Goodbye Prague, to a city I never thought I'd know.
Goodbye Prague, to a heaven that is lined with shattered beer bottles and stamped out cigarettes the junkies and the hobo's here still manage to get a  few puffs out of.
Goodbye Prague, to a hell that was once hovering with the feelings of control, manipulation, and more control, but now is twirling top speed to a land unknown.
Goodbye Prague, you seductive ***** with your cheap liquor, beer, and cigarettes, smelling of aged mahogany mixed finely with an acidic burst of fresh *****.
Goodbye Prague, I do not know when I will see you again, but I hope that I do and that I never grow so old that I forget you.
Goodbye to your abstract animals smeared black, screaming in the exploding summer sun. Goodbye to freshly cut pigs heads and cow flesh, hanging in your storefront window, tempting every passerby like the *****'s of Amsterdam.
Goodbye to every cobblestone that shines after a fresh rain or snow, slippery to the newcomer, an annoyance to the amateur, thoughtless to the old timer.
Goodbye to the potraviny's stocked with two crown marked up ***** and space vegetables shaped and colored in a one and only kind of vernacular; without you, I would have half-drunkenly stumbled home towards dreams of menial headaches and shadowy beer or perhaps to The Oak to drink alone.
I scream so long through faint puffs of carbon nicotine clouds made illuminated by the icy orange street lamps 800 years old glow!
I scream so long to late metro's and early trams!
I scream so long to the roaring rocks who reflect the faces of aging clocks!
So long to passed out bums and unforgiving metro officers. So long to dollar fifty beers and the fear of getting deported. So long with counting silver crown to make even, seeing my math prowess has lessened. So long embedded needles and bottle caps deep within the snowy cobble. So long listless wanders all their money thrown away until the month of May comes to knock on their door. So long alleyway romance 100 crown notes and old men in their rickety fishermen boats. So long sad masked faces who in their forward march sit stunned seeing fortune picks only some. So long through the grey mist stabbed with neon signs that attract the youth and the mad. So long to the feeling everything I had to say was the wrong thing. So long to feelings of foreign familiarity whose ball and chain were slowly starting to rust away. So long in song to the player's of Riegrovy hill whose voices I just couldn't stand. So long I've come to understand everyone's got a choice to live or wish they did. So long to the wide swept hills of Petrin, where angel's of lore go to rest atop dusted fresh snow, among the dotted new born vine. So long to the sound of wet metal against metal, a scream of order carried on the blue man's shoulder. So long to a city whose architecture reminds me of old men's faces and whose color reminds me of elderly women's dresses. So long to smoking in front of children without a second thought for their health. So long to racism that is wicked, but grunted genially - the executioner smiles at the accused - the gravedigger's weep for the dead - the ant makes a break for a hill not his. So long forlorn love whose only remedy for a cure is the beer sitting in front of you. So long to wondering what's going on in the world, when all I want and got is what's right in front of me.
Farewell Prague, you shadowed street walker, a cloak of stars around you, finding all that owe you  your due.
Farewell Prague, you in the morning eyes half mast, snow crunching underneath stony white.
Farewell Prague, miss-handler of crooked time pieces stating the obvious, ignoring to blame bluntly on youthful alcohol abuse.
Farewell Prague, you took me up the hill and through the woods where ravens, black as gutter ice, crackled down at me like showers of New Year's fireworks.
Farewell Prague, you gave me peace where I once thought I was unable to have.
Farewell Prague, you befriended me, then ordered me a shot that made me cough, then ordered me a beer so we could sit and truly feel what it is to sit and wallow in our time here.
Farewell Prague, you entranced me with view after view to a city to stubborn to die.
Farewell Prague, I leave you like you would leave me.
Farewell Prague, to your fat snow flakes that drop into wide eyed children mouths, tasting of iron whiskey rye, though they do not flinch at the taste.
Farewell Prague, I leave you with a hush of a whimper, bitter as the cold, and indifferent as the server's over at Cafe Lourve.
Farewell Prague, with a thousand miles of graveyards, where ghosts barely have the strength to weep.
Farewell Prague, I admit I never knew how to love until I came to visit you.
Farewell Prague, as I stare out your cracked and smoky tram windows, my thoughts not my own, shop windows and naked, screaming men, their cigarettes bouncing in between their lips like a jack of spades on smack, where at last we see that life is only a worth a **** if lived.
Farewell Prague, I see the cards there on the table and you're winking at me while I stand at the backdoor, and what's more, there's a secret you've got to give that I refuse believe.
Farewell Prague, to your open sore catastrophe of society, KFC on every block, and Starbuck's on every other, and on the other other are the lined' wino's shaking open handed and spread for a case of cardboard vino.
Farewell Prague, to the nasty smoker's in trams that just stopped caring.
Farewell Prague, to a city rhythm generated by an ignorant originality and uniqueness, where the same has no name and the the plain jabber on about their jobs in their pretty blue jeans.
Farewell Prague, because to say goodbye would mean we don't have that friendly tone.
Farewell Prague, I see to sacrifice oneself for the comfort of the elder or the opposite fills me with agitated obligation stationed in a vessel older than I've ever lived - yet I know it, for it is me.
Farewell Prague, you are a lost lullaby caught in the wind of an elastic multi-colored pin-wheel, shining riches of the rainbow into the eyes of children, who all whistle when they snore.
Farewell Prague, a button upon the Earth, like every man.
Farewell Prague, a love song sung in the depths of a damp grey hall, rivers all around, so the sounds too much to drink were outlandish in high emotion, juvenile commotion.
Farewell Prague, we were young - not caring about the future, but of course, with worry in our hearts for worry is a sign of human being human; yet, still, we asked nothing of one another and you gave and I gave and you took and I took and we walked underneath one another's blanket's until we were no longer cold and the winter showed to be just an annoying individual at the party.
Farewell Prague, to your lack of complications, making simplicities acceptable again.
Farewell Prague, to the snow that never stops falling, all while slumbering within dream until the seam is ripped so the old can die.
Farewell Prague, I've shined every marble staircase and washed every tram window; you owe me nothing because I like you.
Farewell Prague, to the long nights bleeding away at the table alone, the lady fast asleep, lit by the dim orange glow of the twisted streetlights below.
Farewell Prague, to the long nights forgetting pains of existence and accepting every solution to ward of resistance.
Farewell Prague, our long talks and hovering walks, always forcing me to balk.
Farewell Prague, at last you got the praise you have always deserved.
Farewell Prague, to hot humid nights filled with *** and butter in the summer and cold bitten cold of ***** and juice a la winter.
Farewell Prague, to bad service but good drink and food.
Farewell Prague, you curious tale the bravest man would waver to say.
Farewell Prague, to bridges galore and more dead leaves then wrinkles on my crooked face.
Farewell Prague, at night the sheen of liquor wears off only if you let it be so.
Farewell Prague, to all the those lonely mornings bent head into book on the way to work.
Farewell Prague, how long till you grow to be young again?
Farewell Prague, how long till I admit my defeat to you?
Farewell Prague, how long until I accept I'm the last fool in this world?
Goodbye Prague, the last soldier is standing, but the war is not yet won.
Goodbye Prague, to your hazy stars glimmering and shining for an indebted audience.
Goodbye Prague, the sun breaking through ink spilled colored clouds, the birds chirping, the dogs barking, and us wondering where we started.
Goodbye Prague, your churches are empty so the sins of man run rampant and at last the prayers of men go unanswered; we now abandoned to fend for ourselves.
Goodbye Prague, the puncturing purity of your ways make me giggle in delight as I listen to the cool piano man play; his eyes on the horizon shattering like toppled china.
Goodbye Prague, at last there is a time where we both get what we want.
Goodbye Prague, the verandas are chilled with the dew of winter and the snow glitters like bitter diamonds as the fool tips his hat to shy away the sunlight.
Goodbye Prague, every rain drop that fell upon me was a gift you can never take away.
Goodbye Prague, the fool adheres to agnostic rules but the cruel here see no reason to sue.
Goodbye Prague, I think therefore the dust of escape reflects the waves of the river Vlatva.
Goodbye Prague, to your lack of vowels.
Goodbye Prague, when the night wavers hear the Beherovka weep into its own glass, love leaving her forever making no note to Kissy.
Goodbye Prague, tram driver's unforgiving in their merciless need for schedule.
Goodbye Prague, the last homage to the war standing like a shining diamond neath chipped and shattered rubble.
Goodbye Prague, a listless memory mentioned only in drifting dream.
Goodbye Prague, every loving glance smelling of freshly poured beer over newly fallen snow.
Goodbye Prague, to your hardness, your beauty, and your madness.
Goodbye Prague, your days wet with rain, stricken by sunlight, reflecting white emerald into the window panes of passing trains.
Goodbye Prague, at last you got what you deserved.
Goodbye Prague, now I can weep and say I have trampled upon your cheek and slunk through your veins and trudged through your blood and skipped through your hair and saw every line - both sought after and nought - you have acquired through time.
Goodbye Prague, there is no reason to get excited, you are free.
Goodbye Prague, I see the silhouette of the trees that line your hills and I am forsaken to see the leaves turning from jovial yellow greens to disregarded and disparaged furnaces of dim fire reds and browns.
Goodbye Prague, the people within you deserved all of the credit.
Good Prague, the people outside of you deserve what ever they believe they do.
Goodbye Prague, you family to families with common sense and love rampaging through your barley stained veins.
Goodbye Prague, perhaps there is nothing under your rubble, maybe already all is lost for everyone, everywhere, but maybe, you living the simpler life, can show all that life can be so.
Goodbye Prague, you gave me letters, words, lines, commas, apostrophes, and dashes, paragraphs, pages, and eventually, a story; I leave you marked.
Goodbye Prague, an old friend whose hand I shook but knew would one day turn my back on.
Goodbye Prague, the bite of your cold generosity and your bustling love leaves man with nothing but to bike back with no chance of triumph.
Goodbye Prague, street cleaners clean up your wear and tear from the mothers and fathers that bore you, some 800 years ago; ageless, you loom longer than they would like.
Goodbye Prague, battling sleep as the ***** raps for more and more, none that the man has.
Goodbye Prague, the night is curling in as the wave crashes to the short and I am the lost sun looking for a place to rise, trying to get to the sky.

FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

It was 98'.
No, it was 99'.
That was the year.
Yeah, that was the year.

I had just landed abroad and knew no one.
Well, I was there with my girlfriend, Page.

I knew her.

We had to get out of the states.
There was nothing for us there.
We were drowning in that nothingness - that lacking future.

Cookie cutters everywhere.

Everything I saw was like an outline of something that had already happened.
I couldn't sleep.
I couldn't ****.
I could barely call my parents to let them know what I was doing.

Nothing really.

Floating downward like a leaf broken from its stem.
I was scared.
I'll admit it.
I was terrified of the next four years.
Twenty-five seemed so far away and so close, all at the same time.

We had a found an apartment to live in while in the U.S.
We were lucky because people we met later on said it was hell trying to find a place after arriving.
I was never too good at that stuff anyway.
I always felt like people were trying to cheat me or something.

It was small.
You would have said you loved it, but secretly hated it.
One could barely stand in the shower.
Want to spread your arms wide?

Forget about it.

There was a balcony though and you could watch the street traffic from above.
People look so small when your high up.
Down the street, there was a large theatre where they filmed movies.
I rarely saw them shooting, but I could tell it was a good place to.
It was beautiful at night when the lampposts would flicker on, orange spilling on the street.
Everything was damp in the Fall when we first arrived.

"What do you want to do today?" I asked her. She was laying face down on the bed.
Whenever she was hungover, she would do that.
All the covers and pillows over her face, blocking out the world and its light.
I did the same thing, so I couldn't really say much.
We were hungover a lot those first couple months.
Then came the jobs and everything changed...mostly.

She moaned something that I couldn't understand.
I was standing by the window, staring at the pigeons and crows perched on the roof across from us.
They had made a little nest under one of the shingles.
Clever little ******'s.

"Look at those things," I said.
The coffee I was drinking was bitter and made from crystals.
It gave me a headache, but it was cheap and we were broke.
I stepped back to get a better look at their nest and knocked an empty beer bottle around.

She moaned again and rose up from bed, kind of like a stretching kitten or a cat.
Her back was arched like a crescent moon and she stunk of ***** and Sprite.
The blankets were twisted and crumpled and she was tangled in them like a fly in a spiders web.
I went into the kitchen and poured out my coffee, thinking of what to do with the day.

"Breakfast?" she asked me from bed.
My back was to her, but I knew she wanted me to make it.
I put the electric stove on and opened the refrigerator.

"No eggs," I said back to her, "I'll be right back."

She moaned and slithered back into bed.
I threw my jacket and slippers on and made my way downstairs.

"Dobry den," I said to the cashier.
He was a tiny vietnamese man with a extremely high pitched voice.
I struggled to stifle a laugh every time I came in.

"Dobry den," he said back, sounding like air escaping from a balloon.

"Dear God," I thought, "How does his voice box do it?"

I went straight to the eggs, pretending to cough.
All around me were packaged sweets and rotten vegetables and fruit.
There were half loaves of brown, stale bread wrapped lazily in thin plastic.
Canned beans, noodle packets, and cardboard infused orange juice lined the shelves.
Where were the ******* eggs?
We needed milk too.
Trying to drink that crystalized coffee without it was torture.
I don't even know how I did it earlier.
"I must be getting used to the taste..." I thought.

I opened the single refrigerator they had in the place.
It was stocked with loosely packaged cheese, milk, beer, and soda.
There they were, those ******* eggs, right next to the yogurt.
I looked at the expiration date of a small carton of chocolate milk and winced.
"Someone could die here if they weren't careful," I whispered to myself.

"Everyding O.K.?" I heard the cashier squeak behind me.
I turned and nodded and showed him the eggs.
He was suspicious I was stealing something.
It was ironic.
I put the eggs on the counter and handed over what the cash register told me.

"There you go," I said and handed him the 58 crown in exact change.

"Děkuji," he peeped.

His voice sounded like a stuffed animal.
I nodded, smiled, and quickly got the hell out of there.

"You know the guy that works at the shop across the street?" I asked the body still in bed.
Well, she was up now, back up against the wall with her laptop on her lap.
"You mean the guy that has the voice of a little girl?"
"Exactly. I was just in there - getting these eggs - and I nearly laughed in his face."
"That's mean," she frowned, staring at her laptop.
Many of our conversations were with some kind of electronic device in between us.
We needed to work on that.
"I didn't laugh at him directly."
She smiled and nodded and moved down the bed a little more.
Only her head was resting on the pillow.
I cracked two eggs and let them sizzle there in the butter and the salt.

"So, what do you want to do today?" I asked Page, "It's not too cold out. We could go on a walk."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Over the bridge and maybe down by the water."
"It's going to be so cold," she shivered.
"I was just out there in slippers and a t-shirt and I was fine."
"That's because you're so big. I'm tiny. I don't get as much blood flow."

I flipped the two eggs and looked down at them.
Golden and burnt slightly around the edges.
******* perfect.
Now, just gotta wait a little on the other side and make sure to not let the yolk harden.
I hated that more than anything in the world.
Well, that and hearing **** poor excuses like it being too cold.
It was nice out.
She'd be fine.

"Come on," I sighed. I did that a lot. "It'll be fun."
She looked up at me from her computer with a dead look in her eye.
"What?" I asked her.
"You're such a...nerd," she said.
"No I'm not."
"You're so weird. Some of the things you say sometimes..."
"Like what?"
"Let's go on a walk."
She exaggerated the word walk.
I laughed and knew I was being a little too excited about a walk.
"Yeah. So? What are you doing? You're just laying there doing nothing."
"It's my day off," she scoffed, jokingly.

We were unemployed.
Everyday was a day off.
This was not something to bring up.
It was touchy subject.
One had to go about it...delicately.

"We need to find jobs," I stated, "And we can probably ask around or look for signs in windows."

"Oh JESUS," she gagged, coughing and diving back under the covers.

"I'm just thinking ahead so we can stay here. There's got to be something out there we can do."

"Like what?" she asked, her voice muffled by blankets.

"I don't know...something," I mumbled, trailing off as I flipped one of the eggs, "Perfect."

After breakfast, Page finally got out of bed and took a shower.
I tried to sneak in there with her, but, like I said before, one could barely fit themselves in there.
We compromised to have *** on the bed, though I did miss doing it in the shower.
As Page got dressed, I watched her slip those thin black stockings on, half reading a magazine.
I had gotten a subscription to The Review because I was trying to become a writer.
I thought, maybe if I read the stuff getting published - even the bad **** - it'll help.
Later, I realized, this was a terrible idea, but I enjoyed the magazine all the same.
Page finished getting dressed.
I jumped into whatever clothes were on the floor and didn't stink.
Then, we were out the door on Anna Letenske street, looking at the tram, downhill.


"I can see my breath," Page said, "It's cold..."

"Alright," I said as both of us ran across the street, "It's a little cold."

"But it's ok because I'm glad were out of the house."

"If we would have festered there any longer, we would have stayed in there all day."

"And missed this beautiful day," she said mocking me, putting both of her arms in the air.

The sky was gray and overcast and a single black crow flew over us, roof to roof.
No one was out, really.
It was Sunday and no one ever really came out on Sundays.
From the few czech friends I had, they explained to me this was the day to get drunk and cook.

"Far different then what people think in the States to do," I remember telling him.
"What do you do, my friend?" he had asked. He always called me my friend.
It was a nice thing to do since we had only known each other a couple weeks.
"Well," I explained to him, "Some people go to church to pray to God."
He laughed when I said this and said, "HA! God? How many people believe in God there?"
I had heard through the news and some Wikipedia research Prague was mostly atheist.
"A good amount, I'm pretty sure."
"That's silly," he scoffed, "Silly is word, right?"
"Yep. A word as any other."
"I like that word. What else do they do on Sunday?"
"A lot of people watch football. Not like soccer but with..."
"I know what you talk about," he said, cutting me off, "With the ball shaped like egg?"
I nodded, "Yes, the one with the egg shaped ball. It's popular in the Fall on Sundays."
"And what is Fall?" he asked.
You can see our relationship was really based on questions and answers.
He was a good guy, though I could never pronounce his name right.
There was a specific z in there somewhere where one had to dig their tongue under their teeth.
Lots of breath and vibration that Americans were never asked or trained to do.
Every czech I met said our language was a high contradiction.
Extremely complex in grammar and spelling, but spoken with such sloth.
I don't know if they used the word sloth.
I just like the word.

As we waited for the tram, I noticed the burnt orange and red blood leaves on the ground.
"Where had they come from?" I wondered. There were no trees on the street.
Must be from the park down the block, the one with the big church and the square.
There were lines of trees there used as leaning posts for the bums and junkies as they waited.
What they were waiting for, I never knew.
They just looked to be waiting for something.
I kicked a leaf into the street from the small island platform for the tram.
It swept up into the air a couple inches, and then instantly, was swept away by a passing car.
I watched as it wavered in the air, settling down the block in the middle of the road.

"Where's this trammm," Page complained.
Whenever it was cold out, her complaining level multiplied by a million.
"Should be coming soon. Check the schedule."
"Too cold," she said, "Need to keep my hands in my pockets."
I shook my head and looked at the schedule. It said it would be there at 11:35.
"11:35," I told her, still looking at the schedule. There was a strange cross over the day of Sunday.
"You mad?"
"No," I said turning to her, "I just want to have a nice day and its hard when you're upset."
"I'm not upset," she said, her teeth chattering behind her lips.
"Complaining I mean. We can go back home if it's really too cold. It's right there."
"No," she looked down, "Let's go out for a bit. I just don't know how long I'll last."
"Ok," I shrugged.
I looked up the street and saw our tram coming; number 11.
"There it is," I said.
"Thank God," Page exhaled, "I feel like I'm about to die."

Even the tram was sparse with people.
An empty handle of cheap liquor rattled in the back somewhere.
I heard it rock back and forth against the legs of a metal seat.
"Someone had a night last night," I thought, "Hope that's not mine."
We had gone to some dark bar with a lot of stairs going down - all I really recall.
Beer was so **** cheap there and there was always so much of it, one got very drunk easily.
I couldn't even really remember who we met or why we went there.
When everything's a blur in the morning you have two choices:
Feel guilty about how much you drank, lie around, and do nothing or,
Leave it be, try not to think about it, and try and find your passport and cell phone.

We made our transfer at the 22 and rode downhill.
Page looked like she was going to be sick.
Her sunglasses were solid black and I couldn't see her eyes, but her face was flushed and green.
"You alright?" I asked her.
"I'm fine," she said, "Just need to get off of this tram. Feel like I'm going to be sick."
"You look it."
"Really?" she asked.
"Yeah, a little bit."
"Let's get off at the park with the fountain. I don't want to puke here."
"Ok," I said, smiling, "We'll get off after this stop."

We sat down on one of the benches that circled around the fountain.
It was empty and Page was confused why.
"Maybe to save money?" I suggested.
"What? It's just water."
"Well, you gotta' pump the water up there and then filter it back out. Costs money."
"Costs crown," she corrected me.
"Same thing," I said, putting my arm around her, "There's no one here today."
"I know why," she stated, flatly.
"Why?"
"Because it's collllllllld and it's Sunday and only foreigner's would go out on a day like this."
I scanned the park and noticed that most of the faces there were probably not Czech.
"****," I muttered, "You may be right."
"I know I am," she said, wiggling her chin down into her jacket, "We're...crzzzy."
"We're what?" I asked. I couldn't hear her through her jacket.
She just shook her head back and forth and looked forward, not wanting to move from the warmth.
Dogs were scattered around the brown green grass with their owners.
Some were playing catch with sticks or *****, but others were just following behind their owner's.
I watched as one took a crap in the center of the walkway near the street.
Its owner was typing something on their phone, ignoring what was happening in front of him.
After the dog finished, the owner looked down at the crap, looked around, then slunk off.

"Did you see that?" I asked Page, pointing to where the owner had left the mess.
"Yeah," she nodded, "So gross. That would never fly in the states."
"You'd get shoulder tackled by some park security guard and thrown in jail."
"And be given a fat ticket," she said, coughing a little, "Let's get out of here."
"Yeah," I agreed, "And watch for any **** on the way out of here."

We made our way out of the park and down the street where the 22 continues on to the center.
"Let's not go into the center. Let's walk along the water's edge and maybe up to the bridge."
"Ok," I said, "That's a good idea." I didn't want to get stuck in that mass of tourists.
I could tell Page didn't either. I think she was afraid she might puke on a huddle of them.
We turned down a side street before the large grocery store and avoided a herd of people.
The cobble stones were wet and slick, glistening from a small sliver of sunlight through the clouds.
Page walked ahead.
Sometimes, when we walked downtown in the older parts of Prague, we would walk alone.
Not because we were fighting or anything like that; it was all very natural.
I would walk ahead because I saw something and she would either come with or not.
She would do the same and we both knew that we wouldn't go too far without the other.
I think we both knew that we would be back after seeing what we had wanted to see.
One could call it trust - one could call it a lot of things - but this was not really spoken about.
We knew we would be back after some time and had seen what we had wanted to.
Thinking about this, I watched her look up at the peeling paint of the old buildings.
Her thick black hair waved back and forth behind her plum colored pea coat.
Page would usually bring a camera and take pictures of these things, but she had forgotten it.
I wished she hadn't.
It was turning out to be such a beautiful day.

We made it to the Vlatva river and leaned over the railing, looking down at the water.
Floating there were empty beer bottles and plastic soda jugs.
The water was brown, murky, and looked like someone had dumped a large bag of dirt in there.
There was nothing very romantic about it, which one would think if you saw it in a picture.
"The water looks disgusting," Page said.
"That it does, but look at the bridge. It looks pretty good right

LAST UPDATE:
I won't cancel my account here and delete any poems which I like... I once was a poet here with freedom of speech. It is past now. Thank you all. Black, blue, silver, green or white can't be repainted with pink, as some state paid fools would desire. Bye

I STARTED WITH THIS;
Please be aware that the account hellopoetry.com/retardnnn with current female nickname "sara" IS NOT A REAL PERSON POETRY ACCOUNT, but a social media watching account used by the MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC.

Please don't follow this account or support it anyway. If you get or did get any private messages from this account, they are a scam.

Since 2016, this account "retardnnn" can be found on many social media platforms including deviantart.com/retardnnn and many others. Here are some characteristics of it:

- there is never any uploaded content of the user, so no poems from "sara" even on this site where an invitation poem is required to join the community (perhaps deleted after joining)
- favorites of the fictional user are completely non-sense and accidental, completed just by clicking on similar tags, resulting in a mix of poems coming from many years, this is very distinct from a real person loving poems from people who they watch at a moment. You can see it yourself on hellopoetry.com/retardnnn
- in other sites like pinterest.com, the photo of "retardnnn" or "Sara" is some kind of pretty looking teenage girl. Even not being the same ******* all sites, this is a (jail)bait. By searching the source of the profile pictures, as I did, you can go back to the years 2012 or 2013, and the source photo is matched to Russian websites. This is certainly NOT a real person.

Use your brain, not sympathy for girl names.

I claim the main reason the mentioned profile joined Hellopoetry several months ago is me. Particularly my short prose written in Czech that I published here on December 28th which mocks in a very unpleasant way corruption-driven part of state administration in Prague, responsible for supervising so-called "independent contractors" employment model which is widespread in my country (also known in UK and US I guess). It also targeted particular state official in Prague in a way that became some kind of popular after that. With this text, I achieved what I wanted and I am proud of it.

The user hellopoetry.com/retardnnn is now watching me but I blocked them, so is present just as number 6 but invisible in my watchers list.

I WILL DELETE THIS non poetry related text after this user GETS OFF THIS SITE. Thanks, LV

The employee rights complaint written by me dealing with Czech authorities is accessible through http://tinyurl.com/svarcsystem (in Czech language of course).

UPDATE: In an attempt to discourage people reading my poems, I have ADS IN FRONT of my poems. You can see it by logging off (at least from my IP).

UPDATE 2: For visitors coming outside, the number of views of this text IS FALSIFIED, compared to what I see when I log in.

UPDATE 3: After publishing this, ads disappeared. Also user hellopoetry.com/retardnnn stopped watching me. The number of views of my texts is rising again.

UPDATE 4: Ads again renewed, but this time for any poems I see from my IP (country). Guys are working hard.

UPDATE 5: After having published new header about censorship on my profile page, FREQUENCY OF ADS dropped but they are still present.

UPDATE 6: Still being the same guy (Adasyev) I have changed my profile name to a better known one, only to see if this will influence displaying ads.

UPDATE 7: After doing this, the number of views (of this text) as seen below is blocked at 251 (for readers coming outside the community, my IP or country). The number of views at my poems is also blocked.

UPDATE 8: Number of views is fixed to 540 as of August 5. This is meant from country's IP adresses.

UPDATE 9: When viewed from my country's IP, the profile hellopoetry.com/retardnnn is still present with 8 followers.

UPDATE 10: Number of views of this text was fixed to 635 when viewed from my country's IP. As of August 6. When I log in the current number is 715. Ads are displaying almost everywhere on this site from my country's IP. Immediately after publishing the above text number is modified to 726. Any future value will be falsified and blocked from my country, so it lacks a sense to continue with this updating.

UPDATE 11: In response to the censorship on this site from my country I have already deleted in the last days the incriminated text from December 28th and few others concerning state administration in my country.

PLEASE NOTE: With the current censorship on this server in Czech Republic, you can't be sure whether I get or did get any private messages from you. I didn't get one till now.

I DIDN'T REPLY TO ANYONE TILL NOW. IF YOU GET ANY MESSAGES FROM ME, BE SURE THE ONLY THING I CAN DO HERE NOW IS TO UPDATE THIS TEXT AND MY PROFILE'S TEXT.

Link to this post is:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2631516/a-message-from-me/

Shortened link (as seen in my profile's header) is:
tinyurl.com/linktomylasttext

UPDATE 2021-06-14: I got reaction by e-mail telling me that hellopoetry.com/retardnnn and other accounts ARE surely NOT related to Czech state administration, they belong to a young person. The events above mentioned remain unclear.

There was an Old Lady of Prague,
Whose language was horribly vague;
When they said, 'Are these caps?'
She answered, 'Perhaps!'
That oracular Lady of Prague.

There was an Old Person of Prague,
Who was suddenly seized with the Plague;
But they gave his some butter,
Which caused him to mutter,
And cured that Old Person of Prague.

It looks like the entire city is on fire.
Black statues on the Charles Bridge
like charred remains from the blaze coming off the shining roof of the National Theatre.

And you might be able to picture it
when I say gothic towers glow like points of flame,
But you really have to go yourself to see what I mean when I say
there's a wind tunnel running from the Florenc metro station to Naměstí Republiky
that catches in it a gust of a thousand people in shades of red and black and gold.

If you are in the right place at the right time,
you can see the moment the streets lamps all light up in unison
by some command of the darkening sky
And suddenly everything is picturesque, even if you don’t know what that means.

Your favorite park might be the popular place for adolescent delinquency
but that doesn’t change the way the light from the setting sun
turns the Vltava into melted gold.

David Černy’s fluorescent ******* signals to the world
That here in Prague the world’s on fire.

Just like any other town, except the middle school is in an old strip mall, selling free education. The bank advertises a “Kalachi Festival” and nothing else, not low interest loans or free checking. The streets are lonely, but then again, it’s Sunday morning and most are at church. Where I’m headed, riding passenger, just for you. I hate riding passenger, but I’ll let you wear the pants today, I’ll stick to my fifties inspired floral skirt and clichéd pink teddy bear sweater. We arrive. Nine-thirty on the dot. Right on time, you say “I told you we wouldn’t be late.” I roll my eyes and breathe deep as I open your car door. We walk across the gravel lot to a low lying building. Church. No loud music or free coffee to hide behind. No large crowds or jumbo screens. Just people. We go into a classroom. Read from the bible. Meet people whose names I promptly forget. But that’s okay, they forget me too.
We finish on the gospel of John. And take a bathroom break, I take a while, not willing to endure the awkwardness that is sure to occur if I exit before you do. I stare at my reflection and regret my eyeliner. I’m glad I wore flats, not heels, and feel a bit overdressed to be honest. I exit, after using hand sanitizer as hand soap, realizing, then proceeding to wash my hands again. You’re talking to an elderly woman, she’s small, fragile. I hug her awkwardly, I’m terrible at meeting people. Another deep breath. Your father comes into view. What if he hates me? What if you realize you’ve made mistake? What if I accidentally say ****? ****. ****. ****. Deep breath out. Shake hands, smile and greet awkwardly, yet again. Meet Pearl and Ruby. The Two Jewels of the church. Meet Leonard. Joke with leonard, Think of my grandfather and how I should call him. Mentally punch myself in the arm. Greet your mom, get told I’m pretty, laugh, not knowing what to do.
I sit next to Alanna and the *** Smoking boyfriend, Scott. Sing. Pray. You do announcements. Everyone takes communion, Myself included. You pray, with such conviction and belief I’m confused. I put on the pious face for the congregation. Look innocent. Observe. Sing again. No instruments, only robust voices, all together. Your hand is in mine for the sermon. Finding it hard to concentrate, I notice the approximate age and décor of the church. Probably mid-late seventies. The Mauve carpet reminds me of my mother. She loved mauve in the 90’s, when it was popular. Exposed beams make it feel more like a chapel. They remind me of my church at home. There’s a choir section, making me realize it could have been another church at some point, you don’t have choirs. The sermon’s finished. Your hand has left red marks on mine, small ovals that you fuss over. We make our way out of the church. The last to leave. Following your parents home.
You lived in the country. In a wooden house that reminds me of my first house in Perry. Covered in dark wood. Your kitchen reminds me of my mother, covered in sunflowers, her favorite. You give me a quick tour.  The art that covers the walls of your home is yours and your siblings. I’m amazed. We clomp down the stairs; “they’re extra steep” you warn. Your mother’s preparing lunch. I contemplate offering to help, but don’t want to look like an *** if she says yes and I mess something up.
We retire to the living room with your father. He asks about my family. My parents, an Engineer and a Marketing Director. He asks about their expectations for me. Asks me if I live in the country, No, I reply, I live on the golf course. His eyebrows raise further. ****. I should have left that out. He thinks I’m wealthy. I’m not, neither are my parents. Mercifully we get called in for lunch. Roast, salad, corn, cantaloupe, potatoes, I love home cooking. You peer pressure me into cheesecake. Your father suggests you take me to the pond. You think twice. Taking in my shoes and skirt. We go anyways. Kiss as soon as we’re out of sight. I wish we could just lie down beneath a tree and sleep. We walk back to the house. Collect groceries and money, Even me. We go to the car. Drive away. You’re tired. So am I, we fight a little on the way back, mostly joking. We fall into bed and sleep away the morning. Which you say went well, I’m still unsure.

As in cargo ships.
Fear takes pictures below.

My heart inside stone ballasts.
Saving letters.

I burn it down.
I burn it down & walk away.

Correct.  
Ate, now sick.

Years ago fruit grew.
My wound grows skin with wine.

& she burns.
Price payed for pale beauty.

Still alive.
My torch home.

I search for my children
Frozen in winter's grace.

that's 3 weeks without a keyboard,
that's 3 weeks on a dual-detox -
         that's that: roughly: antagonism
of: once upon a time...
           there can only be one Hans Andersen,
and as the story goes: ol' granny
   passed on the tales, without which:
no talk of posterity, and seances at
the theatre; alternatively: what if Kierkegård
opted for opera, rather than theatre?
    well: horrid is the task of dropping names,
as if being a village idiot, in that
capacity: giving directions... no such thing!
  nonetheless: a horrid task...
3 weeks... without this horrid world-entanglement...
amphetamines in the wild west,
                   and yet... everything slows down...
that's 3 weeks without such ''luxury''...
    and would you believe it?
3 weeks went by: in a blink of an eye.
             strange, or what 21st century writers
fail to recognise: the ******* canvas has changed!
any-single-one-of-them bothered to scrutinise
this new canvas? anyone?
     ah yes, it's still in its adolescence -
it's still: Dostoyevsky, scuttering in the grand
dungeon: that's the Moscow underground.
             the canvas! the canvas!
                             and indeed, if this be some
bellowing horn, from the depths of some forsaken
place... i'll go into the street, and sabotage
civilisation with graffiti...
                     then again: i have the least
expectations, such that capitalism works...
poetry... and what investment have you made?
nil, or almost nil... evidently: zilch!
      ah, but to have invested in canvases,
a studio, paints, brushes... see... no one sees
investment in poetry: primarily because the poet
has done the minimal...
            unless of course it turns out to ****
with a hot poker something once resembling
nations... which now resides in the insane asylum
(even though those, have been abolished)
                           , nation - ooh! what a ***** word!
the left irksome sometimes uses it:
in theory: the nation-state...
                        and then there's the resurgence of
ancient Greece... in a sing-along:
maybe 'cos i'm a Londoner... brother! brother!
Athenian! Athenian!
                                       but we are born into
a Spartan wedlock... no one really bothers to
**** our gob with Shakespeare...
    then again that is the schizophrenia (alias
dualism) in humanity... thus, to be frank,
psychiatry can be congratulated, it has provided
one useful term... and i will use it, over and over again,
in a non-symptomatic way, because, i find,
it stands, as if the Olympic Graeae (Zeus, Poseidon
and Hades) eating the carcass of some inhabitant
of Tartarus...
                               evidently: tartar steak...
doubly evident: tartars, or the remnants of mongols,
settled in crimea, and elsewhere in the Ukraine...
   tartar                      tra-ta-ta-ta... ku ku ryku!
a ja fu! krecha! a ja znow... fu!       radowitą
uprzejmość... skłaniam...  
    or what i call: rising spontaneously from the depths...
polymaths applauded, the tribunal resides in
bilingualism... trenches... history... perspectives
and current affairs... wicker man media...
                        so... an example of pedantry?
ó....               that's an orthographic dignitary -
        an aesthetic muddle... as is
c-ha                               contending with samo-ha...
     ch                            came from antagonism of
cz                                   which was later antagonised
by č               in česka.... say that: hen party
bound to Prague... in the Czech republic...
                                          ch      k..­.
i am, quiet frankly... standing at the feet of the tower
of babel... and i'm looking up, and i see
correlations, and i see decimal marks,
which, when given enough geography,
can seem like England and the isles,
       and central Europe...
    Iberia? phantom of Seneca...
  eureka! let's begin, once again...
  why is there a continuum beginning with
Plato and Aristotle?
                                           we could become
reasonable people... told to deal with madmen...
we could claim beginnings with Seneca...
and Cicero...
                      and why? the Romans loved poetry...
the Greeks antagonised Homer...
            the Romans loved Horace, Virgil,
                           Ovid... perhaps we should really forget
beginning with Plato and Aristotle...
       the former has become a church,
the latter a dentist's assistant (minus the ancients'
concept of a joke).
                      evidently i have to finish off reading
Seneca... his educational letters to Lucilius....
      moralising ******* that he was, thus, perhaps
a nibble at Cicero? but i must say:
                           it has to begin somewhere,
so not necessarily in stale-bread Athens...
                      and having such perspectives helps
in claiming casual conversation?
   assuredly - if it doesn't involve talking about
the weather...
                                which is always a great mystery
   if it's given enough aurora.
   onto the mystery of dialectics,
as discovered by Alfred Jarry in his Faustroll
Pataphysics contraband...
                                                nag­ging agreement...
nodding without approval... (chapter 10) -
beginning with αληθη λεγεις εφη
        (you speak the truth, he replies) -
   and ending with ως δoκεì
                              (how true that seems)...
and then some dub-step...
        know nothing dROP! boom! jiggy jiggy,
get the rhythm.
   as i always find it hard to look at
    diacritical arithmetic...
                                  given the following
represent a prolonging: hangman:
       å, ā and ä...
                             esp. in Finnish -
stratum: hedningarna täss on nainen.
                        rolling yarn, plateau, two dips;
and i will never say something profound...
i'll just say something no one else has said,
benefit of the doubt? somewhere, someone,
                                      kneels at the same altar.
  such are the distinction - invaders from the
north, and invaders from the south...
                                           even with
crusading Golgotha mann -
the times? many bats, supers, spiders,
but not enough readings of thomas mann...
                              easily befallen into prune-nosed
high-airs... it comes with the diet of literature...
   unfortunately.
                              and with yet another book:
i have burried yet another living person
i could have had a beer with, and conversed.
it always happens, every time i read a book
i have to attend a funeral... by reading a book
i have burried someone alive...
                          shame, in all frankness...
    i will sit in a congested train, touch a breathing
body, and consecrate the touch with
a warring genuflect - harbringer of a Teutonic
passion for initiation: a komtur's slap across the cheek.
   chequers played with passions...
           and some have to be approached like
caged animals, their vocabulary as cages,
                and the whole world before them:
cageless!
             some have indeed become so encrusted in
their daily: routine, that it would take a zoologist
(thrice oh, begs some sort of diacritical marking)
rather than a psychologist to understand them...
    like the darting dupes they are, enshrined in
20% gratis! smile! have a nice day! boxing day sales!
all but pleasantries, fathoming the grave.
   stiff vocab and all other kinds of perfume...
                           a king and his charlatan knights,
who are merely ditto-heads.
                  and not of this world, afresh -
among the nimble hands prior to birth -
surely there is: more grandeour in birth
   that entry via a ******...
                            the greatest pain of ****...
and when the ancient treaty was signed
under the name: Augustus Cesarean - or
recommended for a need of aristocracy -
    it was, for a time, the mana magnetism:
and such was the rule of poetry:
rather than a crown, donned the laurel leaves...
donned the laurel leaves...
    and such was the covenant from ancient
foes when trying to assimilate the Jew...
three kings from Babylon,
                         the child in Egypt...
          no good tides from Nazareth...
         a crown of myrrh - later overshadowed
by dogmatic sprechen, simpler: thorns...
yella things... or rzepak, Essex is filled with it...
rzepak... so why bother adding a dot above
the z, when you get capricious and use rz to
denote the same?! thus a science:
voiced retroflex fricative... Stalingrad!
                       can you really stomach this kind
of jargon? if it wasn't for science fiction:
science would be twice removed from gott ist tot,
*******' worth of pondering, given the close
proximity rhyme... nothing that rhymes should
ever be taken seriously, it should be hymnal!
                         Horatio! mein lyre!
   mein Guinness leier! rabbi krähe -
     and they deem that ****** white when talking:
thinking? i'd prefer Cezanne in real life -
   maggot wriggling and all...
                                          as much eroticism
as bound to a dog slobbering its testicles:
which means ****-all in an almighty stance
   for a dollop of halleluyah in Nepal.
well: pretty talk, pretty pretty pretty: i feel pretty,
oh so butter-fly-e.
                                    2 week stance,
***** in autumn... but so many Swiss hues
coming from the same concentration of decay!
shweet!  zeit-ser!        and that's me talking
kindergarten german: innovation begins with
a fork and a spoon, should the tongue come to it...
            i see a poem,
i see something worth bugging... c.i.a.,
f.b.i., hannibal's lecture in Florence, Venice for
the rats... bugging... shoving...
  shovelling... necro grounding, rattling...
    windy via north... Icelandic...
drums along incisors of abstract gallop:
violins... fringes of the mustang... airy airy...
all regresses toward the Vulgate...
         like ****, like said, and the only pristine
stress comes with vanilla ice-cream,
or a medium-rare beef ****! hmph!
                         fa fa fa excesses with that hurling
puff...
                      and i did finish Kant's
critique of pure reason... minus two calendars...
but, so help me god, the 2nd volume was hiding
under some corner...
                           thus, from transcendental methodology
came plump apricots, plums and pears...
             sweet decay fruit baron...
              and it's called sugars in the intricacy of pulp...
lazily grown, dangling on that caricature of
a formerly known: full crop of wheat-crude fringe.
    2 years... honest to god!
         but so many books in between...
i was given a recommendation...
i cited it already... kraszewski's magnum opus...
29 books...
                       although that's history fictionalised...
but nonetheless, it really was about
     the cossack uprising in the 17th century...
   and it was, as i once said, something i can forgive
sienkiewicz - the film version,
as in: i will not read a book once it has been adapted
to a movie... it's self-evident that too many
people have read a piece of work and are gagging
for a conversation... but where's the playground?
           ******* cherades!
  chinese whispers and a Manchurian candidate!
  i thought as much.
                          and whenever it's not a preplaned
escapade, what becomes of the day?
     was it always about a stance for carpe diem?
  syllables: di                em.
                            carpe is said with more lubricant.
corpus diem. well, that's an alternative, however
you care to think about it.
                and whenever you care to think about,
the proof is there: mishandling misnomers:
poets as tattoo artists... although no one sees the ink,
signatures on a reader's brian (purposively altered,
toward a Michael Jackon he-he, and other:
albino castratos the church venerates!)...
   that's 3 weeks in a catholic country...
  3 weeks... if only the football was better,
      i'd be called Juan Sanchez...
               but, evidently, the football is bad...
     so it's catholicism on par with a sleeping inquisition...
no one really expected Monty Python to conjure
that one... because it never really took place,
not until a trans-generational exodus
postscript 2004... once western brothels were exhausted,
and the Arab started ******* a hippo...
              then it was all about lakes and rivers
and Las Vegas 2.0 in Dubai!
                     you say quack... i say:
                                                    easy target.
and they did receive a blessing from Allah...
enough ink to write out Dante's revision of the Koran,
and some Al-Sha'ke'pir to write a play called:
the Merchant of Mecca.
  last time i heard, when the reformation was
plauging Christendom, no one invited the Arabs...
these days i think the little Lutherans of Islam
watched too many historical movies...
me? pick up a crucifix and march to Jerusalem?
  and is that going to translate into:
   blame the populists! blame the nationalists!
it's like watching a circus... why is the Islamic
reformation asking for third party associates?
                  i was happy listening to
the klinik... albums: eat your heart out...
time + plague...
                             once again: the world narrative
gags for enough people to conjure up
     a placebo solipsism... and that's placebo
with a squiggly prefix (meaning? how far
that ambiguity will take you) - ~placebo...
well: since existentialists were bores...
it's about time to head for Scandinavia
   and ask: is that " ''                 for passing on
an inheritance, or better still: ripe for
acknowledging ambiguity?
                          and if you can shove this
  into your daily narrative... you better be
a connaisseur of chinese antiques...
                frailty... then again, theres: ******;
well hell yeah *****'h, it's a murky underwold
after all.
                     and yes: that's called a petting word...
some say hombre, and we'll all be amigos
and muskateers at the end of the story.
                                    finally... i feel like i'm writing
a poem that i'll never end...
              why? it was supposed to be about
how John Casimir of Sweden championed
  the crown away from his brother Prince Charles
(volume 1)...
                      the bishop of Breslau...
a recluse... couldn't ride a horse...
    then again: nothing worthy imitation...
beginning with a donkey...
                               the transfiguration of palms
into whips... 2000 years later
talk of Hercules is madness... that other bit?
complete sanity.
                              well... if that be the case...
the book is there... i signed it, 2nd volume of
Kant's critique...
  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Y| | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

        an oak... in a forest of pine...
an oak in pine wood...

then onto the wood of sighs:

aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
          (somehow the surd escapes,
and later morphs into, but prior to)

a short script: variation on MW...

      pears' worth of blunting runes:
opulance s and ᛋ - versus z,
    congregation minor: the interchange, ß,
buttocks and *****, minus phantoms of erotica.
yet, taking into account trigonometry...
sine (genesis 0), and cosine (genesis 1),
or            M                                   W
(no Jew would dare believe the Latins have
the second 'alf of the proof: that loophole of all
things qab-cannibal-mystic - cravat donning
mystique - a flit's worth of sharpening,
or dental grit... flappy tongue,
flabby oyster, lazing for a crab's palette)...
so?

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

of course there's an

I did not hesitate when I boarded the train,
caught between the salt and German time;
with fingernails yellowed with cigarette grime,
to come to Paris for it's tepid, sweet rain.
Nor I did tremble with with fear and strain,
flexing my pride in Prague with the prime
that only is granted to the young, at nighttime.
I left nothing back by or in home, but I feign--
for crookedly placed by the cold Danube,
I felt a finger of hurt despite my endeavors;
for as water pooled in those iron shoes,
I felt everything that I didn't wish to remember.

again void of sleep,
carried over parallel lines
by blues.
Our names are engraved in our
neighbor's guitar.
The Korean man likes ecstacy,
and we all love music
and food
and ***.
Just like our parents.
We pass a thousand sunflowers at their day jobs.
These hills remind me of home
and food
and ***.

Cihlové stínadlo, divan bez prachu
Výhybky prskavců chutnají zle
Hne sumcem, vylíže střídavě bráchu
Semena s holbou na výkladním skle

Páry a mrdiny končí pod voly
Nad hrstí úliteb vítězné gesto
Stříbrné příbory v podpraží hulí
Za bradou dřímá horoucí těsto

Proč běží sádla na získané body
Proč běží pro kádry, ze kterých jebe
Pásovec zas dal hlavičku do tmy
Pár krysek sladí sžíravě sebe

These city streets are empty and cold
Devoid of life
Not a soul walks here but me
Alone in a world of sadness and pain
With tattered mind
And a broken heart

Life is a harsh endeavor
Joy sparse and brief
Tragedy lurks around the corners
One can do nothing to avoid
So I march head on into it
Embracing my fate

Nothing lasts forever
Save one thing, Death
So to death I walk
With my head held high
Hoping to find a more hospitable place
Than this Earth

It’s 2018 August 12th

Night is falling,
the photographs in my hands radiant with the light of the past
where hills touch the sky,
not my parents‘ earth, only the ground they built on.
Their voices tender with longing for the motherland,
while there is merely my own
heart I see in the vast desert,
homeless, homesick,
waiting for moss to grow over that earth too.
Finally silence
where once was the noise of the nation,
we are children again,
alone in the motion of the Prague-Berlin train.

Maybe you're the colosseum. The code to get through the glass doors is actually just '1954'. You could put up the painting of me at auction, or I could take a cruise from London to the Islands North of Siberia, a stop in a department store in Northern Greece. I stop and take a ride in the middle front-third seat of a older friend's younger brother's car, and force all of them to come outside and see the spider's eggs at Bob-o-Link. Massive cornucopias of cotton walls entwined with silk.

In the department store I ask to be introduced to someone who can take me by the hand and recognize me by my number, show me everything I'll need to shoot a full-length feature, even how I can get to Prague so I can do a little shopping. But the horror of seeing is so frightening, and the girl that I came with wants to do nothing.

I find a little shop selling Czech candies, music, and newspapers, so I try to buy everything but the horror is getting closer. I'm in a lazy Susan, how often does that happen? One more turn and I'll lose my stomach contents and then I won't need anything.

I take a climb up a street that says "Smrzlinu Ahead," but the houses on the street are all either empty or boarded up. I drift in the soccer field, watching my legs, looking over my shoulder. I fall for a pile of clothes that can hide me but are also very soft to lay in.

Another cruise- tropical, perhaps? Somewhere for coy adults, who shed their skin in Winter when their eyes start molting off. Someday I will place both hands into the ocean, I'll dream huge, and go swimming until I start to laugh. One day I'll sink to the floor of the bourn, maybe the same day I wake up and I'm not swimming alone.

The clock gets me.
It comes to me in the middle of the night
Pulls back the sheets and says, "Hey fucko."
Then it lifts open my sobby wet sand-encrusted lids,
It knows when I'm trying at sleep, pumping quarters
Like I was swallowing yawns, sometimes I try to squint
Harder and take a dream to the next level, whatever
The next level is. It's like Friday night when I wanted to go
Out to do something, whatever something is.
Because I know that if I don't I'll miss that thing that's so
Important that if I were to miss it the clock wouldn't come for me

Again.
And on Tuesday's when I'm knotting a dream around 2 o' clock
In the morning, my web-footed adventure, say, killing your

Boyfriend, say
Fighting the Nazis, say,
Rediscovering that you sent nudie pics to
That rando guy we met in that club that lives
in Prague-
I throw the clock at the ******* wall.

Because who knows, I make the bed wrong
Or maybe I don't cook right, or look right, or
Smile the right way at the right

Time. And you start thinking that I have to die.
The bane of my existence is an imagined feat in your
Walnut-sized brain, slowly numbing us while we're
Supposed to be, say

Listening to the rich, Oxford voice of
David Attenborough.

Instead you're thumbing through that index
of CVS cashiers, just trying to find a scruffy face
To flip your digits to, your homemade justification. It becomes
A feat, an unjust cause of mine to

Get it right, that imaginative and artificial bit you've
Been sewing up Monday twilight.

That's when I go out and jaw your sister, somewhere between
A smirk on your face and a bit of anger at the end of your sentences.

I hate myself
for wanting to be pretty
but even more, I hate the world I live in for
   making me feel like I need to be
pretty
in order to amount to anything
   but it's been etched into my brain
      like the alphabet or "I'm fine, thanks, how are you?"

I guess I ran
out of words
when I stopped believing
   that I needed you to love me back

sometimes I still think of you but only
in the moment between tracks on a CD
or at stoplights
or in the the spaces of light between my fingers
  when I shield my eyes from the sun

but there are a lot of things I
sometimes think about
so maybe
   you're not so special after all
just a speck of static
I clung to
  when I had nothing else to hold
  or when there was no one else
to fill the space around me

Z iniciativy české státní správy byly na stránky hellopoetry uměle přidány reklamy. Ty se nejprve začaly zobrazovat na stránkách mých textů s cílem je zakrýt a odradit moje čtenáře. Návštěvnost textů byla také bloknuta. Poté, co jsem do profilu přidal info o tom, že se zobrazují jen před mými texty, se začaly zobrazovat už všude. Státní správa se rozhodla kvůli mně ničit i texty druhých. Pro srovnání se můžete na hellopoetry připojit ze zahraničí, zda se zobrazí nějaké reklamy. Cílem je mě donutit k tomu, abych smazal tento účet a svou tvorbu, jako pomsta za mou (možná přehnaně) satirickou tvorbu proti pražské státní správě nebo poslancům. Pokud jsem někoho urazil, tak se mu omlouvám, ale útočné texty pokládám za užitečné a dobré, jak uvádím dál. Nikdo si na ně přímo nestěžoval a pokud ano, tak by bylo nejlepší, kdyby to řekl přímo autorovi, tedy mně. Moje adresa: Mezi Domky 255, 251 68 Kamenice. Cenzuru pomocí reklamy bez dalšího vysvětlení považuju za zbabělou.

V reakci na cenzuru a reklamy jsem smazal několik textů, které zasahovaly do osobnostních práv lidí, kteří se jich žádným způsobem po mně nedomáhali anebo neměli odvahu to udělat. Likvidaci nebo poškození zla považuju za dobrou věc. Agresi proti úřední nebo institucionální (firemní) nadřazenosti, která někoho druhého považuje za nekompetentního a ne sobě rovného považuju za dobro, které přináší změnu v myšlení. Rozhodne lepší a lepší ovlivní víc lidí. Můj text v angličtině ("A message from me") platí dál, po smazaní špiclovského účtu (můžou si založit nový) smažu i ten.

Zpráva zaslaná uživateli hellopoetry.com/retardnnn:
Predchozi upravou jsem tady skoncil. Navzdy. Muzete pracovat az do dalsiho ministra vnitra nebo reditele BIS nebo deseti dalsich, az do konce veku.

Ještě chci dodat, že "likvidací" myslím hlavně literární zesměšnění, které mělo v této zemi vždycky tradici. Původní inspirací napsat krátkou prózu "Bezdomovci z kolonie Bubenské nábřeží založili kurýrní společnost" bylo dokázat si, že dokážu napsat něco satirického, tak jak to udělal třeba Jaroslav Hašek. Moje texty vadí právě proto, že jsou dobře napsané a jsou úspěšné. Kdyby dobré nebyly, nikdo by se jimi nezabýval a nemusel je cenzurovat. Pokud mě chcete posuzovat, věřte při čtení hlavně sami sobě, ne informacím někoho druhého, a už vůbec ne státem placeným trollům na sociálních sítích. Žijeme v době druhé normalizace. Pokud nemáte odvahu a vlastní názor, tak v ní žijte dál. Uznávám, že v textu "Orangutani z pavilonu Indonéská džungle založili Poslaneckou sněmovnu ČR" jsem to přehnal a bezdůvodně pourážel hodně lidí. I těch slabších a citlivějších, kteří se nemůžou bránit. Hlavním podnětem k jeho napsání byly ale agresivní reklamy (bannery) ODS, které se mi neustále zobrazovaly na mých vlastních stránkách adasyev.deviantart.com a ve kterých se autoři snažili rýmovat, stejně jako já.

Zkusím vysvětlit některé rýmy:
"Vlez na úřad a všechno sněz, Praha volí ODS".
Narážka na člena ODS JUDr. Luboše Záveského, vedoucího inspektora OIP Praha. Jeho činnost spočívá v tom, že u práce, kde nedostanete ani minimální hodinovou mzdu, dal takovým podnikatelům ještě lepší smlouvy než před kontrolou. Z pokuty, kterou inspektoři vyinkasují od podnikatele za nelegální práci, si sami sjednali odměny (vedle státního platu). Touto námezdnickou prací jsem si prošel.

"Kdo nedává na žrádlo, sponzoruje divadlo."
Narážka na pražskou podnikatelku Ing. Hanu Černochovou, majitelku superúspěšného švarcsystémového podvodu s názvem eKuryr, s.r.o. Paní majitelka se svým manželem byla nebo je mecenáškou Národního divadla v Praze. Na to, že podnikání této firmy je v podstatě sofistikovaný podvod, jsem přišel já, ne státní úředníci, a to ve stížnosti dostupné na tinyurl.com/svarcsystem. Po odečtení nákladů na provoz si kurýr s osobním autem v podstatě nic nevydělá a díky tomuto podvodu firma docilovala nejnižších cen na trhu.

Rovněž třeba parodie "Prague Connection" byla inspirována jiným autorem, který zase parodoval některé verše z mojí tvorby. Nic není bez příčiny... Ani já.

A tak dál
a tak dál
nic jsem tady nenapsal
jen tak

pro nic za nic.

Svoje básně přesunu na nové místo, protože je o ně zájem. Nemůžu už tady zveřejňovat žádné další nové příspěvky. Když to udělám, jsou na veřejném profilu smazány (pro ČR). Takže tento text je jediným způsobem komunikace se čtenáři. Upozorňujte na cenzuru a sdílejte moji tvorbu. Díky, L.

POZNÁMKA: Počet zhlédnutí tohoto textu, tak jak je dole, je ZFALŠOVÁN, s cílem vytvořit dojem, že ** už vlastně nikdo nečte. Aktuální zamrzlá hodnota je 34 (5. 8. 2018). Vyzkoušejte sdílení tohoto textu a uvidíte, zda číslo stoupá nebo ne. Číslům u ostatních básní se teď už také nedá věřit.

AKTUALIZACE: Hodnota zfalšována (snížena) na 45, opět bloknuta. Jako nové číslo se může objevit cokoliv a bude opět bloknuté.

AKTUALIZACE: Místo reklam se může zobrazit rádobyvěrohodný inzerát na sponzorování tohoto serveru. Server Hellopoetry je ale dobrovolně financován členy komunity bez zobrazování jakýchkoliv poutačů nebo reklam. Díky tomu je zachována grafická čistota textů básní. Srovnejte při připojení ze zahraničí.

AKTUALIZACE 22. 4. 2021: Co se tady na Hello Poetry vlastně stalo, doteď nevím. Moje nové příspěvky se nezobrazí na mojí profilové stránce. Při aktualizaci anglického textu A Message From Me byl po přihlášení k mému účtu na zadávací stránce vložen škodlivý HTML kód, který periodicky útočil na operační paměť a shazoval prohlížeč. Došlo k prohození napsaných odstavců v mém textu A Message From Me, kdy verze, která se zobrazovala veřejnosti po odhlášení z účtu, se lišila od originální uložené verze se správným pořadím odstavců. Tento samotný český text byl zpočátku (srpen 2018) zcela překryt nesmyslným obřím černobílým bannerem s nápisem Sudoku, který se prodlužoval na výšku této stránky jak rostla návštěvnost mojí výzvy. Samotné počty zhlédnutí/přečtení tohoto a jiných mých textů jsou skutečně zamrzlé, tj. nerostou pro různé unikátní IP adresy i identity (testoval jsem s prohlížečem Tor). Soudě podle publikovaných textů ostatních uživatelů z Hello Poetry, jejich zkušenosti s tímto webem jsou rovněž podivné, např. někdo uvedl, že nemůže psát vůbec komentáře (to by vysvětlovalo, proč můj text A Message From Me se současnou návštěvností téměř 22 tisíc přečtení nemá ani jeden komentář; to je to, co vidím po přihlášení ke svému účtu). Při mé snaze logicky vytěsnit překrývající reklamy, kdy jsem se domníval, že jsou dílem inteligentního útočníka, jsem paralelně napsal anglický text A Message From Me a toto české Sdělení. K odkazům pro veřejnost jsem použil krátké odkazy služby tinyurl.com. Při jejím opětovném využívání během zdejšího zápasu s reklamou se mně najednou reklamním bannerem zcela překrylo i zadávací políčko pro adresu na stránce tinyurl.com, tak, že služba bez blokovače reklam nešla vůbec použít. Celá věc na mě působila tak, že si ze mě dělá nebo dělají srandu nějací počítačoví šachisté s plošným přístupem k serverům a alespoň částečnou možností modifikace přenášených dat. K účtu hellopoetry.com/retardnnn se pojí rovněž fiktivní jméno "Sarai Hladká" a další podivný účet instagram.com/adamlanza92 (podle jména a roku narození amerického masového vraha). Tento instagramový účet měl před pár lety v popisku text právě jen "Sarai Hladká", tedy stejná "sara" aneb retardnnn, který mě měl mezi sledovanými zde na Hello Poetry v červenci 2018 (a který nebo která má účet taky na deviantart.com/retardnnn). Pokud náhodou víte nebo tušíte, čí je to účet, anebo máte nějaké nápady a připomínky k výše uvedenému, uvítám vaše e-maily na adrese lukas.vejsada@tiscali.cz. Kontaktujte mě také prosím, i pokud narazíte na nějaký "můj" profil na Facebooku. Děkuju, L.

AKTUALIZACE 25. 5. 2021: Profil instagram.com/adamlanza92 byl zrušen.

AKTUALIZACE 14. 6. 2021: Dostal jsem e-mailem reakci k původu účtu hellopoetry.com/retardnnn a dalších. Má jít o účet pubertálního dítěte, pisatel mě ujistil, že rozhodně nejde o účet založený MV ČR nebo BIS.

AKTUALIZACE 6. 10. 2023: Moje zkušenosti (nejenom) s tímto webem jsou nově shrnuty na adrese adasyev.tiiny.site

Krátký odkaz na tuto stránku: https://tinyurl.com/nechcemecenzuru

doubly toasted rye bread...
anything on it...
of course i'm not going to treat it
as a bagel: although i should...
some smoked salmon...
the mayo and cucumber and dill...
come to think of it...
toasted rye bread would work
better than a bagel...

        we're not having some brick lane
salted beef, and bagel...
salted beef... good that you asked...
what makes it so... cosmopolitan, i.e. pink?
himalayan salt... i was thinking of
prague salt... don't ask me why...
how? i heard it down the line...

again: larry tesler died a few weeks ago...
well "weeks"... 20th of feb of this year he
passed away... as reported...
larry tesler... it's not an everyday
name... but under the umbrella of darwin that
becomes darwinism:
a group-fire, a get-together, a come-together...
larry tesler is a bit like
a michael faraday...  

           somewhat of a "mystery"...
like... never... i was daring to confess:
those revisions of the cursor...
the phantom hand... of a 2D object in a 3D
object... those 2D ferns in the original
tom raider... moving rapidly when approached...

i can hear the bemoaning...
no new scientific "theory" has resounded true
in the past decade...
unless it's that Higgs': hiccup or... boson...
that only happened a few years ago...

don't... agitate... the... beehive!
i've finished one whiskey and ms. coca
ms. venezuela - ms. novella...
             but i'm still pretending to drink from
an empty glass -
perhaps agitating the whiffs of scotch
perfumes to come...

       how often do i use the larry tesler
method?
well... if i want some... braille...
some glagolitic... some runes...
pretty much all the time...

        toasted rye bread... i'm thinking of eating
some roasted rye bread...
the english being bewildered...
and that's because the former raj
brought with them the cinnamon the cardamom...
ever eaten a curry that listed
rosemary or thyme as a prime ingredient?
can i please just eat this
dogshit, then?

    sourdough bread... not pop enough...
  beside the zeppelins... rye bread galore...
pumpernickel bread... a german thing...
   the name changes... but...
there's only so much toasted white and brown
bread you can eat... before having
an ancient hunger become arise in you...
the baltic cuisine of piquant herrings...
plenty of dill... and rye bread...

- i asked the swabian about this windsor affair
concerning the saxon: the ants-in-his-pants
little brother saxon...
the german who needed to go outside of saxony...
burgundy wouldn't suffice....
had to see the world: become a semite...
a wandering "plague"...
the postman... the dove of "repose"...

this is still about larry tesler by the way...
               ⠓⠑⠗⠑ - larry tesler...
     ⰕⰖⰕⰀⰣ:             "       "
              ᚺᛖᚱ:              "       "        (ditto, as above)...

woman: a human female being -
          because she's not: woo man...
and she is not: woe, man...

               she's a human female being -
that's what everyone might had said...
when being stripped...
to the basics of grammar:
i, pronoun - definite article: the -
noun of nouns -
                        the in between cardinal nouns...
table, fox, wool...
in between cardinal nouns...
box, moon, whiskey and (conjunction)...
the royal pronoun: one would expect...
the other royal pronoun: we would agree to such
claim... given our entourage...
louis XIV very much liked such
pronouns...
             they are the disembodied courting
presence of ghost: where we should be...
to posit...
and what if i want to be known as: there?
can't a they become a there -
i know that's asking too much...
after all... there is an adverb -
perhaps i feel like... being an: ad- -verb
rather than a pro- -noun...

                          there said: it's a cul de sac
and the peoples are gagging for
lessons in grammar... this is still about larry tesler!
well... it's become more of a toasted
rye bread "analogy"...

to be less denoted by noun -
more associated with verbs -
               does that even matter what pronoun?
what if i want to be an adverb: base?
there is an adverb... here is an adverb...
why is BEING a noun...
and not an adverb?
               become is a verb...
   becoming an adjective: although it could
be stressed as a noun: could...
           i think of being... on the lines
of a "here" and a "there"...
nothing is a pronoun...
                          while nowhere is an adverb...
being is a noun but in all fairness it could
be treated as an adverb...
                                   being alone...
           if only it was as simple as...
turning on a lightbulb while at the same time
expenting falling pirouettes of snow...

all this words deserved to be archived
in trash...
     i'm not a betting man and none of these
grammatical arguments really probe me...
i have invested in them a pet-peeve...
and they're nothing more...
but whenever i hear about them being
stressed... i wonder why the counter
argumentation doesn't fall for talking about
this logic on a purely grammatical level...

to update the tabernacle of holiest of the holy
"pronoun" with...
something akin to... by adverb standards...
etc. -
          this is still about larry tesler, though...
and about toasting some rye bread...
nonetheless -
i'm not that old but i'm already tired...
i imagine eating custard as being...
somewhat alleviating...

                but not actually eating any custard...
just imagining eating it
and pretending to drown - gurgling it...
once more: this is still concerning larry tesler...
mind you... larry tesler doesn't exist
on wattpad...

            but all these other would be publishers...
allow larry tesler to exist...
along with that little gremlin that doesn't work...
i.e. ©... not even new york times has
obstructed larry tesler ctrp + c / ctrl + p...
© - yeah.... "copyright"... my ****** ***...
wattpad has actually made actual © "progress"...
you can't use a larry tesler "heimlich" on:
those most scared of texts...
poems by 16 year olds!

              just saying...
you don't need a bagel to enjoy smoked salmon
with a dollop of mayo some cucumber
and dill... rye bread works just as well...
**** i'm hungry!

- again... what (a pronoun) - sorty of © "copyright"
logo is that... when you can larry tesler that
with... export it via highlight and ctrl c / ctrl p?
wattpad doesn't allow you to ctrl c / ctrl p...
at its height it was publishing that
goldmine of one direction fan fiction by
14 year old cherries...
    
                       i guess you can larry tesler
wikileaks: back in the day...

                        so if not larry tesler... who was behind
ctrl a? does it matter - if there's no toasted
rye bread in my gob... just these words
congesting and subsequently constipating my head?
good thing i have earned myself
a bad back - the golgotha "wisening" /
humbling... of digging up roots in the garden
where trees and shrubs once stood...

these words are... hardly a compensation's
worth of balm... but before i gorge on some toasted
rye... they just have to do.

you sat above me, and i watched a song unfurl on your skin.
from your tongue, a pieta tumbled unto my knees.
i was cradling the mother mary who was weeping over the desecrated, emancipated body of her own, over the body of jesus.

the eucharist, the son and father and the holy fantasy of christ, it’s eyes bore heaven onto my shoulders.
a dead woman was burning and her son and grandson and great-grandchild cried underneath a divine weight.
her ashes were split among the men.
they took them home and placed them silently on the shelves while i watched and shivered, silent.
and with my quiet tears, jesus appeared in the crucifixes hanging ‘round all the ladies necks.
he looked at me, with red flowing from his crown of nails.
he looked at me, with the stained agony mary shared when she saw her young son.
he fell into my hands.
i was cradling the dying body of jesus.

i was looking at him as an old man, pained and continuously bleeding.
i was looking at him as a child, playing with sticks on the feet of god.
i was looking at him as the carpenter and as the infant; sweating or crying.
dying or surviving.
i was looking at him through my muddy memory,
through my grandmother’s wrinkled eyes.
i didn’t know know if he would love me like this,
as an open wound,
and infected and rotting and selfish thing,
and,
i wept.

early on i left an imprint for me to remember,
kinda like 2 x 2, equating to 4,
not as simple with words:
i like this dialectic between Dionysian and
Apollonian attempts to express aye arr parley!
shake the pine trees to get the toothpicks
like you might get a mojito, onward! toward
El Dorado! transgressing 24 hour hours
and you get the flavour:
first beer in in from dieting, oh ****, it's bitter,
second beer, mm, sweeter... then the headline
of whiskey and coke... Kazakhstan nice... yok sh'eh mash?!

three movements working their way,
those conquered and exposed to direct roman rule,
presiding over the "charm" with roads, western europe,
now they're so pride to reach that far back,
mention Boudica, one, more, *******, time!
i'll give you Britain that made Louis XIV
the peasant king at Versailles, and Charles II
wise with a Guy Fawkes firecracker... mm, guess
it happened here! in the yeast of a baker's
reincarnation via Malachi's heresy:
Elijah coming soon? Elijah not coming any time
you blunt sword of monotheism excluding
the chance of many, democratic influences!
either the fish or the aquarium...
the aquarium... a billion of them plus Islam will
be anarchic China, people never wish for better,
they only wish to better themselves,
including the social strata stampede that's necessitated
in the process... scientific positivism of Enlightenment
died, the absolute necessity (god) / the absolutely
necessary thing became trapped in the Bermuda
or the Copernican triangle, no good for crossing
oceans, just ably whirling east to no east outside
the atmosphere, try me with two thing:
Copernican vectors with a stable point constantly moving,
rather than sunny, constantly expressed economically
as usurper against usurer and the university grant
of simony, although worthy of an actor to spread
charitable work and paedophilia in Asia dubbed
Portuguese Missionary - well i'm sure the apologetics will
come, my neighbour hugging her dog watching television,
closest kin of the genesis story having secondary reminders
determining whether the lie was white or instructive,
a joke or seriousness - indeed entombed in treating these
words as a holiness worth for all the present religious attire.
absolutely necessary Kant said,
he also said: you said omni- etc., indeed you're on a
roundabout of intellectual yawns, there's nothing new here!
i need god as a concept of vectors and cursors, mediating
more than the caging of man's affirmation of himself
with Freud... the sounds and equally shared optics
need to accommodate a oneness, god is a predicate
of essential function: a. the triple affirmative:
i, thought, existence... something to concern myself with,
b. the duo affirmative:
denial, thought, existence... the arithmetic goes further,
i am writing quickly hence i will not brood over,
except a comparison in cinema, the film *hostel (2005)
and pretty much all of Hollywood's 1970's grit output...
take for example Al Pacino in the panic in needle park,
you know what i see? modern american interpretation
of what eastern europe represents, the farts
leave flamboyant Amsterdam hopeful for Slavic ******,
they come to Slovakia, and it hits them,
the passive lack of jealousy and need to impress
building a chrysler building, the oddity like landing on mars...
but it's already been done with, New York in the 1970s,
the same slavic grit, even the way the cinematography looks
like the colours were shaded with a peppering of sand...
new york in the 1970s is like Eastern Europe in
the horror set in 2005 in Slovakia... globalisation's paranoia,
there are still people out there who we can't ascribe
metaphors to being exclusive: no iron lady lifted the
iron curtain, the iron lady had an iron skirt, and she
couldn't lift that up either... Churchill puffer a cigar
and a million bees emerged heralded by Edward the Confessor.
that's the relation though, Hollywood's 1970's urban grit
and what the tourists encountered in Slovakia in 2005,
a sleepy kingdom, 2nd Mongolia, second to none,
which i beg to differ with, given the Scots were tight
stretching 2 pence copper coin to invent copper wire
and the Swiss (also in hilly surroundings) have us
elaborate paedophilia via Nabokov catching butterflies...
hardly two mountain ranges and hardly two plateaus.
it's called exotica these days... yep... the dissection of
the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and the emergence
of both Lach, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian
and White Russian is what the Czech say made them
speak both cesky and saksonski... tseba! holy roman
prague ****, disintegrated into the Austrian intervention...
very much as if: thank you for defending Vienna from
the Ottomans, Jan Sobieski.
but the Jews got reparations at the end of the ordeal,
and western Europe received the Marshall Plan...
eastern Europe received Marx... too proud they said,
it's not exactly Mama Russia surrogate,
it's Papa Khan also... moon gall! no news from Mongolia
i hear, sooner a tale from an American zoo
where a retired silver-back dragged a baby from
drowning in an inch of water, hero shot,
where were the parents? a four year old can hardly
sit on a kitchen stool let alone climb over zoological
fortifications... ah the blessing given unto man
by Iblis to ape ably a delay he has no chastity over:
if Iblis defended his pride, then man can but
defend his chastity - Iblis was given a longer time-frame,
man was given a shorter time-frame, Iblis'
choice expands furthest into myth, man's choice
implodes further into repetition - for Iblis' mistake
was but one, when knowing of man's aplenty;
it is said that when a man is to become a father,
he relives his childhood - legality i say would have
obliged me, but pride took no notice of symbols as signatures
of such love, especially given the expenses,
or as in the supermarket today, the cashier invested ?
into the one buying the goods:
- where is she? you're not together any more?
- oh, she's moving to York, it's her work, she has to.
- you're not moving with her?
- well, it's only for 2 years, and then she'll be back,
  training, it will take her 4 months...
na'h ah... bye bye...                       she ain't coming back...
tell you what mate, keep a cat, the most selfish animal,
bestia ex solipsism - no necessary petting by constantly
showering it signs of jealousy and ownership and upkeep,
as if having to punch a gorilla to hold hands.
i love feminism for one thing only:
it made sexism a branch of Darwinism, *** warfare...
in relation to me? two girls chatting away:
- *******! how could he leave you!
- but he did!
- what ***** made him do it!
- philosophy!
don't get me started on those who read very little
and can't allow philosophy a poetic form, and necessarily
have to plagiarise Aristotelian stylistics to be considered
philosophy (albeit only in scholarly musings).
i'm sure it was something about the fruits of our
presupposed wisdom that bore knowledge that individuated
us, to the point of extremes, as hardly scraps for
vultures, to no animal nobleness, parasitic amongst each other,
defining the 16th century or such desires to keep
afresh, minted and pampered for the next cohort of dupes...
some find the memory of dogs towards us keener
than our fellow men should wish to share...
the animal domesticated and not eaten is seemingly our
prefect to walk toward a seize-less craft of un-exhausted thought,
only un-exhausted because of missing interaction,
say there, is that Hegel's mirror (master) and narcissus (slave)?
the emergence of these belittled nations is clear in
western europe, the bombing of Libya,
the usurpers of Syria, the once conquered having a taste
for empire and colonial rule think they cherish
the biblical conundrum when the resurrection was inclined toward
the lands Sven and Mietek - toward the lands
of conquerors and the ones converted -
four movements thus (sketched):
a. sonata: βορας ηλιος - μακεδων να ινδια
b. adagio: βιργιλιος ως καντηνoν -
                  μεσoγειος: μαυρος (ex),
κoκκινος (ex), ειρηνικoς (ex),
ατλαντικoς (ex), βoρειος (ex), βαλτικη (ex),
south a poet, north a philosopher,
from only one sea came two oceans and many other seas
to sustain the thirst for seawater among men!    
c. scherzo: Casimir the 3rd welcoming the Jews.
d. sonata: an die mitternachtfreude - more like a calm
before taking up the arms.

So they hacked some computers.
"No big deal" you may say,
"Since their influence steered things
toward the right way"

"They just didn't respect us,
that's why the attack.
So I place all the blame
on the Dems and Barack"

"So we'll get nice and cozy,
Vladimir and me,
since there is just so much
upon which we agree"

"We want to be strongmen
who'll shape history
and we're both such examples
of virility"

"And we'll handle the media
through fear and attack
to ensure truth and balance
shall never come back"

"Admiration and power
is what we adore,
it's the one greatest cause
that we truly live for"

So, Mr. Trump...

When you're there in the Oval
and Europe's alarmed
'cause in Prague and in Warsaw.
the Russians, well armed,

have crossed o'er the borders
and come to reclaim
their former domininons,
then who will you blame?

So why this great bromance?
What's your motivation?
Why would you align
with Vlad and his nation?

Could it be business ties?
Or maybe high debt?
Or maybe dark secrets
you wish they'd forget?

I do not want to think
that it could be such things
but the Russians sure look
like they're pulling your strings.

last night i almost
gave up thinking of bronzy brazilian girls
perspiring pure coconut oil, eau de margherita ;
supermodelas eating my dreams like concord grapes, lionesses
lounging on new york balconies, lithe, reading céline.
(esti ginzburg, on the phone, considers another pomeranian) .
almost stopped.
almost derailed strange vogue-like fantasme of irina shayk, standing legs planted
left knee out-****** and foot
in ebony heel, cocked against the earth.
set being imitation of gloomy coal mine, east of prague. thin arms firmly controlling the
arc of her pickaxe, clothed in leather, high heels;
sheen of sweat holding her feline body in sweet embrace.
imagining that when shift's end buzzer echoes thru the tunnels she smokes a cigarette
on a bench in the women's locker, apple planted on old planking, elbows on her knees.
cover-alls peeled
down to her waist and her hair,
free at last.
(click)
on the tram back into the city all the smoked glass
cartier storefronts pass by like polaroids held in the hand. the same speed.
giggling, 'rina thinks of the six she could place
along her arm; gilt gold, brushed silver, diamant...

there are 11 smoked belmonts by the back steps; i did
little with the night. (tall shadow of a woman in a black dress and my mouth
a cotton ball)
that is to say:
i did almost give up thinking about bronzy braz ilia     g rls ,
-
but i didn't/and so there's nothing else.

to A.

Mythical creature
Feather on fire
Half-bird, half-women
Born is desire

Fireworks of feelings
Awe and thrill
Heartbeat stopping wonder
Love and fear

Watching from distance
you can admire
How it flies closer
And then again higher

Don't try to catch it
Lock it in a cage
It will break free
Or else it will rage
After the storm pass
She will just smolder
Suffer in silence
Tired and older

If her fire is what you want to keep
Show her your love
True and deep
Tell her she can always fly
Just on her own
In the sky
That you will wait for her
Guarding her nest
Being the earth for her
When she needs rest

7.7.2019 Prague

she wanted to find something that made her passion hang
like a human from a tree somewhere in the late thirties
a silent hand pressed against her sponge mind
making her leak her tongue all over the ill surface

years have passed like a seamless tomb
with eyes that scream please, hold me here for more than just two minutes
I am bored with the 1 hour love meetings and the detours
that lead me to the lions cage
the forbidden conversations and the numbed movements
stone tongues of gargoyles limping on the edge of
Gothic cathedrals in Prague

an animal somewhere in the wild dies slowly
a snake gives its venom to prey

and then you stood timid at the bottom of the mountain
as I struggled to make my way down
I thought of how my mother would be proud
to see me in a wedding dress, letting go of the only daughter she was able to drench out
of her body

surrender I thought never come in the form of bliss
till I realized I would hold out against all odds with no mercy
I'm not going anywhere
I stand right here in the corner
with my poetry spiraling down my thighs
in hopeless patterns

Sometimes I imagine sitting under our dining table wanting to chop my hair off, days and nights oppressed, yet not to run the rat race. Partly because I was too resistant to be happy, but with the first monsoon showers, I almost collapsed inside my oversized grey T-shirt that began to turn white, infinite gaps inside mind channels, I sat and watched strange men winning Wimbledon. I stopped writing one thousand words a day, themes and perspectives slipped into a closed brown diary, and I always worried what if someone finds it and reads it aloud in the public sphere in Prague, right in front of David Cherry’s rotating Kafka, how miserable he died thinking he was worthless, how miserable it would be to listen to voices that came beneath my dining table. I talk to a shy Kafka, every day, under our dining table, today he shaved my head.

"There where that ray touches the plain
And the shadows escape as if they really ran,
Warsaw stands, open from all sides,
A city not very old but quite famous.

"Farther, where strings of rain hang from a little cloud,
Under the hills with an acacia grove
Is Prague. Above it, a marvelous castle
Shored against a ***** in accordance with old rules.

"What divides this land with white foam
Is the Alps. The black means fir forests.
Beyond them, bathing in the yellow sun
Italy lies, like a deep-blue dish.

"Among the many fine cities that are there
You will recogni2e Rome, Christendom's capital,
By those round roofs on the church
Called the Basilica of Saint Peter.

"And there, to the north, beyond a bay,
Where a level bluish mist moves in waves,
Paris tries to keep pace with its tower
And reins in its herd of bridges.

"Also other cities accompany Paris,
They are adorned with glass, arrayed in iron,
But for today that would be too much,
I'll tell the rest another time

the night before your funeral
i coped by engaging in 100 different things
you would have never approved of.

i made the eyes at alyssa,
a girl who wasn't mine.

and i only did it because i know
she would never have me,
and that's always appealing.

lauren was late to the gathering.
she made four fractured souls
sitting around a wobbly table
at some arrogant sports bar.

i didn't touch her.
i didn't want to.
i wanted isolation,
yet invited these people
to make me play pretend
at some busy rednecker establishment.

i talked a lot about music.
LCD's latest mostly.
it's easy to hide behind the trivial.

we stopped at a gas station.
i bought beer for chase and tyler.
i hate beer, it just makes me feel
an idiot sense of accomplishment
when this 19-year-old pulls age off
via beard.

lauren left at 3.
i didn't say much.
i kissed her weakly.
she accepted it.
understood it.
had taken notice of my wandering mind.

alyssa slept over,
she had been locked out of her cousin's house.
in the morning, i made her breakfast, coffee.
asked her if she had decided to be my best friend or not.
it was a running joke to her, and she smiled, said she needed more time
leaving it in "potential" status.

i need a best friend.

alyssa left when i took a shower.
as i got ready,
i complained to tyler about lauren.
i don't know if i meant it,
but i listed quite a lot of grievances.
(is it my age?
am i restless?)

i put on a suit and tie. i didn't look at the weather.
i didn't realize it was forecasted to be a sauna.

i got in my car and drove to prague.
the Parks Bros. funeral home parking lot
was spilling into the streets, with SUVs
and heavy duty trucks.

i parked my car a couple blocks down.

walked into the parlor
where you were to make your great showcase
in that open casket.

my father gave your eulogy.
he had been your minister for a few years,
and had loved you for more than 10.

you had died in my mind months earlier.
when i found out about the leukemia.

when i walked past your body on display,
i looked briefly.
all i really saw were your sideburns.
they looked ridiculous.

everyone told me i looked handsome in my suit.
god.
was i so desperate for a compliment that i overdressed
for a funeral?

as we stood outside, it didn't take long for people to laugh.
talk about work,weather, ****** hair, baseball, and girlfriends.
"i hope the heat keeps us from being sad at the cemetery."

i drove to your final plot in the back of the procession.
my dad tried to explain some metaphor at the site, but it fell flat.
he said a prayer over your body.

then he asked me to lead a song i didn't know.
everyone looked at me.

i tried to pass the responsibility.
but eventually started lacklusterly.

i hope there's a god leonard.
i hope that you made it.
and if you get a chance to speak with him,
tell him to play favorites,
and make me a favorite.
that's the only way
i will ever make it.

Some people die in Texas.
Some people die in Spain.
Some people die in their sleep.
Some people die in pain.

We were all in love with trauma.
We were all in love with the same
ideas we projected onto people
and disguised with their name.

I don't live in nine-eleven-land
and neither do my peers.
I've been monitored by other people's Gods
for twenty-two ******* years.
Coffee pots and cigarettes
stimulate my day
and keep the thoughts streaming,
that eventually fade away.

Some people die in Utah.
Some people die in Prague.
Some people never get married
or have the family dog.

We were all in love with status.
We were all in love with goals
that would make life poignant
and make ourselves whole.

I don't subscribe to the thought
that my thoughts necessarily matter.
If life is a horror movie,
then I'm the fake blood splatter.
Bible thumps and dead eyes,
are all part of my design,
and how I live and where I die
means to separate my mind.

Take my hand - you've got to
feel fun time's heading
closer
Futuristic daydreams
are at hand -handy!
microchipped wild
boys and girls
on rent - hardly paid off -
dance! Roll the dice!
Flicker eyes!
Adrift on the dimlit
flourescent
effervescent
reflector rays°°°°you're
never lost or at loss;
Coloured circles glide
across the dancefloor__
bouncy boots swoon, high heels
crack, remastered barefoot Tribe~
Enjoys momentary revelations!
Latino lovers attracting
honey dew magnetic more-s
rain coats off - smiley coasts shine on~
those cunning shenanigan freckles
pressed redhair beauties against
needy torsos in ecco-leather jackets  
electrified silhouettes stunning
like elves un-fading beauty  
transforming tuxedos
of a tight
night; a jingle of
Prague crystals into
one dancing wave submerged
by the vicinity of hissing tongues  
-been- beaten by fierce kissing
in a stronghold ballroom
frenzy - polarized
beatings - hi-s and bye-s ; a
stroboscopic syncopation
ecstatic hips,  
space shuttle
trips