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With my whole body I taste these peaches,
I touch them and smell them.  Who speaks?

I absorb them as the Angevine
Absorbs Anjou.  I see them as a lover sees,

As a young lover sees the first buds of spring
And as the black Spaniard plays his guitar.

Who speaks?  But it must be that I,
That animal, that Russian, that exile, for whom

The bells of the chapel pullulate sounds at
Heart.  The peaches are large and round,

Ah! and red; and they have peach fuzz, ah!
They are full of juice and the skin is soft.

They are full of the colors of my village
And of fair weather, summer, dew, peace.

The room is quiet where they are.
The windows are open.  The sunlight fills

The curtains.  Even the drifting of the curtains,
Slight as it is, disturbs me.  I did not know

That such ferocities could tear
One self from another, as these peaches do.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights

and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise

(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre
.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.

germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi
Jacqueline P  Aug 2016
Pears
Jacqueline P Aug 2016
When I'm awake, I dream of pears.
I like to think of anjou pears because they remind me of the french word for jewels: bijoux.
I don't have a preference for red or green, I just dream of soft pears.
I


Les prêtres avaient dit : « En ce temps-là, mes frères,

On a vu s'élever des docteurs téméraires,

Des dogmes de la foi censeurs audacieux :

Au fond du Saint des saints l'Arche s'est refermée,

Et le puits de l'abîme a vomi la fumée

Qui devait obscurcir la lumière des cieux.


L'Antéchrist est venu, qui parcourut la terre :

Tout à coup, soulevant un terrible mystère,

L'impie a remué de profanes débats ;

Il a dressé la tête : et des voix hérétiques

Ont outragé la Bible, et chanté les cantiques

Dans le langage impur qui se parle ici-bas.


Mais si le ciel permet que l'Église affligée

Gémisse pour un temps, et ne soit point vengée ;

S'il lui plaît de l'abattre et de l'humilier :

Si sa juste colère, un moment assoupie.

Dans sa gloire d'un jour laisse dormir l'impie,

Et livre ses élus au bras séculier ;


Quand les temps sont venus, le fort qui se relève

Soudain de la main droite a ressaisi le glaive :

Sur les débris épars qui gisaient sans honneur

Il rebâtit le Temple, et ses armes bénites

Abattent sous leurs coups les vils Madianites,

Comme fait les épis la faux du moissonneur.


Allez donc, secondant de pieuses vengeances,

Pour vous et vos parents gagner les indulgences ;

Fidèles, qui savez croire sans examen,

Noble race d'élus que le ciel a choisie,

Allez, et dans le sang étouffez l'hérésie !

Ou la messe, ou la mort !» - Le peuple dit : Amen.


II


A l'hôtel de Soissons, dans une tour mystique,

Catherine interroge avec des yeux émus

Des signes qu'imprima l'anneau cabalistique

Du grand Michel Nostradamus.

Elle a devant l'autel déposé sa couronne ;

A l'image de sa patronne,

En s'agenouillant pour prier.

Elle a dévotement promis une neuvaine,

Et tout haut, par trois fois, conjuré la verveine

Et la branche du coudrier.


« Les astres ont parlé : qui sait entendre, entende !

Ils ont nommé ce vieux Gaspard de Châtillon :

Ils veulent qu'en un jour ma vengeance s'étende

De l'Artois jusqu'au Roussillon.

Les pieux défenseurs de la foi chancelante

D'une guerre déjà trop lente

Ont assez couru les hasards :

A la cause du ciel unissons mon outrage.

Périssent, engloutis dans un même naufrage.

Les huguenots et les guisards ! »


III


C'était un samedi du mois d'août : c'était l'heure

Où l'on entend de ****, comme une voix qui pleure,

De l'angélus du soir les accents retentir :

Et le jour qui devait terminer la semaine

Était le jour voué, par l'Église romaine.

A saint Barthélémy, confesseur et martyr.


Quelle subite inquiétude

A cette heure ? quels nouveaux cris

Viennent troubler la solitude

Et le repos du vieux Paris ?

Pourquoi tous ces apprêts funèbres,

Pourquoi voit-on dans les ténèbres

Ces archers et ces lansquenets ?

Pourquoi ces pierres entassées,

Et ces chaînes de fer placées

Dans le quartier des Bourdonnais ?


On ne sait. Mais enfin, quelque chose d'étrange

Dans l'ombre de la nuit se prépare et s'arrange.

Les prévôts des marchands, Marcel et Jean Charron.

D'un projet ignoré mystérieux complices.

Ont à l'Hôtel-de-Ville assemblé les milices,

Qu'ils doivent haranguer debout sur le perron.


La ville, dit-on, est cernée

De soldats, les mousquets chargés ;

Et l'on a vu, l'après-dînée.

Arriver les chevau-légers :

Dans leurs mains le fer étincelle ;

Ils attendent le boute-selle.

Prêts au premier commandement ;

Et des cinq cantons catholiques,

Sur l'Évangile et les reliques,

Les Suisses ont prêté serment.


Auprès de chaque pont des troupes sont postées :

Sur la rive du nord les barques transportées ;

Par ordre de la cour, quittant leurs garnisons,

Des bandes de soldats dans Paris accourues

Passent, la hallebarde au bras, et dans les rues

Des gens ont été vus qui marquaient des maisons.


On vit, quand la nuit fut venue,

Des hommes portant sur le dos

Des choses de forme inconnue

Et de mystérieux fardeaux.

Et les passants se regardèrent :

Aucuns furent qui demandèrent :

- Où portes-tu, par l'ostensoir !

Ces fardeaux persans, je te prie ?

- Au Louvre, votre seigneurie.

Pour le bal qu'on donne ce soir.


IV


Il est temps ; tout est prêt : les gardes sont placés.

De l'hôtel Châtillon les portes sont forcées ;

Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois a sonné le tocsin :

Maudit de Rome, effroi du parti royaliste,

C'est le grand-amiral Coligni que la liste

Désigne le premier au poignard assassin.


- « Est-ce Coligni qu'on te nomme ? »

- « Tu l'as dit. Mais, en vérité,

Tu devrais respecter, jeune homme.

Mon âge et mon infirmité.

Va, mérite ta récompense ;

Mais, tu pouvais bien, que je pense,

T'épargner un pareil forfait

Pour le peu de jours qui m'attendent ! »

Ils hésitaient, quand ils entendent

Guise leur criant : « Est-ce fait ? »


Ils l'ont tué ! la tête est pour Rome. On espère

Que ce sera présent agréable au saint père.

Son cadavre est jeté par-dessus le balcon :

Catherine aux corbeaux l'a promis pour curée.

Et rira voir demain, de ses fils entourée,

Au gibet qu'elle a fait dresser à Montfaucon.


Messieurs de Nevers et de Guise,

Messieurs de Tavanne et de Retz,

Que le fer des poignards s'aiguise,

Que vos gentilshommes soient prêts.

Monsieur le duc d'Anjou, d'Entrague,

Bâtard d'Angoulême, Birague,

Faites armer tous vos valets !

Courez où le ciel vous ordonne,

Car voici le signal que donne

La Tour-de-l'horloge au Palais.


Par l'espoir du butin ces hordes animées.

Agitant à la main des torches allumées,

Au lugubre signal se hâtent d'accourir :

Ils vont. Ceux qui voudraient, d'une main impuissante,

Écarter des poignards la pointe menaçante.

Tombent ; ceux qui dormaient s'éveillent pour mourir.


Troupes au massacre aguerries,

Bedeaux, sacristains et curés,

Moines de toutes confréries.

Capucins, Carmes, Prémontrés,

Excitant la fureur civile,

En tout sens parcourent la ville

Armés d'un glaive et d'un missel.

Et vont plaçant des sentinelles

Du Louvre au palais des Tournelles

De Saint-Lazare à Saint-Marcel.


Parmi les tourbillons d'une épaisse fumée

Que répand en flots noirs la résine enflammée,

A la rouge clarté du feu des pistolets,

On voit courir des gens à sinistre visage,

Et comme des oiseaux de funeste présage,

Les clercs du Parlement et des deux Châtelets.


Invoquant les saints et les saintes,

Animés par les quarteniers,

Ils jettent les femmes enceintes

Par-dessus le Pont-aux-Meuniers.

Dans les cours, devant les portiques.

Maîtres, écuyers, domestiques.

Tous sont égorgés sans merci :

Heureux qui peut dans ce carnage,

Traversant la Seine à la nage.

Trouver la porte de Bussi !


C'est par là que, trompant leur fureur meurtrière,

Avertis à propos, le vidame Perrière,

De Fontenay, Caumont, et de Montgomery,

Pressés qu'ils sont de fuir, sans casque, sans cuirasse.

Échappent aux soldats qui courent sur leur trace

Jusque sous les remparts de Montfort-l'Amaury.


Et toi, dont la crédule enfance,

Jeune Henri le Navarrois.

S'endormit, faible et sans défense,

Sur la foi que donnaient les rois ;

L'espérance te soit rendue :

Une clémence inattendue

A pour toi suspendu l'arrêt ;

Vis pour remplir ta destinée,

Car ton heure n'est pas sonnée,

Et ton assassin n'est pas prêt !


Partout des toits rompus et des portes brisées,

Des cadavres sanglants jetés par les croisées,

A des corps mutilés des femmes insultant ;

De bourgeois, d'écoliers, des troupes meurtrières.

Des blasphèmes, des pleurs, des cris et des prières.

Et des hommes hideux qui s'en allaient chantant :


« Valois et Lorraine

Et la double croix !

L'hérétique apprenne

Le pape et ses droits !

Tombant sous le glaive.

Que l'impie élève

Un bras impuissant ;

Archers de Lausanne,

Que la pertuisane

S'abreuve de sang !


Croyez-en l'oracle

Des corbeaux passants,

Et le grand miracle

Des Saints-Innocents.

A nos cris de guerre

On a vu naguère,

Malgré les chaleurs,

Surgir une branche

D'aubépine franche

Couverte de fleurs !


Honni qui pardonne !

Allez sans effroi,

C'est Dieu qui l'ordonne,

C'est Dieu, c'est le roi !

Le crime s'expie ;

Plongez à l'impie

Le fer au côté

Jusqu'à la poignée ;

Saignez ! la saignée

Est bonne en été ! »


V


Aux fenêtres du Louvre, on voyait le roi. « Tue,

Par la mort Dieu ! que l'hydre enfin soit abattue !

Qu'est-ce ? Ils veulent gagner le faubourg Saint-Germain ?

J'y mets empêchement : et, si je ne m'abuse,

Ce coup est bien au droit. - George, une autre arquebuse,

Et tenez toujours prête une mèche à la main.


Allons, tout va bien : Tue ! - Ah. Cadet de Lorraine,

Allez-vous-en quérir les filles de la reine.

Voici Dupont, que vient d'abattre un Écossais :

Vous savez son affaire ? Aussi bien, par la messe,

Le cas était douteux, et je vous fais promesse

Qu'elles auront plaisir à juger le procès.


Je sais comment la meute en plaine est gouvernée ;

Comment il faut chasser, en quel temps de l'année.

Aux perdrix, aux faisans, aux geais, aux étourneaux ;

Comment on doit forcer la fauve en son repaire ;

Mais je n'ai point songé, par l'âme de mon père,

A mettre en mon traité la chasse aux huguenots ! »
Tom Greggs Sep 2016
The big doors roll open

at sunrise        at sunset

they roll closed

the man with the hand truck

moves his bins and flats

his palette loads       across the lot


Living downhill

from a fruit stand

I’ve come to accept

that joy can appear

at your feet

Red Delicious, Braeburn

Fuji and maybe

D’Anjou on a good day

Valencia Vidalia or Walla Walla

Sweet

Reach down       pick up


Be open hearted         don’t

expect too much--

the little that comes your way

tastes in its scarcity

full of life       this life       your life


I pray uphill in the morning

and I pray uphill at night

to the God of Gravity                                *Satsuma!
Luann Jung Nov 2015
Her name is Lillia,* and I think
               I love her. Her name is Lillia and
   I think I love her and she smells like
             caramelized marshmallows with Honey
                                                           ­                Crisp apples.
                              Or was it Braeburn?
    She smells like Anjou pears and one
           day old rose petals (Scentimental, I think
            they’re called). Her soul would put feathers
                                                to shame with its lightness. When
                       she says my name I hear the crystal echo
        of wolves among the cliffs, and the ******
  of fluted champagne glasses swirling
                              merry contents. Her waist
                                   is like an hourglass where time
                          melts away in a daring drip of
                   not-quite-a-solid-but-is-sand-a-liquid-no-it’s-not.
         ­    Her name is Lillia and I don’t quite
                                      remember how I met her but it’s okay
             because I’m here and she’s here and
                                                             ­        the end justifies the means, right?
Her name is Lillia and I want her
                    to stay with me until all of the stars
    in this starry night become hers. Her name
                        is Lillia, and I am too transfixed by her
        hair swaying in the breeze to notice
                            that she has already walked
                *farther away than I could ever follow.
Quenouille, de Pallas la compagne et l'amie,
Cher présent que je porte à ma chère Marie,
Afin de soulager l'ennui qu'elle a de moi,
Disant quelque chanson en filant dessur toi,
Faisant pirouetter, à son huys amusée,
Tout le jour son rouet et sa grosse fusée.

Quenouille, je te mène où je suis arrêté,
Je voudrais racheter par toi ma liberté.
Tu ne viendras és mains d'une mignonne oisive,
Qui ne fait qu'attifer sa perruque lascive.
Et qui perd tout son temps à mirer et farder
Sa face, à celle fin qu'en l'aille regarder ;
Mais bien entre les mains d'une dispote fille,
Qui dévide, qui coud, qui ménage et qui file
Avecque ses deux sœurs pour tromper ses ennuis,
L'hiver devant le feu, l'été devant son huis.

Aussi je ne voudrais que toi, Quenouille, faite
En notre Vendomois (eu le peuple regrette
Le jour qui passe en vain) allasses en Anjou
Pour demeurer oisive et te rouiller au clou.
Je te puis assurer que sa main délicate
Filera doucement quelque drap d'escarlate,
Qui si fin et si doux en sa laine sera,
Que pour un jour de fête un roi le vêtira.

Suis-moi donc, tu seras la plus que bienvenue,
Quenouille, des deux bouts et greslette et menue
Un peu grosse au milieu où la filasse tient,
Etreinte d'un ruban qui de Montoire vient,
Aime-laine, aime-fil, aime-estaim maisonière,
Longue, palladienne, enflée, chansonnière ;
Suis-moi, laisse Cousture, et allons à Bourgueil,
Où, Quenouille, on te doit recevoir d'un bon œil :
Car le petit présent qu'un loyal ami donne,
Passe des puissants rois le sceptre et la couronne.
The hike to the waterfall
          multiplied
                    my fear of falling by
my fear of passing out from exhaustion.

The hills climbed like
     terra cotta slices of cheesecake
          cut for giants.      To the south, hoodoos ringed
like wedding cake, encrusted with
               shimmering slices of Anjou Pear.

“She’s better at hiking
          than she used to be,” Mike said.
“She made it further
          than I expected,” Leilani said.
“She didn’t stop;
          she’s right behind us,” said Celine.

I missed
                    my dogs.  I missed
     the way they would tug at the leash to
propel me toward good smells.  I missed
               the way they would tug behind when they felt
     something looked dangerous or difficult.

Dwarfed by the stone cliffs, I felt
          like a gnat
     at the Marin Farmers’ Market.  The sky and stone
weighed heavy on my soul.

My mind clawed at
          purple seas armed with
                    chisels slashing at the landscape.
This is an example created for a writing activity about the word "Beyond."
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2020
i was aiming to sort out some computer
details outside the realm
of the corporate world of hierarchy...
something like that...
talking to a 56 year old kazakh in
romford: about the turks and the mongols...
about giving up smoking (not really):
and how i am addicted to carbon
monoxide while he is bagging big chews
from the nicotine gum: fiddly fingers
and something akin to peeling carrots
and power-tame-toes!
fiddles for foreskins...
in this one instance i am... beside buying
into... "the narrative"...
a crown descends...
   a crow is the equivalent of crown:
phonetically: in greek... amore...
                  the rest of the day completed
itself... with me walking from
Chadwell Heath to Romford...
marking my feet on a shortcut through
the green belt...
the traffic noises died...
i just stood in a middle of a field
the vikings might have envied...
no no no...
   the blistering azure piercing breath
and making me embody a loitering of a soul...
three birds of prey...
how is it... that birds of prey rarely
flap their wings... they... just... hover...
impossibly perfect...
they hone in on something...
circle around and around
like a vultures' manifesto...
     i was waiting to see the dive
but i didn't see it: not out of impatience...
i was in a secluded partition of england
yet i was still attempting to buy a bicycle
in Chadwell Heath -
i looked at myself not looking at
anything prior...
this solitary whitey:
i don't mind the remark...
thank god the slaves of colour want
to either see no colour or... too...
the hues of copper, cinnamon...
      teases of cacao...
                           a cuban ****...
                so much was poured into
a runic revision -
    best: an invigoration...
                    toothpicks for words:
an arithmetic of my teeth...
        i am beside myself welcoming
the intrusion of "minority":
perhaps in little ol' removed Swansea -
i am the lord mayor the city might
need me...
   in somewhere like Chadwell Heath...
buying a lion white chocolate bar
is perhaps sub-cultural -
the same old pauper of what-a-load of
violins bundled up on a bench
by the church... a last imploring gesture...
drinking that gorgon's blood
of a dutch equivalent of carlsberg's
spezial broo (or -ew)...
          on these isles: these bright and beautiful
isles:
you can't "sell me": the irish are still
speaking... english?!
the irish are not speaking gaelic -
my god... this terrible hammer from
Lincolnshire -
     when and as to how...
the Welsh took it upon themselves
to become this sacred heaven of bilingualism -
so much for learning Dutch -
or... Bel-ge-an -
  Flemz? Flimsy Choc-a-Block...
       choke on a tired rubber of a tire...
stage a newbie ***** flick from
the dungeons of **** Bruges...
or some ***** / wide my pony: rha rha rho...
that the Welsh still cling to a tongue:
spirit pairing:
of the Polacks under the geography
of the third partition...
of the czechs under the habsburgs -
          history as a fetish...
no... more... "natural selection" beside
the already prescribed antics of ape ****
and meteor... and time impossible...
to have... selective historicism...
naturally?
             that "we" are at a stage where
something is deemed necessary - otherwise not...
but then again it's not...
since: who the hell will remember "us"?
i drink... but i also write...
i guess the writing is more of an exercise
in amnesia than the drinking -
the drinking helps: in that i am more blunt,
boringly honesty:
un-spec-tac-ular for the best...
  i just can't imagine myself writting anything
worse than a journalistic tabloid
palette will allow...
    sure: no rhyme no river for a narrtive:
concretely focused on an (a) through to a (z)...
pay... i guess the concept of
pay is showing through...
          well then... my whittle hobby:
my whittle: it can become impossible -
that the secular niqab
   will not protect you from the stench
of old goats' **** in a public toilet -
the solipsism of farting in a cogested
public "picturesque"...
to have to believe in both narratives:
the mainstream of lies and these -
offshoots of the best / better informed...
my little paranoid agenda is no
agenda... but enough of my beard
shackles a: thorough "through"...
red is longer a bull pointer antagonist...
up could be a down...
but it's not that: well... it is...
that people made a constituted forward:
towing - best kept replicas...
how could it be possible to procrastinate
a diminishing of transcendence:
that freedom is already a pork-pie glutton
and constipation...
"think-tanks"...
      tanks... ego rifles?
      shoot the dummy... play the cerebral
palsy mannequin tossing...
the utopia of hyperhondriacs...
a diaspora of polacks and the greeks...
that the machinery has been
well established... that the machine has
been well oiled...
and is "econimally" sound...
     gentle rub rub gentlest rubbing rub-up...
and down...
and my flesh this least copernican
crux... which has not orientated
itself around either sun, star...
earth or moon...
          
            expanding cycle lanes will
not bring about a new dutch republic...
nor will i sell a pancake for
the purpose of levelling the himalayas...
this brittle conundrum of bogus...
two narratives:
alter-alter -
what-if and... what-if...
                but red's not red:
there's no shawl for a hemmingway
for sooner last:
for a Catalonia...
to romance the world afresh...
but now there's a McDonalds in
Stockholm: future knowledge...
a globalist ghetto -

how the joke that  was once
Sweden is no longer...
this same... cyclops of culture mantra...
of lore: Sveeden: "so tolerant"...
and now the world and no...
this is not a world...
based on the focus of scrutiny
of a world: no... there's
no heidegger's dasein:
there's...

the magic trick for the masses...
which is much more spectacular...
and how willing there's a dulling of perception..
i am of the custard pie...
i am the custard pie...
            
              hiersein: "there" or "here" of...
ahem...                wohin?
that word comes with a question puncture...
you don't actually use the word:
where... without a question mark... no?
you can compound a complexity
akin to heidegger's with: here-being
alias "concern"...
well then... the solipsism of: "over-there"...
a pointer... it's a lack of reconciling the masses
with any ontological... "scrutiny"...

plus up: ++++ pardons for:
blistering of and this leftover scab of narrative...
before the double knee of
b.l.m. and beijing -
now... best left with fighting the nazis...
i'll say it outright...
best left with fighting the nazis...
best fighting a well attired SS-man
in some hugo boss suit...
of pristine khaki... grey or black...
but no... not now...
dulling of suits...
              
   now i'm on par with the argument:
i want nazis! i want to fight nazis!
oh... wait... they're not blonde...
or german or... believe me:
they could have hidden in the Crimean
peninsula...
             but no... but not now...
i want to fight: the *******: good-luck
joke of history...
but this evil is so bland...
it's so terrestrial...
   the same mundane evil coupled
with my own terrestrial existence probing
of conversation / no argument...

the Welsh still speak: "Welden"...
   Velsh... in a climate where... the union
jack is looking up the h'american *******...
but the scots but the irish don't retain
their ******* gaelic...
good for you:
like a nuanced slang of the english cricketer...
tourist... hello... world...
tourist... hello world...
               my now new reality:
legal immigration this little ******...
this no burden of a Ruś -
a warraring burden from a scent in the air...
that there's no concrete:
sulphur stinking zeppelin ruining the skies
at: come night... come lazily this lost day...
this lost day...

once more: when st. patrick met up
with a mule that became
a farce and a ghost-face
of sitting loiter:
anti-saint: humpty-coŁal-sky-
             dumps a truce...
valiant against the propaganda cogs
and blockages...
the retorts of the salvaged plumber...
my new authority: my lost authority...
F'f'f'f'fever pitch for a hannibal...

Carthage must counter: euthanasia...
me best sold "neuter"...
that there is an unconvincing this:
bias this base...
******* on a whiskey soaked
cigarette...
that a guinness can only be drank
from a glass of a measure of a pint...
don't blister me with
this and these details of a gargantuan
t'is... i want a poetry on the basis
of future: dead...

            ****-soaked revelation
of a brick willing: to sell a "hybrid"
sorta-glue: a congestion...
           this my sacred ****...
my tongue this lesser oyster -
      a skull that cannot fathom
   the jaw line...
      witness my own very little...
my leisured attention span...
no new no wriggling of index
as the best pickled earth-worn...

              habitually: a shirt worn
to expand upon an objectivity for
the tow of a shirt with...
creases...
this lesser ambiguity of
a prompt that preserves itself
with a: lost project of ambiguity -

that we somehow accepted
a new, a nuance... a blister and a heaving...
catterpillar dues...
count! count the arithmetic per-take!
back in the ***** of mother russia...
little people do little things...
big people do: crab load of ****:
this sort of philanthrophy...
because: aghast...
the mistantrophe is the next
best fang...
like chewing gum and mawler
of a fake tooth:
my best kept bones...

              heritage of radio and a ******...
but, once upon a time...
my little overt detailing...
romance mr. marshall this little
casablanca and my own tunis -
chasing shadows with
a little insy-winsy spiders to tow...
my own cob...
my own prague pangs of summer
that they are still:
the cobblestones to resound
with horse hoofs...

the last... lost... project...
to have to rejuvinate the revision
of the roman empire...
that there was no james joyce's ullyses
from 200 AD...
there was an old greek in
the new greek in the byzantine choral
chant...
     goody-goody-fwyfays
2020 my lost year...
the year when i begged for a slack:
a diminished point of a pair of *******...
how sober somehow worked...
that drunk was no new sensible...
doubt and its plethora of all the least
possible jargon of emotions:
a McDowell a McCurieal...
   a Dot MacKenzzies...
a lord assumption of surnames that:
there was no ever...
Hogwarts of the choicest of godfather
names... when this blessed babe
of the agony srap..
this tendering of bones...
          my little mongolia...
a variation of Kiev that could expand
into Ukraine...
                       but: ah... now...
a little chisel of england or...
aa bandage off...
this whittle hinter of big bypass flyover
most pristine:
utopia h'americana...
                          Boston bleeds:
Chigaco sort of... fakes...
on the cackle of a letter...
gate? i say... Gate?
      shique: cack: ago: co: go...
no "lord assumption"...
my lord this same ***** diary
this rusty panser..
                                 and i have
to somehow embarass myself
with a "belief" in a... god?!

                  of the non-exisstence of
a god among "sensible" people...
this little deity of transcending...
my quest for a satanic project
gorgon...
         stashed up conjure:
of.. the death-litany...
my own explanation...
            my own little wording that
has to arrive at a...
******* and a variation of hues
that borrows from green...
blue... and the mediating...
              hard-world-of-grey...
this my loosening of tendons...
the easing of muscle to tow
some fat...
my new: hammering...
chicken shackles...
rummanating the lost
ordeal of the perpliexing *** ordeal
of catholicism -
time to *******! time to!

my best pointers:
corpus christi:
we did start off with cannibalism...
we did start off with cannibalism...
metaphorical?
was it ever really a posit of
images that were only read by braille
sooths?
christianity is a cannibalism...
it's so hertbreaking that:
there's no god or an infinite man
of the little things to make
a composition of polyphony...

i can't read into a jesus when there's
the cannibalism:
a "metaphor" for a metaphysics...
a death of poetry: hell...
**** me for the necessary death
of rhyme...
            now "jew" like any basic
posit of a yew...
    prior to the real established
scrutiny of a nation-state...
which has to be fathomed
with Israel...
the hebrews have finally found
their: woke and roll...

           the jews were excused from
towing along to the crucifix...
and when all was done...
and this new camel jockey prize...
king crimson...
isn't cited: unless in the spanish circles
along with portishead...

i have desired this blatant death
that it might contend with Barcelona...
or a sequence if a brothel
from Bulgaria imitating throttle Thailand...
my little ex-girlfriend...
come 5am... and it is still
oxford st. and a flagship wake-me-up...
this old leveraging London matters...
i am but the sharpnel of words
that cannot possible reproduce:
brick-top sensibilities...

my litter interludes basket of futurist "what if"
existences in the Bedlam of epitaphs...
i might have been crowned the prince
of Anjou...
   i might have cradled the thirds
of the third crusade...
i might just as well be the beggar from
the annals of history making journalistic
progressions... to sow: death... to tow...
belittling creases of lost
adventures... creasing the skin prone:
proof... a detail of a scalp that's not...
  em... retail... wigs...
                          you wanna make me a glutton:
fist based... there was no turmeric involved...
the "convenience"...
yes... a bone-ah-tomahawk...
  my best attired cannibal...
it's such a taming project...
i want to be chemically sedated by disproofs...
but then... i am...
squandering what little i have
of romancing russia...
or thereby greece...

  this is the part where i try to borrow from
a differentiation of...
second from last:
stream of borrowed cocktails...
or...
my best screaming streamer -
i nice unto you...
you...
no... i very much like this cul de sac
of: i nice unto you...
why? the work invites no
technicality that can be
detailed into a trans-generational...
my last Epicurus joke...

crease a child an ultimatum of
competition...
conjunctions of grief...
not biggest thank you...
i thank you as to why
i... not because i wanted
to drink...
sober people are splits and
just plain boring...
towing toes to tango:
no game of twos...
sober people have no...

   my best tomato ketchup fake
blood load of argumentation...
bias / basis...
generic *******...
cause no happy bride:
was ever to be prized...
or prided..
my little gimmick wonderland
of a shtick...
no thank god i never married...
thank god i toiled around
with...
bread-knit...
and... cuneiform woke...
best kept islam: a foretold
variation of agriculture...
the plantation ridicule plumber of
eastern european choice:
****-dumbdumb...
dies with... incorporated
neu-Birmingham...
******* polacks...
too proud to think they could replace
us *****: first prized Pakis...

ahem... yes... what?!
this be Westminster...
tax haven collector's bias?
do i have a face that might coincide with:
i had...
but right now?
no... i couldn't give a tonne's load
of ******* to mind
it being a copernican: first invoked
sort of... affair...
savvy?!

— The End —