing myself...
i hear the warrior-"philosophers"
spew...
    in light of infanticide...
man up man up to, what?
   what are my ambitions in
and to thorough life?
              none resemble the affects
associate with serving the ambitions
of a genus, of a species,
of a cultural darwinism narrative,
as if to, magically,
counter the cultural marxist narrative...
i am to counter?
really?! what's there's to counter?
all the idiot will be half-way through
breeding while i'm planning
my exit strategy...
the human species will be fine
and dandy... whether white or copper
skinned is beside the point...
i just don't tend to appreciate
abortion frivoloties and whatever remains
of masculine ambitions...
well i already know what "masculine ambition"
involves with the opposite ***...
within the confines of oneself...
hello prison esque "return the favor"...
shoved my head up my own ***
for too long i guess...
or a not deep enough pocket of "spare" change...
to fund:
               how many moments of insight will
you find listening to a high-heel
on a vinyl rack when a vinyl is missing?!
as many as i would ever have...
   nooooooooooooooooooon!

    what have i not obliged myself to become
to counter social expectations?
i am a social nuisance...
    a culmination of the reigning pathos...
but a sorry state of affairs
is truly a woman in her 30s and her 40s
with... more an abortion in hand
than a birth of a child and a second child
to come...
  a drunk woman always appears more
forlorn than a drunk man....
as a man: i am persistent in providing
myself with the ambition
of giving birth ti myself,
even after i am born...
   i am still to be born,
in that i am to give birth to myself:
a feat, which will finally materialise upon
my death...
but a woman?
     if she hasn't ventured into her
biological realism of spawning birth...
that outcompetes her own
intellectual endeavour and surpasses it?
i don't have that existential luxury
of an existential fulfillment process of
the "easy answer"...
the best i can accomplish to compensate
a replica in terms of being pregnant
is harvest an array of parasites...
tapeworm or cancer...
certainly not a matthew,
or a samatha, or a malachi,
        or an amelia.

                   the closest i'll ever come
to an experience of a foetus is my own ego...
to learn to disembody myself in the variations
of:
   (a) the reflexive: myself, and
(b) the reflective: my self...
                  women have the easy existential
explanation: to provide the continuum narrative...
"we", men? the sort of ******* that comes
in between, the custard explanations,
the excuses worth the ingenuity of "problems
solved".

   question is: where these the "problems"
to begin with?
    this desolate man still concerns himself
with tennis:
two players...
an array of umpires... the size of a football team
(11)... and the ball collector boys / girls
(6)...
       an old bachelor... is half the problem
of the half of society's ills...
                   but an old maid / spinster?
        
a drunk man can retain his stage of funny...
but a drunk woman of the same age
is just tragic.
Love is a recycled word,
used and resused in time and again.
Love like so is that of a chliche,
brief and ultimately unfelt.

It is through its brevity that
we discover that it is all but
what it says it is.

Love is instead chaotic,
that which blurred lines
between affection and hatred
fuse into one and engulf you whole.

No one understands this more
than the veteran lover.
Whose heart has been broken and
torn and kissed together all over again.

This is loves sweet embrace.
It is vicious, passionate, understanding,
and complete insanity.
It is the turmoil that can give us purpose.
It is the purpose that will give us turmoil.

And I surrender to it.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2019
what's the biggest difference
between 20th century's
french and german
existentialism,
    and the 21st century's
primarily, anglo-sphere,
realisation of an existential
   "crisis"...
           anti-jew meme...
         the globalist octopus...
imagine...
     some people have
recovered from an existential
crisis, having established
vast constructs of thought
way back in the 20th century,
namely
the french, and the germans..
but...
my oh my oh my my...
the anglo-sphere of linguistics
has only, "just now"
awoken to this...
   quiet a predicament,
wouldn't you say?
                         fertile ground...
oh sure, there was existential
angst in the anglo-
sphere among irish
pillars...
                beckett, joyce...
but concrete architectures
of thought, regarding existentialism,
seem to be absent...
  so... counter-argument:
so how come i can
freely buy a copy of some
german philosopher,
a french novelist turned
philosopher...
           but...
  i'm skint... when it comes
to english thinkers more
or less associated with
my status, rather than stance,
on contemporary "translation"?
   elitism...
no... it's not that...
      i could have just well
have procured
a life helping out my father
in industrial roofing...
             i didn't mind roofing...
it's not an exactly pristine
labour of love sort
of environment...
the scottish widows' h.q.
roof near st. paul's?
        me.
   i was part of that
monstrosity...
       but... come again?
but there are some many attachment
cursors when it comes
to an anglican take
on "revising" continental
existentialism...
        whatever crisis
the continental people
felt, and consolidated
the 20th century people...
is only just starting to bud
in the anglo-phonic world...
start-up, island,
end result,
    h'america and australia...
there was never a question
as to why, or if,
the english-speaking
people would ever entertain
existentialism,
but, suddenly they are,
at least starting to look
into the pit,
from their ivory towers...
immediate escape
impetus?
      reach for the fictive
narrative,
                disavow journalism...
make journalism bedfellows
with political rhetoric...
there's no debate...
circus, however you look
at it...
             you can't fathom
an abstract variant
of the german or the french
mind, gripped by
an existential critique,
a piquancy,
    a pedantry...
in the english speaking world...
there are,
just simply...
   too many attachments
to deal with...
       - growing a beard:
meant exactly that -
eat ****.    
         i don't see where
there a "me" to be found
in a (0, 0) starting space,
of net-worth-"work"...
     coumpters-freeze
network...
for a language...
that ridiculed,
or became succinct
in succumbing
to its anglo-preferences
of objectifying counter-standards
for its own...
shortcomings...

  what has 20th century
existential philosophy have
to do with "anything",
esp. if arrived from
the either french
of german, cultures?

we have Joe Slave over 'ere...
oh right... sorry...
paweł nowak....
just took joe stephen slave's
role was
the person, the hands,
in a recycling factory...
do you mind?
  rather:
do you mind...
teaching your natives...
   to...
   and you know how that
cindarella story ends...

introducing existentialism
to the brits and,
generally,
  the anglican variety of
the tongue, being
used...
   will end up as, failure...
the 20th century
taught me this,
the irish failed,
the french
and the germans...
basically a "foreign" idea
is more than just...
******..
the people are ******,
with paradoxes
of their women...

                sure... a bit like
Iceland...
oh, ****, a bit too close
to the continent...
like madagascar
  is to africa...
and sri lanka is to india?
i'm not 'ere to care to
the idiosyncratic
concerns of island people...
contra the, "collective"...

island people will forever
remain island people,
"solipsistic", idiosyncratic,
idioms...
            i can't change that...
always prone to export...
but never to import...
    island people,
       the **** is there to say?
ever bewilder yourself
over chanel 4 news...
and how...
  john snow is slipping
into dementia?
      you listen to the cue?
no?
                  sorry... john...
dementia on the horizon...

attempting to adapt
existentialism into england
will fail,
given their moral high-ground
of the "migrant crisis"...
it's an island...
  the borders are clarifying,
distinct,
        sure, the people can be *****
when their language
is bored in being
a "lingua franca"...
         but other people have
other, in-debt defences...

western slavs?
ever hear a spaniard speak
pollack, just because
he hiked with a polish girl?
yeah... mahler...
                       violins and ****...
you only listen:
                  for an idea...
it comes, it comes,
it doesn't come...
well... you move onto
some khachaturian...
        so,                 no biggie...

you can't import continetal
thinking to an island people,
they have no concept
of borders...
their naive presupposing
barrier, centered-ground is
unshakeable...

   existential philosophy
"meme" rate of survival is... ?
0.1,
binary, negation, an affirmative
statement,
and then the fiasco...

       it doesn't help
that there's an alternative
outlet via h'america or australia...
i'm not looking
at the "bigger picture",
when there isn't one...

     20th century existentialism
will not work in 21st century england,
or any english-speaking world
to begin with...
there are just, too many,
attachment points,
         as many nurtured
nostalgia avenues
as there are amnesia riddled
currencies of attention
exhaustion...
        it's just a pristine model
to revive the serf...

there's no point reading existentialism
to a people,
so far lodged in their
isolationism that they
can claim, both an island-stature...
and two continents,
by extension
       of stating: "being aware"...      

i guess you have to be born
on the continent
to read anything by 20th century
writers,
but... trying to implement
the word...
into the idiosyncrasy
of island-dwelling people,
akin to the English?

                    i'm not even going
to bother trying...
they're island-folk...
   they "think" of borders akin
to coastlines...
and not migration
fake bordering of a contradiction
of peoples occupying
a quicksand pit
of looking at a geography map...
island-folk...
  they know border...
because they know... island...

you can't translate
something that's already
paradoxical to them
  (hypocritical, is not a milder
term of usage for the desired
execution)...
     no...
                not going to happen...
two islands,
some set of continental enclaves...
culture...
whatever you want...

             i've lived with them,
even though i've lived pretty much
among either the irish migrants,
or the scots...
    you're not going to translate
an island, into a continent's
auxiliary...
  right now...
you'd think that
   Estonia would become
characteristic of an island-people
auxiliary mentality...

       i can't blame these people
though...
   an island environment
provides an island people
mentality...
    if you have never been
part of a congregation,
geographically...
   yes...
      but they're borrowing
continental idiosyncracy...
****** *****...

   Iceland?
            yeah... oh yeah...
they're hot on the topic of what
island life is like...
being so...
   conservative that they even
have developed apps
for people to check their
genetic proximity
and any immediacy to live,
+ baggage...

      the Brits were always 'ere...
the Icelandisch?
were always there...
          and...
  sorry... for the already given
postcard: wish you were
here analogy of...
            curiosity killed
the cat...

           but island dwelling people
will always be,
an island dwelling people...
right now,
you do what i do...
you play chamaleon...
  "sociopath"...
                you...
begin with: a-pathy...
          without pathology
looking for... what requires
you to mingle with the most
pathological examples of
a hushed sanity of society...

          and...
          your luck, as well as mine...
nothing really happens...
like butter smeared
over a gently toasted
piece of toast.

hello tomorrow.
Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us-
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
******* with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait,
in their short time,
like little utero half-borns,
half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands
for twenty-five illicit days,
the sun crawling inside the sheets,
the moon spinning like a tornado
in the washbowl,
and we orchestrated them both,
calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette,
that played over and over
and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable,
as the rain will on an attic roof,
letting the animal join its soul
as we kneeled before a miracle--
forgetting its knife.

The daisies confer
in the old-married kitchen
papered with blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for they stand for a love
undergoihng open heart surgery
that might take
if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand,
even in prayer,
that I am not a thief,
a mugger of need,
and that your heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.

I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide.

I will observe the daisies
fade and dry up
wuntil they become flour,
snowing themselves onto the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.

For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning:  DANGER!  THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of that orange,
the diamond, the carrot,
both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,
and the love,
although Adam did not know the word,
the love of Adam
obeying his sudden gift.

You, who sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,
both the Camp Director and the camper),
you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,
and calls and letters and once a luncheon,
and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't!

Yet this year,
yanking off all past years,
I took the bait
and was pulled upward, upward,
into the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me!  Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it!  Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and planted the seed that dives into my God
and will do so forever
no matter how often I sweep the floor.
kirk Oct 2018
I came along to your garden, to see your chillies growing
Unaware of what laid in wait, or what was really showing
There stood a glass a lidded drink, familiarity of knowing
If that's what I think it is, I don't want it overflowing

Do my eyes forsake me, is that a fluid from the body
Is that froth of a good beer, or from a head that's shoddy
Does it look like what it is, a very dodgy toddy!
Ghoulish drinks will turn you green, like Goblins are in Noddy

What the hell you thinking off, with water that's distilled
It smells like the local gents, so it should not be spilled
I don't mind a special brew, but this time I'm not thrilled
Unusual cocktails are okay, but not ones you have filled

Aren't beverages supposed to be, refreshing and thirst quenching ?
You say that it's good to drink, but really it's gut wrenching
An endless supply you may have, but it should be toilet drenching
Don't ever make a wankers drink, by using a fist clenching

You wouldn't want this drink on tap, it defies imagination
It's just the same as a lady, drinking her own *******
It maybe the water of life, but it's just urination
Aqua vitae is not my idea, of a real drink designation

Even just the thought of it, makes me feel sick and hazy
To drink a glass of this stuff, you must be ******* crazy
Well talk about recycling, or are you just bog lazy
Is Harvey Denton related, or do you live in Royston Vasey

People like to drink sometimes, is there something I have missed
You seem to have your own ideas, but with a certain twist
A brand new meaning you have brought, to getting yourself ******
Golden showers are one thing, but that's when your sexually kissed

There's one thing I'd like to know, so what do you say
Why do you think that drinking ****, will keep the germs away
It cant be very good for you, it's an inside body spray
Your just drinking toilet water, hay Jay are you ****** today ?
This is a response my sister sent I thought it to be a worthy mention:

Ha ha ha he he he , a poem about a man that drinks his own wee , I should have guessed I should have known, because when I told you the seed was sown , so very funny, I think it's great , for all the laughs , well done mate
This is how far it goes
Now that your smile causes me pain
How you walk past me makes me envious.
Hope my throat won’t suffer from goiter
Since saliva can’t flow like it used to
You surely know how to hurt me
Without even a single touch
Modeling in my face without even a simple wave
It’s the same place we live
But different lifestyles
Am high on memories, of that one day
When you said the words I keep recycling in my brain
life nomadic Jul 2013
A tomboy, naturally barefoot, gingerly walks the white painted line because the asphalt is just too burning hot.  Scrubby tufts of weedy grass are welcome respites on the way, briefly cooling her steps even if they are stickery.  The ***** soles of her now calloused feet were intentionally toughened just before school got out, with mincing steps across the roughest gravel she could find.  Her mother accommodates her preference, leaving a pan of water outside for her to scrub her feet before going in.  Even then, a black path has gradually appeared leading from the front door in the old orangish carpet.  Two months of summer barefoot every day when she had the choice. Keyed roller skates clamped onto last year’s school shoes were the exception.  She can flat out run anywhere.
  
This particular expedition began like every other thing they did, which was anything to fend off boredom.  She had been sitting on a cement step shaded by an open carport, just three oil-stained parking stalls for three small apartments on the tired poor side of town.  There is a little more dirt on the street here, and grass is a little neglected.  Just like the children, but these kids prefer that anyway.  Two scruffy friends stomp on aluminum cans, brothers sporting matching buzz cuts and cut-off shorts.  They are flattening them for the recycling money by the pound, so the carport smells vaguely of stale beer.  Another boy attempts to shoot a wandering fly with a home-made rubber band gun; rings cut from a bicycle tube made the best ammo.  “What do you want to do?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  Thwack…  The only requisite for friendship here is vicinity, yet it is still true.  The idea of choosing friends is about as odd as the concept that one could chose where one lives... Strengths and shortcomings are completely accepted because it is just what it is.  

Their amazing three-story tree fort with a side look-out had been heartlessly taken down by the disgruntled property owner last week.  Two months of accumulating pilfered and scrap two-by-fours, nails, and even a stack of plywood (gasp!) from area construction sites had yielded supplies for a growing fort.  A gang-plank style entry had crossed the ditch to the first level.  Nailed ladder steps to the second offered a little more vertigo and a prime spot to hurl acorns.  Another ladder up led up to the third floor retreat, with a couch-like seating area and shoulder high walls.  A breeze reached the leaves up there.   The next tree over was the look-out, with nothing but ladder steps all the way up to where the view opened up out of the ravine.  When the wind blew, it gave merciless lessons in facing any fear of heights.  But now that was all over, discovered gone overnight.

Someone says again, “What do you want to do?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”  “ 7-11? ”  Good enough, so they head out.   Distance measures time.  Ten minutes is the end of the street past the cracked basketball court in the church parking lot.  Fifteen minutes and the lawns end at the edge of the sub-division.  Half-built homes rising from bare dirt and scattered foundations could offer treasures of construction scraps, (where she suspects the stack of plywood came from.) but they keep walking.  Twenty minutes is where industry has scraped away nature, and railroad tracks form an elevated levee.  But time is meaningless if there’s a wealth of it, so there’s no going further until an informal ritual is completed.  Wordlessly they each dig around their pockets searching for equal amounts of pennies.  Each of them carefully arrange them lined up on the rounded-surface rail, and they settle in for the wait.  It could be five minutes or it could be thirty.  They all understand it’s a crap-shoot of patience waiting for the next train. It’s an unspoken test; quitting too early means losing your coins to the one who stays, so that’s not an option.

Heat presses down and the breezeless air smells like telephone-pole creosote.  She sits in a dusty patch of shade found next to an overgrown ****.  She knows it tastes like licorice and breaks off a stem to chew, but doesn’t know what it is.  The boys throw rocks randomly until she finally stands up to join in, tempted by the challenge of flight and distance.  Then she stands in the center of the tracks, looking one way then the other, searching for the first random distant glimmer of the engine’s light at the horizon.   A flash, so she places her ear to the metal Indian-style, and the imminent approach is confirmed.  She calls out, “its here!” and double checks her pennies’ alignment.  Heads up or tails, but always aligned so the building might be stretched tall or wide, or Lincoln’s face made broad or thin.  That happened only rarely, since it could only be rolled by one wheel then bounced off.  If it stuck longer, the next wheels would surely smash it into a thin, elliptical, smooth misshapen disc of shiny copper.  Its only value becomes validation of a hint of delinquency, Destroying-Government-Property.  Once she splurged with a quarter, which became smashed to just a gleaming silver, bent wafer discolored at the edge.  Curiosity wasn’t worth 25 cents again though, so she had only one of those in her collection.

The approaching engine silently builds impending size and power, so she dashes back down the rocky embankment to safety because after all, she is not a fool, tempting fate with stupid danger. She knows a couple of those fools, but she finds no thrill from that and is not impressed by them either.  Suddenly the train is here, generating astounding noise and wind, occasional wheels screaming protest on their axels.  She intently watches exactly where she placed her coins, hoping to see the moment they fly off the rails that are rhythmically bending under the weight rolling by.  It becomes another game of patience, with such a long line of cars, and she gives up counting them at 80-ish.  Then suddenly it is done and quickly the noise recedes back to heat and cicadas.  The rails are hot.  Diligently they search for the shiny wafers.  Slowly pacing each wood beam, they could have landed in the gravel, or pressed against the rail, or even lodged straight up against the square black wood yards down the tracks.  They find most of them, give up on the rest, then continue on.

She has thirty cents and at last they reach the afternoon’s destination.  7-11’s parking lot becomes a genuine game of “Lava”, burning blacktop encourages leaps from cooler white lines, to painted tire stops, to grass island oasis, then three hot steps across black lava to the sidewalk, and automatic doors swoosh open to air conditioning.  She rarely has enough money for a coke icey; she is here for the bottom shelf candy, a couple pennies or a nickel each.  Off flavors but sweet enough.  She remembered when her older brother was passing out lunchbags of candy to the neighborhood kids for free, practically littering the cul-de-sac.  She had wondered where he got enough money for all that popularity, or could he have saved that much from trick-or-treat? She wondered until he got busted shoplifting at the grocery store.  The security guard decreed that he was never allowed in there again, forever, and the disgrace of sitting on the curb waiting for the mortified ride home was enough to keep him from doing it again.

Today she picks out a few root beer barrels, some Tootsie-rolls (the smaller ones for two cents, not the large ones that divide into cubes) a candy necklace and tiny wax coke bottles, and of course a freeze-pop.   Sitting on the curb, she bites off small pieces of the freeze pop, careful not to get tooth-freeze or brain-freeze, until the last melty chunk is squeezed out the top of the thin plastic tube.

“What do you want to do now?” …”I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
Maggie evans Apr 2019
Plastic plates bowls and cups
loaded on recycling trucks.
You've had your party thrown it away,
Less to wash up at the end of the day.
But few fall out they blow in winds,
Escape the grasp of the recycling bin.
Not all bags are renewable plastic,
Less strong now not so fantastic.
So write a note for a new tote,
Handles far stronger less likely broke.

It's not our problem it's goods we buy,
There wrapped and packaged to the shoppers eye.
But when the seas are less serene
Choked on plastics and polystyrene.
Death tolls rise numbers of sea life plummet,
Dont ya think its time we do summit?
To a turtle or whale a tasty dish,
To dine upon the jellyfish.
Not a bag for life that passes by,
That binds them to starvation before they die.

So the seas bob in colour of plastic pollution.
Times running out what to be a solution?
Its high time we started a clean up revolution!
To use less packaging to educate all.
Before the tides continue to rise and we loose them all.

The ice caps are melting at an alarming rate,
How long before for all it's too late.
Eco systems absorb UV,
cool the world for nature to be.
Polar life need ice to remain,
In cooler climates to sustain.
But as they melt and tides continue to rise,
Am losing hope for their demise.

Leave the jungles and forrests for self restoration,
Less fossil fuels and deforestation.
The trees keep falling from constant felling,
With palm oil growing; plantations swelling.
Our orange ancestors the orangutan,
Has been their homes since the jungles began.
To break life cycles whole eco systems,
It's time to change the world with our wit and wisdom.

Else what do we leave to the future generations,
Man on earth just viral abominations.
Just a glimpse at climate change, it's high time we change our habits not their habitats!
John Ryles Jul 2011
Little bits of litter blowing everywhere,
Is it that we are carless? Or maybe we don’t care.
Bags and bottles ******* of every kind,
A simple picnic our ******* left behind.
Bottles of all sizes floating on the pond,
If left on the beach will travel far beyond.
Polystyrene boxes used for burgers or chips,
Are float on our ponds like little litter ships.
But worst of all the dreaded carrier bag,
Hang from wires and trees like a kind of flag.
Just to make sure we spread it far and wide,
Cars are used to carry debris to the countryside.
Now that we have spread it from coast to coast,
We are a famous nation because we litter most.
Fish and chips were sold wrapped in newspaper,
You could say part of a natural recycling scheme.
Pop was bought in bottles with a paid deposit,
Kiddies for pocket money collected to redeem.
Litter is not pretty it will not go away,
Soon we will have nowhere clean to play.
Maybe if we learn to take our litter home again,
We would see the trees and flowers,
Down our English country lane.
beth winters Oct 2010
you had birds in your mouth and sunlight dripping from your eyelashes.
i promised i wouldn't speak if you wouldn't change faces twice an hour.
we made conversation under a tree and sleep-walked through your kitchen.
i couldn't stare for your poetry disguised as fingers, always moved your hands.

i opened your window and slid to the street, took a walk with the recycling.
my hands looked tired the next morning, and you wouldn't take no.
when the lights fell asleep, we ran for the boats and slipped into the water.
the moon smiled and pulled us apart, i never matched your shoes again.
Jake Espinoza Sep 2012
Write something about nothing, call it poetry.
Quiet jet-engine speed turmoil indecision on the topic.
Silent bodies, screaming minds, communication desired and avoided
Chance glances, glimpses. Hoofing it.
Write poetry about nothing, call it something, but only in whispers to yourself, pretend to hope to be heard, have interest feigned or genuine directed your way.
        Confusion. Mingled strings of internal conversation.
        Misdirected. I can’t think crooked, focalisation se présente sideways. Self-expression in non-poetic terms seems likely. Saw girls, one on Detroit street, summer clothes and quiet face, scampered inside from the yard littered. Saw her again in the street next to a minor catastrophe, passed her by and looked.
        Let’s take a second to breathe, introduce a silence to the mind so that everything that comes can be better heard. So much background noise, minor thoughts mingle into static, almost impossible to interpret the bemused psychobabble. Empty it out, slow down, relax, and maybe you’ll begin to recognize coherent thoughts; organize the jumble of words fighting to be understood all out of order and as yet meaningless. Thoughts keep revolving, recycling; the girl, she reminded you of Melissa. Same style, a girl whose mood is always a grateful summer to your wintry perspective. Refreshing reminder, easy on the eyes. This girl’s likeness and your friend the poet, separated; his utensils. The paintbrushes he flourished about to create were not wooden and sable but liquid and smoke. That small ******* secret voice suggesting unwholesome things, acts unbefitting of brotherly conduct. He is my true brother, my family; an extension of my own soul. I went to treatment, they broke me down, whittled away at my rough hewn surface to make sculpture, a replica of others, manufactured to meet requirements and specifications deemed necessary for target successes. This talk of will, sacrificing my own, force-fed trust and mantras begetting themselves in circular fashion, turning in sync with the earth’s rotation upon its axis in its course of necessary revolution.
        Expended effort and time saved or served, goals impossible until forgotten, let go empty space ellipsis let god. Self-supplanted in unpredictable incomprehensible present, trying to avoid thoughts of crumpled papers in paper bags serving as receptacles for things undesired or abandoned or too truthful, I’m forgetting what it is to hide from myself which makes it possible to disappear. Tune in to the present, your train of thought – a queue – crowding, crowds rushed and frantic me first says everyone impatiently awaiting their turn for attention. Starved but forgotten proper nutrition. Self-criticism equating to self-analysis – spontaneity – uncontrollable, unforeseeable in the present aromatic mixture of mason jars swarmed with colored lights beautiful dim in darkness in which beer was swilled, time spent in unkempt kitchens nervous, standing walking evading settlement peace or rest, this is excitable discomfort, anything to slow down or feel a surrogate thereof. Forgotten words remembered, past rooms beautiful dim in darkness, proper illumination – see everything just right, not too brightly though not too dark. Living in this room for now, seeing as though immersed, submerged in memory of smiling faces easy laughter, cold-eyes Vera and well-at-ease. There is a wealth of self-acceptance. These people, their faces shine contentment, comfort, and mine is manufactured. I’ve become a factory where everything is sought after and nothing is attained because my goals are intangible, comprehensible but beyond aid, sorry, it’s just the way you are, maybe you’ll know one day, but we can’t help. We don’t waste our time with questions of absurdity, we live in this present moment, and that’s how we do it – no plans until plans come. No thoughts until thoughts come. Easy transitions in conversations, we don’t think of how to be ourselves, we just do it because we slow down, we know we are breathing, and it is not in our nature to forget it. It is not in our nature to live in our heads, to flail in a swell of questions less dense than water, we attend. We simply are.
        This is contentment. This is their seamless skin where mine corresponds to scars and rabid suspicious scratches dug deep. They were content with their surfaces; I was convinced of malice subcutaneous hence the scars and blood breathing open air. It is this suspicion that draws a line, places me on one side, them on another; it is this curiosity intrinsic and ironically unquestioned that digs the trenches in shape of graves. This fatal imaginary need for understanding where there is nothing to be understood. Questions are my poison, self-manufacturing, self-sufficient destruction, coming hot off the assembly line in my skull. Questions incubating further questions error: implement infinite loop, killall. Find the bug, recompile, run. Sit still, learn from the wind and atmosphere you’ve learned to sense which makes you an outsider only because you wanted this somehow. Uncertainty, confused reflection, arbitrary comments; coincidences, conspiracy, breakpoint. Programs running in smooth operation.
        Radiohead blaring, self-conscious self-care, these people enjoy themselves with unconscious grace, they let themselves be and immediately I tear my mind in two to understand what they understand without understanding. It is the nature of love and music that displays the closest correlation. These people are my idealized notion of grace, rendered more so by speed of processing, depth of analysis so that they appear not only graceful creatures, but with grace amplified as if observing them in slow-motion. So much contingent on understanding, contingency notwithstanding if I was comfortable with ignorance, if questions did not occur. These people are appropriate; balanced, no need for brutal introspection, no need to stir up sand composing the sea bed. These people, they understand certain things I cannot as of yet. They understand, they know without knowing that things are the way they are because things are the way they are and that’s ok, we’re ok, and everything is and will always be ok as long as we know well enough to leave well enough alone. We are each other, serving compliments to sainthood.
        ...let go, and be one with us, for love is in our hearts.
It took a few lines to get into it. Also, this is meant to be read aloud, somewhat intensely.
tread Dec 2012
the sled flattens cans on its way down the rock-face
oh, bottomless pit, how have thou forsaken the moth without the lantern!
carry me and I will carry me farther,
shoot a man and he will die for a day
teach a man to shoot and he will die for a lifetime.

Inalienable in the sense of extra-terrestrially impossible
Cold in the float-plane at 8000 feet or as high as an average cascade
'Average' being an ******* who believes himself average
**** that *******.

slumber as fast as you can to reach first place.
go, go, go!

the race has started!
Nicole Mar 2018
Pen and pencil residue
Scribbled across a crumpled page
My words
His words
Yours
What do they all mean?
Still they make me feel things
Tears staining old papers
Not sure where these thoughts come from
It's been a long time now
Though it feels like just yesterday
These empty vibrations we put out back then
Still find a way to reach me now
This sting will last an eternity
Unless I throw it all away
And let the memories fade
joe thorpe Aug 2017
the people vs. my every waking moment
                         me, for every heart I've stolen
                         the lost light given to homework
                         an idea embedded that our souls are
                         search machine engines
                         are we waking, are you my dreams

the people vs. contemporary art of all periods
                         angrier and more painful hearts
                         suicide as a solution
                         recycling factitious pollution
                         no one says a thing about ideas repurposed

the people vs. intelligence
                         truth
                         passion
                         anything other than money as a practice
She Writes Jul 2022
Repurpose your pain
Create a masterpiece
- Art
Elaenor Aisling May 2014
I've learned to hate uncertainty.
Changes that come cursedly unannounced.
The future glass is half empty, and leaking.
God, Luck, and the Fates have lost my file.
Tossed by mistake to the recycling bin,
to fend for itself.
Time is the only one that plods along,
dragging moment after moment
to the slaughter, though they shriek
never taking a day off.
Death is the only certainty
and even he
works by spontaneity.
I am, at times, a panicking, over-planning pessimist...
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
Resubmitting for you consideration. posted to HP, my first week here, and another that got swallowed up in the multitude of words.   But I like it a lot, it makes me smile and perhaps it will find a wider audience, a second time around.



Do Not Put a Poem Here Until You Have Bent your ear to Shakespeare's sonnets

Until you have bent your ear to Shakespeare's sonnets,
Till you have laughed with Ogden Nash,
Wept with Frost, visited Byron's ghost,
Read the songs of King Solomon,
And once you
Despair of being their equal,
Shed your winter coat of worry,
***** your courage to the sticking point,
Begin to write then with reckless courage,
Unfettered abandon, make a fool of yourself!

Scout the competition.
Weep, for you and I will never surpass
The giants who preceeded us, and yet,
**Laugh, cause they thought the same thing as well...

— The End —