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Ken Pepiton Feb 2023
Look once more,
look back and see the way, to now
from
when reason first was used
to master the frame
of mind, embodied, as mine,
informed with shapes of things solid,
shapes of things inside,
shapes of thing outside,
shapes of thoughts stacked in sequence,
after the hallelujah,
as per holy orders of worth appraisal,
services rendered,
magic performed,
life administered, for another week,
any body can handle one more week.
After the hallelujah.
learn that definition once, and you never
see sequential activity in ritual
as before,
magic effectuation, affection, as joy
one mindful, chewy, gustatory morsel,
of child-like faith, to be conserved.
Conservatively speaking,
Whig-wise, knowing one's prepositional relativity.
We labor, not in vain… to become worthy
to tread, with shoes, on streets of gold.
where milk needs no cow, and honey bees
never need be busy all day.

Riches and sweets, both
take more than either promise, aimed at
via entertain-mental mmm-usings tight
at tension, mind's time spaced taut
edge of me, edge of mine,
edge of ever aimed at
thus far… where we suffer this is so…
- measured timespace in mind agone…
Then we live through the last now, to die.

Becoming the author, fisher for being bubbles
afloat in ever after all.

At my funeral. To spare the hassle, imagine.

Friends and loved ones,
most are dead, or far away;

but we recall times, vague days
incidents for which we each hold bits,

instants, reality instantiated, pastense,

feel the kiss, feel the shame, the joy,
the hope, the loss, the win, the terror,
the truth of no perceptible way,

away from quit.
--------------

Infancy instants, perhaps, we guess,
we recall being babes, for briefest
recollections of perceptions kept, some how

to be reformed from shards of information
stored some where in an image of a moment

seen from the frame of a seer, not me, seeing
me, infant me, tossed and caught by a laughing
man in a sailor suit…

and, the oddity, of the singular infantile memory
stored some where for reconstruction, living
entertainment…

like unto Agricultural Entertainment, an art form
ancient as harvest festivals,

when locals picked the orchards, and our worlds
were edged in otherwise wild hedge rows,
where little creatures live at child level,
where words miss heard give stories twists,

too odd to be retold while holding any of the small
awe, aw, so sweet, too dear to let be meaningless,
but
as truth been told,
mean is bad in dogs and men, mean is bad in mankind,
mean is common,
mean is most common,
mean is measured, granted
mathematical reality, mind my means, you know
"intend, have in mind;"
Mental meaning application, folded man-kind wise…
Sometimes connected to root *men- (1)
"to think,"
which would make the ground sense of man
"one who has intelligence,"
but not all linguists accept this.
Liberman, for instance, writes,
"Most probably man 'human being' is a secularized divine name"
from Mannus [Tacitus, "Germania," chap. 2],
"believed to be the progenitor of the human race."

~~~~~~~~

Institutional minds, adapted from drama,
worn like Superman's or Bishop Sheen's cape.
Übermmench, **** sapien augmentacious,

**** habitus, us, as we think, we are.
We are no other way,
as a man thinketh truth, as a mind may think,
fine, so is he, in his own mind, right or not,
limited fineness, judged, discerned, quarkishly
ever finer, to this very point,
where mind being time being comes to mind,
in you.
We, momentarily, agree, aggressive face to face
point, fair call
at the inner edge of the inverse square
practical fractal constant…
gravest of issues, at thought
speed of intention to grasp. Percept perceive
link touch… flowing listing seeping soaring

bemused become
amused and entertained, feeding on ensamples,
as sorted characters,
defined societal aspirational imaginal
roles in reality aboard 1950's era Spaceship Earth.


Standing, unbowed, before kings,
bowing before mean men, thinking

all ya'll are said to be created, made
equal…
valued worthy
of opinion expressed as yours, as
wings put on wishes, shoes on prayers,
for warding reaching pulling pushers
-list as wind, in cognitive bias, right
lean as wild grasses launch new seed,
- double helix, twisting up
- from down,
feel massive missal push us on,
orbital, for a lifetime,
be maker of a being bubble
be a minding creating creation,

as weighed in balance, or mass, as gold
or wind in force testing wills for making

a way, where no way was.
Dead end. No way from now, but through.

Wind beneath my down swung pinions,
lifting my imaginal self over my useless

wait state, ever learning, never learning
the whole truth we are sworn to tell,
as soon as
we begin to see as others see, subject,
object
seer
seen seeing, saying

we may be minders of findings, guardians
set to watch,
set to see,
set to say look this way, these invisible limits

terminal connection looping past through
you
as my word choices,
pass the blood brain barrier and pierce
eternal you, in stasis.

- ---------------
- post radio war, not so long ago

"how ' we gonna keep 'em down
on the farm, after they've seen Pairee?"
- enter the era of the salesman
Total war, full power propagation of faith,
in practice, words are empty, meaning
is made- hate festered pride
of whiteness, same color as the rich, qualia
as equally mistaken in terms we call common,
****** speech of the non-reading classes,
stupid peasants, children of useless men.
Lower by far than, Biblical men
of the baser sort. Belial's
sons of total depravity,
two rungs lower than average
working classes, labor, any collared man willed
to pay sweat for bread and circuses.
And a dry, warm place to sleep.

Man, the reasoning creature, is what he eats.
Man does not live by bread alone.

Imagine grooming a gimp, from puberty.
Imagine Michael Jackson, "the kid is not my son!"

Look out, Howard Bloom. Duck.
Watch the boy do a thousand shoulder shrugs.
See the fantasizing worth of awe in focus, this
is us,
we paid to see the man perform, in a role made
from lies a child uses
to make just now,
reasonable, just
cause,

I can, I have power given me by Life, look,
who can imagine being the fan,
aw, man,
nobody longs to be
in the nosebleeds, being there
is not being you,
when all you can become has become true.
Just imagine,
fakes never make it.

And truly a big tragedy to be avoided, next.

We interview… the biggest nobody,
an entity insisting formless information imagines
bubbles of being limited
-- some strings of pearls rolled up

roll into little *****
of gnoshit pearls, treasure true, in essence
from dried gnosisnot. These we cast not to pigs.
To think a readers reasons
for writing, become one
of the rare breed born
to become readers
of one thousand books, once before you die.

------------------
If Warhol made action seem so mundane,
might I not make fun seem so slow a function
to make perfectly reasonable,
picking a fight with a lie,
because I can… being created equal to that task,
I can recognize lies I told,
I know where the handles are, I know what holds
the handle to the secret meaning of things,
can seem material, where free will
is culture locked as impossible.
Thingo no hypo.
Action movie, opening sequence,
as liturgical as any measured reassurance,
enter in, become the entertained,
we live in another realm, we only play at
while being entertained, we only watch roles

being presented for judgement,
test your will to link a mind projection,

from a former time shaped mind, aimed
at drawing an audience, a crowd,
all agreeing upfront to pay
for the mirror neuronic stims,
in a darkened room filled with fools such as I.

Who allows possible a gunfight with ***'s,
at goal-to-go range, taking five minutes,
and no named characters die,
all blood is non player blood,
only a child's mind never exposed, flash,
allows that to feel real, for five minutes,
into a nonreal mindtimespace
reality
of ever once,
and ever after, onces

such as once, seeing a gun in your face,
once hearing the bang, from a gun in your hand,
once
upon
recalling that was a movie, and I never killed a man,
but by osmosis, I imagine I can see
how hate
works the same as ******.
Relax.
Recall the unbelievableness.
--- so what are silent action movies feeding,
young Aldous Huxley, a bright well educated lad.
{We are all alphas}
-----------
"His uniqueness lay in his universalism.
He was able to take all knowledge for his province."
-------
Only a rich man's son may so say.
Even, as limiting to level, if such leveling
evens the odds, serves to increase resolve
to square the circle and fix pi to simple, once
and
for
all. As events in the heaven occur, fractally

added in fine ality… at you, dear reader, enlivening me.
Infinitely, relative to yesterday.

Of course, comic books count. As in the future,
classic video games shall seem poetic code.
I appreciate the reader's task more than the writer's. Writing is easy, reading what you write from the outside is the reader's task, unless it feels like a game.
Jade May 2019
Ghost Writer cries.

But you can't hear her.

Sometimes,
she can't even hear herself.
Or, at least,
she chooses not to;
she chooses to ignore
the sob caught in her throat
like a pill that's washed
down the wrong way.

Ghost Writer attempts
to swallow her sob
which then catapults
to the depths
of her stomach
where she can
never
reach it
(where she can never
fully tame it
to silence).

When Ghost Writer
studies her image
in the mirror,
she can't quite comprehend
the sight of her reflection.
The intricacies of
human life become blurred,
almost inconceivable.

Head tilts in
bemusement--
"so what ?"

Lashes flit against
shrinking pupils--
"these eyes are
vortexes of dream."

Breath respires from
mouth to mirror to fog
to--
"I am not real..."

Ghost Writer's body is
tethered to the earth,
but her soul dwells elsewhere.

Heart pleads,
tries to convince her
of her own existence,
pounding with the force
of a Goddess' blood
against skeleton-key ribs.

But heart cannot
get through to her.

Heart is padlocked,
too far removed from subject,
like the monkey's heart
that "hung" in the
rose apple tree.

Phantom heart
for Phantom Woman.

But it is unclear
if Ghost Writer is the monkey
or the crocodile's wife
in our fable.

Ghost Writer is hungry,
but for what exactly
she hungers for,
she does not know.
She only knows that
she is barren
like the eye sockets
children cut out of
white bedsheets on Halloween.

The colour has been stripped
from the canvas of her creation.

Ghost Writer is
an unfulfilled masterpiece
(something will always be
missing).

So she picks up her quill
to make sense of
this senseless emptiness.

She writes and
she writes and
she writes and--
"How prolific!" they say.

Yet,
all of these poems and
not a friend to her name.

Ghost Writer
sleepwalks through
the terror of this
loneliness.

She goes to grasp
the fingertips of those
she once knew--
those who once cared
(supposedly).  
Anchors to ground her
to the reality that
threatened to strand her.

A mass of beating vessels--
proof that, as long as they
are in her presence,
as long as they can offer her
the tentative connections
of their friendship,
she, too, is alive.

But when she reaches for them,
they pull away,
seamless as the air.

Ghost Writer breaks,
haunts the desolate
alleyways of her psyche
with the plagues of
her insecurities.
Self-esteem erodes
until she devolves
into her worst nightmare--

nothing.

Ghost Writer disappears
(this time without redemption).

She leaves no souvenirs behind
to perpetuate her memory,
no tangible mementoes.

She leaves behind
only that which
will not be destroyed,
by fickle, selfish hands:

She leaves behind the
Poetry.

For even long after the
Vanishing Act has
resolved itself to the relics of
what has  been lost,
Ghost Writer shall
always have the last word.
Don't be a stranger--check out my blog!

jadefbartlett.wixsite.com/tickledpurple

(P.S. Use a computer to ensure an optimal reading experience.)
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2023
I am a Taken Poet ~ “The Wreckage of Your Silent Reverie”^

<6:45 AM Sat June 3>

again and again, a peculiar lyric
more than provokes, ******, injects,
no mere head buzzing, sledgehammer
beheaded, no under skin, in my pores,
shedding,reabsorbed, replaying the replay,
until I, will-less, commanded endlessly,
induced, besplay my irritants into my
“take,” for I am an overtaken poet, searching relief

too well, the wreckage refuse of these
silent reveries consume us, and I shriek,
contemplating the years of holey falling,
not hours or days, not weeks or months,
spent in rigorous dreams, facing & escaping,
my guilts, my fork failures, bottling & pouring,
with no relief from screams, head-banging,
nightmare visitations and inarticulate moans

until they form words, projectile ejected,
pollutants upon a clean, white background,
and dispatched to the heavens or nether land,
and to you, here in poem form that brings but a
modicum crumb of relief that empties, buying
time, knowing full well, my cup runneth over and
fresh replacement troops are eager, readily available,
by joining the seesaw border war, splitting my halves

my halves for I am not whole, I am deboned,
and slices fall off of these trough of words,
these statements of fact & fission, uninformed forms,
even worse, formed formlessness reciting repetitive,
inescapable  escapades, dead-ended hell highways,
these poems, all carcasses of me, roadside ****, until,
someone unseen, unknown invisible, removes them
to the largest refuse pile in world, a inutile poem heap

even this epistolary of diary entries offered down for
your bemusement, my expulsionary relief, give but
the briefest analgesic, and a newest version of an oldest
reverie, old friend, comes like the unending beeping,
of a dying battery of a fire alarm, squeaking, unrelenting,
unresponsive to curses or begging till the last ounce
of its energy is consumed, so too I, impatient squeak words,
too many contemptuously familiar yet well hid in new combos,

temporarily pulled from the wreckage of my silent reverie


~~~~~~~~~~~~<7:45 AM>~~~~~~~~~~~~

^ “Oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees
In the arms of the angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie

You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Sarah Mclachlan
gray overcast chilly Saturday morn,
listening to the chirping of a dying battery,
reminding me of my mortality and
my other stuff.
Hal Loyd Denton Jul 2013
Eleanor stepped from the rear platform of the caboose as they were sidelined to let a freight
Pass she mused how she loved freight trains how romantic they were the gust of night air from the
Passing train that and the sound the train made was intoxicating she too was a piece of heaven she only
Had a blanket wrapped around her body just above her breast her blonde hair was wet it had deep
Comb lines she presented the highest qualities of womanhood freshness innocence a wild freedom a
Tenderness her face expressed a look of longing a yearning the call that commanded wonder she picked
Up the natural richness from the golden sunset as they traveled west the silver stream that was wide in
The river they ran alongside for many miles this night it had been her bathing pool bemusement and
Wistfulness came from her eyes and played on her face there to was a sadness a mystery that spoke of
Pain she was travelling with a music troupe on the cheap she stated to stroll in the dark up the length of
The train first she encountered the only Spanish man in the group he was setting with his back against
The train on the rail at first quiet and thoughtful was his tune you visualized walking down the dark quiet
Street of a Spanish village then he increased with a fastness you could hear Olay the scene quickly
Changed to the famed bull fight in the great arena he played slow and softly making you feel the
Tenseness as the great Matador faced the great beast the first pass was letter perfect the grace the cape
Moved in a half circle then he spoke Toro the bull charged but in the blink of an eye the Matador saw
The bull turn his head with those massive horns it caught him in the side and then the terror of a human
Doll being tossed and stomped the cadence of the guitar told it all the day would go to the bull glory and
Honor would go to the dead Matador she continued to walk as the guitar sound faded only to be picked
Up by the sound of a rich trumpet it pierced the sweet night the distant pine seemed to sway in
Appreciation the lone Coyote not to be out done howled his plaintive cry to the magnetic moon the
Expanse of the dark southwest night was the fulfilling and telling of the tale many ghost rose that night
Native American people always on the move in their nomadic way the wild mustang were real they
Stood grazing in the lush grass just across the river Eleanor with her rich creamy skin seemed as a dream
Passing between them made perfection call out from a night train
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2016
for mine own Yocum*

<>




a strange parting shot,
that we are are the refuse
upon this island Earth,
the very last item on some being's
weekly grocery list,
a list composed 'illions of years ago,
of things that could be worthy of
"creating"

this thought sticks to my soul,
like a rosé pink colored
NYC street'd, well chewed,
gum piece
adheres to my sole

the musical companion to this ecrivez,
a sinfonia for strings politely begs to differ,
while a hard covered book
dances me over to Texas,
Dudamel conducts Barber,
all making the question of
man as an afterthought
in a divine master plan for a planet,
seems almost recklessly absurdly nonsensical


then

my cell buzzes me back to this

******* hell earth

seven more cops shot, three dead

down in the bayou of Baton Rouge,
on a sabbath Sunday morning

rouge red now assumes,
takes on a different
notation colorations,
to my bleeding eyes,
delivering importations
of  headaches confusion rampage,
red rage

the amplification of the worst of we,
afterthought creatures surely,
why "create a destroyer,"
an absurd contradictory term,
so we are gift wrapped  
beneath the misleading approbation -
human

there is no nobility in our savagery,
or dare I sneer and say,
in our humanity

you cannot seal a wound with music

you cannot revive the dead with a poem ear-whispered

sitting beneath the tree shade
of my privileged place,
my surrounding world is
bay blue and grass green,
my vision myopic,
I am a self-centered,
microscopic collection of red cells

conceding to you Sargeant,
this designer of the human form,
who wrought it from
soiled earth and excess rib bone,
had a peculiar sense of humor,
a comedian full of
malice aforethought,

for are we not
the final joke,
for someone's bemusement

we must have come last,
because you always
want to leave them
laughing
Mistaken Beliefs
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1706235/mistaken-beliefs/

Within the unfolding creation of this Earth,
with its majestic mountains and valleys,
its rocks and trees, its life-giving streams and seas,
Surely man was but a minor afterthought
no more important than birds, or snakes.
Only we see ourselves as exalted above all other
living things. Our opinion is highly overrated
and wholly underserved.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
papa internet goes wacko with his cybernetic compulsory
esoteric ****, says words like: the person who's to go against
the holy trinity (minus the surd no one really bothers) is no longer
a Jungian fantasy, the trigger and
the detonator of world war une and part deux,
but the paraclete isn't a person of much
relief either - cold war une and part deux -
right now, china's expressionless billion -
you squint, they look sober,
you drink, they look squinty eyed,
can't winde up that cold heart readied for
a billion polymath antonyms of your self
in automaton mobility -
compared with the fragile western championing
of individuality, China looks like a billion
despots morphed into one, you can't win.
back to Catholic bureucracy:
that's two names at your baptism -
matthew, conrad - and a third
at your confirmation (which i never
had, scouts' honour, cross my fingers
mea culpa my heart and count to 100)
would have been: Shiva -
the auspicious son returns -
well, **** me, canned peaches
and some apples and the NATO
phonetic: will you be my bride?
that's a thumbs up on the Rockefeller Sq.;
Isis: blatant espionage: mother of Horus
sister of Osiris - and i'm the Duracell bunny,
******* a clone sheep with a ***** dummy eject;
******, ***** strap-on, thingy magic eek (
the fidgety bit of putting together an Ikea table
for high tea).
you never went to a faith high-school
you never got to grips with the uniform,
or the bureaucracy, some of it invented
to simply rebel against it -
not the uniform bit, i thought that
was clean, in terms of non-discrimination
and how trans gets gendered as both, or neither
being allocated the chance to foster
would-be abortions.
hey! if Elton John can have a telly-tubby, so can i!
but this isn't your song...
and you just made an effort to scrap the idea
of singing in a shower -
poetry is never a sing-along, more or less
a thought-along - thought... a word masturbated a lot...
and i meant a lot - esp. when you're day-dreaming
and nothing you think precipitates into being
what you were thinking about -
so anti Cartesian, fair enough, thinking can precipitate
into a centimetre definition, a centimetre allowance,
self-consciousness bit - but beyond this fact
it's back to square one, daydreaming,
the disagreeing fact of thinking but not being,
or not thinking and being: the latter reserved for
entertainers and sports -
this is the secondary stage of the Cartesian realisation
that Descartes didn't mention... when thinking
does not precipitate into being - secondary meaning
a telepathic joke - or the men that stare at sheep
in the U.S. army and think they can run through walls...
of course the classical model involves the easiest
explanation, ergo as in +, -, x, ÷, take whatever metaphors
from this tetrasignum you want on a vacation into
psychiatry, i'm not one schizoid moment bothered
about firebombing Dresden either (slaughterhouse 5),
it's true enough to say that thought proves existence,
but thinking doesn't necessarily prove being -
whatever that means - it's the daydreaming bit
of the equation - Descartes is really a primer for
the study of philosophy, even Kant comes back to
this vocabulary arithmetic - as does Heidegger with
his bemusement: when people say "i, i",
cognitive identity and otherwise expressed.
the roads are divergent, or let us say the one's
origin from nothing leads to no big bang,
let us just say: a personal rebellion, not so much
that one precipitates into another,
let's just say that the ergo is worth replacing,
given our daydreams... and the fortune of never
realising our fancies... or as some might claim:
our misfortune of not realising our fancies, but
having a personal life without a media microscope
itemising our every movement... poly-diadem
dictator of western media:
                                                cogito para sum.
or, as stated by the benzene trinity affixes -
inclusive ortho- and meta-, obviously shortened
for liquid extraction - or the quip -
as in para: guard against, | |... interjecting / intersecting, i.e.
the suffix -llel (closure? not really, it could be
a nuanced noun, category affix, less familial concerns -
ah yes, an affix -llel, a suffix is a complete word:
pre- agaro -suf phobia, till the no. xi).
so a step beyond the cul de sac of Descartes -
the daydreaming part, when indeed thought materialises
into artificial intelligence simulators concerned
with the question of self-consciousness, paradoxical twins,
where thought materialises into its existential recipient standard
of never fulfilled, always unfulfilled, always demanding...
the bemoaned culture gap between youtube videos going
viral and virology on a canvas of infected flesh -
so forget the Cartesian cascade, that thinking will precipitate
into being of some sort, given current care for celebrity
culture we can't be assorting this equation with a rational
sequence, or the "as it should be", that train is long gone...
we need to defend ourselves against the precipitation of
thought into non-being - to regain a pleasure from mere thought...
not every thought will leave us richer off or as start-up
entrepreneurs - hence the need for non-materialisation,
our perfected mechanisation - the daydream - oh don't worry,
i'm not writing this from an ivory tower...
i have a constant fear too... but this ergo of 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
will not do... hence the revision, as all philosophical
standards are cared for akin to Renaissance canvases -
                                                               ­             cogito para sum:
that my thinking parallels my being - as i indulge in the former
and economise in the latter.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
i thought that Sunday would be the day that i'd save money and indulge in my insomnia, not drinking, but i have a triage appointment with my G.P. today between 12 and 5 p.m., so i'll not be synthesising sleep (quantum peek-ah-boo with ß in American with a zed - i.e. zed leppelin), never mind. you pick up obscurity as you go along with it; whatever becomes personal you depersonalise by abstracts, standard procedure when writing a chemistry experiment: abstract prior to explanation, in science abstracts are not exactly abstracts in humanism, they're merely prologues, or shorthand intros.

my writing addiction is worse than my alcohol addiction,
a hell-raiser in heaven...
****, i can end up penniless and broke on the street,
its my parents i'm worried about -
i do have a Muslim enemy - i buried it for 7 years
faking schizophrenia so i could be untouchable -
i can give you the name, i can give you a little biography,
i'm worth two coin flips a **** by my estimate,
i didn't fake insanity so i would get £120 a week on
debility payouts, now that would be mad...
i have to plan from time to time when i have to stop
drinking and synthesising sleep rather than going mad,
i was brought back to ensure my father didn't fall into
depression when one of my cousins undermined his
team of roofers stealing them, the "cousin"?
husband of my grand-uncle's daughter, technically my aunt,
undermined my father's self-employment strategy
employing Poles and Romanians - my father? taught
by Scots... old Jack the Guinness pouch puncher -
diesel running at 4 a.m., breakfast at 5 a.m.,
work is life... work is life... **** me! it's 2016
and the death of Prof. Dumbledore died today,
the movie was completed in 2009 - so obviously no spoiler
alert, 7 years the secret was hidden from my ear...
i only learned of it today... as i also learned...
premature depression in the youth of England -
second Marx and Engels are waiting... spring clean angelic
suggestions of how England invented unshakeable
utopia... WRONG! what do you think Marx and Engels
were doing? what do you think the problems are in England
right now? right now?! mental health.
the pride and prestige of English society is getting to me...
their under-reading of philosophy books -
what sort of damage can a thought experiment have on someone?!
none! getting all ******* pompous and Clancy will
not solve the matter - they don't like wording, or subsequent
excesses - they're importing nurses from India
and are mesmerised by the Japanese curse of karaoke -
England, the 51st ******* state - akin to the Penguin
cover of K. ****'s *man in the high castle
,
you ain't pure just 'cos' you think you are!
i have a worse addiction than drinking... writing enlarges
the monster in me... you obstruct my hands from the
keyboard i turn into a monster, given brain damage
you can reason why i tend to need an ****** space of
recording something down - i need it more than alcohol,
without alcohol i just get bored, i don't live in
sparkly Paris for one, the nights around here are deafening...
one example? my father obstructed me recording a thought
(got i miss the expected ease of cognitive narration
i knew prior, and i loath the personality that resides in me
at present... i could have been such a good father)...
i get blocked on the stairs before i want to write the
waterfall, he grabs my index finger and dislodges it...
the rest is pure comedy... the paramedics come,
i compliment the male paramedic on his looks
(why am i so misogynistic by now? i used to idealise
women! n'ah, no point mulling this problem,
the answer is too obvious)... i go to the hospital...
i wait for an hour, pose for pictures with my dislocated
finger, have a laugh and a chat, walk up to a black
girl with some medical problem (the dislocated finger,
what a brilliant comedy gimmick) and introduce her to
Us3 on my knees - time to straighten my finger -
the doctor asks me how it happened -
i lie: i was in such a shock i don't remember,
i pursue the lie to effectiveness - i notice his name,
i was in a pub with a Hungarian barmaid and i asked
her the problem i was having, some psychiatrist with
the surname Szasz, an english speaker couldn't make
the z into a h to say... shash - so i tested this failure
on the barmaid on the doctor, Hungarian test 1.
said his name... asked... Hungarian? yes, he replied.
bingo! lie sealed, Malachi's prophecy came true.
later he obliged to send me the x-rays of my dislocated
finger to my email account... charm charm charm.
i'm a poo'h bear when drunk, strike a conversation
with me like this one Lithuanian girl did and i'll kiss
you from forehead to your chin and neck, kissing your
eyes shut... but get between me and the blank page?
not a good idea. i'm ******* scatter brained -
rarely i get the opportunity to relive the cognitive narration
fluidity i once had that inhibited me from writing anything,
and i mean anything apart from homework and exams.
also... the **'s debut album is a rarity... it's one of those
albums you can listen to without headphones -
listening to it on headphones is rather pointless -
it's perfectly pitched for a bedroom auditorium;
and not much music makes sense without headphones
these days; but i also wonder why not everyone is
addicted to music, and more to conversation via the epitome
of Radio 4's chatty chatty broken bloke.
Sunday newspaper book reviews as usual... no book of
poetry... oh hell, let's bring out the howitzers -
pop culture ignores poetry, poetry explodes in a culture,
many people are disaffected, congested into sardine phobias,
struck that some people remember the countryside life
and milking cows, small town life... the internet is in its
genesis, the middle-classes semi-proficient in the technology
are damning it with promises of a feasible exodus to
the promised land of the sitting-room couch and television,
no one is noticing the digital miners who are digging
for the perfect pixel - a polydiadem fly-eye;
but here i am, facing ridicule at the teachings of Jesus Christ,
hating him is sorta a fake, but it's more a fake at
either Christianity, or the unrelenting fictionalisation of
the man thanks to the Greeks, bemusement at the Star
of Bethlehem, the historian Josephus, and the fact that
that the Nag Hammadi library was found in Egypt and not
Israel... i'd be dumb to ignore the archaeological proofs
culminating with the crucifix and the atom bomb and the
pathology of predicting ends of worlds... Oppenheimer
was just as good, quoting the Sanskrit death bit -
i guess living in Egypt gave the little man of Nazareth
pharaonic ambitions of worship - easier and more convincing
on a crucifix than on a throne with sensible Greek
digestion of the world and fascination to boot -
hence the fascination to the last with architecture and
'my father's house will be a house of prayer',
seen the state of the Anglican Church? and see how mundane
the prayer service has become after 2000 years?
everywhere, now, countless religions are sprouting like
spring ginger using psychedelics and what not...
well, that was the case in the 20th century... the 21st century's
answer is this dark age reinterpretation of Cartesian
philosophy... not so airy-*******-fairy about philosophy
books, are we? philosophers prescribe no drugs, merely
thoughts... what you would probably have not thought out...
harmless pharmacology if you're into claustrophobic
suicide pacts with yourself... the 21st century has proved
another breeding ground in England, this time not economic...
and if not economic, therefore existential...
i'm just another Engels looking for his Marx... or another
Marx looking for his Engels. ah, the cascade ends.
I woke to a knock at the door one day,
And stumbled, to put on my gown,
The place was a shambles, and last night’s tea
In cartons, was scattered around.
I hate people seeing the way I live,
They shouldn’t call round, it’s a *****,
But called out, ‘Who is it?’ and got the reply,
‘It’s me, it’s the upstairs witch.’

I had no idea she lived upstairs,
The apartments are all very small,
The slightest of noises will carry on through
The ceilings, and paper thin walls.
I opened the door in bemusement then
To see who was pulling my leg,
She wore every colour the rainbow sent,
Pushed past me, and said: ‘Call me Peg!’

I followed her into the wreck of my room,
And mumbled, ‘I know, it’s a mess.’
She shrugged, and she pointed my PC out,
‘I knew it was that, nothing less!
You sit and you type through the early hours
I hear all your whistles and bells,
Your tappity-tapping is driving me spare,
And worse, is confusing my spells.’

‘I have to compose when the mood is high,
And that is from midnight and on.’
‘And I only spell when the Moon is nigh,
I can’t til the sun has gone.’
We stared at each other with little grace,
Both grim, with a certain intent,
She wouldn’t be giving an inch to me,
I murmured I wouldn’t relent.

‘We’ll have to come up with a compromise,
I’ll help you, if that helps myself,
I’ll spell in your program a silence key,
And you’ll be at peace with yourself.’
‘But what am I getting from you in return,
This sounds like it’s going one way…’
‘I’ll bring all your stories to life,’ she said,
‘In colour, and one for each day.’

‘I’ve written so many, you’ll never keep up,
I’ll need to go back through my files.’
‘Just open the drawer of your cabinet,
And I’ll carry you there, for a while.
I’ve seen all your stuff on the Internet,
Your devils and demons and ghouls,
I haven’t a clue what you think you will do
In a garden, with so many fools.’

She sits in her garret and plays with her spells,
I type without making a sound,
I open the drawer and I walk on the shore
Or hear bells from the church in the town.
I follow each lady I’ve written in verse
And make love when I’m feeling the itch,
They all wear the colours of rainbows at first,
And they look like the upstairs witch!

David Lewis Paget
Vivian  Jun 2014
WHITE WINE
Vivian Jun 2014
women swilling white white in glasses;
remember when you took me
out to dinner with your parents?
your father peppered the
salmon to excess and the
sommelier to exhaustion:
what year? where were the
grapes grown? what would you pair
with this? what about with that?
your mother gave me a
knowing glance as he prattled on,
and you shook your head in bemusement.

I wonder what
looks she gave
you while I was distracted.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
tuppence middleton is careful of british ***,
she doesn't refer to british antics from
holy ****** soil in spain, bunched-up ******,
and diving into the pool from a hotel balcony
as a modern epitome of courage... / stupidity
without a cause or a sword;
while everything back home goes on in your
daily orwellian backstreet surveillance,
pristine (chocolate on rotten teeth clenched
elocution); she forgot to mention that the brits
have a viral infection worse than alcoholism,
they treat *** with the nasty-pill,
so they can make banter about it (jokes)
to carry on bloodhound drooling for more.
make joke out of *** you'll end up easily shocked
and shackled to no ***, but joking that
the burning bush that spoke to moses on mt. sinai
was the ***** region of his egyptian mega-*****
will get you further than expected.*

so she's writing her drunk through her twenties
memoir, one fascinating detail emerges
(i could have written thing, like all the philosophers,
to condense the vocabulary of a few categories of
words to reach the philosophical pinnacle
of abstraction, i said detail, although i could have
said anecdote, tarts in cardigans of printed tartan):
verbatim: i dropped a bottle of wine on kitchen
tiles and was lapping the drink like a dog,
along with dirt from the floor and broken glass;
i was half as bad, one night i couldn't mix enough
alcohol with the sleeping pills i'm taking,
i knew of one off-lice that sold alcohol into the wee
hours of the night, a few miles away,
next to a brothel i used to frequent, upon entry (drunk)
asking for water, the prostitutes bemused by my
courting ways without a chandelier ballroom in sight
(kissing hands after giving an ******, all that),
so i thought i'd catch the night bus (N86) to get a few
beers... on my way to the bus-stop,
2 miles away, i spotted a hit and run fox dead
by the bus shelter, a few houses prior a skip
with two bins bags... two spectators...
spotted the fox, emptied the content of the black bin bags,
bent over the fox, put him into the bin bags
(i was thinking of the guy who had to work a sunday
getting rid of the health hazard),
i almost choked and almost vomited,
i could snort up the odour of blood from the fox,
packed the fox in the bin bags...
walked back home,
weighed the fox on the scales outside my home
(9 - 10kg, about as much as my ginger maine ****),
then walked on, dropped the bag into the bushes
in the green belt...
(the closer i am to a brothel, the more i'm eager to go in,
which isn't particularly odd, given the slime juice
eagerness of the flower if not the pouch oysters);
and then a shamanism appeared out of mutual respect:
sat on the curb drinking a beer, sat with a fox,
a girl walked less than half a metre from the fox,
the fox didn't move,
drinking a beer lying down so close to a fox
scratching the fox's fleas could have jumped on me...
my ginger totem, you are my ginger totem...
so what about the sheep the wolves and the foxes?
who's to attire the foxes into a metaphor adequate enough?
but i'd never sip a broken glass bottle from the floor,
i mean, i ****** into my favourite mixer bottle
coca-cola, then poured it into a glass with whiskey...
but i wouldn't go as far as to drink it...
i'd wait and experience the fluctuations of metabolism,
cook some food, read a book, you see words
can salvage a man from the depths of drinking,
they're akin to stones, i'm basically piling stones
into a mountain, effectively there's nothing moving
them once they've been written, all you get is
a bemusement:
peel                                v.                         pelt
poker                             v.                         pooh
pill                                 v.                          no y in peel
new woos                     v.                          news
pepper                          ­v.                          penguin
in the word ego, the e is a prolonged syllable,
i had many more, better examples,
but the way i see it, without evident diacritical units
to example off, you'll get hidden aesthetics
of many particularities of expression,
based upon many odd instances where it's written
one way... but spoken another.
Guy Braddock Dec 2013
Convex curvature, female caricature
In the shiny polished upper side resides my reflection
Up left, roses would strive
To derive right ***** from the
Unparsimonious point of inflection

And what inflection! Phrasing inflected
Sings songs well affected
By the erratic gliding
Of ******* chiding
The inopportune haste of
Her lover

I, graced, sit down in bemusement:
For nor does she bring just a
Knickknack's amusement
Nor do I lug
A source of apologies
Instead our duality slates
Juxtaposition
As the most redundant of tautologies.
This poem is a bit of an enigma. I challenge you all to guess who "She" is.

— The End —