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Michael R Burch Jun 2020
Sonnet: The Ruins of Balaclava
by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, barren Crimean land, these dreary shades
of castles―once your indisputable pride―
are now where ghostly owls and lizards hide
as blackguards arm themselves for nightly raids.
Carved into marble, regal boasts were made!
Brave words on burnished armor, gilt-applied!
Now shattered splendors long since cast aside
beside the dead here also brokenly laid.
The ancient Greeks set shimmering marble here.
The Romans drove wild Mongol hordes to flight.
The Mussulman prayed eastward, day and night.
Now owls and dark-winged vultures watch and leer
as strange black banners, flapping overhead,
mark where the past piles high its nameless dead.

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (1798-1855) is widely regarded as Poland’s greatest poet and as the national poet of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He was also a dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor and political activist. As a principal figure in Polish Romanticism, Mickiewicz has been compared to Byron and Goethe. Keywords/Tags: Mickiewicz, Poland, Polish, Balaclava, Crimea, war, warfare, castle, castles, knight, knights, armor, Greeks, Rome, Romans, Mongols, Mussulman, Muslims, death, destruction, ruin, ruins, romantic, romanticism, sonnet, depression, sorrow, grave, violence, mrbtr
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
when i was born within the Chernobyl aftermath, and the nurse tried to **** me, in that she almost choked me, enlarging my heart, and when that didn't **** me, and they attempted to befriend me, and gave me a brain haemorrhage... and that didn't **** me... i started to think: what will? i can't say i'm in hell, i can only assert limbo: i'm not a monster, just yet... it's only later that i became *******, when they wrapped me in a blanket of denials, to ensure their society was a beacon of false hope and even more false love... that last bit is the cherry on the top... i once hated ridicule: now i started to loath playground like games of lies... i just started thinking: these people are a bit worthless... how could people i once respected become so... so... pointless? it's not a case of: oh poor me... i'm laughing... asking for the next quickened allotment of epitaph in marble... i prefer the pain rather than this kiddy game of denying something being true... that sort of **** just makes up for being thought about too much... it exhaust my mental capacity... limbo is quiet fine, i'm apprehensive where these people think they live... utopia isn't exactly a best-described vicinity... but when did people start to become so ugly? it's slow down here, the big bang just happened, or as i say: with the kettle boiling water... biology's darwinism timescale for a reaction, and physics's timescale of the big bang theory are not exactly fascinating for me, boiling my water to make a cup of tea... i am literally split-mind concerning these two "barometres"... it's just hard juggling these two (0, 0) coordinates... to stress a beginning... evidently juggling these two narratives leaves us living our lives on amphetamines... insect like... it's hard to even make time or emotional investment in: a death in a village... it's doubly hard to make adjustments for a tomorrow, giving our input in beginning: no one knows, billions and billions... years... and then back toward the befitting cranium... it really is man with an omni-characteristic, well... at least one of them... which clarifies itself in a way: given that we're no longer exploring this orb, globalisation ensured the tribe died... we can go in circles: round and round... there's never a clear vector in sight... no real unknown land to challenge... it's all been tamed... once the savannah, now the zoo... as one german noted: the melancholy of the completed house... all the work gone into constructing it, the thrills, all gone... it just stands as perfect, as it is already derelict... hard to keep track of a two-beginnings system... it's hard to find awe these days, i mean awe that might allow an Aristotle, rather than just looking stupid... i think that England really does require an invasion to shake it up a little bit, it looks so docile in its arguments... so certain: "poised" to conquer... i can get (0, 0) of the big bang, a big blank... my brain just became scrambled eggs... i store that **** in my head: i'll see forever-never-tomorrow... i store the monkey-suit in my head (the other (0, 0) beginning) - i'll begin to wonder: but the monkeys have it so easy! me panda! me and bamboo! darwinism has either killed of history that we made in the centuries a.d. / a few centuries b.c., or what they're prescribing us really can't fit into one head, or into a few, to make it into a crowd... because when a few ditto-heads ingest one wise monkey talking over another monkey... the atheistic crowd is the quickest to disperse... as with the constant banging on about the number of stars in the universe... i like to look at the number of carbon dioxide bubbles in a glass of Perrier water.

well, maybe because they aren't
my contemporaries... but i despise Chopin
like despise Liszt... the fact that the latter
smoked cigars is just asking
for me to abhor him... and that a poet
   succumbed to his virtuoso skills
with dire tears of
       a jealous thread (matt arnold)...
for me Liszt and Chopin battered the piano,
literally, battered the piano...
     could have slaughtered a cow also...
but then again there's a part of my that says:
well, if the god argument is infantile,
how about the nation argument, is that infantile also?
are we to be bleached entities,
or merely abstract pronoun users? you see,
   they stole Copernicus from the Poles,
and Mickiewicz, and evidently Chopin is no Pole...
but a prize nonetheless... so they keep him
as that rare thing: something born into an almost
inescapable state prone to disintegration...
   what with the monarchy being
     one of import, either a Swedish electer ruler,
or a Hungarian, or a Russian, or a German (e.g.
house of Sas) - a monarchical brothel,
   otherwise known as an aristocratic "democracy"...
    it's just a good thing i don't like him... i don't see how
a piano can be ***** as it has been by either Liszt or
Chopin, sure enough, nimple fingers,
joseph ii hapsburg, mozart, the film amadeus citation:
                                                               too many notes...
    a bit like me... for its worth, the piano is so delicate,
    so so delicate... how it becomes an instrument that
requires competitors, how you need more virtuosos
who can play the **** music than original from-scratch
composers... piano: it just asks for gliding hands,
it's not asking for these megalomanic
tunes that might leave you with a wish from an audience
memember: to break your fingers...
evidently nothing more than a death / ******* stare...
or why the true resting place
of Chopin is Japan... as odd as it might seem...
           plays the piano great... plays a woman
  like a bagpipe...
                  aren't the two related?
     and when i first heard *ola gjeilo
on the radio
i was a woman watching a romcom...
                              the whole northern lights album...
my: a feast!
         just one of the few contemporary composers
that i can invoke...
     so coming back to the piano:
   me more of a Debussy and Eric Satie palette...
they just glide... i can only imagine
       a flight of migrating swans,
   or ice-skating...
    Chopin and Liszt is a mathematical headache...
        solo piano and the gentleness of approach...
    and only today,
   a lesbian couple travelling to manchester...
one of them phoned the radio station
and asked for a request...
      i've been dying to note this song / composer
down for a year or so... always heard the song:
never the composer's name...
                   ludovico einaudi,
much to my taste: the piano still remains
   a wardrobe item of the orchestral architecture,
rather than a door of your fridge...
constantly yapping for: more, more, more.
you glide across it,
tease it, rather than taste it,
  or subject it to a rubric of quickened calculation,
it stuff the room,
the best you can do is make it sound airy,
    make diacritical echoes from it,
than actual letters...
           say: the acute above the o, rather than
the o and acute in ó....
such a delicate thing: the piano:
which is why i never understood Chopin,
or felt a need for a national argument
       needing him, propping him on a peddlestool...
having him as a national treasure...
                  i always remained true to
those who settled for gliding over the alphabet...
    rather than immersing themselves in it...
that kind of composition, that simply fakes lazy...
     they are the ones i admire...
     and yes, given that dialectics has been
completely forsaken,
   the best we can do is give an indulgence
in an opinion, and make comments of
diacritic...
   women, chocolates,
men: dialectics...
                    or at least that's how i find myself,
making diacritic comments...
   akin to piano (contra chess,
    white notes consonants,
black notes vowels,
or should i say: any letter with a diacritical
distinction is the black note,
vowels and consonants are uniform in white)...
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2018
a niech še Mickiewicz
tę Litczonke pochówawszy...
poszle'ji prosto po Greka,
j'baniem po tsara Cyrola!
psi tryp!
gawari to samo so pies
o ogon koło bada!
morda zorem kulą,
morda zorem na szczyt
cerkfi kieła gryz szarpana.
       a tu mi grzyw,
a tu mi łokieć,
a tu po chłopsku
kiedy zdziw jako:
       PIN'jebanamać'gwint!
sto kurva razy tego fryz
litanii 'wina sie pytoł:
zachooooood, ci tyьбıe wschód?
no ta(h) zegnój ci to teraz
do świcki!
                         popierdolone rho
cyrku i romā(h)...
pomiatajrzy Mickiem po
cha cha cha lit... win... skim...
Co,  Pani nie pod pisze wyroku sądu
nad nad, tym wyrzszy, tzn. po-wia-to-wy?
Litwin udaje panicza,
   'krainiec stara: boze dopomuz
stać po pijaku... nad... świnią!
Litwa i mazowsze niech i tam,
co i tam... pochybel, sicz,
     cień, i zmartwychstań, wola...
niech no ciota skryje bliny...
jam człek... cytaty cy niet cytaty...
ale wbrew romansidła...
       krew sieje gniew...
a gniewaj nad lublu czy tesz
lulu...
             od dziwki smak rumieńca,
jako kosak wart wiatri i cienia...
niech ten panicz Mickiewicz spierdala
do Wilna, do licheń lacha
smarkatka...
          my to Ukroj i Wina...
       chleb z pod Kijowa...
      a krew z murów zwanym Vavel...
litfa to kiedys byla...
    smarkatka dworzan...
     ni tu, ni teruz...
masz ci my dyszli...
   zbroje 'glika: anną zwysz...
          ci dam znów: KUNDLA
ZOREM O TYCZ'KE I ZBIÓR!
              co boze sam ni d'oh...
człek tym warty o ******>    razy pierw to gnać, co boźy
rozum pierw szarpnie cienia...
honestly, the crown's romance
with Lithuania is long gone and stale...
I will die, not having seen L'viv...
and all the happier my lack
of dreams will be,
           as of now, unto death...
    Mickiewicz had his romance
with Lithuania,
   i, at least, can appreciate,
Ukrainian beer...
               no fun having staged
the European championship with
Poland... so no wonder the annexed
Crimea...
           thank god I never actually
managed to breed with English women,
even recreationally...
    given the current: and what if
Pontius Pilate ate vindaloo
for breakfast? search me,
  you either ask Jack or Sherlock.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
.oh ****! now i remember, now i remember that other school of English thought... pragmatism! everything is so rational these days, no wonder that so many mental illness diagnoses exist... apparently every deviance of, "success" is, "magically" worthy of psychiatric scrutiny... but then you get psychopaths in the upper eschallance of society... and they're immune to psychiatric scrutiny... so much for pragmatism... whatever that means these days... what?! e-scha-llan-ce... usher-lance?! oh right, ****, i was going for an adjective... echelon... my adjective? feeling up to the level / rank within an organization, and subsequently, perfecting stated rank with robust, pompousness and erudition, matching up to a pedantic exercise within the confines of either, grammar, or, diction; my bad. see... i don't get it... i could somehow couple up the ancient Greek concept of the Stoic school, and the Epicurean school (of thought)... it became crystal clear... but... but when it comes to the English school of thought? i can't make the logical-leap of a worded multiplication concerning the schools of: egalitarianism, and... pragmatism... maybe i'm just *******... but i... i sometimes can't come at a worded equals sign, or at least: a mutually inclusive / mutually exclusive sharing processor of looking at both attempts to revise 1 + 1 = 2... then again, i'm not bothered... English liberalism doesn't bother me... the English were never libertarian in letting go... who are the English? they have their equivalence among the Prussians... but, yes... i was looking for this noun, this last remaining school of thought from the Anglophone world... i was thinking... what goes well with the cognitive spaghetti that exfoliates egalitarianism? ****... what else? pragmatism! so help me god, i can't concede making this dualism of ideas, perhaps contradictory, perhaps not, as i did with classical thinking... stoicism and Epicurean school i can justify... but the English, somehow complimenting within the realm of pragmatism, and egalitarianism?! good luck, i can't do it.

currently i only identify two schools
of thought in English...
i might change my opinion
in the future...

how, just how petrified people
are of exploring dialectics,
the fear stemming out
from... having opinions that
do not deserve questioning,
such blatant solipsism...

but i do identify two schools
of thought from the English
speaking world...
o.k. three... ****...
four...

egalitarianism...
egalitarian idealism...
unitarism...
utopian-ism...        

****... four, five...
how many in total?

scholasticism, in general...

  there's one more...
i'm sure there's one more...
it's related to egalitarianism...

what's the word i'm looking
for?
a morphed liberalism
of: one freedom can eventually
over-compensate
another statement of freedom
and deride the former liberty
with a... ore ******-up
liberty...

but there was another mode of thinking,
i'm sure of it...

you know that people
are afraid of experiencing dialectics,
when they have to phrase
their opinions:
but these are my personal
opinions...
   yep... stated in a public sphere...
why is it that i don't
make videos?
      your freedom of speech
is one thing...
mine? constricted to the comment
section...
   this? an extension of thought,
since i'm bashing a blank piece
of "paper"...

what was the other root of the English
school of thought?!
no... it wasn't universalism...
England, given the stated terms...
is a covert communist state...
a subdued communist state...
a dubiousness from the empirically
tested experiment...
where did Marx and Engels
concentrate their observational
capacities if not in England?
weird...

  communism originated in England
under, said, sociological observations,
was tested in Mongolia...
and then returned via Russia to
Eastern Europe...

*****... gets to my head...
it might come to be two days later,
but i'm sure i wanted
to work with another school of thought
from the English demand
for the egalitarian take on things...

looking at the English,
i see a people burdened by a desire
to make "things"... fair...
          i see people teasing Utopia...
a people who haven't experienced
a momentary transition period
of a quasi-Utopia of communism....
within the countries that
received the Bolshevik mantra
and not the Marshall Plan payout...
even Sweden (neutral, source of inspiration
for the Nazis) and Switzerland
received Marshall Plan funds...

       but the English...
              what an oddity...
oh i don't imply a demeaning
interpretation...
       but the English are teasing
a revival of socialism...
you know how many archetypical
human emotions socialism curbs?
you can't do it unless
subjected to foreign rule...
given the current Brexit agreements:
now's your chance...

but socialism really did originate
in this fine, fine land...
Marx didn't look alongside
Engels outside of England...
they looked at Liverpool...
and children being employed...
German children had Krampus...
English children had
work in the factories...

this probably is an over-simplification
of history, but all the details
are there...
personally?
i find English existentialism
(if there is such a "thing")
over-powered by Darwinism's
over-simplifications...
Darwinism, having killed modern
or pre-modern history,
having to expand beyond
our known, and kept history...

a big bang theory i can deal
with...
i can congest it into a subscript
of words, via a conceptualization
of atoms...
and bigger atoms,
suns... protons, neutrons,
planets...
and electrons...
lost in the realm of sub-atomic
particles and antimatter...

but when i go back to Poland?
you know what i don't hear much of?
overly simplified existential
explanations pivoting on
nothing, but Darwinism...
in England it's all Darwinism,
and not much more...
i guess when Einstein disproved
Newton,
the only thing motivating
English culture boiled down
to focusing and pivoting on Darwin...

outside of England?
you know how important Darwin
is?
          in Poland... Mickiewicz...
a poet...
                         Copernicus...
            a astronomer...
            and in Russia?
Dostoyevsky...
          Tolstoy...
                     Mendeleev,
Tchaikovsky,
Rasputin,
                      Prokofiev­,
Bulgakov...
        Kandinsky...
               Anna Andreyevna...
Chekov...
                      how much is
Michael Faraday worth these
days in England,
if you're going to celebrate
only the scientists
and shove every artist
into the shadow of Shakespeare?!

i really shouldn't drink
*****...
                       i go crazy crude,
mad and... it's *****!
       you can't mellow out like
you could mellow out with
ms. amber, of the Scottish highlands!
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
i only started collecting a library, because, would you believe it, my local library was a pauper in rags and tatters; apologies for omitting necessary diacritic marks, the whiskey was ******* on icecubes to a shrivel.*

ernest hemingway, e.m. forster, mary shelley,
aesop, r. l. stevenson, jean-paul sartre,
jack kerouac, sylvia plath, evelyn waugh,
chekhov, cortazar, freud, virginia woolf,
philip k. ****, dostoyevsky, aleksandr solzhenitsyn,
oscar wilde, malcolm x, kafka, nabokov,
bukowski, sacher-masoch, thomas a kempis,
yevgeny zamyatin, alexandre dumas,
will self, j. r. r. tolkien, richard b. bentall,
james joyce, william burroughs, truman capote,
herman hesse, thomas mann, j. d. salinger,
nikos kazantzakis, george orwell,
philip roth, joseph roth, bulgakov, huxley,
marquis de sade, john milton, samuel beckett,
huysmans, michel de montaigne, walter benjamin,
sienkiewicz, rilke, lipton, harold norse,
alfred jarry, miguel de cervantes, von krafft-ebing,
kierkegaard, julian jaynes, bynum porter & shephred,
r. d. laing, c. g. jung, spinoza, hegel, kant, artistotle,
plato, josephus, korner, la rochefoucauld, stendhal,
nietzsche, bertrand russell, irwin edman,
faucault, anwicenna, descartes, voltaire, rousseau,
popper,  heidegger, tatarkiewicz, kolakowski,
seneca, cycero, milan kundera, g. j. warnock,
stefan zweig, the pre-socratics, julian tuwim,
ezra pound, gregory corso, ted hughes,
guiseppe gioacchino belli, dante, peshwari women,
e. e. cummings, ginsberg, will alexander, max jacob,
schwob, william blake, comte de lautreamont,
jack spicer, zbigniew herbert, frank o'hara,
richard brautigan, miroslav holub, al purdy,
tzara, ted berrigan, fady joudah, nikolai leskov,
anna kavan, jean genet, albert camus, gunter grass,
susan hill, katherine dunn, gil scott-heron,
kleist, irvine welsh, clarice lispector, hunter thompson,
machado de assisi, reymont, tolstoy, jim bradbury,
norman davies, shakespeare, balzac, dickens,
jasienica, mary fulbrook, stuart t. miller,
walter la feber, jan wimmer, terry jones & alan ereira,
kenneth clark, edward robinson, heinrich harrer,
gombrowicz, a. krawczuk, andrzej stasiuk, ivan bunin,
joseph heller, goethe, mcmurry, atkins & de paula,
bernard shaw, horace, ovid, virgil, aeschyles,
rumi, omar khayyam, humbert wolfe, e. h. bickersteth,
asnyk, witkacy, mickiewicz, slowacki, lesmian,
lechon, lep szarzynski, victor alexandrov, gogol,
william styron, krasznahorkai, robert graves,
defoe, tim burton, antoine de saint-exupery,
christiane f., salman rushdie, hazlitt, marcus aurelius,
nick hornby, emily bronte, walt whitman,
aryeh kaplan, rolf g. renner, j. p. hodin, tim hilton... etc.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
but of course, the three families of a continent,
and many aunts and uncles and distant relations,
as if to say: but in the flood of swarm
whether by twirling zephyrs or foaming seas,
whether certain inaudible sounds of the seen things,
hinging with a creak or a squeak as a condensed
copper, whether it was man who's history
was bound by a envious hunger for the alchemical
crown, from rotting in oxidation iron,
to mandible copper, then through to the metalloid
age of silicon - to the stiff-winged birds of aluminium
and elsewhere still the blood metal desires:
the blood metal of ******, piracy, ransom,
or necessary imitation and all kinds of fraud -
if to mesmerise the human eye and turn the human
heart into a magpie's, if not kept in check by the
voluntary beggars of appearance, as those great buddhas
of the renaissance, under borgias or a sixtus or a julius;
'he who desires to possess the earth,
       let claim by only sitting in silence.'

                                                      ­(adam mickiewicz)
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i can be a sadomasochist with myself sometimes,
given the videos i watch on the internet -
but then i'm again bound to being perched on
a windowsill, married to a dialogue with
the moon... and to tide bound,
sometimes the graciouis words comes my way,
sometimes the ingratitude... but then clouds at night
are never so by day.... and i feel blessed...
for they contort in such a way that i see
all paths toward pandemonium
leading, how they contort without
Mickiewicz toward no hope of castles or swans
being conjured - but hollowed out eyes of death
with a jester's smile of awaiting Tripoli -
are thus bound and exhausted
in exceeding their time there...
once monotheism conquered
the gods of both norden bound
and classics... it should be faced with a new
barbarism, and bygone strides
       against the demigods...
with a demi-**** that's Muhammad
of semi-applause allowed the gratification
of being literate, but as all good myths
abide by: unable to write out
δ ι κ τ α, plus minus 1 + 1 be the = dicta...
clouds in the night...
breathing magnimonity -
         as merely: cloud in the night,
Ilsidore...
had i been given the confirmation name,
now i can think of a name, i'd would like...
izydor...
             this is this last precision of magic...
had i been confirmed by a church,
and the bishop of some obscure essex country,
only being aged 30 i'd like the name to
be Isidore...
                     a bit late, i know...
  but i am an apostate, and i want
to drink from the font of baptism...
but you give me no water for my scythed lips...
for death scythes no bones...
had my confirmation be, it would have been
Isidore... the 16 year old me would have taken
to the name Michael... give it time
and it would have matured into Isidore...
Izydor of Seville...
but i am an apostate... and i don't believe this
egypt crap of the nag hammadi library...
i can't argue with a muslim,
i am given the archeology of the library,
and given the death of the prophet Isaiah...
it's too real to have these two prophets burried...
and in script re-awoken...
           that the new testament and the koran
make no sense... archeology sort of dislodges their
heart's intent to kneel and make macabre at the mosque...
it's impossible to convert... because you just can't convert...
   Isaiah was cut in half and Jesus was crucified...
i can't believe in the son of god...
                           both were burried...
       but the catholic bureucracy remains,
and if my confirmation name goes as anything,
i would now be called Isidore...
                                and if i'm mad for doing so:
then i have prince purple as my sparring partner...
                       nag hammadi & the dead sea scrolls...
no wonder the koran is so agitated...
      it has lost its profound origin...
it has lost its profound cool because it was lost...
the current muslim affairs are due to the fact that
the nag hammadi library and the dead seal scrolls emerged...
there's no simpler explanation,
   it's hard to testify irrational emotional
                                    coagulations when something is spoken
in archeological testimony...
    thank god the new testament speaks of jo and ma
moving to egypt, where the nag hammadi library was found...
and we know the prophet isaiah was a courtesan,
which is why we find his book in israel...
but the koran brotherhood is *******...
   i think the new testament wrecked more havoc
on northern europeans than the koran ever could
on the Indonesians... to be honest.
but because the two archeological findings were found,
the koran crew is *******... they're simply saying:
we prayed five times a a day, and for what?!
you ask me, i was expecting falafel and baklava.
                i can't expect them not being angry
when the koran has been undermined...
and it has...
                       when they hid the gospel of thomas
in egypt and sold the truth: by jew for jews alone...
no one thought it would backfire...
     st. paul can sorta forget mass circumcision as benefit
with these women...
  it's a question of: you have to re-learn
the benefits, to see what you lost.
              and you have lost what you couldn't appreciate.
so in america: anti-religious circumcision,
or secular circumcision and ***** paved the way for
what we have: rather happy masturbators with foreskins
and women with circumcised male partners,
and neither masturbators nor secularists want to
start families... d'uh.
             the koran is ******* because of what emerged
in 1945 and was guarded by the logic of archeo...
                                    you can't stop
because they know they're simply wrong...
we know from those adhering to st. thomas' gospel
as promoting trans-gender bulletproofing
that poetry can only be stretched so far...
   you can't tell demons to be methapors
   and tell transgender bi-genital creatures that they're
figments of our imagination...
you tell me a demons doens't exist: i tell you a transgender
person doesn't exist... this is the glorious
anarchy of st. thomas' gospel implemented without
the authority of the church...
the mystery of lawlessness? archeology:
hide it long enough, even the koran will crumble...
and lo and behold! i'm drinking! why?
because i'm celebrating this glorious whirlwind of
insisting anarchy!
         and why do i not feel rebellious?
that might be a good question...
                 but it's not...
              i don't have a proto-koran to begin with...
i have the old and new testament,
  and the emergence of
                      a 2000 year old hidden
mingling of the two, beginning with the prophets
Jesus and Isaiah...
                               one was a Jew that lived as a courtesan
and was cut-in-half...
the other was a Jew that became militant and later
made sure that Muhammad was also a militant
prophet starting off from a non-militant position
of mere merchant... according to the historian Josephus...
the compendium of the profanity of
tetragrammaton came with the historian Josephus
at the rule of Nero... hence the quickened
book of revelation being written...
                       once "the" beast reigned...
       it's no wonder that the two books are so unknown
in christianity...
            the fact is that the simultaneousness of
the emergence of nag hammadi and the dead sea scrolls
being simultaneous meant that the two old devils
of christianity and judaism would firmly diverge,
make divorce... and make secularism married to islam's
antagonism as the last blind-man fondling the elephant...
   i can't be jew because i'm not circumcised,
but i can't be christian in my liberalism to accept
the anarachy steering away from church,
   and family... or nation and federalism...
and i know, that's obscure; i just can't see
trans-gender ******* as a priority for humanity...
i can understand wearing a mismatching pair of socks...
but genitelia? that can't be jewish...
that has to be egyptian...
that has to be egyptian in terms of undermining
a jewish psyche...
                worthy of a crucifix... meaning that jo and m
really did travel to egypt and escaped herod...
               but je suis was cought up in the egyptians
taking rule and i bet one ******* duck-quack
that je suis was robbed from being capable of
conjuring up a dream... i bet je suis
couldn't dream... all the icons point toward that
crusade analogy.
                 it's still no excuse for the koran plebs
getting so frustrated that they have no archeological
involvemnt in the matters of today,
which is why they turned to brute and bully...
because they have been excluded from the archeological
findings, they can only do the meanest thing imaginable
and stage a violent insurection into the dialogue...
but since they're not really welcome,
and because they're actually talking *******
they can only resort to terrorism...
   it's a harsh reality to be met against...
    i'm not surprised they resort to terrorism,
given that they have no archeological grounding to
introduce themselves...
               into a civilised conversation...
          i'll probably bemoan this fact for
about 10 seconds... and then laugh for the next 10 minutes.
Michael R Burch Dec 2020
Poems about Things that Break

These are poems about things that break and/or shatter: a bubble, glass, a mirror, a twig or tree limb, a thunderstorm, cities and towers in times of war, old habits, our hearts, and sometimes Love itself.



Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.



Dark-bosomed clouds
pregnant with heavy thunder ...
the water breaks
―Michael R. Burch



As grief reaches its breaking point
someone snaps a nearby branch.
―Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Lightning
shatters the darkness―
the night heron's shriek
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.
―Sappho, fragment 130, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



My heart is unsteady as a rocking boat;
besieged by such longing I weaken with age
and come close to breaking.
―Otomo no Sakanoue no Iratsume, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My era’s obscuring mirror  
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.            
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.



Mirror Images
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us ...

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...

and if you were to ask her,
she might say―
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Modern War Poems



Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you―
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then―

eternally present
and Sovereign.



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not the blossomings of song nor the adornments of music:
I am the voice of my own heart breaking.

You toy with your long, dark curls
while I remain captive to my black, pensive thoughts.

We congratulate ourselves that we two are different
but this weakness has burdened us both with inchoate grief.

Now you are here, and I find myself bowing:
as if sadness is a blessing, and longing a sacrament.

I am a fragment of sound rebounding;
you are the walls impounding my echoes.



Bubble
by Michael R. Burch

.................Love
..........fragile elusive
.......if held too closely
....cannot.........withstand
..the inter..................ruption
of its.............................. bright
..unmalleable.............tension
....and breaks disintegrates
......at the............touch of
.........an undiscerning
..................hand.

I believe this is my only shape/shaped/concrete poem.



Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth, on the first anniversary of 9-11

She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget,”
Dove-white on her car’s window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget,”
and kept her heart’s own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers’ glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on ...
she stitches in damp linen: “NEVER FORGET,”
and listens to her heart’s emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: “NEVER FORGET”
because her heart is tender with regret.

Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine and Other Voices International



Break Time
by Michael R. Burch

for those who lost loved ones on 9-11

Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: "Frail things must break!"
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Mate Check
by Michael R. Burch

Love is an ache hearts willingly secure
then break the bank to cure.



Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy’s a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

Published by The Lyric, Black Medina, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya (India), Shabestaneh (Iran), Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Captivating Poetry (Anthology), Strange Road, Freshet, Shot Glass Journal, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Famous Poets and Poems, Sonnetto Poesia, Poetry Life & Times



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior―
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst―wild, electric;
its sequined cavity―parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward―a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails―fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.

Published by Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine and the Net Poetry and Art Competition



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
as the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some raging ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze:
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.

Published by Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and The Chained Muse



Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as if she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.

She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something . . .
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.

At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.

Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars



The Ruins of Balaclava
by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, barren Crimean land, these dreary shades
of castles―once your indisputable pride―
are now where ghostly owls and lizards hide
as blackguards arm themselves for nightly raids.

Carved into marble, regal boasts were made!
Brave words on burnished armor, gilt-applied!
Now shattered splendors long since cast aside
beside the dead here also brokenly laid.

The Greeks erected shimmering marble here.
The Romans drove wild Mongol hordes to flight.
The Mussulman prayed eastward, day and night.

Now owls and dark-winged vultures watch and leer
as strange black banners, flapping overhead,
mark where the past piles high its nameless dead.



Once Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness . . . or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka . . . if I wished
upon a frozen star . . .  that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm . . .
yet something still not love . . . if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove . . .

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review



Eras Poetica II
by Michael R. Burch

“... poetry makes nothing happen ...”―W. H. Auden

Poetry is the art of words: beautiful words.
So that we who are destitute of all other beauties exist
in worlds of our own making; where, if we persist,
the unicorns gather in phantomlike herds,
whinnying to see us; where dark flocks of birds,
hooting, screeching and cawing, all madly insist:
“We too are wild migrants lost in this pale mist
which strangeness allows us, which beauty affords!”

We stormproof our windows with duct tape and boards.
We stockpile provisions. We cull the small list
of possessions worth keeping. Our listless lips, kissed,
mouth pointless enigmas. Time’s bare pantry hoards
dust motes of past grandeurs. Yet here Mars’s sword
lies shattered on the anvil of the enduring Word.



The Higher Atmospheres
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever we became climbed on the thought
of Love itself; we floated on plumed wings
ten thousand miles above the breasted earth
that had vexed us to such Distance; now all things
seem small and pale, a girdle’s handsbreadth girth ...

I break upon the rocks; I break; I fling
my human form about; I writhe; I writhe.
Invention is not Mastery, nor wings
Salvation. Here the Vulture cruelly chides
and plunges at my eyes, and coos and sings ...

Oh, some will call the sun my doom, but Love
melts callow wax the higher atmospheres
leave brittle. I flew high: not high enough
to melt such frozen resins ... thus, Her jeers.



Old Habits Die Hard
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The habit of breathing
is an odd tradition.
Why struggle so to keep on living?
The body shudders,
the eyes veil,
yet the feet somehow keep moving.
Why this journey, this restless, relentless flowing?
For how many weeks, months, years, centuries
shall we struggle to keep on living, keep on living?
Habits are such strange things, such hard things to break!



Having Touched You (The Boy in the Bubble)
by Michael R. Burch

What I have lost
is not less
than what I have gained.

And for each moment passed
like the sun to the west,
another remained

suspended in memory
like a flower
in crystal

so that eternity
is but an hour
and fall

is no longer a season
but a state
of mind.

I have no reason
to wait;
the wind

does not pause
for remembrance
or regret

because
there is only fate and chance.
And so then, forget...

Forget that we were very happy
for a day.
That day was my lifetime.

Before that day I was empty
and the sky was grey.
You were the sunshine,

the sunshine that gave me life.
I took root
and I grew.

Now the touch of death is like a terrible knife,
and yet I can bear it,
having touched you.

I wrote this poem as a teenager after watching "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" with John Travolta playing a young man with a defective immune system who risks death for a chance at love.



Published as the collection "Poems about Things that Break"

Keywords/Tags: break, breaking, breakings, shatter, shattered, shattering, delicate, fragility, fragment, touch, cruelty, brutality, abuse, stress, love, pain, relationships, society, mrbreak, mrbbreak
break, breaking, breakings, shatter, shattered, shattering, delicate, fragility,  touch, relationships, society
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
as an antidote to the poetic of onomatopoeia, i simply won't allow such a desecration, the ruinous cloud of plum purple hangs over language with this one poetic technique, just before the barrage of rain falling like a vertical tsunami, as i found myself fishing in Poland, the white-precursor of Mickiewicz's castles turned into horses' gallop... and then foo! a monsoon in 5 minutes... the fish? quiet big, but since kept in a reservoir, a bit fat... actually... too fat. seriously, the onomatopoeia has to go, we can't be found imitating sounds of inanimate things... or debasing our use of phonetic encryptions with sounds of edible creatures... why... if we kept at it, you'd see monkeys building the coliseum and man playing the Mongolian harmonica of vibrating lips and the index finder moving up and down to their tune; plus i think onomatopoeia is the culprit of excessive spelling in english... i know, the keeping of necessary aesthetics but come on... moo vs. μ?

and i wish to lessen the optic strain for continuing
subject matter non-italicised...
you know what's more interesting than paying attention
to the use of onomatopoeia like that, the crudest
musicological element of poetry (well, rhyming is
also up there) - English is perfect, it's a-diacritical
(ah or a? never mind) - you have to start to imagine
the language like a blank canvas, but not necessarily,
what's more interesting in this vector rather than
clinging to onomatopoeia technique is that you
can apply anti-onomatopoeia, distinctions, accents,
yesterday it became revelatory,
it's roland garros on the television, after the days
events there's a program with Mats Wilander
(Swedish no. 1, seven grand slams between 1982 and
1988) and a blonde woman presenter,
i picked up my loss of interest in using onomatopoeia
to profile her origin... she could have been of any
European ethnicity... but the accent... it just landed
in my ear... German... and indeed, without an information
bracket on the programme's description, it was
Barbara Schett... you see, you paint the accents, it's
more interesting that way given the nakedness of English
compared with other siblings of the alphabet high-jacked
from Roman; you end up pricking your ears to attune
accents that than ol' McDonald had a farm.

that was my initial fascination, the lie of Eden passed down,
like Voltaire on his deathbed being read his departing word,
his own encoded as: this is not the time  to make enemies
he was referring to the devil)...
also: you'll find it hard to find his *éléments de la philosphie
de Newton
... you will find Candide,
and Letters from England... but the elements of Newton's
philosophy will be a holy grail... oddly enough, contrary
to common belief, Voltaire never alludes to an apple
falling on Newton's head, but the book is a joy,
given that it includes diagrams... a bit of an Alice moment
for me: what's the point of books without pictures?
i could give you a chapter-by-chapter schematic of
what's being included so you don't think i'm bullshitting you,
the first chapter is about God... i know, ha ha, Voltaire
the ardent atheists... the third chapter is about the
freedom of the deity and on the great principle of sufficient right;
hold on! i'm digressing again, this was a debate concerning
onomatopoeia! you're probably asking why i've started to
use runes again... imagine what lied more, the tongue or
the eyes... this is crazy geometrics! geometry precipitated
when human went wild encoding sounds, it needed
something rational and coherent to attach itself to, to find
a cure for this crazy phonetic encoding, Pythagoras
attacked (Δ, δ) - i'm sure of that... i mean, can you just imagine
two drunk vikings sitting there, ******* themselves
sound-spotting and dissecting their mouth? which shaped
what, and which was to be cut-off / trimmed after they
poured wax into their ears and started to lip-read?
i mean... how many ****** shapes came from all
the soul-cages being opened with the shape of the mouth
from O?
ᚺ - hail             ᛖ - horse (and i'd say camel, but no camels
so far north)       ᚱ - journey         ᛟ - heritage
      ᛚ - water               ᚷ - gift
                                 i mean, it's amazing how we managed
to cut of subsequent letters we ascribed to things
and create a distinct sounds... but can you the torturous
road toward this end? to have created ~20 distinctions
from nouns? no wonder Aristotle asked to debate
proper names... i'm more inclined to ask a debate about
proper sounds... but still... so many wild geometric shapes
from just one... O... or - (a shut mouth)...
no wonder mathematics emerged: you couldn't really build
a longboat using ᚠ - ᛞ, or a house, what mathematics emerged
was probably when people thus dispersed interacted
via the merchants' enterprises and saw a gold nugget
of applicability write in how so many different people interpreted
looking at the mouth talking...
but i'm but one man, and this is a mystery, for i wonder
how the mind worked in order to write mandarin and
also qin **** huang's wall - i accepted many people died
doing it, and that the Mongol invasion was inevitable,
and that Japan was spared by a tsunami...
but how they took snippets from O to write a phonetic
encoding like 政 (Zheng, which also ascribed the
tetragrammaton at work, with one atom being a surd).
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2017
it was once called being intelligent... now everyone's in on the vogue of: autistic... what the ****?!

it's a maine **** that's nearing 10kg...
i pass this rooftop "mongrel"
    in the street today, and i'm like:
you torso is smaller than my cat's head,
sorry, i agree, both of you are
ginger ninjas... but come on...
                       my cat is fox sized goo
that needs pampering...
so the ****** "creeps" into my room...
i mean creeps by: he leans against
the ****** door and it just opens... basic
physics...
                 and he's inquisitive...
you sure? i'm sure. you sure sure? i'm sure
sure.
          cats can fool me any given minute,
i'm too benevolent with them...
so he's like: hmm, he's perched on a windowill,
maybe i should perch on the windowsill too...
then he plays this *taxi driver
game with me,
looking into a glass window...
  and you know what "they" say about
glass windows in the night...
   they turn into mirrors...
              so he takes to his reflection and is like:
yo' talking to me? ***?!
               it's a bit like snap-chat,
cats have this nervous insect "twitch" about them...
they have the neurosis of sudden movements...
   and he's all: you talkin' to m'ah *******?!
    he tricks me when i want to spend some time with him
by closing the door he pushed open...
           and his eyes gaze at the "void"
of me closing the door...
              ****** had ants in his ****... couldn't sit it
out with me... the moment i revise my original
intention of closing the door, to then opening it...
with the window open: he's off!
   out the window!
               but the sheer insinuation tactic of
a cat's gaze... that gets you to places you've never
been before... the ****** opened my bedroom door to
play me... and he played me...
          i was duped by a cat...
   10kg pressing against a door? it will get it opened
no matter what obstructions are in place...
           i get it... it's april and it's getting warmer and
you want to sniff a bunch of trees and flowers in
bloom... for some reason i had a moment this afternoon
where i had a scent of cauliflower...
                             maybe mozart and the clouds...
    oh god, fame is ****... mickiewicz? byron?!
  overrated...
                    the whole idea of original sin
and plagiarism being the sin?            thank ****
no one really bothers milton!
      but get to the point where a cat fools you
to try to salvage the remains of the evening wondering
in the garden: for that extra hour...
         catch a frog?
                  maybe... you're into gambling... so am i.
the ****** made a stealth pearl harbor move from
the windowsill out the window when he insinuated
with his gaze at me having closed the door to then:
open it again...
                              and then the dash!
              off he went...
                                  for some reason i have no
capability to compliment myself in terms of i.q.,
but whatever i.q. score i might have attained:
this cat just undermined me to the point where
my i.q. score is 0.
             is it really paedophilia that i might say:
o'keefe music foundation's kids' cover of
tool's 46 & 2 is better than the original?
                      it's how it opens up...
the bass guitar... it sets the rhythm... metallica has
nothing of this sort of intro... a bit like eric
clapton live... let's say he doesn't solo during
the song *******... but he solos into the song /
rhythm... he does his virtuoso moment and
then gets serious respecting other instruments
and does the "mundane" of the rhythm and signature
of the song...
                     i required the p-word to release myself
for the instilling of the word: provocateur...
        america: the n-word          and now the p-word...
what's the m-word? mammoth? monthly?
                                           membrane? moth?!
why is american culture so... ******* infantile?
maybe i'm delusional, but it's like: wanna doughnut?
              yeah! and postcard from saturn too!
**** this cat... i close the door and he's uneasy...
i read his eyes and say: ok ok, i'll open it again...
   and with the window open,
he jumps off the windowsill into the night garden.
        oh here come the bets:
- i bet you my friday night will be more entertaining
  in d'ah clubs on brick lane!
- i'm pretty sure it will be... i've been laughing for
the past half an hour, so how does that even compare,
or even matter?
Mateuš Conrad May 2017
míkołaj̄ ßęp szarźỳńskí?
                                           or given the original orthography?
mikołaj sęp szarzyński?
                  a XVI poet, born in what
                   the greeks would lament having lost it,
the Constantinople of the north... L'viv,
otherwise known as Lwów...
                               well... if Edinburgh can be
the Athens of the north... L'viv can be
                           the Constantinople of the north.
never mind that... i think this poet is worth
more toward establishing the canon
                      of polish literature than mickiewicz,
     or a miłosz...
                               listen... i'm trying to waste
about an hour (and it's nearing 8p.m.)
before i head to the supermarket and
buy a bittle of 1 litre's worth of dark
*** at £15... i need to write something.
            but the orthography i'm proposing
no one is going to adopt, for the basis
of schooling... and as an answer:
what's the nature of reality?
      that old cookie of a metaphysical question?
well... it's certainly language,
                 language is the first exemplum
to be utility prone... as in: we talked.
        mikołaj sęp szarzyński's output, though?
i just have a fascination with
            old-polish... a bit like the shakespearean
thou indicative of you...
thankfully i own a book that cites XVI polish...
    but beside that, that on the side,
here's one example of the poet's work

          o bene sperandi exemplum lapsis et amore
          ardente in dominum femina clara deum,
       nostri non ignota mali. succur(r)e, precamur,
    nam nos (heu miseros!) tot mala dura premunt.
      sancta fides precibusque tuis fiducia nobis
           et validus culpas solvere crescat amor
.

this is the verse, as an ode to mary magdalene -
and it reads in translation as:

   on the example of trust for those downfallen,
famous woman with a firery love for your lord god,
well versed in human politeness. we implore,
come to us with aid, because, we, the meek,
are crushed by so many heavy catastrophes!
may it be, that with us imploring thus,
                                             a holy faith abounds,
trustworthiness and love, able to destroy the changes
                   under the command of the winds of times.

which just proves that you cannot elaborate on the latin,
even if it's 16th century latin... you have to invoke
a modern twist to the verse...
            otherwise you're working on a translation
that's a bit like: modern day japanese:
       em em       ar  ar             ***   chou chew.

i'm actually not even going to bother writing out
a 16th century polish dictionary for the moment...
translating the latin took out all the strength i was
believing to have composed, prior to the translation...

   obviously i'll write a post scriptum...
               but latin is hard to translate into english...
there's too much shrapnel to deal with...
   all these ****** conjunctions, definite articles indefinite articles...
it would sometimes be easier to gobble down a bowl
of noodles, in a chicken soup, from a poached chicken... mmm...
   obviously with the required spices, and boy.... leeks...
         the sort of soup that's see-through, and not
the western:      creamy creamy pie.... moo moo moo...
not all soups are supposed to be creamy...
    some soups are even supposed to be cold...
                                         like a vichyssoise.
Mateuš Conrad  Jun 2016
9
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
9
i've been synthesising my sleeping pattern
for 9 years, i haven't experienced lucid dream
for wakes upon turning
365 x 9 equal for 3285 mornings, or afternoons,
i can drink lukewarm whiskey & coke
and feel happy, but i managed it, simulating
the natural byway into sleep and mythology,
nine years of synthetic sleep patterns,
i should have been encrusted in the Auschwitz
medical experiment of sleep deprivation,
thank **** no Muslim will mind wearing
satan's postbox - unless you're *****-nilly
and Lenin and politically correct - like bi-,
swings both ways, they tried to shoot Trump
while i got a spare tire to boot...
oh please ******* with your Muslim friends
to Saudi Arabia and satchel up on Bangladeshis
building up the new pyramids of
of Dubai... cos there's a nation of saints
somewhere, somehow? this ain't the antagonising
hypocritical Vatican mind you, also,
you know what Islam means to me?
it doesn't mean a submission to god... given then 72
virgins for martyrs, it just means: competing with king Solomon;
so there, i "said" it, get a jihadist on my *** straight away,
i'll be waiting, eating strawberries and a yogurt
watching Wimbledon, oh come one,
do it nice and pretty with me like a Barbie doll,
i can't be bothered with your ******* attempting
the altogether possible, but seemingly impossible -
it just gets boring after a while fearing mortality
with your Marmite smeared ninjas attempting
an American cheeseburger of sports that's played alongside
the Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, New England Patriots...
oh wait, you can't antagonise me, because you didn't
fish with a bait like Mickiewicz, or Tuwim... or Prus...
yawn.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
usually when i begin drinking, after the day's
sober stretch, sometimes unbearable, sometimes tense,
but then the night comes, one of the cats
keeps watch with me (head out of the open
bathroom window, me on the steps into the garden),
making sure the moon doesn't suddenly
change into a sickle of red, while the exhausted
clouds buckle their would be hoofs,
with mickiewicz eyeing castles in them, but not here,
not now.*

with a bias for theology, i say ol' chap,
would that be a toast of making things appear
rationally adequate should they be two words
expressing one word? like **** sapiens
for mankind? i dare say ol' chap by jove
you are right!
well then, a conclusion:
all the greek gods were crafted by
the greek poets as scandalous and immoral,
slowly losing their immortality
by mingling with a one too many mortal women
to give us demigods like hercules and perseus...
but then socrates came and said: 'why
the gods immoral if we aspire to be kindred
with them, and ourselves immoral justify
our immorally forced nature by being fed
the immorality of the gods? what if gods are
moral: deus sapiens (the compounding trick,
seems rational enough) - and we simply fear them
so, and use poetic illusion to justify our immorality
by the blasphemy of poetry to justify it in the gods?'
a bunch of cinema goers i presume.
well that would explain a lot, like the origin of
madness - with deus sapiens, we can get momentary
flashes of **** insapiens, the supra-moral beings,
who without genitalia crafted the biggest existential
choke... sorry, joke of our lives: holes, pistons, trains,
lollipops - but your mouth where your ****** is / ****;
after all, jesus died for ****, not that i particularly care:
better an honest insult than brown nosing myself
with his fake delight in it;
but given that the greeks took delight in writing
the new testament, all that olympian philandering
paid off as nonsense - after all irrational gods
gave man reason, gave us the genesis of philosophy,
for only irrational gods can provide man with reason
and respectability... rational gods can't do that,
they can make fluctuations in man's reasoning
(however sensible)... but then there are the gods of
continuum, of tradition, or a hierarchy that's rarely
shaken to rubble... i look towards india and see it...
there's also the inverse-nihilism of the far east...
i don't know why i attributed the word nihilism
to what i am about to define, but i define it with
an example, so it might be easier to change the word
and not use the horrid ditto marks of ambiguity...
the japanese perfecting ensō sumi-e(h) / not ***, eh /
uvula back of the throat e; or brewing tea for a
very long time, longer than the english i'm assured;
but i derived nihilism from the etymological origin,
latin nihil, i.e. nothing: i.e., if there's nothing, no deity
not heavenly encore... we might as well take our
time about it... live to a hundred and twenty.
in conclusion i was thinking of a taking out something
from quantum physics, and put it into a theory
of linguistic (call yourself a theoretical languor
of phonetics you might say, sure, why not):

quantum         qua-                     -ntum
                      as being              don't know,
                                           looks pretty though

now the best bit, re-coupling the prefix qua-
with vox (voiced, voice), and akin to quantum
must but another letter in the word to make it
exotica of belgian farmland... hey presto!

                          quaevox (kwe vox),

i realised that the latin ae provides not only an
interchange (but because no one really uses it),
but also a w wound, if there's a u involved,
obviously because we say w is a double-u.
so what did i just create? definition...
drum roll please!

in the english alphabet there are 26 phonetic symbols,
but there are less quaevox in that realm,
the symmetry of c and k is a good example to have,
basically: different symbols that have the same
amount of "energy" in them, but are of different
open-geometry (straight lines bended that do not
confine to provide the pythagorean c (squared) =
a (squared) + b (squared) - where c is the length
of the hippo... hippopotamus... hypotenuse...
ah you see! i knew that c & k weren't alone...
there's also q... and queue... y why and lie and i;
obviously this term quaevox is still in its infancy,
but that also means it's in its prime.
don't say i didn't warn you... there's
art blakey & the jazz messengers playing in
the background... the classical music of the africans
if mozart et al. are to the europeans.

— The End —