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JV Beaupre May 2016
Canto I. Long ago and far away...

Under the bridge across the Kankakee River, Grampa found me. I was busted for truancy. First grade. 1946.

Summer and after school: Paper route, neighborhood yard work, dogsbody in a drugstore, measuring houses for the county, fireman EJ&E railroad, janitor and bottling line Pabst Brewery Peoria. 1952-1962.

Fresh caught Mississippi River catfish. Muddy Yummy. Burlington, Iowa. 1959. Best ever.

In college, Fr. ***** usually confused me with my roommate, Al. Except for grades. St. Procopius College, 1958-62. Rats.

Coming home from college for Christmas. Oops, my family moved a few streets over and forgot to tell me. Peoria, 1961.

The Pabst Brewery lunchroom in Peoria, a little after dawn, my first day. A guy came in and said: "Who wants my horsecock sandwich? ****, this first beer tastes good." We never knew how many he drank. 1962.

At grad school, when we moved into the basement with the octopus furnace, Dave, my roommate, contributed a case of Chef Boyardee spaghettios and I brought 3 cases of beer, PBRs.  Supper for a month. Ames. 1962.

Sharon and I were making out in the afternoon, clothes a jumble. Walter Cronkite said, " President Kennedy has been shot…”. Ames, 1963.

I stood in line, in my shorts, waiting for the clap-check. The corporal shouted:  "All right, you *******, Uncle and the Republic of Viet Nam want your sorry *****. Drop 'em".  Des Moines. Deferred, 1964.

Married and living in student housing. Packing crate furniture. Pammel Court, 1966.

One of many undistinguished PhD theses on theoretical physics. Ames. 1967.

He electrified the room. Every woman in the room, regardless of age, wanted him, or seemed to. The atmosphere was primeval and dripping with desire. In the presence of greatness. Palo Alto, 1968.

US science jobs dried up. From a mountain-top, beery conversation, I got a research job in Germany. Boulder, 1968. Aachen, 1969.

The first time I saw automatic weapons at an airport. Geneva, 1970.

I toasted Rembrandt with sparkling wine at the Rijksmuseum. He said nothing. Amsterdam International Conference on Elementary Particles. 1971.

A little drunk, but sobering fast: the guard had Khrushchev teeth.
Midnight, alone, locked in a room at the border.
Hours later, release. East Berlin, 1973. Harrassment.

She said, "You know it's remarkable that we're not having an affair." No, it wasn't. George's wife.  Germany, 1973.

"Maybe there really are quarks, but if so, we'll never see them." Truer than I knew.  Exit to Huntsville, 1974.

On my first day at work, my first federal felony. As a joke, I impersonated an FBI agent. What the hell? Huntsville. 1974. Guess what?-- No witnesses left! 2021.

Hard work, good times, difficult times. The first years in Huntsville are not fully digested and may stay that way.

The golden Lord Buddha radiated peace with his smile. Pop, pop. Shots in the distance. Bangkok. 1992.

Accomplishment at work, discord at home. Divorce. Huntsville. 1994. I got the dogs.

New beginnings, a fresh start, true love and life-partner. Huntsville. 1995.

Canto II. In the present century...

Should be working on a proposal, but riveted to the TV. The day the towers fell and nearly 4000 people perished. September 11, 2001.

I started painting. Old barns and such. 2004.

We bet on how many dead bodies we would see. None, but lots of flip-flops and a sheep. Secrets of the Yangtze. 2004

I quietly admired a Rembrandt portrait at the Schiphol airport. Ever inscrutable, his painting had presence, even as the bomb dogs sniffed by. Beagles. 2006.

I’ve lost two close friends that I’ve known for 50-odd years. There aren’t many more. Huntsville. 2008 and 2011.

Here's some career advice: On your desk, keep a coffee cup marked, "No Whining", that side out. Third and final retirement. 2015.

I occasionally kick myself for not staying with physics—I’m jealous of friends that did. I moved on, but stayed interested. Continuing.

I’m eighty years old and walk like a duck. 2021.

Letter: "Your insurance has lapsed but for $60,000, it can be reinstated provided you are alive when we receive the premium." Life at 81. Huntsville, 2022.

Canto III: Coda

Honest distortions emerging from the distance of time. The thin comfort of fading memories. Thoughts on poor decisions and worse outcomes. Not often, but every now and then.

(Begun May 2016)
Alyssa Underwood Jul 2017
There are times when the Lord will take from us every familiar thing and send all the others away to have us to Himself, uprooting and dismantling our earthly anchors until we find no safe place of attachment but to Him alone. And though we search feverishly to secure another, He will faithfully cut off our efforts at every pass and every attempted by-pass, almost as though we could see them being escorted out the door, marching one after the other in file and possibly taking our sanity with them. “No, not another one! Where are they all going and why am I not invited?” But it is His alone to give or not to give, to give and take away.

The One Who took up the cross and took the cup of the Father’s wrath for us has the absolute right to take anything and everything from us at any time for whatever reasons might please Him. But know this for certain: concerning His redeemed, those reasons will always involve two things—glory and intimacy. They are the overriding answers to every lingering question of “Why?”.

But if we fail to understand His glorious and intimate intentions we may misconstrue our losses to be a sign that He is actually withdrawing His affection from us. The very things which He is doing for love’s sake to perfect our pathway to intimacy might be taken instead for obstacles blocking it, causing us to doubt His love. We could not be more wrong, but sometimes it's so hard to see through the veil of pain.

For it's a strange and bewildering thing to feel that you belong to no place and no person in this world, to have nowhere to call home and no one to share it with if you did. A severe untethering indeed that though meant to prepare us for flying can seem to us more like drowning. The sobering truth is that none of us belong to this life or the things of this earth; all sense of it is only an illusion, and pain and loss are simply the dispelling of the myth—the rude awakening from a bewitching dream we once had. But oh how we fight the disillusionment.

Maybe we remember a time when we had prayed to be refined, to be made more like Jesus, but we didn’t know it would have to hurt so bad and take so long and look so dark and feel so lonely. Even if we have understood and embraced His call to deeper intimacy we may after a while, when nothing seems improved either around us or in us, start to resent our belonging to such a determined and jealous Lover, though He is doing exactly what we had once asked Him to. We may start to think we can no longer bear anything except that which superficially distracts us from our grief. We may even start to give up hope, for if not anchored exclusively “behind the curtain” and if repeatedly crushed it threatens to **** our hearts for good should we have to face one more disappointment.

We may feel very much like we are flailing around in a deep and darkening ocean, repeatedly pulled under by the powerful tow and thrashing waves of overwhelming emotion and continuously knocked back by the brutal winds of confusion. Yet we can still see the unshakable boat of faith and truth standing solidly only a small distance away. We know it is real and that if we could just reach it we would be safe. We hear someone shouting through the din, “Just hold onto the boat! The boat will save you. Look beyond your feelings and walk by faith. Hold onto truth!” But can’t they see that as hard as we may try we have no strength to swim to the boat? Can’t they see that we are sinking?

And so we are left with nothing but to cry out to Jesus, to cry out to Him to bring the boat to us, to come Himself and rescue us. Do we have that much faith? Enough to just say, “Jesus, help me! I’m drowning!”? Enough to see that He is our only hope and nothing else matters apart from Him?

Because when we do, we will understand that this hope in Him alone is the very lifeline by which He will pull us to safety—back to faith, back to truth, back into His intimate arms of love, back into a peace which passes all understanding and into a joy that gives us strength for the journey.

As difficult as it can be in our grief to hear the Lord whispering truth to our hearts above the constant clanging of our feelings, we must now more than ever choose to take the time to be still and seek our soul’s rest in Him and in His promises. But how amidst such clamor and confusion?

Simply decide to cast your cares on Him, if only for the moment, by climbing into His Shepherd’s lap to look and loiter and listen. And if you have no energy to climb up, then just lift your arms and ask Him to pick you up. And if you haven’t the strength even for that, only raise your eyes toward Him and you will soon find your sanity restored as you behold His love for you. Ask Him earnestly to let you see it afresh, for perhaps you have been temporarily blinded from recognizing it.

Stop everything; cease just for this minute from all worry, anxiety, fear and anger. Forget the past and do not look toward the future. Focus only on this moment right now, as if you knew it would be your last, as if it were the very one to lead you into eternity. Inhale like fresh air the powerful promises of God’s Word. Soak in their grace and drink in their healing, keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus’ face. Can you see Him longing for you? Exhale every distraction, conflict and uncertainty of this world. Then listen... What is He saying to you right now? Wait for it, then let your soul rest in it, and let go of everything else. Rest in the grace of this present moment and in His strong, sure arms. Let Him take care of you, wounded one, for you are His beloved, and He longs to tend your broken and needy heart.
~~~

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
    my hope comes from Him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
    He is my fortress, I will not be shaken."
~ Psalm 62:5-6

"The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
    my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
    my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I called to the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
    and I have been saved from my enemies.
The cords of death entangled me;
    the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
    the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called to the LORD;
    I cried to my God for help.
From His temple He heard my voice;
    my cry came before Him, into His ears...
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
    He drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
    from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
    but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
    He rescued me because He delighted in me."
~ Psalm 18:2-6,16-19

"We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf..."
~ Hebrews 6:19-20a
Jason Drury Oct 2016
Though, should I
or have I begun?

To feel the tussling
Of blurring bodies.

Transforming and dancing,
Through these very halls.

Where aching is thick,
and a embrace is a release.

Should I begin?
How should I begin?

Swallow the dagger,
stabbing from behind.

Let it sit deep in my stomach.
Push it further, where it can’t cut.

Where will it end?
How will I begin?

Under lock and key,
Just where I left it .

It escapes as it did just now,
conjuring a puncture to bone.

Blood flows,
Rushes out into the world.

Is this a release?
How can I heal?*

Pouring out,
It tastes salty on the cheek

The color is dark,
cold to the touch.

Purging the night,
that stained blood black.

Sifting the chill,
of steel from bone.

Ringing out whats left of gore and fluid,
down the drain.

*I can begin now.
This is the end.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!
Like a hearth,
Her hair was inviting
And warm, red mahogany
Her deceptive eyes
Sensing danger
Betrayed only
by her quivering crimson lips

Back against the wall
Separated by arm’s length
Sobering distance
Maddening silence
She, reticent siren
Far from the ocean
Far, far greater than its depth
She, from the wild
A wolf’s howl
Far from the forest
Far, far greener than its leaves
She was shelter,
In the mountain
I found myself lost
Enchanted by spring’s
rustling whispers
     ... whistles swirl
in the pungent springtime breeze;
steeped with a bedazzling
        cadence
   heart dancing
to a hummingbird’s
         whirs

   waves of breath,
of little wings waft,
whooshing throughout
twining honeysuckle lattice
       a
tiny manger
beset of hidden gold
precious speckled eggs, 
silver lining of smallest hopes
   fruits of fruition
   continuum beheld prize,
concealed in interwoven rootlets;
   
potently perfumed flowers
       while away
the waning dark hours;
swollen full flower moon
           waxing yellow,..
         heavenly fragrance
sweetly-scented suckled nectar
  
the one with eyes of a child,
   wonder ― hidden inside,  
   marvel in the light of grateful eyes
imbibing an unholdable moment's
    spellbinding elixir 
    ... poetry alive

air  so poignantly perfumed
       with blossom
        moonstruck
by spring’s frolicking cadency
a reverent moment's
edifying intoxication

       a sobering beauty that just is...



someone ... May 2017
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.via ghana: i iz welcome the haiku poetic extractionz of the maxim: full-on potentiality of - few words maximum effortz! one wishes to almost die from feng shui minimalism! chinese geomancy and european chiromancy (reading balzac et al.) - but the sigh poetic of pepsi max effort iz wot iz the breaking of the camel bonk and backß... last time i heard from a kenyan bartender... all the timber comes from ghana... as does the wheat from ukraine and the salt from poland... coal is always "elsewhere"... or no coal... wind... the wind comes from: far far away... beyond the language of the seven vowels...

it took much of an effort to have to overcome
a reading of Stendhal...
esp. when you find him in your teens..
almost impossible...

it's enough to visit a brothel:
once a year... perhaps skipping a year...
and there's enough body,
and skin, and warmth...
to contrast... what i'm yet to read about...
otherwise have read, i.e.:

2010s through the 2020 summary...
lucy holden now 29...
sexting, dating apps, bisexual flings
flatmates with benefits...
millenial serial dater...

all the details are already known...
mine? that strip-clup in athens on a whim
with two strippers either arm
burrowing my face solving the mole
in their cleavage...
the goodmayes borthel with the romanians
that said a very bulgarian word, once...

and who can ever forget
the south african cocoon ****-accusation
of: not unde the bed-sheets and please
oil up rather than dry-******* me...
or the thai surprise picked up
in a park and that a little bit of heavyweight
beer and some jazz and a garden shed will allow...
the number of times i've had ***...
well... what are fingers for?

the black girl with a coccyx like an iron maiden
attempting to tattoo itself onto my pelvis...
2nd time round?
i heard she had a child and his daddy
would be bringing him home the morning to come...
and this other black woman,
oh i mean: full detail - woman...
two children sleeping on the bed...
get dragged off...
thrown to the bed...
and i'm there to **** an imitation ******
of... a tight fold of legs...

it's not exactly **** but even with that:
i'm not a best fitter...
so tell her: it's not going to happen...
we pretend to sleep or at least i do...
when this afro-fur-ball with a plucking sound
of a smooch is standing at the end of the bird...
he's naked i'm naked everyone's naked
i pick him up like i pick up maine *****
and lay him on my chest...
i can't allow a river of fingers through
his afro tangles... so i pat them down...
and he falls asleep...

***... oh no ***** word about it monsieur!
just this *******...
oh but i'm glad that some girl nearing
her 30s has made up her mind up...
only recently i've heard that my mother was
attempting to woo a married man
who was part of the Solidary movement
and probably waiting for a greencard...
i heard this... from my grandmother...

i'm still pampering on the sly for
a Mary Antoinette...
Ilona was wrong... i wouldn't become
a child strapped to a hellhole of a teenager's bedroom...
i'd become a leech hybrid...
as along as i have enough excuses
to return for "the word"... and never rap it...
i'm fine fine... best be on my optimal behaviour...
to never find myself in a baptists' church choir...

- there's also a quick fix procedure...
the match of the day is watched
with the mascots on screen...
the ben-hur's not making it to
prophetic status... yes the bread...
yes the circus... and all those cul de sac...
soap operas of parking scenes...

and there's always language...
best expressed when drunk...
never sober because is what delves into
the formality of: dear sir / madam,
kind regards...

the day when i stopped combing my fair
and peered at the beard...
uncombed hair: almost reminds
me of donning a pineapple on it...
an ancient buddhist balancing act...
like performing the act of gravity...
without copernican mathematics...
as simple as finding the CENTER on
a bicycle... or like finding
buoyancy in a swimming pool...
perhaps i am more water than flesh...
but i'm also a fraction of fat...

i can float on water if i can find
the balance... i don't need to play
the drunkard treading water surviving
to stay afloat.... i... relax...
then i float.... or bob-on-the-surface
teasing an unexpected shark-bite-attack...
although: swimming in a sea
is not my thing...
i very much appreciate seeing
the bottom i can dive down toward
and touch... the chernobyl stink of chlorine...
is almost a parisian perfumery...

heat breeds diseases it breeds...
insects...
i abhor the heat...
the zenith of winter is yet,
is yet to arrive... and for the help of god:
i can't arrive at... writing sober...
should "poo'etry" ever be written sober
to begin with?
i mind: that i don't mind...

i can find 8pm and 9pm quite:
which implores you to not quit - curb colt...
i was making a sponge apple stuffing
roulade...
after having made some biscuit
with brown sugar and diadems of hazelnuts...
and prior to some sausage rolls...
three fillings...
cranberries with some peppers and
chillies...
fennel seeds with apple...
and the third... the third...
i don't quiet remember...

my head was exploding with a brain being
towed and all was:
i am yet to grieve a passing,
a tax of death...
i am yet to be left half imbecile and half
of any other texas hold-up poker game...
i'm wishing for...
that quarter of a million of a bet
i placed on:
one team wins...
but both have to score...
ergo... catching a mosquito by the testciles
donning boxing gloves chance...
2 - 1 etc. victories...

i don't want to blame women...
the last one i was serious about...
she's on her 3rd marriage or whatever...
and i'm still in woad: in deep blue
coinciding with...
god's roulette...

as a testiment of man...
there's the ambition to find: the void...
to find nothing...
and from that... find the thinking thing...
res vanus: the emptiness
that can be fathomed with more or less
thinking, than a yawn's presence...
because...
descartes doesn't really exact ontological,
whatever...
i can't be and be:
when i churn out a day-dream and
a day-dream is all that is...

thankfuly i have nothing to "work"
with... most women only have boredom to begin
with....
at exactly 20 minutes to 1am...
i'm not so sure...
a mother can say: you stink...
then you go and buy something from
a convenience store...
and the cashier stresses how fresh you smell...
that's quiet something...
a woman likes the way to smell to her...
in between doing these *******
tribunals of sweating over
apple roulades...

and Stendhal... it's only my mother...
i just have to gnash my teeth
and apply the burden of sober...
this canvas... no other...
i drink for the 1 hour pleasure
of disorientation...
a shot in the head in some Ukranian
prison...
stiched to the next to be executed...
chikatilo...
i'm not exactly fond of the company...
but i'm pretty sure...
kurt cobain... and his shotgun antics...

and how the prolonged death appeal
of Christine Chubbuck lasted much longer...
Kafka said it right:
a stab at the heart...
**** colt and boyo... don't aim for the head!
that's how Ukranian convicts die...
shot in the back of the head...
in a cell... never in the open...
it's not like the brain delves into
the automated unconscious of the pump
that's the heart... how do you think
the urban myth of the cockroach that lived
for 2 weeks more was born?
the head didn't have a mouth to ingest
food with...

shot in the back of the head is an execution
that, done in an Ukranian prison cell...
is pretty much all of Dante not visiting
either heaven or a hell...
but two weeks with... in the presence
of death... the body starving...
that magic finger-pointing exercise
of seeing death in movies?

well thank god they did a movie about
Christine Chubbuck's (rage against the machine):
bullet in the 'ed!
i was lied to, no matter...
i'm here to hush and sweep the leftovers...
because why would you march
a man into a prison cell...
shoot him in the head and close the door
and wait... because no: in the open...
with a chance for rabid dogs to feast on...
in the darkened night just shy of Kiev
would ever matter...

Christine Chubbuck was left dying on
life-support machines after her half-high Kiev
attempt to pop the balloon...
psych- myth of the brain as source
of the sigma soul...
my left toe has more soul than this
rubric forever explained as forever to be explored
goose-fat sponge...
come to think of it...
after a haemorrhage that no one believes
beside me, some neurologist and a dementia
riddled grandfather who easily forgot...

what's this brain this brain this nought?!
**** it... kamikaze cockroach!
as ever oh but always so much when
someone has to mention...
has to mention: with no exacting details
of fancy...

also called the drought period when pakistani
gangs are up in Leeds and i'm strapped
to the outlier Loon'don culture:
as ever playing the obedient schizoid...
because that's, just fair game...
centuries behind what the youth
of Denmark have to offer...
the mutterzunge and the l'inglese of:
any future of tourism with Jack's flag...

heavy influences stemming from
st. andrew and all the worth of wordworth
with a tinge of punk...
but never a baron of lexicon coming from
just shy of 4 hours away from
the lisp of masovian warsaw...

what could possibly be wrong?
how about... stemming it down to the root
of... sober people and the lacklustre of
when writing: under no influence at all...
apparently "now" the high moral ground!
the sobers usher in the words
that we are abide by when the football hooligans
their casual Tuesday mundane,
their casual Tuesday mundane custard
splodge of oats in regurgitation...

i can almost but not quiet...
imagine myself being the cameo in this dear diary
of these "free" women of the western world...
give me a feral black woman pulling
two kids from her bed in order
to imitate a ****** by folding her legs to
pretend...

it's still a bullet in the back of the head
for some, minor or major
andrei "cain" chikatilo -
no... with a full crop of cranium of hair...
and a grandmother that says...
well... how busy your chin hairs are...
that you are able to lodge a pencil in there
and it doesn't fall out...
hair here and all other hair elsewhere...
chest and... where the antioch identifier
of achilles ought to be of a six in sixes
packaged...

since who is buddha... or a christ when...
an thích quang duc "oops" happens...
the people will never leave their unison...
their get-together "happening"...
but what's to be celebrated should...
the crucifix be turned into that "other"
torture ordeal of being: piked...
crucifixion the tsunami wave of history...
when one can expect the fate
of being piked by the more imaginative
sorts?
if only the antichrist was gay
and was sentenced to levitate on a pike...
passion and ecstasy via
the Walhalla doing ****... again:
sorry if the pike missed the **** baptism
of ecstasy... and instead aimed
at ripping apart the flesh and bone at:
whatever pivot was made available
to work from reverse ingestion:
beginning with the pelvis...

i'm just tired and cooking and shooing
shadows for the past month and i know that it's
just an exaggerate lounge period...
and all i want is an added arm...
and the serenity leg to take the step to return to...
footsteps... with a bulging echo to command...

it needs to be stressed that these women were black...
i call them ivory beauties of chocolate come
quicksilver moon glistening...
i can't remember... no... "you're" right...
i never managed to **** anything
of an ethno-centric "perspective"...
i'd be arrested for that...
as if starting a hitlerjungen movement or
some other random "****"...

i'd package myself with a mexican strapped into
alcatraz...
the Louis of the Aztecs and some
long lost St. Juan of the Mayans...
leash me... Russian or Prussian or...
what's that third otherwise power of influence
that this body was allowed to morph into?

perhaps i once was allowed to control these words...
but that's how drinking goes...
it's a homocodie when you **** someone
when under the influence of alcohol when driving
a car...
this is a sort of homocide...
i trully gave my hands away to the devil...
and the brain: oh forget that old fabble of a pickle...
what's in brine was always supposed
to be in brine and pickled...

- and what were the chances of me becoming
a sentimental drunk... listening to some
crowded house - weather with you?
the la's - the la's... no... not merely the 1990s
epitome of h'american tourism lodged in london
of myth... as any ******... that myth translated
itself into paris... there she goes...
i mean the whole album...

whale! whale! a beached whale!
Grindadráp...
and some want to go on the Hajj...
and die in a human stampede at the Mecca...
but... well... some want to...
of all of Europe...
Venice, Paris, Rome, Athens,
Amsterdam, perhaps Edinburgh
(wink-wink nudge-nudge)...
Barcelona...
or... Grindadráp of the Faroe Islands...

capture a polyphony in language that is hardly
ever going to be much more
than a chance to... to do that...
shove three fingers into your gob...
expect an elevated volume of sounds...
call the hounds! a mile away!
i was never allowed to learn that
whistling "trick"...
perhaps that's why i never managed
to play the trombone or the clarinet...
the ****-poor leftover guitar...
which is as much as having to read
braille!

reality: i live in england but i'm a ******...
i haven't ****** an english girl...
or a ****** girl...
i was close! a ****** girl licked my face
like a cow, once...
chin, lips, nose and forehead...
i was actually waiting for e.t. when that
happened...
the pakistanis have all the english girls...
sorry... it's sad...
but... the australia...
the fwench... the russian...
it's a decent rubric...
crude... nuanced...
so is buying fwesh meat at the butchers...
the perfect crime is less severe...
fiddling with a tombstone...
then towing it for 2 miles...
to bury the remains of your cat...
after your neighbour "accidently" killed him
when you were away...
and of course they deny it...

after all... i live in a society...
innocent until proven guilty...
said jimmy saville...
it's not the old... european "misunderstanding"..
of guilty until proven innocent...
if not a real story of Tomasz Komenda...
there's the Shawshank Redemption...
or there's... the Count de Monte Cristo...

if all are innocent until proven guilty...
what's that? the genesis story never happens...
it's hardly a moral deterent...
isn't it? people will do as any aleister crowley
would command them to do:
do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law;
this is a naive presupposition of
fudge-packed jurisprudence...
what should have been egg-whites..
it merely some sugar dissolved in water...

statistical counts aside...
i would be more inclined to... fear...
being held guilty... to then be allowed "innocence"...
that to being held innocent...
to then be forced as a doubly-culprit!
how does the double jeopardy paradox arise...
from the high pillar of: innocent until
proven guilty?!
law is at one's own leisure...
should all be bound to an innocence...
revisions of the biblical metaphor...

if we can all be innocent...
wouldn't we at least all fathom an innocent
attempt to break some law?
for a matter of: testing the waters?
even if innocent until proven guilty is true...
there's no narrative of redemption...
why is it that the shawshank redemption
is such a popular movie?
since it adopts the continental motiff of:
guilty... until proven innocent...
it offers... redemption...
it's a popular movie because it's unfair
for the basis of a single individual...
not some amassing of victims of a jimmy saville
recount... that have... none... zilch...
no redemption!
their redemption: ist tod!

because if i were to be found guilty...
with no chance of defence...
i would exercise a double-think in relation to this...
rather than exercise this leisure into
grieving the orwellian zeitgeist monstrosity of
but the one novel...

i'm not convinced of the english model...
this... innocent until proven guilty...
this pontius pilate argument...
i'm not for it! this sinking to the core of my heart
and hopefuly, prevents me from a heartbeat...
perhaps so fewer examples of
the #metoo would come to the fore...
if... one were not so easily allowed
a ststus of innocence...
perhaps... guilty until proven innocent...
doesn't allow...
so readily accessed accusations...
perhaps this modern, english model of
jurisprudence...
is missing a medieval lisp?

as law abiding as would suggest...
i would be much more deterred from inacting
a grievance should i be found guilty...
without a benefit of a doubt of a jury...
than if i were to be given the a priori: innocent
status...

i don't like this: england and greenwich in tow
is the bellybutton of the world
demand of... all else is less than we...
no... did i come from Algiers?!
what has Algiers to do with it and Leeds
shouldn't?!

at least that's how a man sobers up...
while still drinking...
he might focus on sober demands...
of topics that only drunks should speak of...
and since neither of the two meet...

because i have stood as a witness
in a court...
and i was given a photograph to...
"compare" having identified him in a mugshot...
the photograph i was shown still
had a date imprinted on it...
and this was the ******* argument...
the photograph was years old...
i identified the culprit in the police mugshot...
but the case was "won"... for no apparent reason...
the witness said: i...
this photograph is years old...
i can grow a beard and hippy attire in a year's time...
of course i was the witness that said:
note down the registration plate
of the car this camel-jockey jumped out of
and grabbed m'ah fwends mobile...

i've seen how: innocent until proven guilty works...
i'm not conviced...
i can't be... there's something instinctual preventing
me from adhering to this english...
jurisprudent sensbility...
it's hardly a ******* charles dickens novel...
if it were... and i greatly underestimated
charles dickens... no... really...
i shouldn't have read any of dostoyevsky...
i should have read charlie ****'oh'ends...
believe me when i say that is hould have...
since... heidegger's ponderings VII - XI
will retain their shelf-status as... the book most
probably unread...

such is the sobering process...
am i, in no way, allowed to sacrifice my 'ed
on the premise that: innocent until
proven guilty is the right categorial imperstive
to buckle on... since...
the anglophonic world buckles on it...
like a spectacular breakdance feat of
a penguin on steroids...
doing the diving header tsunami
of chore: the crowd goes wild!
it's no operatic applause and being
"superficially" reminded as to how...
find your proper seat...
before the castrato peacock does his
singing bit...
apparently finding one's seat
when it's never going to be a maggot-pit
at a slipknot concert is all that's
about to happen...

come by the butcher's and let's attempt
in finding you some oysters
among the volume of red boisterous...
to replica your genital parts
and sordid caviar letfovers...

perhaps i could be angry...
but la ilah illa blah'lah...
i am... halway bound between
being simulation circumcised
and being castrated...
i never which is which...
notably, given...
circumcised men are not allowed
the impetus of taking up
web-cam Susan on promise of...
also pleasing themselves
without wanting to earn some money...

it's a real problem though:
innocent until proven guilty versus
guilty until proven innocent...
relish...
the english indiosyncratic
wishing they were scandinavian iceland...
no... honey too sweet tooth bear...
this is not how the GMP affair that exends
with its genesis in the jimmy saville affair
looks like...
this quest for: apparently "superior"
is not going to work on me...
kin of a kind-of luvvie dubby...
bon voyage!

the entire continent is listening...
individualistic rights...
innocent until proven guilty...
the more i reiterate these words...
the more i sober up...
because i can't see how...
i am: a thief...
until i am proved to be... a thief...
by having performed the act
of thieving...
or not even an "after"...

sorry... please expose your divine
rational intelligence and tell me
via a reiteration that 2 + 2 = 4...

i am not a thief,
but i am a thief...
only if the act of stealing is proved...
and if "the" act of stealing is not proved...
i'm way more than a thief...
i'm a thief with a baby driver!
this anglican logic *****...
if innocent until proven guilty...
is to sustain the individual flourishing...
i'd rather make theatre of the original,
biblical deterrent...
a queen of this sort of popish claims
and her duaghters of yorkshire because...
the pawns of justitia...

conventionality of continetal thinking...
there's not even a "what if" or
"it would be better" should... allow,
extended into:
guilty until proven innocent...
rather than... innocent until proven guilty...

i sometimes find myself chattering...
in the cold...
but i'm not chewing anything...
i'm pretending to pivot the piano on a ghost...
being played as some per se magician's
excavation of: whatever time...
thus it was spent...

i call it chattering chopin...
bite marks available... like the multitude
of signature most willing to be...
allocated a collection foreseeable...

the would the artichokes of arabia...
or the fennel roasted roots of Italy...
there's something to be had of a woman
sporting the "cherokee" leopard-skin prints
on something that's...
90% cotton and 10% lycra?!

and the reason why i visited a brothel
in the past ten years was because?
if i want to play poker...
i'll play poker...
easy ***? it's not so easy in the act
and you want to find a kiss and...
she tells you: it's against the laws
of this sort of nunnery...
but you still manage to slurp a lip or two
of a shy pluck of the tulips of the sea...
or however this thing that
language is works...
if it's not going to be a hammer and nail...
forever... this "excuse" to allow nothing
more than YA novels...
metaphors and... pedantry of elswhere
from punctuation?

herioglyphic assumptions of :) emoji?
wink barrel baron! oi!
non-responsive...
black also implies: ivory beauty...
i started to admire their teeth...
since mine were always going to be
custard yellow death grin...
like bone to the rot...

no... i'm pretty sure tonight ends
here; now;
the prodigy - destroy...
given how... keith flint...
and that horse... and it was never a tale
of the stormy badger...
and how the fox is my aid and will
never make it to...
transcend the red coat hunting parties...
because... just because.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
all I've learned from love


<•>

for the fedora man, 10/29/17 10:34am

<•>

another song done me wrong on a Sunday morn,
so much due to do, a list not for compilation/publication,
including poems promised and weighty deadlines overdue,
for its tedium would still be lbs. heavy in weightless space

instead a lyric plucks my attention, of course beeping,
insistent chirping a chorus of, write me right now,
immédiatement dans son français de Montréal,
this is the item that needs to be list topping,
now whispering a messenger-angel name dropping
a request formal from the fedora man dressed in black

all I've learned from love,  
a listing doomed to comprehensible incompletion,
a listing to the right as new reasons in-come
constantly from the left, each heart beat a
remarkable reminder that the list grows longer

every day, the repeating seasons, proffer suggestions,
disguised as a newly revised ten commandments,
obedience to which is a wish list for
attaining grace

all I've learned from love is its duality, essential quality,
a human single cannot attain the commingling required
for the visioning a peak season of life colorful,
its sad corollary, leaves falling exposing the body bare-****** of the soul linear alone

all I've learned from love is its shining skin is an agreed upon
indefinable nature, other than we all recognize how our
definition personal exists in that Ven diagrams space where
our circles intersect, when A breaks the skin of B, creating
{A,B}

all I've learned from love is without it no matter what
somewhere inside is a desperation pocket that is
an inquisitive irritant, a brain burr, a pea under the mattress,
a high and mighty 1% of disarmament incompetence that rules the imbalanced balance of my bottom line on the top of my head

all I've learned from love that it appears on its own timetable,
in surprising trains and planes and baseball games, sitting
alone in a theater or in front of a Rubens, on crazy disastrous
first dates in foreign countries at cafes or non gender
specific bathrooms amidst alternating currents of
this is crazy and this is infinite and ever so sobering
wondrous possible


all I've learned from love is it never shoots straight,
but will always end in a holy bullseye


*Tout ce que j'ai appris de l'amour, c'est qu'elle ne tire jamais directement,
mais se terminera toujours dans une sainte bullseye
h m w Sep 2017
He smiled at me and said 'here, take this'

It was a happy little pill of his and it would feel bliss

I smiled and gave him a kiss saying, 'thank you baby'

But what happened next forever will drive me crazy

Next thing you know I was spinning in my head

Then he wanted to bring me to a bed

His friends walked in and wanted more

So they all called me a ‘***** little *****’

My body was numb and I couldn’t move

I let out a scream but they didn’t approve

Everything went black but then again I woke

But to them it was nothing but a funny little joke

They locked me inside of a walk in closet

So if there was a stir I sure wouldn’t cause it

I blacked out again and woke in a different place

Treating me as if my soul were missing and my body were a case

Still I was unable to move nor speak

But he still said he loved me and kissed me on the cheek

I counted five inhumane beings on top of me moaning

One was even playfully groaning

I was disgusted and wanted it to end

But I knew that after this my mind would never mend

By now it would have been a little past three in the morning

Earlier I should have taken that adorable face as a warning

When they realized I was sobering up

They had an alibi saying they’d call this a hookup

When I could finally move my mouth again

I realized what had happened and felt heavy chest pain

They heard that I was muttering words that were incomprehensible

They saw me as nothing more than a body and that I was dispensable

They came up with a plan to hide my body in a ditch

I even heard one say, 'she deserved it, what a stupid *****'

I hit my head when they threw me on the ground

I only saw black in front of me and around

I woke up to a woman asking if I were okay

I only said one phrase and it was that 'I was betrayed'

What happened after that is irrelevant at best

All I will say is that I was nothing but stressed

This is my story and it happened two years ago today

Nailing an image in my mind that I was a targeted prey

I know now that I hold so much more worth

And I love myself more than anything on this Earth

Just know that these words have come straight from my heart

No matter how vile and disgusting this memory is, I can never restart

So I tried to make it a poem so it seems like some kind of art.

h.m.w
I am a ****** assault victim and I never received justice.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
.all this is suggesting is: i'll meet you half-way; given that "this" question was always going to hover over "us", given that there's a disparity between English: a people, and English: a language... evidently the natives cannot begin to envision themselves as a lingua franca peoples... no wonder, their language has been "hijacked".... the "xenophobia", but like kevin spacey said: well, i'm here, am i suddenly supposed to, *******? playing the ******* *****-eyed poodle is not on the cards, but at the same time, it's hard to envision this language, as a people... given all the infringing demands of the anglo-saxon economic model into areas, where displacement is rife, subsequently... i can understand the concern of the natives, given that i didn't transgress the base principle: don't **** their women. see what a mild spaghetti-custard blip of history we're getting into? i am expected to integrate, but i'm not expected to integrate. i am somehow expected to be told to do what others want, but at the same time, i'm expected to protect my individual rights... no "parallel" anlogy akin to a catherine perry song? no kitty-*******, just around the corner? i can see islam... you know its prime sense of failure? that arabic would and never will, become given the same lingua franca status of english... you're complaining, or is it me stating the facts? evidently is a language reaches a lingua franca potentiality and subsequent expression, the natives will suffer... i'm not a native, but i can only imagine... what the consequences are... being ram-packed with excesses in ***** purchases... so much for a protected status of international economic ventures... like: i am waiting for the intra-national economic counters... can't see them coming, or i can see them, in a Casandra conundrum variation. there's still the topic of the natives... rarely can the English be allowed an outsider perspective without a sediment of their language being used, by a foreign entity... now, or never, why? you have somewhere important to be at as of: tomorrow? can you blame the natives, given that their language is a lingua franca, and not just, relegation to a national idiosyncracy "pH scale" differentiation? as a foreign entity, you know what i've learned from living on the most outer aspects of London? sure as **** it's not Cheltenham... i speak the tongue, i'm no genius, it's only English after all, it's hardly anything near Mandarin... what i feel sorry for, are the jihadi buggers who were born here, and were never taught their native sprechen... whatever the hell happened to English, and what Islam is jealous of, it came about naturally... arabic was never supposed
to become the standard bearer, the lingua franca of commerce and disinhibiting individuals entrenched... which, implies? i can look at the natives, with a more piercing dedication: excuses... excuses could be had, if, your, language, wasn't as "******" as it currently is... seems like i've reached a status of post-integration... now, i'm asking the language, the sort of application usage cruxes, that a native, simply wouldn't.


                         there's just so much
                           baggage,
that madmen
can carry,
for the "sane" standard
bearers of civilization,
of civility...
    at least some
of these outliers have
the *****
to not cower behind
an insanity plea...
     most of the madmen?
imagine
a tiger in a cage...
after a while...
          the tiger becomes
tamed by
zoological structuring
of its day-to-day...
and everyone's happy...
but that doesn't make
the tiger into a *******
bonsai, a feline "companion"...
beside the point...
  it's when some medical
conditions are slandered,
exposed to metaphor,
misnomer,
             that the madmen
receive the package
of social constraints
"levitating" just above
the state of being dormant...
but in this scenario:
well... that settles it...
now we know what
a level-playing-field looks like...
intellect,
and the debacle concerning
trust...
               well...
i've learned of trust
the upside-down way...
    relationships,
notably with a russian
specimen...
              me, ******,
why was i thinking i wouldn't
be ****** over?
   oh... right...
i can claim all
the responsibility with
what i "did" with a *******...
but when it comes
to the "affair" of a woman:
of free disposition,
i'm suddenly the culprit...
psychic trenches,
there "we" are,
entrenched in some plateau
of what seems to be
Belgium,
   and there "they" are,
entrenched in the same
plateau...
            sigh sigh, one more
for the party...
point being,
   people have not unearthed
the + + + + +
aspect of this debacle...
it's now a level playing field...
everyone is suspect,
everyone is limited...
a true: forensic quest for
democracy...
  all the other incidents
came and went,
always, as if: in passing...
  so this incident can also
come, and go, in passing...
solidarity to what?
to whom?
or rather: with?
            i can deal with this
sort of indigestion
surrounding my day to day,
but before long:
what other sop-story is
supposed to grab my attention?
clarity of intent,
   unlike someone experiencing
a psychotic break-down
of the psychic labyrinth...
a transcendence of
the categorical incentive...
somehow:
  the categorical imperative
was never supposed to mean:
what it meant to begin with...
the categorical imperative
has somehow lost the whole:
living by the standard
of a maxim...
               given that all maxims
are true...
  much harder to "test the waters"
with aphorisms...
            sure,
observable facts,
    then...
               disinhibited fictions...
glorification?
  today i had a problem
killing an ant...
   i was taking a ****
and had a problem killing
a moth that decided to freak
out the inanimate objects
of the bathroom...
       yeah: oh sure, sure,
i'm all for Herod's "conundrum"...
point being:
   we now know what
both sides feels...
         we now know...
       that there are outliers
on either side of the "debate"...
one: i am suspect,
but two: so is the counter-suspect...
no sacred cows...
   no: i think i'll just milk
a muslim in new dehli
for the jyst and thrill of a per se...
- at least now:
s.j.      w?
                or the conservative
mediator crowd of:
      there for the sake
of outrage only on the behalf
of outrage-in-itself?
past the phenomenon,
i can only return to the anti-phenomenon
of the noumenon (per se)...
which is not disappointing,
seeing how the whole "feel"
of it is begs the crux
fathomability of the individual...
just another skim read /
listen to the modern day
                          pharisee...
heavy sighs,
   blinded eyes...
frivolous waggling tongues...
but deep down,
most of the people are
content with having to experience
a revision...
  the revision being:
a level playing field...
   behring just attacked
the elites...
this?
    this dog ***** pile of
media attention?
         good...
        now everyone's uncertain...
i'm not afraid to think it,
and put it into writing...
    after a while:
   you just tire...
   you get tired of hearing
just one side of the story...

      what could leave someone
extreme: glee "riddled"
just leaves me exhausted...
     but at least the schizophrenics
are off the hook...
at least there's still some
belief in personal restraints...
even with a debilitating condition...
at least these people
are not facing the collateral
stereotyping of someone
with: the clarity of intent...

         there's just me, at this point,
thinking to myself:
and why did "they" drug me
to the point of:
making "them" feel uncomfortable...
clearly my mental faculties
have not been
                 car-crash dimished...

welcome the new hybrid...
soul mongrel...
           what is it about the polacks
that has made them so...
immune?
     i guess only recently
Poland has celebrated
the centenary of independence...
i wouldn't know,
i'm strapped to England
in metaphorical strait-jacket
  (what is metaphor
compared to metaphysics?),
   sober, drunk,
drunk, sober, etc.
               i was given a crash-course
in multiculturalism,
i guess i assimilated...
   back in school there was
the popular irish gang...
and there was "my" group...
of all the outliers...
   we used to spend lunch breaks
playing cards...
but when i heard news that
i would only be fully integrated,
once i gave up my native tongue
which i used to speak in
private?
    that broke the camel's back...
the centenary of independence
of Poland...
i wouldn't know...
i'm in "exile"...
   which is: economic "war"
came to where i come from
after the fall of the soviet pact...
and...
                every time i go back
to visit my grandparents...
i am only associated
with that country by speaking
the language...
and boy, it's not so ******* rosy
on the inside, compared to what
is being pushed to the outside...
Poland is like a: death-zone...
**** me, even the Hungarians
know how to ***** themselves
when it comes to tourism...

    i am, in "exile"...
            come to think of it,
most of the Muslims in the west
have it worse,
but i blame their parents...
i had one Pakistani friend
in high-school...
   now that i succumb to
reminiscence... yep...
he spoke perfect Urdu;
    but all these outliers?
   what their parents did...
****** themselves into
an integration mechanism...
not retaining their mother tongue?
like all these,
western jihadi prospects...
speak about 10 words of arabic,
and they are "attempting"
to compensate...
   i somehow feel for them,
a complete mine-field
of a mind-****...
       like being impreganted
by a virus,
a cancer...
     the linguistic dysphoria...
so yeah: if everyone would please
like to make heavy scrutiny
of the blatantly obvious,
regarding the genital region,
and forget a sobering note of
worthwhile problems,
namely the language dysphoria
of muslims, in England,
feel free to keep looking
at the genital "problem"...
            
clearly there's a dysphoria horizon,
i would know,
given that i have retained
my mother tongue...
but they haven't...
               and all they want is probably
so little...
   i remember that my father
once called me
the bellybutton of the world...
referencing me as
   an english child...
  that's how the Polacks view
the English: the bellybuttons
of the world, center of attention,
yada yada...
                 gender "dysphoria"...
you have to be *******
kidding me...
              what about the language
dysphoria of Muslims
                    in the (v)vest?

jak to się mówi:
            tym co się od razu, ma?

i can understand the language
dysphoria, well,
being a 1st generation immigrant...
i can't imagine being
born to 1st generation immigrants,
not retaining my native
tongue,
   knowing only the tongue
of integration,
   it would feel alien...
   like i was impregnated
by a foreign body,
   retaining nothing of my "******"
natural resources...
so... the problem we've arrived at
is very real...
  more real than gender dysphoria...

hopefully i'm less "schizoid"
at the end of this marathon,
and more: relieved to be merely
bilingual...
entrenched bilingual -
            so no, not a polymath...
or rather: not a polyglot;
my maternal great-grandfather
apparently was,
spoke 7 languages,
disappeared somewhere near
Niagara Falls...

   the plan was: England, stop-over...
via Argentina
   and toward the U.S.,
****... seems i was side-tracked
into remaining,
being shackled to these isles.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
why did i ever go out on a friday night?
drinks with "friends" and hitting the essex
club "scene" -
well - no much of a scene -
there was never the music you'd want to listen
to: come friday or saturday -
even mid-week when all the rock kids
were "hanging out" -
what would be chances of being your own d.j. -
catching something really new...
POIZON - church is poizon -
cool mom - something between a crossbreed
of cage the elephants and nirvana on blew -
3rd view - moi -
but i used to: and i remember that gehenna of
a sobering walk - alone after a night out -
like some furious son of sam -
when youth still had the adrenaline with it
and a sense of anger ******* around with
disillusionment -

those were the friday nights: bon jovi highlights
and long hair and milking a somewhat androgynous
look - sometimes the mascara would come out...
those were the days of having milk skin
and a proper shave -
the long hair and the waistcoast and cravat: semi-,

the lonesome story before i met my beard:
fwyday mordaithceirch -
i actually have a name for it...
i forgot what's already the designated
whittle pecker mr. pritchard of the down down:
below...

oh, oh so what...
rough friday nights in my youth -
on the clubbing "scene" -
and always that moral hangover when it came
to drinking with others -
ever since i started drinking by myself:
i forgot the mirror and that bucket
of warm water beside my bed to put my hand
in before going to sleep...
once or twice the company was worth the drink -
but most of the time you only kept
such company: because you were drinking -
drinking was never an afterthought -

now... i like drinking alone -
at least i can keep fact-checking the company
and the odd vocab peacock taking to the catwalk
of a ruminating free-fall tongue waggle
and rummage - the needle in the haystack
adventure - or... the ******* bucket
of deshelled oysters...

there have been some awful friday nights -
but: seeing how i started to give my beard
a welsh name borrowed from a willem dafoe
novel - and how it simply became pointless
to wake the dead with the angry tantrums
of youth: and how i seem to have
forgotten where my 20s "went" -
somehow rooted in: da-sein and how
i "wasted" 2 years on one book by kant -
2 years on one book by heidegger -
and: how i didn't have the time to "catch-up"
on the greek classics -

oh these island dwelling people -
i try to imagine them not being a seafaring:
and their messiah / superiority complex -
with their breakfast that could hardly
be digested come the hour of noon -
or no messiah / superiority complex -
the traffic: indeed - works like clockword...
from left to right...
sidenote: what of fahrenheit and
the feet and inches - stones and pounds?
ounces?
the metric of: baseline 0 here,
baseline 00 over there...

no... Michele Campanella piano solo take
on wagner's das rheingelt: entry of the gods into
valhalla - it's hardly anemic -
it's... the last leaf of autumn falling -
because the crescendo has already happened...
a befitting closure...

the superior island folk and their...
hyphens and germanic loan words -
how almost all names in chemistry are still
in their germanic: intact form of: no hyphen:
broken leg or broken arm...

woodwinds... perhaps... the violins providing
the humming of birds:
chirp chirp: no chirping -
and of course the horn - but the horns never
as prominent as those drank from...

something has happened today -
but i am... left without having any english
sensibility / egalitarianism -
somehow i always equate egalitarianism with
the english - the islanders -
a firework went off in the background -
mr. sloth awoke mrs. slouch after 3 years
for a firecracker celebration...

because who would want to be ruled
over by unelected: chocolatiers...
esp. after their trial run in the Congo -
but i have certainly had worse friday nights...

it can't exactly get much worse than...
say... listening to the siegfried idyll...
multitasking: drinking a cider, smoking a cigarette,
balancing act of folded leg sat on
perched on a windowsill solving a no. 11,289
sudoku from the 27th jan. 2020...
otherwise prior to:
imagine my disbelief at the pleasure -

with numbers to somehow escape thinking in words:
no grand arithmetic linear gymnastics -
of the end result -
certainly no logical statements -
just a whirlwind of numbers complimenting
these few words...
and what a fine friday night it has become:

the pizza was made - god save me from the perfume
of yeast... or checking on the rising dough
from time to time -
the leftover yeast gave me the opportunity
to bake an imitation sourdough crust pretty-as-a-picture
loaf that: would make any mushroom blush
and shy away from unfolding into an umbrella pose...
or a Y... curling outward-inward into an upsilon Υ...

because how could i forget the pleasure of
sifting through numbers?
by the time i attempted puzzle no. 11,290
i had to write a "map"

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
2)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x

come to think of it... where's a subscript?
if i'm going to use 1, 2, 3...
to tier the allocation of squares...
tennis and sudoku...
tennis: a game of 7 rectangles -
and how many judges and ball boys / girls?
sudoku - a puzzle of 10 squares - perhaps...
if i'll use tiers 1, 2, 3: a1, b2, c3...
what if... sudoku invoked letters rather than
numbers?

much later... oh believe me...
this is the antithesis of knausgård
writing about using googlemaps...
        
           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

it's still a schematic - the narrative is yet
to begin... otherwise...
there's nothing smart about this...
i have tired eyes sometimes:
i succumb and have to allow myself
to no acid-bath these eyes in words...

esp. since i speak so rarely -
imagine... in england and i spear
the bare minimum of english -
i can: i have to: i will - when being prompted -
but i can't remember the last time
i had an honest: informal exchange
of letters... lapped up by the glutton
tongue... i looked and looked
and with my silence i can attest:
there's a speech-impediment -
a stutter that's not born from nervousness...
but... an allusion to a "stoic" through
my lack of conversation...

at least on paper i can exfoliate -
enough cider and enoug whiskey and i'm all
sparrow McDermott!
ugh... the devolved scots and the likewise
welsh... devolved nations...
only this aspect of Brexit is... well...
imagine the "evolved" status of post-Yugoslavia...
Kosovo...
this is the only aspect of an otherwise:
fair enough that's... well...
if you lived for 3 years among the scots...
you'd get to appreciate them...
this is the only aspect of this whole affair
i will ever appreciate...
i would pour blood and **** into
the Welsh continuing their...
preservation of the iaith...
forever and the more - i would love to see
scotland start to dig trenches and
forget trainspotting gaelic -
parading like ponces and humpty dumpteys
with "harkccents"... glasgewian bull-runnings...
cousins aye and wee -

a thing of beauty: a thing of union...
but this... they were bullied in brussels...
they came back and started to bully the scots...
if you have lived -
the betas of cardiff - but they tongue: remains!
look far back and wales would encompass
cornwall -
ignorant i of a 26 year "servitude" on these isles...
quiz me on outside of London:
no point...
perhaps i too would wish for the lost
theta in Dublin - towing: to t'ink...
as any sanskrit H-surd does matter...

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

but if i will replace... the side tiers of numbers...
the numbers in the puzzle will have to become
letters - greek... probably iota, epsilon and upper-case
gamma...

the bullied have returned from the palance
of the chocalatiers and: back to their old ways
of bullying the rest of these island folk...
because: it's infantile for me imagine
a resurrection of the crown (poland)
and the grand duchy of lithuania -
the commonwealth -
but somehow the united kingdom is not
fated to become the next yugoslavia -

i can confirm - up in edinburgh i was
confirmed by having the hat of Knox having
scalped me -
never is always metaphor: vaguely -
as in literally - in these quasi-paragraphs...
so it's not... infantile to even "think" that
the british empire can be revived?
zee window-licker spezials of
cross-breed h'americana postcards sent?
i nibble to attempt a joke...

oh i can bulldozer this whole narrative...
turn into a berserker -
i've saved enough money to deal
with the label loser...
all it will take is me having drunk enough -
sightseeing the slums of london's east end
and then hitting the brothel:
like an iron-head... to the pillow
and the ***** of a *******...

because i have had worse friday nights...
terrible company...
if i were not a michel de montaigne or a knausgård:
me me me, me me, me me me me,
write enough of that and:
to meme to grafitti... or to...
why are there no diacritical markers in
the english language worthy of recognition?
why would i...
rhoi fy **** y Cymraeg enw?
give my beard a welsh name?
and why is that not a cedilla C but a ******* K?
why not... Çumraeg?

on foreign shores i have made it adamant that...
this sense of foreigness does not
peppermint my presence with hopes to:
add to - an integration -
just borrow what the local have made: left-overs...
and work with that...

(insert snigger) - the neu-vikings of
northumberland...

           a             b             c
      x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x  
1)   x   x   x   3   x   x   6   x   4
      x   x   x   2   x   4   x   8   9
      x   1   9   x   4   x   x   6   2
2)   x   x   x   7   x   x   x   5   x
      x   x   2   x   x   8   x   4   x
      x   2   x   x   x   x   x   x   x
3)   x   x   6   1   9   5   x   x   3
      x   3   8   4   x   x   x   7   x

this really does have a linear narrative...
here goes...
3(c1), 9(c3), 1(c1), 2(c3), 2(c1), 2(a1), 9(a3), 8(c3),
4(c3), 8(c2), 8(a2), 5(b2), 7(c2), 3(b2), 3(b3), 8(b3),
7(c1), 5(c1), 7(b3), 5(c3), 1(c3), 6(c3), 1(c2), 3(c2),
9(c2), 9(b2), 6(b1), 6(b2), 6(b3), 2(b3), 2(b2), 1(b2),
1(b1), 9(b1), 9(a1), 8(b1), 8(a1), 5(b1), 7(b1), 7(a1)...

and then a "gamble" in the narrative...
the (7a2 and the 5a2 - interchange)....
it's a pleasure - not a chore -
5  9  4
2  8  7
3  6  1
8  1  9
6  4  3
7  5  2 - this line... what if it was 5  7  2?
1  2  5
4  7  6
9  3  8
if i want to solve this puzzle - i will solve it
and not read a tabloid article /
whatever the hell has become of youtube...
my diamond jukebox...

otherwise the "narrative" continued from
7a2 and the 5a2 interchange:
7(3a), 4(a3), 4(a2), 6(a1), 4(a1), 5(a1), 5(a3),
1(a3), 1(a1), 3(a1), 3(a2), 6(a2)... end result?

           a             b             c
      5   9   4   6   8   1   2   3   7  
1)   2   8   7   3   5   9   6   1   4
      3   6   1   2   7   4   5   8   9
      8   1   9   5   4   3   7   6   2
2)   6   4   3   7   1   2   9   5   8
      7   5   2   9   6   8   3   4   1
      1   2   5   8   3   7   4   9   6
3)   4   7   6   1   9   5   8   2   3
      9   3   8   4   2   6   1   7   5

because i can imagine this not being:
the most difficult Finnish sudoku...
i can almost imagine this puzzle
to be in greek...
where: 1ι, 2ζ, 3ε, 4χ, 5Σ, 6δ, 7Γ, 8β, 9ρ...

in the background all i hear is:
corvus corax' la i mbealtaine...
the greek version of the japanese puzzle...

           a             b             c
      Σ   9   χ   6   8   ι   ζ   ε   7  
1)   ζ   8   7   ε   Σ   9   6   ι   χ
      ε   6   ι   ζ   7   χ   Σ   8   9
      8   ι   9   Σ   χ   ε   7   6   ζ
2)   6   χ   ε   7   ι   ζ   9   Σ   8
      7   Σ   ζ   9   6   8   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   8   ε   7   χ   9   6
3)   χ   7   6   ι   9   Σ   8   ζ   ε
      9   ε   8   χ   ζ   6   ι   7   Σ

half-way... i just wanted to "selfie" what
will become of this... i no longer write: i paint...

            a             b             c
      Σ   9   χ   δ   8   ι   ζ   ε   Γ  
1)   ζ   8   Γ   ε   Σ   9   δ   ι   χ
      ε   δ   ι   ζ   Γ   χ   Σ   8   9
      8   ι   9   Σ   χ   ε   Γ   δ   ζ
2)   δ   χ   ε   Γ   ι   ζ   9   Σ   8
      Γ   Σ   ζ   9   δ   8   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   8   ε   Γ   χ   9   δ
3)   χ   Γ   δ   ι   9   Σ   8   ζ   ε
      9   ε   8   χ   ζ   δ   ι   Γ   Σ

going... going... gone...

            a             b             c
      Σ   ρ   χ   δ   β   ι   ζ   ε   Γ  
1)   ζ   β   Γ   ε   Σ   ρ   δ   ι   χ
      ε   δ   ι   ζ   Γ   χ   Σ   β   ρ
      β   ι   ρ   Σ   χ   ε   Γ   δ   ζ
2)   δ   χ   ε   Γ   ι   ζ   ρ   Σ   β
      Γ   Σ   ζ   ρ   δ   β   ε   χ   ι
      ι   ζ   Σ   β   ε   Γ   χ   ρ   δ
3)   χ   Γ   δ   ι   ρ   Σ   β   ζ   ε
      ρ   ε   β   χ   ζ   δ   ι   Γ   Σ

i don't mind a people being right...
but the overt-gloating...
without having to work around the sort
of paranoia associated with:
how the russians are not allowed to glutton
themselves on gloating -
because they are always made
to feel suspcious - the russians can't gloat
like most of the anglo- speaking world...
always suspect: russophobia evil genuises...
tip-toeing goliaths - less the blundering
fudge-packers of "global ****"...
and i kissed a boy and i liked it...
my genitals started shrinking
and my *** started to exfoliate with:
welcome all! welcome all hard and on!
and that tongue in my mouth always helps...
but imagine my surprise when
i started to navigate my hands
but the reply came:
timbuktu and mt. kilimanjaro will not be found
attached to this sort of torso...
wrong dog, wrong tree...

some things really do require numbers...
i once had a mathematics teacher in high school
bemoan the origin of modern numbers
and how we once: upon a time used these letters...
but did our arithmetic with visual aids
akin to the abacus... because...
you'd have to "read braille" when counting...
to differentiate the already: lettered numbers
and the letters being letters -
and all arithmetic functions
were "spoken of" but never depicted...
i.e. there was no VII + III = X...
there was no XV - XI = IV...
eh?! arithmetic was cat-intuitive...
not spoken of - done by either the visual
aid of fingers when haggling
in a market place -
or by the abacus aid in a bureucratic office!

i said this was the most perfect friday night...
what did i have to offer?
no clickbait title - some gems of wording
in between?
the patient reader - as ever - most rewarded -

but... oh my god... the sensation of
changing the bed sheets...
it's friday night and you're... changing your bed sheets...
and they are more crisp and clean
than any political event that the journalist leeches
are milking -
and you do it with a saving private ryan precision -
you will sleep in this bed: well into
11am of a today to come...
believe me: that you will...

- in that i am still walking among the germanic people -
if the germans will sing a: bretonisher marsch...
then the two peoples are alligned by
their sentiment for the crow as their godhead:
alles menschen totem...
what could possibly make me feel welcome?
french grammar is polish grammar...
matin de printemps - poranek wiosny -
spring morning in reverse in germanic...
how many more examples would i ever wish
to give?

there was a moment in my life where...
i realised my faults... i should have read
the Pickwick Papers... anything by C. Dickens to be sure...
instead came Stendhal, Voltaire, Balzac...
because if you said to me...
BBC radio 4... the archers...
and... thomas hardy: madding crowd?
you'd accuse me of being ignorant of:
London is a bustling cosmopolitan in-waiting
from the busy-body industrial proto-Beijing
it was of 100 years ago?    
the French had cosmopolitan intellectualism
100 years prior to the english...
100 years later and it's still not much...
is anyone about to cite me william hazlitt?!

the trouble with the english is that they hold dear
to that one old 19th century idea -
this waiting for: awaiting a revival of darwinism...
the "blatantly" obvious needs a resurgence!
because a michael faraday must most surely
be forgotten!
how many times will this already painful reality
need to be emphasised once more:
intellectually - via a darwinism?
no one stresses the copernican "upside-down"...
or what is copernican "west" up in space?
how does acknowledging the sphere
of the earth - ease you reading a flat map -
moving from point A to point B?

earlier this week - for once in my life i was
ashamed of what i wrote -
so i wrote for scribli per se: scribbles for
scribbles themselves -
the darwinian germanic folk who say:
alles von afrika...
how the hebrews debased themselves
in both aushwitz and breaking their bones
on the emoji hieroglyphs -
alles von afrika: ja... so sicher... so wahr!

ask any slavic person among the germanic
peoples...
where from? wir (ar) sind lesen und schreiben
"afrika": i.e. Indu...
if the african challenged the hebrews
with... "the best they had": egyptian emojis...
why would i not stress my birth
with pseudo cedilla Ş / इ... ☦ -
this indo-european is not... at home with
these african-germanoids...
pseudos and quasi -
these chocolate frenzied busy-buddies!

from the caucasian and further still from
that whittle sub-corinthian quote: continent...
somehow, "somehow" this part of this story
is read: south to north... always a grand
marker missing when the people went
east, squinted... learned skeleton existence,
atoms... and the frenzy of letters:
owls and ******* **** flinging beetles
back in the north eastern tip of
africa: in that egyptian haemorrhage of "idea"...

i assure myself... perhaps the form came from
africa... but sure as **** the tongue only arrived
in the lap of the Dalai Lama...
as did the "thinking" and the music
across prior to the Mongol's curiosity
over the tundra of Siberia...
something had to be placed on a loan...
and coming back to the cradle and the crux
had to happen like so...
not this current: ergo: so...
quickened and: what news from Damascus?!

first impressions count...
i made my bed... it's newly washed...
as crisp as falling onto a bed a prawn crackers...
without the crumbs' itch...
like listening to some german:
juggernaut... this will do... i can fall asleep
with this: grab hören zu der winderhall...
mehr flöte - weniger violinekratzen!
schlechtdeutsche? alle deutsche ist gut deutsche...
erwarten etwas isländisch zu sein
gesprochen insel von insel: auf diese inseln?!

to make a crisp bed of freshly washed sheets...
to sleep in them alone...
given the grammar is not that far removed...
are the french even remotely translated
as a germanic "sort of" people?
"they" or "we" share the same grammar...
and there are celtic freedoms that would
never be allowed to exfoliate under
strict anglo-ßaß obligations...

oh sure! great people! steam engine: choo-choo!
newton et al...
shakespeare: when they taught us shakespeare
they should have taught us bernard shaw...
when they forced jane eyre down our throats
we should have been reading
the pickwick papers...
the music will remain german -
because as much as vaughan williams...
holst and händel were "were" english...
esp. latter with his umlaut that spread over
toward i-and-j...

why wouldn't you **** at the pillar of the empire:
a past most assured - dust, books and moths...
like hell will i come to correct my ways
to state the: pish-poor Elgar... this poo'em too...
himmel... sky...
leerenhimmel - empty sky -
nein sonne während der tag:
das englischnebel: bedeckthimmel...
nein mond während der nacht...
nur so...

i of the lesser men of this world duly bow
my presence before the altar of the higher men
of these isles...
and hope and pray that their wisdom
will not bestow upon them any major calamity...
with not irony or ridicule i wish upon
these peoples... the right sort of oars
to turn this rooted island
into the people's imagined langboot...

there are only one british people a people
who will pursue to gloat having been
conquered by the romans...
being raided by the vikings...
integrating the anglo-ßaß...
a second viking coming via the Normans...
the push-over remains of the celts...
that somehow translated itself into
the: empire...
ideal: to compensate...
the islamic fervor for the... resurrected
caliphate...
jokes about the dritte ***** and the vierte *****...
that's pretty much the precursor jokes
surrounding: ein zweite ***** -
auf welche die sonne nimmer setzt -
ever wonder how that translates with the increased
cases of insomnia?!

again: bad german is better than
no german.
She's like a switchblade dancing across my tongue.
She's like a hurricane crashing through my lungs.
She's like a nightmare strangling my dreams.
She's like a sobering feeling faded screams.
She's like a ... (kiss)
She's like a ... (fist)
She's like a ... (kick in the teeth)
She's like a firefly shining through my night.
She's like a lioness killing with all her might.
She's like a devil stealing to save my soul.
She's like a guardian angel I don't know.
She's like a ... (kiss)
She's like a ... (fist)
She's like a ... (kick in the ******* teeth)
She's like a switchblade dancing across my heart.
She's like a hurricane crashing from the start.
She's like a nightmare mangling my dreams.
She's like a sobering feeling torn from the seams.
She's like a ... (kiss)
She's like a ... (fist)
She's like a ... (kick in the mother ******* teeth)
She's like a priceless painting inside my mind
She's like a permanent image that I can't find.
She's like a devil lying to steal my soul.
She's like a guardian angel I still don't know.
She's like a ... (kiss)
She's like a ... (fist)
She's like a ... (kick in the ******* teeth)
She's like a switchblade dancing across my wrists.
She's like a hurricane crashing through the mist.
She's like a nightmare dangling my dreams.
She's like a sobering feeling without means.
She's like a ... (kiss)
She's like a ... (fist)
She's like a ... (kick in the teeth)
She's like nothing you've ever seen.
She's like nothing you've ever had.
She's like nothing you've ever gleamed.
She's like nothing you've ever read.
She's like a kiss, a fist, and a kick in the mother ******* teeth.
Jeremy Duff Jul 2013
~

However often Steely Dan says
all that I am thinking,
he never says
all that I need to say.

I guess that's why I'm putting this into writing.
I guess that's why I'm taking this from my heart,
which will die,
and putting it on paper,
which will die as well,
only much later.

I want to matter.
I want to relate this to you,
my friends,
in a way that is worth something.
In a manner that is in no way resembling
my usual upheaval
of mismatched,
poorly chosen words,
spoken in a drunken
and sobering
slur.

To You:
However often and warmly I think of you when the sun is out, my midnight thoughts of you are always cold, always confused, and always sickening. I'm truly sorry for this. It's always been me.


To The First:
You entered my mind at about the same time you entered my life,
which is uncasually unusual for matters such as these.
I believe this to be the first of many mistakes we made.


To The Last:
We've all been hurt.
We've all cried and
we've all hated the same person that we love.
But no one deserves to be whole more than you do.
No one deserves a friend more than you,
you,
the one named Robin.
I know not your life,
nor the story you wrote about,
on a desperately, obviously rainy day in March.
All the best to you.
*This is in no way a comparrison of the three girls mentioned in the end.
The writing before "To You"
has nothing to do with the writing after "To You"
If you think this is about you, it is not.
If you believe you are either the subjects of To You or To The First or To The Last,
you are probably right.
Brianna Oct 2013
Chaos brewed in my heart with each sip of that sweet, sweet poison.
When I'm sober I feel pain.
Tragedy fell in love with the Sinner across the room he led her straight to hell with one breath of cancerous smoke.
When I'm sober I feel...
Hope will lead me to my demise and I'll fall head first into the darkness surrounding his heart.
When I'm sober...
Blurry vision an slurred words he took my hand lead me down the rabbit hole laughing through the dark tunnels.
When I'm...
Tears running down her face Tragedy waited for her Sinner to come back to stop the sobering pain she started to feel...
When...
Katy Laurel Jan 2014
Certain rhythms will provoke ghosts
in old attics reeking with romance.
That eternal prayer
found in complete silence,
begs sinners to break purity.

Mortal breathes begin to dance between lips,
creating poetry in sacred space.
The momentary awareness of another,
who craves the absorption of your soul.

**** me into your lungs darling.
I'll translate centuries of painful wisdom
stirring in the temple of my bones.

These truths begin a home
in our late night dialogues
circling around dangerous pasts,
all those golden, fatal blades.

As we make our way back to the red light of sleep,
the attic leans in to touch our skulls.
We respond with agony and laughter.

I slide into sleep,
forgetting all I need to find in your mind.
Accepting the fingerprints
as you press my identity upon your tongue.
The restless goddess within my nature
swallows the mortality
in tonight's poetry.

But this never lasts.
Love is a distraction,
an intoxication meant to entertain that ego who loves deficiency,
a selfish voice who finds herself every morning in front of a decaying mirror
and blames the lack of other.

Learn to leave the fear behind.
You alone are whole.
There is poetry sewn into your veins.
Underneath that sacred silence
there is an original symphony
waiting to find the medium of your complex truth.
Traveler Sep 2016
Sobering
The impact reason
Has on reality
Surely the access to
Thankfulness
Leads through
The door
Of togetherness
Down the empathy
Of continuity within
There we will ascend...
Traveler Tim
Abbigail May 2014
I knew that only telling myself you never existed
would be as difficult as telling a drunk that he'd never tasted alcohol.
But you, my poisonous drug,
I've been sober of you for 388 days now
and if I let myself slip up,
if your name rolls off a tongue near by and I allow myself to react,
to absorb that name,
to taste that name,
to feel, to hold, to know that name,
I start counting my days all over again.

So now I'm just 1 day sober...
and I don't know anybody by that name.
ShowYouLove Apr 2015
Good Friday: What is it and what’s so Good about it?!

What exactly is Good Friday and what is so good about it?! Jesus died and we put him there. He died in the most terrible way imaginable and did nothing wrong. As far as we are concerned, we killed our best hope for freedom because now he is dead and that isn’t anything to be happy or good about!

Good Friday is a day of extremes. It is a day of great and overwhelming sadness and a day of hope and joy. It is a day of suffering and agony and a freedom from them. It is a day of powerful evil and of far greater love, day of death and life, of end and of beginning. This is Good Friday. It is on this day that we are reminded of our sin and humanity. So often we are the throngs of people singing hymns and giving glory to God as on Palm Sunday and we are the same angry mob that demanded Jesus death on the cross; mocking jeering and spitting at our Lord and Savior. Yet, in all our sin and hatred not once did Jesus despise us. Rather he looked on his people with all the more love and compassion.

Only Jesus could make something as ugly as the cross into something so beautiful that it is one of the most recognized and venerated symbols today. His heart broke for us as on that cross he showed us the power of perfect love. It is said that love isn’t love until you give it away and Jesus said “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend”. Jesus’s life was his love and he gave it away. It is sobering to think that after all I have done and will do that someone as perfect, powerful and great as God would look on me with love. To realize that he knows my name and calls me, and that he would call me friend, call me child is nothing short of amazing.

On Good Friday we have the opportunity to venerate the cross by kneeling down touching or kissing the cross; in doing so we can bring our troubles, our burdens, our joys, blessings, hopes, and dreams and give them to Jesus in a very real way. Jesus said “Come to me all you who are weary, you who are broken and burdened. Come to me and I shall give you rest; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. It is at the foot of the cross that all are equal and all can come; the rich and poor, sick and healthy, young and old.

No one has everything, but everyone has something and each of us are called to use what gifts we have been given to be salt and light for all around us; both around the block and around the world.

So Good Friday is Good in part because of it was on this day that through His death on the cross we might come to have life eternal, sin and death were defeated. Good ultimately prevailed over Evil. Jesus’ death and what would happen after was also made true when he said “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life will lose it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life”. In his death Jesus’ body and blood are the true bread and true wine given for the whole world. His death also has produced much fruit in the people today who follow Christ and his teachings. For more than 2000 years, people have come to believe and the faith has continued to survive, grow and even thrive throughout the years despite difficulties and trials. What would have happened and how would life be today if Jesus had saved himself from death on the cross, and didn’t die for our sins on that day? The world may never know and even though things are far from perfect, I thank God he did. That is Good.

Amen
Jesse stillwater Apr 2018
A thrown flat stone skipped
across the snowcapped reflection
breaking the mirror glass surface;

rippling the glaring still waters
the way a trailing piano note
slowly decays to a sobering hush

A gentle puff of silence
segued into a fading
whisper's echo



Jesse
06 April 2018
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
pop culture... yeah... that yawn...
borrowed from the t.v....

   belle delphine... makes a comeback:
                                                       ­    i'm back...

       i must be a real riddle...
                                              though...­

      there i was thinking:
sorry... i was on auto-pilot...
i started to think of...

                harley quinn -
ava max - sweet but a ******...

trouble: i know what a tease
of regret looks like...
i also know what...
a make-shift...
nazgul harem of bulgarian
looks like... too...

        a tease of regret:
a former girlfriend...
striptease of a follow-up
narrative...
very nice... oh oh so nice!

but this one is clearly not beyond:
being a push-over...
belle delphine is no harley quinn:
i.e. ******* seriously sober...
**** your entranced: drunk...
******* sober overtly sober twice...

but... for the bathwater...
and... no...
i am the omega man...
on the list... of... allowed...
men... to *****...
into a genocide tissue
of... banking on genes:
without a ****-up
mother and father sort of
narrative...

         for the drunk:
the sobering whirlwind of reality...
because when rich people
like... should... i... inject...
myself... with some... broown show-gar?!

like i once asked an aesthetician:
i guess in reverse...
i was put under the scalpel and:
the selfless dictum of medicine...
he asked me: what books?
i asked him: quo vadis?

                i thereby managed
to burn the bookmark...
who was sane enough to salvage
the book i was reading?

    clued in on the: beside the brothel
antics...
   this clearly aesthetic girl...
this money making
crazy wheel this buttocks of
supra-roulette...
   when man and death...
the trough... the rhine valley
of trenches and brick-making
tactics for the ***** pederasts
on top...
those cherries those readily...
and thereby... easily...
cusps of iced cream...

                prostitutes speaking...
their gimp and limp-sidekick...
hard-on...       "procrastinations"...
to rhyme to rap...
by the way it looks like:
to rhyme is to rap:
to rap is to rhyme:
  
cookie dough oh oh *******...
and crisp-et... cookie ok: dunking...
slippery and swoon... and sweat...
   boy george fickle...
somehow browning... and none of that...
best dead before:
there was ever a best before date...

and then....
                      MA-GI-C!

playing a game of caesar's thumb:
      versed... in pollice verso?
          how do you play a game of
caesar's thumb?

oh... well... you will require a female maine ****
cat... and some... adamant moth...
the game works... like:
you proving to the beast:
you are not... toying with the moth...
the moth is a lesser creature
to both of you...

how does one play a game of caesar's thumb?
when one only has...
an agitated moth to catch once in a while...
and a maine **** cat:
to give attention to...
with a clenched fist:
with the entombed moth trying
to wriggle its way with
a fluttering of the wings...

   there's also that female
mosquito...
clenched onto by a pinch involving
one of her leg-work limbs...
and being a female...
she pulled and tugged and made
a "dialectic" of the verbs associated
with that limb extension...
a male maine **** cat would
have made a feast of her...
like he would of the cobwebs...

she escaped with 5 legs... to her original 6...
but a month...
i can't disfigure...
too quick for the lassy...
i held the moth in my clenched
fist like a rattle of fluttering
wings teasing...
not enough...
top bored from having
the impossible catch of the night...

the moth always remains: intact...
alive...
either cat catches the moth...
or leaves ones bedroom:
with a blooming gloom
of boredome....

but that's how to keep intact
a "sanity"...
a visit to the brothel...
becomes... a typo-
       for a shop only butchers are only
allowed to... inhabit...
    the sentencing of meat...
the clarity of heaving a life
of a moth in one's clenched fist:
and there's a thirst...
of the fist: to draw that lost samble
of: the begrudged familiarity
of language: and given that...
it's all in 21st century crude / rudimentary...
and rhyme...
            
       no caged beacon of the heavens...
of a lost circumvent...
caged lottery of the rhyme
of being perpetually caged...
       for the loot of **** and cockrel loitering...
like: morn is the cry to whine!

a game of caesar's thumb...
there was once a clenched fist: and a thirst for
blood...
now... a maine **** she, cat...
and a moth... fluttering...
like... an agitated petal-wing-and-rose...
too many "bored"
marihuana junkies stalking these
english streets come twilight...
one almost bumped into...

agitated by my poker facing
the already agitating grey-ish...
by the number...
by the number:
                   what-what of...
if he be not the king george:
having to give up h'america...
then he's no helen mirren...

          a game of caesar's thumb:
any and if all be owned:
that antithesis of a game of chess...
a game of both
kings and paupers...
3D dynamic: and madmen!

"revision": belle delphine...
cold... hearted... capitalist at... brain-sizzle...
but... gravitating toward
two outlets of fiction....
   belle delphine ≠ harley quinn...
a little ******... oh so hot...
hot tender me oh my ***:
posion the daisy...
poison rose should... a rose be all
the more... already... poisoned...

a visit to the brothel:
a visit to the butcher shop:
for the cho- chop and chopping assurances...
the crooked crown on an already
crooked head...
the statue of charles II
in soho sq....
        
              i most certainly paid for much
less than this ****-tenure-of-a-tease....
but then... to have an argument...
you'd need to mingle with a bunch
of thieves... murdering slob-gatherers
of phlegm...

            poisoned red-bunch of
a wholly rosed-up affairs of loiter...
and time: such a prized dead-end of
eventuality...

            the father the god:
the sacrificial lamb...
because... god forbid she was
ever to somehow burden
a deity with a: one first...
once and a daughter...

                  ****** fun-fair for
the riddled ghosts...
       blank shot shrapnel...
                     better suited...
midnight blue of the alias black...
then at least:
best... towing two gaylords
with everyone's bet on
typo and a bullseye!

   but never... the sensibly...
      hetrosexual normative...
goody twice-tied...
shoe-and-shine:
pwetty: that girl and:
you best forget to whine!
that girl and you'd wish...
            her father was a shtalin....
because...
crude and rude...
and all that's ****...
before Lucifer peeks with
a... siamese cranium...
              
      death to all...
who have made it concise...
in making life:
hardly... a... pardon....

  yes... best equipped it making it:
magic! and all the more difficult...
but never difficult enough...
difficult enough...
when... somehow... never... citing...
an... albert fish...
needle in my pelvis...
to... exfoliate... with any...
and more... addition of...
pain as an... ******...

      i guess the plead of the shawshank
sisters drops...
it always drops...
when there's a "conflation"
of evidence...
surrounding... the lower-base...
extremity: the crab genus...
       crustaceans....
    child- this-and-that...
       ****-fiddler...
             but a cannibal to boot?!
you... talk...
or simply... electrocute said:
individual...
since... your... ******* 'ed...
is already fried by the magic
of norm-frequence...
and the already: herd... estasblished...
Norman?
you with me...
sptunik jimmy...
               you with me... cream-soda joe?
you with me...
finding aliens already bigger
than flies... the widow mantis...
blessed joseph josephine?!
*******-numb-wit?!

oh yes! all conession: avowed
to you!
               because...
who isn't...
      in russia... they vowed
to keep these cain canine brood phlegm
of an *******: freely to roam...
siberia... that was the promise...

when they would **** a birth-firvolity
of a: devil and the "by chance"...
when converting man to
the stature of elevating wolf or bear...
and all the better...
rather than... caging the odd-ball
parody of... lacklustre joke and...
moth-ball-rolling...
****-wits the: future!
supposed! narrative!
******'-h'america...
              celebrated feature of culture
most involving... a horror...
      and... bull-wrapping!
               a ******* for a skinning!
You need rehab from me, and I’m sorry
but this isn’t healthy.
Admitting being a problem is sobering
And I hope you can recover from my withdrawal.
I’ll be busy detoxing myself, for you
For everyone after you.
I hope you remember how great you are!!
I'll be cheering you on from a far!!
& that you're better off
without
me
broke up with my boyfriend today and it was the classic story, opposites attract but they don't last.. almost everything that was attractive wasn't out of resemblance to one's self, but to the extreme differences in one another.
Struggling to want to communicate, is a red flag
Tryst Apr 2017
A sobering thought
The death of an alcoholic

Not some bridge-squatting ***
Unkempt and unclean

A family man
With a good job
And a mortgage

But no liver

A long weekend
Waiting for news
    "Not looking good"
            "Deteriorating"
        "Just a matter of time"
  "It is done"


We cannot speak 'it'
Too soon for that
So we talk about 'it'
Without saying the words

You couldn't live without the *****
You couldn't live without a liver

So we have to live without you
Frisk Jan 2014
January brought cold weather, as well as a igloo shaped as home
fabricating a sort of warmth in a desiccated environment, it's a
sandpaper type coarse tip toe around the tacks scattered on the
floor type cold, childishly misplaced and a childish ignorance.
February brought one of the purest primrose flowers out of the
field, stuck in drought drowning in murky waters, covered in
dirt, and i washed away the dirt marks that i recall, was all over
you. It's a sobering feeling to find someone who completes you.
March brought lightning, but clouds shook the strikes away into
Davy Jones locker collected in mason jars, but lightning is not a
controlling virus. It doesn't hide it's burn marks or it's scars left
on vulnerable bodies that are at their tallest height, their peak.
April caused me to be a narcissistic but raucous child, enjoying
the effulgence showered on me, as well as the rain that poured.
This smile was stuck climbing to my ears, and I let life take the
rains as I stayed acquiesce to my worries. When it rains, it pours.
May brought a forest of doubt, growing introverted and placing
dynamite in my path, these mirrors won't show me anything but
the truth, anathema's bile spilled onto the yellow brick road and
I was dragged along for the unfortunate ride constantly mocked.
June was the end of the road and the start of a new and brighter
one, like a window flying open with all of my hopes and dreams
being carried by owls. My algorithm is being solved, one step up
without a tyrant. I'm going to dissociate myself from everyone.
July let the mirage give in, five years of desire to visit arizona
with it's rusty colored mountains and spiky tumbleweeds
sprawling hope back into my lungs that there is bandages
for the wound imprinted on my heart back in soggy April.
August showed me that it smells like burnt hair here, but the
good kind, if it makes sense, with hot air brushing against
my skin twirling with excitement that I've arrived, bringing
a bit of Texas with it. I've never been more happy to see rain.
September introduced me to jets at seven in the morning and
trains at ten, mountains that are almost an optical illusion, like
cardboard standups I could push over, and feelings of a lost friend
brought back after glancing back at my ex best friend of five years.
October was dressing up as my favorite movie character, kids
are quoting the movie as we fill our backpacks with dozens of
candy bars and filling me with the fresh october air and freedom.
Texas never provided that comfort. It's so real and overwhelming.
November was the interlude, 1,000 miles back to Texas brought
melancholy but i unraveled my roots back to the Greyhound,
an akin aching grandmother I brought back to her feet, as well
as got back to my feet when i slammed on my brakes and hit hope.
December brought me slamming my feet back onto the ground
when i left her walking home alone, but it taught me to love hard
and let go when you're given up on, that Christmas is all about
soft piano playing corny songs that are meant to bring you cheer.
Today brought me here.

- kra
Ray Aug 2014
Stuck
in a ***** two-room apartment
almost out of cigarettes ,
at one in the middle
of a sweaty Chennai night,
sobering up after two days,
famished
and restless
dreaming of mid-night
cigarette shops that never were,
dreaming of alcohol
(just enough to pass out),
checking and rechecking
the spent bottles
and giving up in the end
and settling to tolerate a night
with myself,
walking and babbling
and writing and thinking
and floating up on a great idea
and circling back to the floor
looking for cigarettes,
just waiting for the shutters to lift,
just waiting for this to end,
just waiting.

It was the best metaphor for life
that I've ever known.
Published: Efiction India
Ar Bazian Feb 2016
The Haunting of the Ol' Fisherton Bay Morticianary, Pt.2*

And so it goes...
The good mandelver, was given two,
caskets to measure his feelings to...
the undertaker sat, while the artist was gone...
pulled a flask of whiskey out.. and,
sang himself a song.

When he stood up,
to look 'pon the corpses
he found his flask missing...
he fussed and cursed, what's worse is;
that there stood a man, in such deathly groom,
he stood in the corner-centre, of the prepping the room...

There stood a man who'd sung along,
whose eyes indeed were really on...

"Off with the willows and off with the bloom,"
he said..
off with the cherry too, and off with the tune...
Come ol' Merry merry mate, come and sing along,
for when you bring the caskets make,
sure to sing a song.
One for the lock-it ring,
one for the key.
Another song to whistle to,
and a song to rid of me...
What's wrong you old drunken ****?
All pale and wet! O' gee...
the cat's gotten your tongue, I hope!
You dare not mess with me!"

A.r. Bazian
Feb 19th, 2016
Fictional "The Haunting of the Ol' Fisherton Bay Morticianary" is a series poem written by A.r. Bazian.
harlon rivers Oct 2017
Maybe it's been written
somewhere in the constitution
     of the waning moon

                                         ― When somebody loves you,
                                               you can never be lonely ―

But, appearances
  to the contrary,
the moon is sometimes blue;

counting stars alone
in a sky full of stars

is just about as lonely
as 'once in a blue moon'
                              can be ―

Like when the night is yours alone
                  or feeling alone
               in a crowded room

hearing Hank Williams moan within your silence
       "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

                                         ― When it's hard to say
                                               you love someone,..
                                               but it's harder to say
                                               when you don't ―

                • • •

A coyote's pleading howl
breaks the silent twilight engulfing trance
cast by the dappled moonlight;
like there's some kind of lonely madness
    swallowing him whole,..

                     as
    these two hollow eyes
                 gaze out through
                                     the chilly,
                                            sobering
                                                 refreshed
                                                   Autumn air
                                                             ­    spilling
                                                                ­  in through
                                                            the open window,

                                                        ­           counting stars ― alone
                                                           ­             in a sky full of stars


                                                       ­             the crackle of the fireplace
                                                       ­            echoes, startling the silence
                                                         ­                of a feigned warmth
                                                                ­          from the other side
                                                                ­ of an otherwise hollow room

and i feel frayed as a hole in an empty pocket with nothing left to lose

the impending dark winter nights are lonesome
            and  linger longer than before ...
  
seeing the empty space beside me
   I remember how it really really aches to just be ...

                                                            *­lonesome as a blue moon ― *

                   ✩                        ✩                                       ­ 
                ✩                                       ✩                           
✩          ­                                                      ✩
         ­                                                                 ­                                

moonless ― rivers ... 2017


Lonesome as a Blue Moon
Written by:  h.a. rivers
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
i still think
                                           that literature's       "      "
is better assumed as
     mathematics'                             ~
or what's simply abbreviated
                                    ambiguity, sort of,
as apologetics for Heidegger is concerned -
     that there is moral ambiguity in the interpretation
  of Dasein as ecstasis about, e.g. the war in Syria:
    but is that a self-serving ecstasis for the fact per se
    or that other interpretation for concern, which
with the above mentioned notation is a lack of,
       as in for peace to resume as common sense
      and less of what's suitable away from the apathetic
route, and indeed the ecstasis to shout for forced peace
            rather than see it all as without your moral
judgement with you being no moral agent in the matters
     that themselves have to resolve, without your input.
- and it always comes like this, cute little things,
or how you can condense all the theories surrounding
the psychological trinity into superego,
or that verse by Philip Larkin
        that begins wonderfully:
they ******* up, your mum and dad
  (this be the verse) -
  and the two other bits and bobs,
the Gemini scalpels -
       depending on how you wish
to make incisions into thought (or
any other moral quality, for that matter) -
do you wish to be a surgeon,
your own man as it were, and with the ego
cut your own story?
        or perhaps you'd prefer a butcher
psychiatrist lob pork chops of you
    with his depersonalising id?
         after all, he will say:
the laws of the state demands you have
so sort of i.d. (identification credential);
only the rich, a Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany
could ever fit the programme of Herr Doktor,
         Ode Odi Oedipus            Olé!
Herr... auto-****** means i have enough
******* on my ******* that
a gentle rub of the ******* gets me all
hot & bothered and juiced up?
   after all, the maidens of Egypt have
to have theirs cut and endure docile mantras
of why, why, why.
    and please, Herr Doktor, when
will Latin actually die? they keep saying
Latin is dead, familiarly like Nietzsche's god
is dead... but Latin isn't remotely dead,
  the blimmin' alphabet is still here,
how do i know? well, d'uh, i'm using it...
you say id             i say es
   you say ego               i say self
(then you make a Frasier joke about elves)
       and we go on and on in
this cat               mouse              game,
it's all a matter of fashion,
      they all said the above Mr. N was a
great stylist, after all an aesthetician is,
   and now they blabber on as if talking
Gucci pooch'e - this is dead, that is dead,
it's a fashion industry: but less obvious,
more inclined in       what you talk about
than what        you wear.
             said,
   '            ', he said
     "        ", he thought he said,
                                 or the narrator said it for him,
                         or the narrator thought he said it
for him, when in fact he didn't say anything
    nor the fact that there was anyone to actually
  say anything at all -
                 kinda a Beckett Watt moment.
           the Watt waltz, and that truly is a mind
   ******; as i sometimes wish narration was
kept in the Irish / Polish standard of notation
- and off we went to the poll booths.
- aye, and we vetoed rather than voted.
who would have thought that two ****-heads would
make the unlikely politicised duo of escapees.
             akin to Ulysses - but i get the
picture, the hyphenated compound words not
yet approved to be actual compounds,
        cite the Oxford committee for doing
****** paperwork, or none at all to modernise
  the Anglo-Smackson.
      ****... in the real world this could be
called pimping - but here... mm hmm:
peacock exfoliation - and i know it, so it's less
smarty and cared about: just... done.
yes, it usually starts rigid, that bit about
    Latin not being dead is extremely rigid
in composition - it's a sore the size of a ****-steak
   on my forehead -
            as is my lack of desperate attempts
to applaud Delmore Schwartz attempt to bring
    Finnegans Wake (the pearl in the crown
of all things difficult) to the people and the swine...
            so he didn't think Ulysses was
difficult enough? jeeze! and this alone reads like
a modern aversion to how young people are
drawn into mutilating themselves -
                  rampant ids             less acknowledged
Larkin moments in discussion:
        or perhaps the opera of suburban happy-go-happy-do?
       kids without even the foggiest of
the lysergic acid of Hanna-Barbera
                        and the Loons -
                                the fun-go-to lunacies of
cartoon network 20th century 90s...
                                       and hell: when we actually
        lived in times of toy story toys;
                 these days i'm getting the impression
a girl is probably going to play with a ***** than
   a barbie - must be the pink and the blonde
                         matched by the how many? jokes
    in mouth as in look doppio standards of not getting it;
but of course, the many other stereotypes.
            well, us kids, back then,
                          ah...         nothing like that coming again.
       summary... in ref. to the title,
   it's next days shrapnel from the debauchery of
the previous night, or why i write drunk and sometimes
get lucky sobering up and do not indulge in the bottle
      and not write something, and end up not writing
something like William Styron's Darkness Visible,
    who also drank, but didn't write and drink,
                  drank on the sobering up note, like
this poem.
well, i figured, if i don't exploit the drinking
       as a sedative unwinding and be bashful
then, resolutely, the sobering up me is still making
  that blood wine:
                          and never did liquidating
   two kilograms of caster sugar in half a litre of water
             feel like handling mercury.
Steve Raishbrook Oct 2014
The shaking stops, numbness ensues
Restless nights take hold
Suppressed negativity rushes to me
Like a title wave of unwanted emotion
When will it stop............?
When will it stop.............?

Dawn breaks over the city
The temptation to reach for the bottle... ever growing
Shaking continues
But this time with rage
Sweat drips from my brow
Drink..........
Drink..........
Drink..........
The voices start chiming in my mind
Diving under cover the bottles clink...
clink.......
clink.......
Empty bottles surround me
Just a drop to relieve my pain

I can't bare this a second longer
The 4 walls of this room, my own person hell
Click!
The electric meter cuts off
Change is hard to come bye
Just empty bottles
Rage flows through me
Smashing up the room I leave

Walk that'll help
People though
People looking
People everywhere
Eyes in every window
Looking.... judging

The agony of the sober anxiety, taking hold consuming my mind
Card rejected a new low
I find change for bread
Managed to pay
Sweating uncontrollably

I can see the apartment block
My head clears
Stumbling into the darkness
I look around the room
The sobering realisation
I have nothing, no one but these empty bottles
Madelynn Nieves Jun 2017
My conscience is loud
yet my voice never comes,
It's disarming what dependency can do, altering your character,
until you are simply a character,
weaving falsities into strands of fools gold, until you're living in an armor
of the emperors new clothes.

I swore to myself,
that I would never again be this person, the one with my finger
on the self destruct button,
but sliding down the hill
comes much easier than climbing.

And at the bottom,
numbness awaits me,
making me fearless.

I feel the cold wash over me,
goosebumps all throughout my being,
as the waves begin to rise.  

She covers me,
salty yet sweet,
and everything makes sense.

The meaning of life in a pretty peach casing.

I am Invincible.

I am Oblivious.

She peaks and soon crashes,
repeatedly against me,
making me feel like the world could end and I wouldn't even think to care.

But what at first seemed exhilarating, wears on me to no end,
the buildup and constant let down.

She's lost her novelty,
and with that,
the numbness fades.

Sobering up for long enough to realize,
I am the definition of insanity.

Inviting you back in so often,
I no longer have defenses against you.
You snuck into my priorities without me ever noticing.
Like that song you hate so much but can't help to sing.

Will I ever get rid of your tune in my head?

Will I ever be able to say no when you call?
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
the female cat got the nick’s name: the ballerina... the male cat got the name: hulk. but you see, original marxism didn't mention religion, it had atheism on its knee spanking martin luther... this neo-marxsim is scary... and capitalism is not really helping me to ease my mind... capitalism believes in god the same way these neo-marxists believe in god (capitalism just believes he doesn't exist)... capitalism will have to stop selling atheism as a trendy gucci bag as a way into cool intellectualism... it will have to face up to the responsibility of creating theological marxism... *******... thanks for creating the greatest guilt trip of all... at least with original marxism there was the safety-net of atheism working in the subconscious of what defined the idea as ego... now you've just woken up a lobster frying in the wok!*

i sometimes get a glimpse of the sort of drunk that fits the
debacle of america in the 1930s,
the mean drunk, the sort of drunk requiring psychiatric treatment,
i see him once in a blue moon,
and he’s a nasty character,
but probably due to a writer’s block...
i fixed the DELL laptop after a year or so
of typing in the wrong password for the internet connection,
so i managed to creep less at night, where i drink
in ninja-mode avoiding conversation with anyone
and only making meow sounds once in a while,
conversation gets me drunk anyway, so i avoid it,
i talk to cats... which helps since they have powerful
senses orientating them in the world perfectly...
but a rather crap say about it... meow...
so there’s god, and he figured out...
as many “dumb” things as possible on foot, hoof and wing...
and one thing, resembling a monkey...
talking a lot...
it worked... compared to the animals our senses
are dimmed... candles compared to neon lights...
it’s great knowing you’re on top of the foodchain...
almost blind and deaf like an ostrich in a jellyfish
while all the animals are given simplicity,
and man complication...
in order to ode a shakespeare for a quote...
and a granny for a zimmer-frame.
i dare you to get the sinai humour in here,
i hope theology will one day become stand-up comedy...
otherwise... get the *****-driver and a jigsaw... we’ll
sort this out pronto!
i have seen the mean drunk, the abusive father drunk...
but then i also found zen...
the art of drinking & sobering up thanks to writing...
if i start talking now, and i’ve only started my 70cl bottle of whiskey,
i might be a rolling stones back-up singer
doing zen to a hotel room...
so i write:
it’s the medium you see: whiskey-colours in autumn,
fine shade of vintage brown, single malt...
a bit of impressionism with a sniff & and gargle like mouthwash...
let’s face it... there were once cyclopses
in poland in the communist era who distilled from denatured alcohol (denaturat)
via a slice of bread to get the ivory indigo off the optic palette...
cyclopses i tell ye... 9ft10 in scaling...
spoke of nothing but chanel no. 5 after drinking the cocktail,
70cl a night will get me heart-throbbing to 40 in the existential roulette,
and i’m fine with that...
god i’ll miss the arthritis postcard... wish you were here... in the grave.
the girl cat is doing the jaws impression with her tail, circling me,
dog’s don’t laugh at the machine-gun clipping sounds of writing,
cats are fascinated... that’s why they sleep a lot,
apart from that, the wish-you-were-here bit,
i picked a fight using cartesian methodology...
i know that marcus aurelius was a stoic success...
i know that mikhail gorbachev was also a stoic success...
the soviet union imploded and we have no terrorists from kazakhstan,
but you can’t stop cognitive nagging...
biting of lips and grinding the teeth...
i think this has to be defined as a second tier of what’s being defined...
if it all began with socrates attacking the sophists and
eloquent speech, no wonder we are not allowed to speak
eloquently, with cognitive dyslexia being rife with new recruits
in that famous statement: DIE IN YOUR CONFUSION...
i would like to admire the stoics in their: keeping up of appearances...
but the cognitive aspect of stoicism is only effective
within the rank of emperor... or 1st comrade...
it’s really ineffective on any other tier of the pyramid...
a bit like one-way streets of charity...
there’s this~90 year old granny who committed suicide
because of oxfam...
true story...
i want two inputs...
there are two great shops in edinbrugh, both on nicholson st.,
one’s an oxfam book store where i purchased a. camus’ the stranger
to use in a french literature course getting a 1st (talk about
luck in choice) - and giving an almost ancient copy of
emerson’s collected essays...
and of course the barnardo’s book shop
where i purchased the anatomy of madness for ~£30,
that’s how real charity works...
the charity is a mediator, there are two selfless people
in the background...
one gives a possession of his away, another selfless person
buys it not wanting the selfishness of a mint 1st edition...
not like those ******* adverts with actors
asking you to turn into a milked cow...
just money money money...
to pay for the actor’s teary eyes and the administration...
of the £3 you give that way, you pay about a 2/3 if not more
to the charity itself... the poor beggars get a squid and
a sand-castle: something for something.
When the end of eternity arrives, you shall be by my side awaiting the dawn.
The Sun rises bringing newfound hope to the denizens of a light and airy realm,
Our spirits reanimate, rejuvenate, resurrect; intercept weariness of heart.
Doves above the high plains carry our love across the infinite sea of the Universe.

Stars and twinkling celestial bodies swirl around the center of all creation.
Pianos, my threnody has become a source of lament and bemoaning but in time a love song will revitalize a deadened soul with a deprivation of cosmic oxygen.
I want you to breathe newfound air into my nostrils, fill me to the brim with your breath of life, toxicity to the bones.
Being able to stand in your midst will be an impossibility.

My knees will give out and as I fall to ground you will tightly grasp my hand and pull my body into yours.
“Amplify my heartbeat with the sound waves of your voice.”
“Ensconce within the warmth of my body, feel the heat rise when we begin to caress each other softly.”
My blood becomes frigid smoke when I’m in your midst.

Nothing but cold heat courses through my body.
I’m frozen, stuck in a cube of time and space where you and I reside in comfort and abysmal enamorment.
-Ardent passion-
This is where my heat lies.

The inferno that burns beneath my wary skin is a tempest of sequestered affection.
“I’m afraid to be touched.”
You are the element of freedom.
You are the most sought after and desired material in all creation.

The materialistic nature of this world has accosted me with a cannonade of ****** bullets, pleasing in a forbidden way…
Gazing upon you with my eyes is a sin.
A transgression.
But the platinum heart in your possession is my desire.

Daffodils and roses surround us in a floral sphere; a yellow tinged bubble..
We transcend gravity and float above the ground.
-Fragrance-
An aromatic barrage of iridescent fumes intoxicates us as we rise past the stratosphere, mesosphere, troposphere, and conscious- sphere.

Being with you is a higher plane of existence where your every breath is vital to my survival.
Magic courses through my veins when I hold your arms around me.
Aqueous bombs descend from my eyelashes when you depart.
A deluge of tears has accosted me.

My body contorts and I crawl into a corner; this is my cloister of trials.

Those seemingly eternal eons during which I endure the withdrawal symptoms of your narcotic love…
Maybe you’re a hallucinogenic?
Lying on the cold and sobering concrete floor beneath me, I **** my thumbs in the fetal position.
I’m an infant after you vanish in the thick and noxious puff of smoke that lingers long after you are gone.

You are a master of the arcane.
You are nothing short of extraordinary.
Even when you disappear it is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
I feel the love spells from your tome of seduction blast my fragile spirit till’ I begin to lose my sight.

I clench my forehead with the back of my skull pressed against, being caressed by these sanguine reds walls that seem to cave in.
I can’t hold my head up any longer.
I lie in darkness as chaos consumes my soul.
The murky and dank ambushes me from the corners of an unknown dimension.

I’ve slipped into an unknown land.
A myriad of ravens with ebony wings surround me until I am no longer visible to another human soul.
They latch onto my skin, grapple onto my thighs, weigh me down with despair and push me six feet under.
When all is dim and lost?

I realize this is figment of the imagination, a fabrication…
I realize this is all a dream.
A dream of what could be.
A dream of a narcotic love.

I have yet to jostle that unknown creature who lurks at the threshold of the limitless skies.
When I reach the stars in my spaceship of galactic love then I will find you.
Obscurity runs amuck in the dimension that I now reside in.
Dark clouds loom above the skies…

The sun is nowhere in sight.
A storm is brewing as lightning begins to crash.
In those brief seconds of illumination I am bombarded with visions of your face.
The complexion of your skin, the feel of your flesh beneath my fingertips.

I hope that your touch will unbind me, loose me from the disillusionment that I’ve been threatened by all my life.
I beseech the heavens to shackle me with iridescent chains to the stars so that gravity will never pull me away from my dreams.
I will hang above the terrene never plummeting down the sea of the skies, never being incinerated by the blaze of freefalling down the atmosphere.
You will be my reward.

That glowing gift box with a celestial wrapping.
A diadem with the most extravagant gems and diamonds shall be waiting for me beneath the cosmic plastic wrapping and the golden ivory box that surround this gift.
When I open it, this crown shall begin to levitate and a human silhouette made of light shall begin to transfigure itself from naught beneath it.
Skin will slowly attach to your luminescent body.

Your metacarpals and phalanges will appear.
Your ribcage will expand and a platinum heart will begin beating within it’s confines.
-The heart that I’ve always wished for-
I will finally be able to gaze upon your face.

I will hold onto and never let you go.
We will grow old together and when we near the end of our lifetime, we shall become nebular gases.
We will then become one with the Universe.
The remnants of our love will last everlastingly even after the spark of passion is long gone, when our corporeal vessels no longer exist in a physical form.

“I don’t…I have nothing else to say but that I will be waiting.”
“I will wait for you to materialize in my midst.”
“My heart ails for you but my malady will dissipate once you arrive.”
“Every heartbeat leads you and I one step closer to one another.”

“You will be my remedy, my panacea of love.”
“I love you but I don’t even know who you are!”
“The reason why is unknown to me.”
“I will be waiting darling.”

“I will be waiting for your earth-shattering kiss.”
When the ground beneath us begins to crumble, we shall plummet beneath the lithosphere and asthenosphere till’ we reach the core of the planet.
We shall become the inferno beneath the ground.
Our passion will burn so brightly, so fervently, that an eruption will take place above the surface of the ground.

The world will know that when we make love, the air will be ignited.
Our passion shall heat up the Universe.
You will be in my Universe  and you will be my Universe…
Maybe then?

-I’ll become yours-

To my Future Lover, to my moon, sun, and stars, to my Universe,
By, Iridescently Efflorescent
Alicia D Clarke Sep 2012
a few miniscule sips turned to gulps.
gulps gradually turned to chugs.
chugs turned to *****.
still you werent sober.
still you grabbed your keys and got into your car.
15 miles per hour turned to 30.
30 turned to 50.
Stop lights turned to red.
Stop signs became mere red dots flashing the canvas of your peripheral vision.
nothing could slow you down.
nothing could tell the car awaiting the next turn, that you were coming.
you were coming and you werent stopping.
faster!faster! a lead foot on the gas pedal.
closer! closer!
BAM!
lives instantly taken.
fun turned to hell.
living turned to dead.
lesson learned?
Christopher KD Feb 2015
The cab moved quietly
Beneath the street lamps
Pleather seats: torn, faded
There we sat, silent- content.
The driver, a portly man, hacked
Struggling, his breathing deepened
Panting, gasping to regain regularity
Quickly, his breath filled the
Confined, litter-shrouded,
Van with the stench of
Cheap cigar smoke

We arrived at her home
The driver approached slowly
Carefully avoiding the icy snow
Banked earlier by the cities plows
Sliding the van door open I step out
Still holding her hand, the night air
Enters my lungs, sobering me
Just for that brief instant

Hastily, she leans in
Without hesitation, I meet her
Ambitious advance, reciprocating
The kiss is brief; I’m no longer cold
Her lips are warm and soft against mine
Retreating, she smiles. I gently brush her hair
Behind her ear unveiling a dark brown eye
My glazed, drunk, stare meet hers
Her grin, now beginning to fade
She looks down in confusion

I sense the cab driver behind me
Growing impatient he lights a cigar
Before turning away she whispers night
Her hand lets go of mine; our fingers part
Complacent, tomorrow she will return to him
Revisiting that feigned, simulated, infatuation
The kind they falsely advertised as ‘love’
Standing alone, I’m cold once more
Keying in, she doesn’t look back

Reaching into my pocket
Scrounging for what cash is left
To the cab, I surrender my last five dollars
This pays just enough to get me where I stand
Dissatisfied with his tip, the driver departs cursing
Unsure what to make of the evening, I begin my walk
Now, not so sobering, the night air dries my throat
The chilled breeze that once blushed her cheeks
Now stings my nose, ears, and finger tips
Alone, I continue west- home
Cold, I have miles ahead
Spirit torn in twain
I walk them.
I first felt the ferrous fissures
Delivering shivering quivers
Down my spine
As each chime took the light
Outside of our present days

Then the shakes grew into tension
My naked, sobering suspension
Was left never to mention
Nor whisper what I needed to say

And when I asked you of this
You withdrew so quick
I only had time to trace the lines
Of your escaping shadow

Holding on to tentative strings
And all the small things
You left for me to find
The same gray forests of signs
And silent ways

Designs you used to craft and convey
With clever ease
Laughter beseeching my thoughts
Silence now haunting my dreams
They are now presently looming
Cold coniferous trees

It's not as if I can pretend
Like simply taking paper and pen
Could possibly remedy this
When I have to look down forever
At the ink staining my foot, leg, and wrist
I'm convinced that I created this fate
Because it seems in this picture frame
I'm the one who made a mistake

You carry the hate in your heart
like it's been priveleged to you

My misgivings have now adopted
the persona that I imbue

I faced the other way as we faded
when you withdrew

You suffer daily
and face this struggle alone

Claiming everybody abandoned you
and did you wrong

But you don't lose me
Like I've told you all along
"Smashing, watch the glass fly
Ain't no way, ain't no way you can go back
Float away, float away, float away yeah
We're frozen in this moment
Ain't no way, ain't no way you can go back
Float away, float away, float away yeah"
Toni Cezeal Jul 2012
A breath of sober air
Filling the depth of my lungs
First in a while
Can't even call it denial

Blatant avoidance
Of sobering truth
Till one morning you awake
Wondering if it was all a mistake

The illusion
The freedom
The feelings of a happy place
The hiding
The playing
Closely laying face to face

Coz when the veil is gone
And mirror comes crashing down
Somehow one can't control
Tears, hurt, frowns

Yes. Pain.
you sobering fool
You ripped my heart
And tore it in two

You squeezed so hard
So your presence was known
suffocating indeed
I struggle to breathe

And yet I know
I have no one to blame
I gave you a key
So its all on me

And in the same breath
I could never regret
Yet its time that you leave
Give me back the keys

Give me back my joy
Give me back my smile
I will love forever
Even when I don't know how

I'm sober now
Not living a dream
Let the journey begin
Hoping love will win...
Brandon Conway Aug 2018

This depressive choreography
                                     of flames
                                     f     i      k     r     n
                                         l    c      e     i     g
consumed in the geography
                                 of bodies
                                 b   i   c   k   e   r   i   n   g
                              
Tongue's embers  licking  
                  the innocent cheek
words like poniards
                     P   R   I   C   K   I   N   G
leaving this dance at its
                                                          piqu­e

Now left  a  s m o u l d e r i n g
             soloist on the stage
                            a dance so sobering
                                     watch this fire's rampage

burn his own pyre
              I gave into the rage
burn his own desire
             another illegible page
tossed to fuel the bellowing fire
              the end of our golden age

Jonathan Keeley Dec 2015
the same place i used to play with my toy trains i get drunk alone at 230 in the morning
thats a sobering thought

— The End —