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Mateuš Conrad Jan 2019
i can't exactly call myself a recovering alcoholic,
that would be too obvious,
too: well boxed...

                                 a recovery...
an alcoholism, what would that be?
would it look like something from
the movie la mécanique de l'ombre?

it could look like something of the sort,
at least: the less spicy parts of
the plot...

       what is missing is the pangs of
conscience, what remains?
       silly thinking: and apparently...
too many hours in a day.

a recovery...
              i've encountered these periods
of "recovery"
  before...
                   spending a month caring
for old people (family, sure,
but sometimes strangers would be
better)...

                      i'm still scattered brained
when it comes to writing
dialogue:
     short-attention span on my behalf?
count me as a monk
in a monestary of a novel if
you get a chance:

    i fooled myself in thinking that
i'd be able to appreciate a Dickensian
novel...

                - becauase there is always
something to add
- a persistent juxtaposition
of the narrative...

    - hence this; imitation of
telegraphic bro - k - en
      li- / -ne- / -s... <dash dash>...

the 13th rule for life:
to counter the 12th -
pet a cat when you encounter
one on the street...

ha!
             and does the doctor
think that's that easy?
     not all cats will want to be petted...
yes... it's possible...
but not all cats want to be petted...
unless the cat is very naive...
paradox:
    those posters on lamp-posts...
now: a missing dog?
  i can understand a missing
dog...
    but what cat can ever become:
"lost"?

             13th rule for life:
wear pajamas...
    to bed...

                          revolutionary....
for over 3 years i slept
****-naked...
   i woke up and...
i always missed the lazy-slot...
the lounge existentialist
hour or so...
with a coffee and a cigarette...

13th rule for life...
    wear pajamas to bed...

(i don't know... some people might
think to wear pajamas to
the shop...
          a very prominent pasttime
for english women
jumping to the shops
wearing onesies...)

that is: you can wake up
and take a snooze session from
bed and make it stand-up...
sleeping ****-naked?
you have to dress in day clothes...
and that's...
simply shocking...

          a recovering alcoholic...
it's not like going to an a.a.
meeting would do me any good...
group therapy is not for me:
taming my farcical ego
   requires me: working against
some third person puppeteering...

spot what?
   if i'll start drinking i'll be back
to base one, something equivalent
to today...
   i don't remember drinking
and throwing tantrums...
    i do remember being under
the delusion of:
   the general grandiosity of
writing anything under an influence...
which probably began
with reading some of
Bukowski's manuscripts...
  the pedant in me opened up:

  immaculate writing -
  typographic...
               i.e. very few typos:
if any...
  but sure...
                 i'll use the term: "recovering"...
what scares me now is:
there are so many hours in
a day, and there are so many times
you must turn in bed,
scratch yourself,
   get up and drink some water...
wrestle with yourself...
when it came to going to sleep
it came as easy as throwing
a sack of potatoes off
   a roof, or asking to sparr with
a prof. boxer:
                       one-hit knock-outs...

- mind you: the scent of the room
in the morning is less brewery and more...
warm...
   it's less choking...

now... about the weight-gain...
****... that's going to be a problem...
even i have to admit:
   2 meals during the day
can't exactly be 2000 calories...
but... having looked at the empty bottle
of whiskey...

   55kcal in 25ml of whiskey...
     so that's...
    55 x 4 = 200kcal x 10 = 2000kcal
per night, per bottle,
for roughly 3 years... **** me!

and what sort of kcal are we talking
about? well... sure as ****
it's not protein, it's not fat...
    carbohydrates?
   how do you burn off 2000kcal
                  of alcohol? buy a diesel hybrid?

group think in alcoholics anonymous:
concentrated with feelings
of shame...
                       i don't know,
         i'm guessing that's the scenario...

sure: sobering up
and i'll have to the reality of:
'you really did write some
mundane verses...
   no, they weren't that great...
   any drunk could think they were
great...
remember those pangs of
       fear when you woke up
the next afternoon after an all-night
session?
   yeah... that's called:
  a moral hangover: stemming from
a delusion of grandiosity...'

i don't do shame:
         self-critique is much better...
nonetheless:

there are so, so, so many hours in a day!
there are too many!
   what do people do with all
these hours?!
      i'm going to grow crazy just thinking:
was that hour wasted,
wasn't it?

/
              and in terms of finding
a "proper" job other than pursuing
   this... "hobby" of having scribbled for
the past 3 years...
  
   well... i like walking...
oh... right... the profession of being
a postman is about to fizzle out...
street-cleaner?
    they don't exactly advertise that
job for the "respectable" people:
not in a job-search-engine-website...
    i the odd occassion,
sure, i looked at these websites... /

 /     yeah: as many options out there
as there are hairs on my head...
hell... some people just stream themselves
playing video games...
what's a "proper" job what
isn't a "proper" job...
   just prior to the great technological
update...
             but i'm jumping ahead
of myself... /

  /                                    laboratory work...
well... that's a start...
sober thinking and no...
   crippling desperation and:
                        thinking oneself limbless... /

/ so i had to go and suss things out:
    the whole job market
on a level of the street...

      last time i heard: poetry is not exactly
an endeavor worthy of a competitive
streak of: employee of the month...

   and, mind you: always the spare parts,
missing nuts and bolts,
screws and sharpened hammers...

mantras like: self-worth and...
   a profession makes a man...
   yes: if he's good at it:
   no one exactly needs a ****** plumber
inspecting a burst pipe...
   unless: he be looking for
             a loch ness sized puddle... /

and no, it's not from a demaning
perspective:
   when i was a child i wanted to be
a bus driver at first...
                     so... something against
an administrator of a medical building
at the reception?
    no... nothing against that...

    a street-cleaner?
                     why would i have a problem
with that?
   so... why the hell is poetry such
                  a baggage of: inadequacies?
i'm no dog:
but i feel it like a collar
   with inverted spikes around my neck...

- but yes: some people do over-compensate
their job with an over-bearing balance
of self-worth...
                              didn't i sometime ago
(in this verse), not mentioned my own
claims of over-bloated grandeour?

          can't win...
                      either the egoistic route or...
the depressed: crushed by the mass
route...
                            or: some vague middle... /

my... any more of these sober afternoons
and i actually might do something
spectacular...
                           at the moment...
          one month, sober...
                a hiccup interlude...
a complete brain-drain of a day or two
returning to the same pattern of
                         getting ****-faced at night...
and then, now:                                            /

very much akin to no. 9
from cinema calendar of the abstract
heart
(tristan tzara)...

              i.e. 'but the dance of round
tables shuts in the shock
                of the marble shudder

   new sober'.
                                                                     /

i wasn't going to make use of these
idle fingers, while returning to the old ways:
and the old ways are...
hardly a maturing tenure of:
never in my previous engagements
a worthwhile sober observation...
   but: as of today:

a sober observation -
i never thought i'd say this,
but on a double decker bus...
  listening to queen's of the stone age
album rated r...
         this sober "thing"?
it's not too bad...

                                           it's...
refreshing...
                           it's... well: there i was
thinking it would be mind-numbing...
                                                                             /

walked up to the bank machine
to check the balance...
                     well... isn't that something?
who would have thought...

   if having bought a gramaphone
and kind of blue vinyl is to "save me"...
might as well promise myself:
    hell, here's to my variety of AA...
using vinyls...
                        i need some sort of outlet...
conversations wouldn't have
solved the problem...

                               wooden shjips: V... /

well... better think i write unspectacular
verse: sober...
than think i write spectacular
verse: drunk...

                           there's nothing else to it...
- but there's something else to mind...
- Dickens...

            Dickens didn't write anything
spectacular: hear me out...
                       i mean like Beckett "spectacular"?
yes, like pretentious,
    difficult literature: to read...
                   but he did write with
a relish for a reader's sense of comfort...
   maybe that's possibly worth
                     imitating?

                                                                  /

/a view ascance: side notes of -
          how efficiency is lost
within the confines of prescribing a
burdensome effectiveness;
            like:
                being constapitated
in an elevator:
               and being claustrophobic.../

/alternatively: a hypothetical conveyor
belt...
                 archaic notice
  in the form of: arbeit macht frei...
                                    althought with
less sadistic irony of the SS
   completed upon finishing
harold norse's
  a memoir of a ******* angel:

seems that what one deems one's
own "poetry" is exactly that: "poetry"...
   and what becomes poetry
is equivalent to: giving a generous
portion of one's **** to a publisher:
in the literal sense...
    
                             but hell...
if Dada can see print...
                         oh... out of the blue:
for no other purpose other than
                a count of syllables,
                     from the count of words,
from the count of sentences,
from the count of punctuation marks
   (inter-syllables),
    and then back into:
   the count of vowels through
to the count of consonants...

                 to arrive at some meaningful:
v:c ratio... /

                             by god:
new sober is indeed spewing your mind
like placing imaginary accounts
of the number of matchsticks per tree:
in the rough estimate,
                             akin to:

brain damaged:
                       Σ: the involuntary compact
for the understudy of man...
      less: anima / soul
           and more: vox / voice -
  as ever: partially brain damanged...
yet still perusing the body and,
yes, the total (sum) -
                       where thought originates
and: with the duly departed /

                         x/σ (the algebra fraction of
a sore thumb of the sum of man)
                                                                         /
   y/σ (the algebra fraction
of a missing finger of the sum of man) / / / / /

it appears i can do much
more havoc being sober, than being drunk...
from this:
     what was once blanc is
    but an acne riddled crease in the fabric of:
till the next blanc becomes
more than such a creased indentation:
and more...
                 akin to the fields surrounding
Ypre - at that certain moment in whatever
time...

                           just let me absolve myself
from citing stereotypes.

— The End —