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Mateuš Conrad Jul 2018
.wow, i never thought it would ever be possible,
i'm sorry, i have no empathy for these youtuber "creators",
any idiot can regurgitate the news,
venture into vulture journalism,
  then again: gone are the days of closely associated
with people like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein...
they are really gone: what the hell was gamer-gate
compared to watergate? gate after gate,
and all i'm hearing is response videos,
it should have never come to this,
whereby journalists are as untrustworthy as politicians,
and of what remains, come the saturday and
the sunday editions, when the petty bourgeoisie
come out of the woodworks of a week,
album reviews, book reviews, t.v. reviews,
restaurant reviews: real, real journalism,
all the grit you'd expect from a warzone...
           journalists forgot they were not kindred spirits
of politicians: but immediacy historians...
the front-line history chroniclers...
i find... these days, esp. these days...
    you know why i like heidegger so much,
and forget the fact that he joined the **** party?
in 1938 he was already disillusioned by it...
so the ad homine fallacy bites the dust...
   even a **** deservers a redemption...
but i find that these days, of all days...
   man, as a historiological creature has to bow
before the unshakeable facets of the biological man,
esp. in the english speaking world...
    in terms of history and biology:
     history has all the fun stories,
and a sensible "concern" for time,
   well... if not "concern" then at least a bearbable
time-frame...
                  after all, i am the one who said:
all the great deserts of the world,
akin to sahara? they were once great
mountain ranges... you already know where
to look between a mountain range akin to the alps
and a desert... bound to h'america...
   monument valley: utah...
  a mountain becomes a rock after a while...
while the desert expands...
    ayers rock (uluru)... but monument valley (utah)
is a transition period between a mountain range
and a desert, if we're going to stand outside
of all space and time, and look back in...
we have plenty of time to catch-up on...
           just like i believe that black holes
are actually 2-dimensional objects:
   that spin really fast, giving an impression
of them being 3-dimensional objects:
as usually represented by a gravity dip associated
with them pulling matter into themselves...
i think that black holes are paradoxes...
since how can a 2-dimensional object
actually exist in a 3-dimensional space?
   that depends on the size of the "3-dimensional"
object / space... the universe is a medium,
it's defined as a "space" but to me...
      it's beyond space... it's only space on the grounds
of isolated time, 365 days,
the time and space it takes for the earth
to orbit the sun... which is an isolated example,
outside? well: there's atmosphere on earth,
outside? vacuum!
who's going to prove my theory wrong?
               not anyone in my lifetime -
besides the point with these youtube content
"creators": where credit is due, credit is due,
but once might have cared for their vulture
journalism... two old farts akin to felix (black pigeon
speaks) and sargon of akaad talking about how:
the youth are congregating to youtube to listen
to music: that's what i've always done...
  i discovered these youtube "creators" by accident,
i just wanted my jukebox back, man,
i wanted my algorithm back, my imprint back,
now that the devil's dozen scenario took hold
of the platform: 1 video playing, 12 back-ups...
and they're all the same, unrelated, *******...
        talk all you want, please, just give back
my algorithm imprint, where i can discover new music...
again... i never thought i'd see another
compilation video, 173 videos bound to one...
and, mind you... after finding about 6 googlewhacks
(googlewhack? when you use the sort of
language that provides you with only one search
result on the behemoth platform of billions
of results, 1 is grand, but 6? it's becoming too
predictable)...
                        so here's what i found
   (band - song):

wooly mammoth - mammoth bones / kyuss - space cadet,
rainbows are free - last supper / grand magus -
                                                mountain of power,
zed - lies / om - cremation chant I & II,
    smoke - hallucination / weird owl - white hidden fire,
orchid - son of misery / witch - seer,
               unida - you wish / black mountain - old fangs,
b.r.m.c. - ain't no easy way /
              jack daniels overdrive - ****** to death,
shrinebuilder - blind for all to see,
                   datura - mantra / the heavy eyes - voytek,
the machine - infinity / clutch - the regulator,
   colour haze - mountain / maligno - son of tlalocan,
dozer - twilight sleep / gomer pyle - albino rattlesnake,
blockback - dead mans blues / greenleaf - witchcraft tonight,
cactus jumper - right way / borracho - bloodsucker,
alabama thunderpussy - motor ready,
                    earthless - sonic power,
my brother the wind - death and beyond,
   zaphire oktalogue - carrion fly / siena root - reverberations,
unida - slaylina / pothead - toxic / sungrazer - mountain dusk,
   rotor - costa verde / blizaro - it's in the lighthouse,
planet of zeus - woke up dead,
     kongh - pushed beyond / ufomammut - smoke,
high on fire - to cross the bridge,
              the secret - bell of urgency,
      unida - wet pussycat / dozer - big sky theory,
cavity - chloride / brutus - swamp city blues,
the grand astoria - something wicked this way comes,
sasquatch - the judge / pharaoh overlord - skyline,
baby woodrose - love comes down / kamni - **** of satan,
lay with me - the flying eyes / cowboys & aliens  -
                                                out of control,
sons of otis - liquid jam / hainloose - recipe,
    ridge - rancho relaxo / bongripper - ****** sutherland,
skraeckoedland - cactus / grails - satori,
    lo-pan - chicken itza / five horse johnson - people's jam,
blind dog - don't ask me where i stand,
     wiht - orderic vitalis / hisko detria - nothing happens,
liquid sound company - leage for spiritual discovery lives,
   goatsnake - black cat bone / gandhi's gunn - rest of the sun,
the egocentrics - wave / propane propane - it's alright,
heliotropes - ribbons / mother mars - price you pay,
che - the knife / annimal machine - condenado,
   earth - tallahassee / the whirlings - delirio,
orchid - heretic / maeth - horse funeral,
siena root - rasayana / graveyard - longing,
           tia carrera - hell / hainloose - recipe,
      burner - five pills (and a bottle of whiskey),
dala sun - guilty for ****** / vulgaari - lie,
        slo burn - muezli / stonehelm - zombie apocalypse,
smallman - evolution / spiders - fraction,
         shakhtyor - e. jaspers / earthmass - lunar dawn,
evoke the lords - dregs / colour haze - silent,
     sutrah - el septimo viaje...

  

who are "these" people,
who: "supposedly" live for the future...
they always cite it,
as the one motivational
momentum of the present -
it's as if they've never seen
a bull itch the ground
with its front hoofs -
   imitating building up momentum
before a charge...
or how a slingshot,
or how a bow works...
   to these people,
the ******* sideways movement
of a bow against a violin...
sometimes...
      you do not retreat into
the past, to hide, to amount
to nostalgia...
     sometimes
the only reason for the reflexive
affirmation, confined to maxims
and aphorism, nay: even poems!
is to look back...
     to reap what was once
sowed, rather than sow blindly,
and reap: what no one wants
to reap...
    drunk? getting there...
       it felt so relaxing paying off
a 100 / 250 part of a debt
i owe her...
            while buying a russian
standard liter,
   asking for a 100 cash-back
of the supermarket cashier,
- the limit is 50,
   but if you buy something else,
i can give you another 50...
- oh... ok...
   so me went to and took a bottle
of shveedish cider...
   rekorderlig...
   mind you? the swedish,
what they perfected fermenting
better than what the the irish claim
to fame is?
    sorry... magners:
               irish? stick to the guinness...
(it's actually the only cerveza
i'd go into an english pub to
drink from the tap... bottled? canned?
not the same)...
     but with such swedish delights
such as the above mentioned,
  ålska and K  ö   nigsberg
                            *œ
?
no competition... the suede(s) just
do one thing grand...
    cider...
- what was i talking about?
  ah... the "dreaded" past...
     the people who say:
  but you can't live out a life,
   holding onto a private past,
a memory...
    so... these other ******* were
allowed to implant a false
past, unrelated to me,
teaching me whether it was
Newton, or Leibniz who first
invented the infinitesimal calculus
method?
                i'm betting on Leibniz...
after all... he took the position
of a ******* librarian...
   and he wasn't buried with pomp
& circumstance at Westminster Abbey...
sometimes...
         one person can't have it all...
but if the education system
is a system that is indicative for
the erosion of memory, esp. private
matters... and juggernauts in
with these selective rubrics of science
and history...
fair enough the basic
implants: numerical arithmetic,
and lettering arithmetic -
    and then... lessons in mental
entertainment... when applied
           to menial labour...
memory is: supreme...
          i can't give my memory up...
that's what: killer proteins
eating the fat tissue of the brain
like starvation in reverse
        of a case of Alzheimer's?
memory is: cameo cinema -
    however distorted it might be,
although i beg to differ on
whether time per se,
  is not the better psychedelic
component
when coupled with memory -
esp. the cinematic aspect of memory...
there was never a "living" in
the past -
      there was a point about memory
to sharpen the edges of
    "dasein"... all speculation and
questions regarding consciousness,
as championed through
a chimpanzee's *** are somehow
pointless:
    given there's a higher tier of
conceptualization -
   working from dasein...
            hierjetzt -
      or in english?             presence...
- because why would i treat
a personal memory,
like some inorganic entity of
a schooling system,
under Catholic measures,
  that made it necessary to include
Pythagoras... but not Horace?
that's inorganic memory...
and unless i turn into some
inorganic entity -
   the organic aspect of my psyche:
my past, my cameo cinema?
   that's going to be a leech,
attached to me...
  and i'm not going to give it up,
just like... when i walk about
my door, and enter the england
that i know on the peripheries...
i'll speak the lingua franca -
     but with my privacy?
    you'd better cut my tongue off
before i stop speaking
my western slavic heritage...
    and it pains me...
when certain groups of immigrants...
don't know the POINT
where immigration becomes
insensible... self-lacerating...
           i once hated their approach...
now i just pity them...
anyone ****** can juggle
     two oranges rather than three...
p.s. old school cure for a cold?
forget the pills...
   glass of warm milk,
  an egg yolk,
     and a good scratch of butter...
  (on the rare occasion,
  milk infused with garlic)

mixed together...
before bedtime...
  if the ****** won't sweat out
the bacteria during the night...
     well... stick to the synthetics...
i'm pretty sure i know why i drink...
certainly not to: PARTY PARTY PARTY...
i always aim for
the one safety net of "pharmacology"...
ssssssssleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

p.s. so much for children loving their
parents...
        in vitro and the whole
m.g.m. debacle:
so, sweet little *******,
       no *******, no chance for your
for a quickie satellite launch date from
Tehran, under all the weight of
monotheism turned secular...
christianity: the only "monotheism"
with overt tinged of polytheism,
lutheran, baptist, catholic, orthodox...
just today i opened my door twice...
once to a confused curry house delivery man:
did you order some food:
i too replied with a confused look
and the word: huh?! no.
then a black woman with a a white ol' granny
came by with a leaflet...
the jehovah's witnesses were on my trail...
lucky of my grandfather,
   the profanity brigade of the hebrew name
i will not dare utter came by...

  and if you have lived a good enough life:
memory? memory beats hollywood
technicolour and CGI...
at least in the cinema of memory i always
get to play the cameo (role)...

oh i get the youtube creators:
   living with his parents... still. aged 33...
funny that i don't mind them,
since they're getting older they're settling
into their solispsism,
        annoying as ****, but i stand them,
thank god the protruding caduceus veins
on my phallus protected me from
a circumcision...
  i can ******* like a girl with a web-cam...
no scented candles:
the no. 1, 2 & 3 on the throne of thrones...
the toilet, simultaneously masaging my ****
and prostate...

men were not exactly supposed to derive
pleasure from ***: they were,
supposed to give pleasure,
and in giving pleasure to one outlet,
they were subscribed to finding out what
best pleases them: ergo?
women would always derive more of
the people from *** than men would ever...
*** is not a story of bragging about
a harem... the woman lies flat...
the man pumps her...
after all... she is the one burdened
to carry a child, why wouldn't she be
the one deriving more pleasure from *** than
a man could ever?
72 virgins! ha ha!
   ah ha ha!
             what's the ratio?
   last time i checked... a 3 hole caravan...
of a woman's worth...
   mouth, ******, ****... and man?
only two points of entry, well...
"entry"...
                    seems that the tomatoe,
really is a fruit, but is treated like a vegetable
nontheless!
homosexuality in the 1960s...
william burroughs in Tangiers...
                    when Islam was quiet radical...

well... i cook, i clean...
                what are my other options of continuing
to write and living the ed gein "lifestyle",
i tried getting social housing in england,
but, i'm not a somali with two wives and a dozen
kids...
              rent, in london?
extortion...
                   housing shortage...
                 well there's me hating my parents,
the outside world just needs to see
an ed gein imitation...
               or there's me living off acorns
in the woods, or rummaging on the streets,
making the N25 bus from oxford st. to ilford
my own personal mobile hotel as a homeless
man in london...

   i think it's time to succumb to your
parents prejudices, if only for the jokes,
no point in making ethical high judgements
to fit into a zeitgeist narrative surrounding
yourself with people: you'd never eat a meal with...
that's how i define the highest form of respect:
if i'll eat with you: implies that i respect you...
i drink alone...
a high school fwend once thought he could
bribe me with his company,
that i "had to" drink with him...
      no... not really...
          i much prefer drinking by myself...
these days you're not expected to honour your
mother and your father,
i.e. make them proud...
               honour is a double-edged sword...
just don't be ashamed of having
a mother or a father...
not that hard: given western divorce rates...
i.v.f., frozen eggs... yadda yadda yadda...
lucky me in having went to university...
oh... really? so much cooler in a cosmopolitan
environment with your contemporary
flat-mates?
               get the picture?
                 paying rent while literally living
in a diguised cardboard box?
i can't help the fact that poetry doesn't pay...
that there are economic factors beyond
my control in play...
   maybe if i was the grandson of my parents,
born in england, and not elsewhere,
there would be some sort of + leverage...
for a bricks and mortar start-up...
plus... i hoard...
         books and music...
                     mind you:
neither of my parents spoke english as their
mother tongue...
  neither did i...
they didn't teach me this tongue:
i had to teach this language by myself:
for myself...
           aged 8: thrown into the deep end
of the pool: now swim ******, swim!

i just feel sorry for the immigrant parents
who gave birth to their children into the *****
of the land they immigrated to...

two days ago i found a heartbreak,
a romanian couple, with a child...
the father was stubborn in teach his daughter
his / her native sprechen...
romanian... but she was already speaking
perfect antithesis of accent kindergarten english...
and almost non-responsive to her tongue
alligned to her biology...
    clearly she was born in england,
but her parents were both romanian...
i've had that conundrum in my head
for a long time...
   what if i married an english girl...
and i was unable to teach my offspring
my native language,
what if i had to silence my native tongue,
"forget" it, or only speak it by myself,
via reading a book in western slavic?
what if the woman i married:
wouldn't see the benefits of bilingualism,
outside of the mainstream economic
mantra of ensuring your children
learn either german or mandarin or arabic?
that worried me...
          oh believe me, i enjoy my lapses
into english: since i am providing the groundwork...
but in the case of having offspring...
e.g. teaching them the western slavic tongue
so they could speak to their grandparents
(i.e. my parents)...
       even my grandparents lament
the scenarios when a woman would marry
an austrian... and she wouldn't teach
her children her native tongue,
and when the grandchildren would visit their
grandparents... they'd be speaking
a crude variation of braille, morse,
   sign-language: na migi...
               i know that my mother is alive
in me even under this veil of english...
because she's more than the womb,
the genitals of my conception, the breast fed off...
she's also the Atlas of my vocabulary
of the "hiding" tongue beneath this one...

i already knew the "game" was rigged from
the get-go... i've seen how one hindu woman
suffered being married to a scouser...
she never managed to pass on her language
to her children,
she bought a library, thinking her children
would succumb to learning: however poor
they might end up being...
but she was suffocated by the english
tongue of her husband...
and her children didn't express even the most
vague of desires to learn their mutterzunge...

that's what worried me to begin with,
marrying an english woman i was afraid
of the ignorance that someone bilingualism
was en route toward a psychiatrist disorder
i was diagnosed with: schizophrenia...
this anglophonic ignorance still scares me...
like: everyone is expected to speak the revisionist
globalist lingua franca: this anglo lingua...
if i didn't meet a bilingual / polyglot woman,
i'd return to rearing idiotic children...
anglo lingua was only supposed to be a middle-ground,
a "no man's land"...
             a language of trivial economic transfers...
a language primarily orientated around usage:
rather than an ethno-centric basis for "englishness"...
to **** with: god save the queen...
the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
                 old scot dragoons': auld lang syne...
those where my forever anthems...
see...
        what gave birth to a jihadi john?
his mother "forgot", his father "forgot":
his "mother" forgot, his "father" forgot to speak
the "ancient" tongue...
there's a point to integration of the immigrant,
an immigrant is a forgetful creature,
an ever pleasing creature...
never to mind himself as an ex-pat...
you ****** forget your mutterzunge...
you'll be speaking in cockney accents
with broken affairs of arabic beheading people
for zombified reasons of grandeour!
*******...
          you, you: you are to blame!
you were so ashamed of your parents that you
delved on honoring them to the point
of thinking giving pride unto them was very
much akin as keeping shame away from
their girdle of the wedlock of your own existence!
death has not made your a martyr...
i guess you deserve those 72 mishaps,
those 72 annoying voices...
and i pray to god that you receive your reward!
i hope that among the 72 you will never find
a chance a repose to find your: self!

integration is one thing,
pandering to the "elites": plebs who think they
are kings among the plebs,
is quiet another...
plebs who go places and think english
is a universal tongue: just because
uncle sam says so...
of those i respect:

y cymraeg: pwy dal eu tafod...
an gàidhlig: cò fhathast bruidhinn an cuid teanga...
i nawet moim: co ma mówić
to nawet tyle: co znaczy tak niewiele!

there are boundaries... learn the customs
of the natives, but ensure you retain the customs
you were born with...
a child, born in a foreign land,
ought to ensure his parents teach him
the words to speak to his grand overseers...
complete immersion,
this cultural abortion,
this cutting of the umbilical chord
from: i have never met a people so
content at having been subjugated outside
the indian sub-continent,
cricket... for ****'s sake...
       as to demand other europeans
to treat them as superiors,
when sitting alongside an englishman...
****-bud-bud, the **** are you on about?!
once again: england has become the circus
for the grounding of what began
with engels and marx...
   wasn't communism born from
engels and marx observing english society?
sure... first experimented en masse in
mongolia... but its origins?

   so of course i had problems finding a suitable
mating partner... i was afraid that my nativ-zunge
would die a slow but solemn death...
that an english bridge would not consider
the worth of a bilingual child, or a polyglot,
or that she would repress the chance of my
"biological continuum nuance" to respond outside
of the anglo lingua refrain of: beside the english language?
there are quiet a few one might want to learn...

it's not easy being a first generation immigrant,
esp. if you moved aged 8, mute as a wolf
to a domesticated dog's barking...
but hey, no jihadi john in me...
           jihadi john should have been raised
bilingual... i wouldn't be the one speaking broken
tourist arabic while beheading someone...
jihadi john spoke tourist arabic...
the dichotomy of the mind to the biological
reality, beside the current, western,
"biological relativism" debate...
      clearly darwinism was "wrong"...
man is, these days, left with neither a biological
reality, nor a historical reality...
              but there is a historical reality:
but it's so knit-&-picky...
come on... philip augustus of the capetian
dynasty?
                 casimir III...
                        jeremi wiśniowiecki...
konrad I of masovia...
                           kuno von lichtenstein...
alles ist gott: und gott ist alles -
  gott mit, uns!

              mit eine leben wert leben:
    erinnerung ist die nur kino
             wert sehen eine film beim;

hell... could be worse:
   i might have translated some latin
of horace into pig-trough comfort food.
Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
(poems from the Chinese translated by Arthur Waley)

Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And you said: ‘I miss you bitterly . . . “

As Helen drifted into sleep the source of that imagined voice in her last conscious moment was waking several hundred miles away. For so long now she was his first and only waking thought. He stretched his hand out to touch her side with his fingertips, not a touch more the lightest brush: he did not wish to wake her. But she was elsewhere. He was alone. His imagination had to bring her to him instead. Sometimes she was so vivid a thought, a presence more like, that he felt her body surround him, her hand stroke the back of his neck, her ******* fall and spread against his chest, her breath kiss his nose and cheek. He felt conscious he had yet to shave, conscious his rough face should not touch her delicate freckled complexion . . . but he was alone and his body ached for her.

It was always like this when they were apart, and particularly so when she was away from home and full to the brim with the variously rich activities and opportunities that made up her life. He knew she might think of him, but there was this feeling he was missing a part of her living he would never see or know. True, she would speak to him on the phone, but sadly he still longed to read her once bright descriptions that had in the past enabled him to enter her solo experiences in a way no image seemed to allow. But he had resolved to put such possible gifts to one side. So instead he would invent such descriptions himself: a good, if time-consuming compromise. He would give himself an hour at his desk; an hour, had he been with her, they might have spent in each other’s arms welcoming the day with such a love-making he could hardly bare to think about: it was always, always more wonderful than he could possibly have imagined.

He had been at a concert the previous evening. He’d taken the train to a nearby town and chosen to hear just one work in the second part. Before the interval there had been a strange confection of Bernstein, Vaughan-Williams and Saint-Saens. He had preferred to listen to *The Symphonie Fantastique
by Hector Berlioz. There was something a little special about attending a concert to hear a single work. You could properly prepare yourself for the experience and take away a clear memory of the music. He had read the score on the train journey, a journey across a once industrial and mining heartland that had become an abandoned wasteland: a river and canal running in tandem, a vast but empty marshalling yard, acres of water-filled gravel pits, factory and mill buildings standing empty and in decay. On this early evening of a thoroughly wet and cold June day he would lift his gaze to the window to observe this sad landscape shrouded in a grey mist tinted with mottled green.

Andrew often considered Berlioz a kind of fellow-traveller on his life’s journey of music. Berlioz too had been a guitarist in his teenage years and had been largely self-taught as a composer. He had been an innovator in his use of the orchestra and developed a body of work that closely mirrored the literature and political mores of his time.  The Symphonie Fantastique was the ultimate love letter: to the adorable Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress. Berlioz had seen her play Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see above) and immediately imagined her as his muse and life’s partner. He wrote hundreds of letters to her before eventually meeting her to declare his love and admiration in person. A friend took her to hear the Symphonie after it had got about that this radical work was dedicated to her. She was appalled! But, when Berlioz wrote Lélio or The Return to Life, a kind of sequel to his Symphonie, she relented and agreed to meet him. They married in 1833 but parted after a tempestuous seven years. It had surprised Andrew to discover Lélio, about which, until quite recently, he had known nothing. The Berlioz scholar David Cairns had written fully and quite lovingly about the composition, but reading the synopsis in Wikipedia he began to understand it might be a trifle embarrassing to present in a concert.

The programme of Lélio describes the artist wakening from these dreams, musing on Shakespeare, his sad life, and not having a woman. He decides that if he can't put this unrequited love out of his head, he will immerse himself in music. He then leads an orchestra to a successful performance of one of his new compositions and the story ends peacefully.

Lélio consists of six musical pieces presented by an actor who stands on stage in front of a curtain concealing the orchestra. The actor's dramatic monologues explain the meaning of the music in the life of the artist. The work begins and ends with the idée fixe theme, linking Lélio to Symphonie fantastique.


Thoughts of the lovely Harriet brought him to thoughts of his own muse, far away. He had written so many letters to his muse, and now he wrote her little stories instead, often imagining moments in their still separate lives. He had written music for her and about her – a Quintet for piano and winds (after Mozart) based on a poem he’d written about a languorous summer afternoon beside a river in the Yorkshire Dales; a book of songs called Pleasing Myself (his first venture into setting his own words). Strangely enough he had read through those very songs just the other day. How they captured the onset of both his regard and his passion for her! He had written poetic words in her voice, and for her clear voice to sing:

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.

At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.


His words he felt were true to the model of the Chinese poetry he had loved as a teenager, verse that had helped him fashion his fledgling thoughts in music.

And so it was that while she dined brightly with her team in a Devon country pub, he sat alone in a town hall in West Yorkshire listening to Berlioz’ autobiographical and unrequited work.

A young musician of extraordinary sensibility and abundant imagination, in the depths of despair because of hopeless love, has poisoned himself with *****. The drug is too feeble to **** him but plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by weird visions. His sensations, emotions, and memories, as they pass through his affected mind, are transformed into musical images and ideas. The beloved one herself becomes to him a melody, a recurrent theme [idée fixe] which haunts him continually.

Yes, he could identify with some of that. Reading Berlioz’ own programme note in the orchestral score he remembered the disabling effect of his first love, a slight girl with long hair tied with a simple white scarf. Then he thought of what he knew would be his last love, his only and forever love when he had talked to her, interrupting her concentration, in a college workshop. She had politely dealt with his innocent questions and then, looking at the clock told him she ‘had to get on’. It was only later – as he sat outside in the university gardens - that he realized the affect that brief encounter might have on him. It was as though in those brief minutes he knew nothing of her, but also everything he ever needed to know. Strange how the images of that meeting, the sound of her voice haunted him, would appear unbidden - until two months later a chance meeting in a corridor had jolted him into her presence again  . . . and for always he hoped.

After the music had finished he had remained in the auditorium as the rather slight audience took their leave. The resonance of the music seemed to be a still presence and he had there and then scanned back and forward through the music’s memory. The piece had cheered him, given him a little hope against the prevailing difficulties and problems of his own musical creativity, the long, often empty hours at his desk. He was in a quiet despair about his current work, about his current life if he was honest. He wondered at the way Berlioz’ musical material seemed of such a piece with its orchestration. The conception of the music itself was full of rough edges; it had none of that exemplary finish of a Beethoven symphony so finely chiseled to perfection.  Berlioz’ Symphonie contained inspired and trite elements side by side, bar beside bar. It missed that wholeness Beethoven achieved with his carefully honed and positioned harmonic structures, his relentless editing and rewriting. With Berlioz you reckoned he trusted himself to let what was in his imagination flow onto the page unhindered by technical issues. Andrew had experienced that occasionally, and looking at his past pieces, was often amazed that such music could be, and was, his alone.

Returning to his studio there was a brief text from his muse. He was tempted to phone her. But it was late and he thought she might already be asleep. He sat for a while and imagined her at dinner with the team, more relaxed now than previously. Tired from a long day of looking and talking and thinking and planning and imagining (herself in the near future), she had worn her almost vintage dress and the bright, bright smile with her diligent self-possessed manner. And taking it (the smile) into her hotel bedroom, closing the door on her public self, she had folded it carefully on the chair with her clothes - to be bright and bright for her colleagues at breakfast next day and beyond. She undressed and sitting on the bed in her pajamas imagined for a brief moment being folded in his arms, being gently kissed goodnight. Too tired to read, she brought herself to bed with a mental list of all the things she must and would do in the morning time and when she got home – and slept.

*They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter, - a simple scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw on my clothes, all topsy-turvey.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within:
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile’s heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room to talk about the weather!
The poems that begin and end Being Awake are translations by Arthur Waley  from One Hundred and Seventy Poems from the Chinese published in 1918.
Sonorant Nov 2021
I. Phasmophobia
I am the innumerable gloom of dim, long-buried anthems.
In wistful suspension, I shadow over a living loft in silence.
Tethered between lines, my fog bleeds on panes in knocking
Hawking your dimming faces in the lamplight of my genesis.
Torn the tunnels of their astringed throats, a requiem is reaped.
— ”I was a shape moving rapidly, nervous at the edge of your vision.” -Cynthia Huntington

II. Claustrophobia
I am the small match ignited from the depths of your mind.
My walls blanched absent of evacuation, self invite into
Your personal and private violation, invading every fissure
With icy burns, solidifying your chrysalis on hungry bark.
Your frozen God of smothering doom, a willow devours you.
— “But then I remember the universe was closed, and so very small. There was really no where else to go.” -Peter Watts

III. Ommetaphobia
I am the stricken, scarlet cloth coalesced of cruelty and ichor.
These rawboned talons, cloaked thereof, overtake embrace—
In coarse delight— a piety of prisoners’ silver stark sights.
Perceptive cavities leak my garb as my artistic blade sweeps.
Plucked from the dredges of a briny skull, two diamond orbs.
— ”The hearts hushed secret is in the soft, dark eye." -Letitia Elizabeth Landon
.
IV. Monophobia
I was the cherished friend to you, my twine stitched in your grasp.
A golden balloon unaffected by tides of time and distorting gales.
Alas from this intimate atmosphere shot an arrow, poisonous
Where silently I erupt into a missing memory upon the wind.
As your curtains close, you breathe for me, without a hand to hold.
—”And all I lov’d, I lov’d alone.” -Edgar Allan Poe

V. Arachnophobia
I am the legion of soundless beholders aloft your dormant dreams.
An itch scattered over the crooked spine, arid for pulsing melodies.
This fruitful sapling beckons each dark, angular limb near your neck.
As my lighting strikes erratically, your foolish impulse slow to clutch
Creeping necrosis bestowed by the guardian who claimed your home.
—”The Spider taketh with her hands and is in king’s palaces.” -Proverbs 30:28.

VI. Agoraphobia
I am the ancestral abductor of this rotting womb you deem a shelter.
As the embryo held within, I contract you into tides and bid ‘swim’.
Directions devoid, beyond bolted doors, you plummet to my depths
Where you wish for comforts’ wind but mislaid the method to breathe.
My otherworld encompasses you, whilst I drink in your suffocating.
— ”Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children.” -William Thackeray

VII. Ecclesiophobia
I am the black shepherd in martyric masque and a mitre casque.
A discrete imminent sheep cowers, hanging on the hook in my gallery—
My chalice congregates your pure liquor of laments for libertine luxury.
I rise where you fall and smother the lantern of your last mortal minutes
Instilling final grace in the stillness of your veins, my kingdom reigns eternally.
— ”Suffering can be a gift.” - Abbie Bernstein.
I am the grand central
swirling vortex of the known universe

pathway of consciousness
a worldwide metaphysical interconnection

hub of modernity’s magnificent  metropolis
prime mover of it's empowered citizenry

eye of a Mid-Atlantic megalopolis
bridging an expanse from Boston to DC
trajectories of an Acela Express
accelerates time, coheres a region

magnetic compass axis
gyroscopic core
web of iron rails
touches all
transcontinental
cardinal ordinates

my constitution of chiseled granite blocks
manifests steadfast immutability

opulent terminus of marbled underground railways
subconscious portals to inter-borough worlds


the Zodiac streaks across my painted heavens
splashing aspirational mosaics of
bold citizens onto universal canvasses
my exhalations burst galaxies,
birthing constellations
promising potentialities of
plenteous abundance
as a right of all
global citizens

transit vehicle for mobilized classes
of fully enfranchised republicans

my tendrils plunge deep into
cavernous drilled bedrock
firming an unshakable edifice
-a new rock of ages-

rails splay out to the
horizons farthest corners
northern stars, southern crosses
nearest points on a sextants reckon

I am the iron spine
of the globes anointed isle
I co-join Harlem and Wall Street
as beloved fraternal twins

commerce, communication and culture
is the electricity surging through my veins

the worlds towering Babel
rises from my foundations
the plethora of tongues
all well understood

I open the gateways of knowledge
guarded by vigilant library lions

route students and scholars to
the worlds most pronounced public schools

beatific Beaux Art is boldly scrawled on my walls
in dark hued blues sung in gaudy graffito notes

swanky patrons sip martinis,
nosh bagels with a smear and **** down
shucked lemon squirted oysters

reason, discovery and discourse tango
to the airs of Andean Pipe flutes
with violence and discordant dissonance
deep within my truculent bowels

I am the road to work,
a pathway to a career and
the ride to a Connecticut
home sweet home

my gargoyles and statuary laugh
at pessimistic naysayers

I am the station for
centurions, bold charioteers
homeless nomads and
restive masses

I stir a nation of neighborhoods
into a brilliant *** of roiling roux

beams of enlightenment
stream through colossal windows
today's epiphanies of the fantastic
actualize resplendent zeitgeists

sipping coffee in my cafe's
the full technicolor palette
of humanity is revealed;
civilizations history is etched
forever upon the mind

eight million stories
of the naked city is bared
as splendorous tragedy
it's comic march
of carnal being
exalted

a million clattering feet
scurry across marblized floors
polishing the provenance
burnishing a patina
exuding golden footprints

I am 100 years young and
thousand years away from
the crash of a demolition ball

Doric Columns and
elegant archways
coronate commuters
each day with a
new revelation of a
democratic vista

I am the grand central
my spirit flows as
one with the mass
in the vibrant
heart of our
throbbing city

Music Selection: Leonard Bernstein, On the Town

written to mark the 100th Anniversary of Grand Central Station


Oakland
2/8/13
Emily Tyler  Sep 2012
Handwriting
Emily Tyler Sep 2012
I've decided that I
Hate
My
History teacher

His name is
Mr. Bernstein.

I hate him.

Why,
Might you ask,
Do you hate your history teacher?

I hate him
Because
He
Took
Off
Points
From my
HISTORY
Test

Because of my handwriting.

And thus,
I hate him.

Your 'y's,
He said,
They look like 'g's
And so he read
Mainly
As
Mainlg.

And I was
Marked
Down.

And remember,
Folks.
This is a
HISTORY
Test,
Not a
CALLIGRAPHY
Test.

There
Ought
To
Be
A
Law,
There ought to!
Where Shelter Jul 2018
People who are experiencing depression use different words than people who are not



By Elizabeth Bernstein
June 11, 2018 9:33 a.m. ET

Feeling down? Pay attention to your language.

Language changes significantly in both content and word choice in people who are depressed, according to a growing body of research using computer programs to analyze speech and writing. People who are depressed tend to use the pronoun “I” more, indicating a greater focus on self. They also use “absolute” words like “must,” “completely,” “should” or “always,” reflecting an overly black-or-white outlook.

Scientists have long known that people change how they speak when they are depressed—their speech becomes lower, more monotone and more labored, with more stops, starts and pauses. But newer studies, including several published this year, have found differences in the actual words depressed people use.

People who are depressed “don’t see subtleties, and we can see this in the words they use,” says James W. Pennebaker, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies how language relates to a person’s psychological state.

The study of computer-assisted language analysis for depression is still a nascent field, but apps and other technology that track language could eventually help doctors and patients identify a depressive episode more quickly. Since there are no biological markers for depression as there are for cancer and other diseases, therapists currently have to rely on a patient’s self-reported symptoms and on their own analysis to diagnose the disorder. Both can be highly subjective. The apparent suicides of designer Kate ***** and chef Anthony Bourdain last week underscore just how challenging it can be to identify and treat depression.

How to Talk With Your Dying Loved One

Conversations about death are among the most important, and difficult, we may ever have. Too often, we avoid them, Elizabeth Bernstein writes.



In research published online in March in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers at the Universities of Arizona, Zurich and Texas, as well as Michigan State and Georgia Southern, gave questionnaires designed to measure depression to more than 4,700 people at six labs in the U.S. and Germany. Participants were asked to write about their lives, a recent relationship breakup, their level of satisfaction with life, or just their general thoughts and feelings. Then software analyzed their language. The results: In addition to using more negative, or sad, words, people who were depressed used more first-person pronouns or “I-talk” than people who were not depressed.

Pronouns show where a person is focusing attention, says Dr. Pennebaker, who is an author on the study. Someone who is really interested in another person will use the third person “he” or “she.” Someone closely focused on a relationship will use “we.” “But if you are thinking about yourself—if you are more self-conscious or self-aware, as depressed people are—you will use the first-person singular ‘I’ or ‘me,’” Dr. Pennebaker says.

Depressed people also tend to view the world in a concrete, black-or-white way, using words such as “must,” “completely,” “should” or “always” that express absolutist thinking, as shown in a series of three studies published together in Clinical Psychological Science in January.

The researchers, from the University of Reading in the U.K., used software to calculate the percentage of absolutist words used in messages by approximately 6,400 members of internet forums for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and a host of control forums. They found that approximately 1.5% of words used by people in the depression and anxiety forums were absolutist—which was 50% more than those used by people in the control forums. The percentage was even higher for people in the suicidal ideation forums: about 1.8%.

Why are absolutist words so bad? People often don’t realize they are using them, and they can amp up negative thoughts. (Think about having your barbecue rained out. Saying “this always happens” is a much harsher thought than “sometimes the weather is unpredictable in June.”) Absolutist words also require that the world correspond to your view. (“I must get that promotion.” “My children must behave.”) “If the world doesn’t adhere to what you demand of it, that is when depression and anxiety set in,” says Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of Reading and lead author on the studies. The more flexible you are, the better, he says.

Psychologists say people can use language as a tool to help them reframe their thoughts. “Very often, what you say is what you internalize,” says Mr. Al-Mosaiwi. Here are some tips:

Remember that the actual words you say matter, not just the thoughts they convey. Even if you are unable to replace negative words with positive ones, try replacing them with more accurate neutral ones. Instead of: “This party is horrible,” try “This event is not for me.”

Banish absolutes, especially in relation to your goals or relationships, where falling short of your expectations can be particularly depressing. These words and phrases include: always, never, nothing, must, every, totally, completely, constantly, entirely, all, definitely, full and one-hundred percent. Replace them with nuance. Instead of: “I can never catch a break,” try “Sometimes things don’t work out.”

Write. Keep a journal. Try a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise. Compose an email to a friend. Then analyze what words you are using. Are they too negative or absolutist? All about you? Tweak those sentences—and stay vigilant for those words in your speech.

Ask a loved one to help you identify absolutist or negative words or sentences and suggest reframing. It is easier to notice someone else’s language than our own.

Create a mantra you can use to override absolutist language. So instead of saying “This always happens to me,” say “This time. This happened this time.”

Put your mantra on sticky notes and place them where you can see them. Make it your screen saver. Have a needlepoint pillow made.

Pay attention to your use of the word “I.” If most of your sentences have “I” or “me” in them, you are probably too self-focused, says Dr. Pennebaker.
Mateuš Conrad May 2021
some variation from a reference point:
that (the reference point)
being a blank canvas...

            to begin with: nothing to "work"
with... beside imagining
a congestion of letters:
that letters become words:
that words become sentences...

writing about: writing...
which is at least a tier above:
writing about reading...
or writing about drinking
a mystical cup of coffee:

or something about either Buddhism
or Tao in that 1960s h'americana vein...
well... for something absolutely different...
californian mathematics is racist...
covid-19 is racist...
god is gay...

how terribly i must feel to not read much
of what women write...
any ******* expression
always suited me more welcomingly...
tongue for a phallus
an *** for a mouth...
                                while Balaam finally
managed to trot to the same
pace of the four don quixotes...

in the age of celebrating womanhood...
crippling words: worded junctions...
the entire problem with nouns...
"problem"...
otherwise the certainty of verbs:
for some... the much necessary distinction
between no nuance no metaphor
no misnomers no fiddly-bits-&-bobs
& clogs & knobs...
vectors: prompts... turn left... then turn right...

so far only one certainty:
the madonna-***** complex...
              and no ambition on my part to
court a nun -
or attempt to subjugate "my" genes to
this carousel of time...
so "selfish" of me to bow out...
so that one ****** two can persist
with that cuck-soaker of
an interracial transcendence of forks
in the road...

perhaps it would just break my heart
to have a daughter...
perhaps i see how too make it into
the realm of mythology
of the highest nobility, that of swans...
****-flinging troop of chump...

mind you: there's already a lady in my life
that never disappoints...
a ms. amber with whiskers
a ms. amber as beer as gods' ****...
a ms. amber sweetest of all: mead...
no wonder i personify this liquid...
only today a supermarket cashier
smirked and said: you drink that like
water...            indeed i do
i replied...

well... if at the end of it i squiggle out
if at the end of it i squeeze out
a poo'em... and don't box myself with rhyme(s):
a drink to joy! a drink to health!
a drink to mew-sic!

ni z gruszki ni z pietruszki:
du tun spreschen deutsche?
              from out of nowhere!
                      not from a pear - not from parsley...
a pear's a pear
but... herbs and spices are not
required to have an indefinite article...
it would be impossible to write:
a cinnamon...
a parsley... unless... a stick of...
    a bunch of...
parsley's parsley (is)
  
         it will always come down to
the idiosyncratic of this love-affair
of:      erworbenzunge

                    (acquired­ tongue)

what can't be offered re. some slurring
and oath-making
in light of what happened at the Bataclan?
the boiling of water...
but in general: a malaise...
a glance... a skim-reading...
a toleration of Semitic and nomadic
*******...

      'there's no water in the desert'...
well... guess what...
there's no ******* arable field in a forest
either! those roots weren't going
to just drop dead...
berry picking in the blackest of thicket...
****'s sake...
said some Inuit on a north american
tundra...
or some Mongol passing through
the butter of Siberia...

                but i guess that's what happens
when you've been sitting on a stash
of dino-juice (oil)...
**** for brains....
           why would a Pakistani ask me if
i believe in god in the presence of an arab?
captain Ahab over 'ere is
building... what exactly in the desert?
luvvy-dubby-bye-bye...

            and it's not i conjured up the term
camel jockey...
it took a Bangladeshi ripping into an
Egyptian to come up with that...
the Egyptian replied with:
bush-monkey at the Bangladeshi...
        and this was in a high-school
where the majority where Irish Catholic...

there was a time when...
there was the proper grammar police...
and when people had faces...
there was a physiognomy...
you could even lip-read people on the tube...
this one instance with a nurse:
i just told her... apologies if i'm not looking
into your eyes all the time...
i'm lip-reading...

  hell... before the pronoun debacle -
you could abstract someone...
you could have a whole range of...
rancid chilly... turmeric...
saffron... cinnamon... chocolate...
               oak bark...
         piggy: albino sheen...
                         pink-froth...
           rabid mongol mongrel...
Caucasian...          flattened occipital bone Turk!

if we can't understand ourselves as
different... by "divine instruction"...
                     n'ah... i'm not going to undermine
the freedom this language affords me!
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2021
i guess i'll forever be in love with the English weather... i adore the gloom... it mutes my heart: it allows me to focus on all the little miseries that make me... happy... however paradoxical it might sound: i find happiness in melancholy... it's such a refreshing escapade: realising the subtle metaphysics of gravity... i'm dragged down... never disappointed... from time to time... either giggling or smirking in a public place... but the weather... overcast... dreary... monotone... it's not the Faroe Isles... but... close... even in the heartland like Essex... Loon'don... plus... the people have conjured up a magical amber juice... herr schnurrhaare und fräulein bernstein... i love to drink more than i love to ****... come to think of it... i love to ****... but... i much prefer a solo drinking ****... preferably with today's newspaper... before noon... fasting... it clears the 'ed... and makes: the word HAY... sound... mmm... ******* tremendous! almost... "vibrating"... even though... the hasn't been a TRILL on the R around these parts for some time... perhaps somewhere in... Scoot-land... ah! never mind!

i will not make any, any(!) concessions to morality
with thought...
spin the narrative(s)... wander off: i will...
feeding into a detached mind-body duality:
feed the automaton...
call my ego a parasite... my inner voice
a plucked eye of a cyclops!
demeaning frailty: hidden rot of man...
        i will not make any concessions to morality
with thought: i will no churn out
thought to be:
   ought i?!
                             i'll break upon the freedoms
i so wish... but i'll break with: panache
come to think of "it"...
i can understand the authenticity of work...
i'll go a step further...
i probably have three maxims i utilize...
a Tao (version) of aiding the world by allowing
the world to forget you...
the Alexandre Dumas: the best advice
one can give is... to not give advice...
and the third?
controversial... but... without the sadistic irony
implied by the original...
truly! arbeit macht frei...
- was i expecting to be saved by... adjectives?
only in the anglo-lingo-sphere
is Darwinism so... infectious...
   i get it... i truly do... but... it's not some...
all-encompassing release form...
Darwinism to me is a pet-peeve...
a bit like Marxism...
        Darwinism explains all!
                   i'm tired of it: i'm tired of people
perpetuating it to the point that
they themselves become: two-dimensional...
it's the oblivion of obviousness that
bothers me... there's no room for...
ahem... "poetry"... NUANCE...
for starters Darwinism: as a tool of history is...
his story?! not mine...
i much prefer etymology as the safety net of
"measuring" time... or no time...
Darwinism is all form all... cubism...
morphed monkeys suited in tuxedos...
spot the albino...
it's... too... concise...
yes everything has a purpose...
yes... almost seamlessly: like no strings were
attached... floating in: and as the ether...
condescending into a make-shift: solid...
Darwinism doesn't care about language...
it's popular among English speakers...
Copernicus was popular among the Polacks...
these days they just reference him...
Copernicus: concise...
he stopped the sun and moved the earth...
what can be said... likewise...
proverbial... about... Darwin?
he... shot the money and woke the man?!
ah... awoke the man?
he... stopped pickling brains and
spines in transit to make... giraffes?!

i'm perplexed by the company of my bonsai
tiger: maine ****...
why would a cat... require my ******* company?
i'm a drunkard nobody!

sonny rollins... saxophone colossus... when
guys had... STYLE...
i could listen to jazz to escape the European
claustrophobia of classical music...
music written by men who couldn't...
*******... whistle!
all-cerebral music... notation bound...
technical... jazz had something...
and then... whish! spoof!
like the Vikings... gone in a flash...
a span of... i'll be generous... 50... years?!
i... abhor... rap...

i can understand work: digging two hoiles
in the ground... experiencing gravity unlike
any astronaut might: properly grounded...
******* gravity....
making new comes for:
hortencje: hortensia(s):
*******... hydrangea (orator)...

knee-grow... grow a knee?
must be one of those anglo-saxon fetishes:
to appease their women...
those mythological blondes...
their women... their women...
apparently up north any ****-
-stani will be eagerly ******...
such a waste of 6ft tall fuckable Ottis-ready-for-it...
not reading...

my my what a custard worth of thighs...
my my what a custard worth of thighs...
knee-growing any bigger from the last time
i inspected the phonetic joke?!

ride a bicycle drunk:
take up any truck load like one might be
a David vs. a Goliath...
immemorable Saturday:
pseudo... oh look... the afternoon just
passed by...

truly... a swig of whiskey into a cup
of black coffee overwhelms any concern to
use cream..

- why i love fasting...
empty one's self long enough...
the sugar levels drop...
ingesting anything after enough time becomes...
an agony... one becomes a Boa...
constrictor...
i'm... digesting while at the same time being
summoned by: constipation...

i'm buzzing with drunk
but it's not even noon...
but who knows... what's the supposed hour..
on these isles...
best i take the ol' rover for a spin
on the streets...
no... this one time: i'll wait it out..

pickle slow: on the sour... grotesque...
sobering... sombre-ing...
laugh with defiance!
  ******* yourself with tears...
sketch a concept: not a diamond...
but a concept of:
synonymous with what's rain:
at night!

-among these... island... dwelling... folk...
i love... the Scots... the most...
don't ask me why... how?!
they retained their Trill of the R: for starters...
they were: they wear... are...
grrr... SKYRTS!
tartan, *******... 'icks!
i ought to love the Velsh more... since...
they still have, their own tongue...
but nay... nay...

i love these people because....
they seem to be: people...
i love the Scoots because...
it's 13:00 oh: clock and i'm
drunk dishing out sabers... drunk...
i'll wait for the night to riddle
a bicycle... sober...
brothel... tonight?
not just yet...
i'm tired of watching all those 1% nymphomaniacs
getting the proper treatment...
i'm tired of politicians lying too...
but... seeing how these nymphomaniac
women are looking for ulterior
holes to fill...
transgressing **** wasn't even
starters...
the cat will sleep on the bed...
i'll take a snooze on the floor... savvy?!
i said... savvy?!
i'll do my round-about
drunken sailor on a bicycle "trick" some time...
later... savvy?!

- binoculars... testicles... sandpaper... grit: proof...
binoculars... testicles...
mirror... glass... air and still lake water...
binoculars... testicles... sandpaper... proof!
mirror! mirror! get me a:
mirror... or a... Agnolo Bronzino's...
Venus, Cupid, Folly & Time...
i'll ******* to that...
reinterpretation of "lips":
behind a NIQAB... like... a cat gets
to growl... or lion: yawn... or...
or... the ****'s wrong with you?!

a cat is sleeping in my bed while i
decide to sleep on the... ******* floor...
why?! because i'm Hindu but
i still enjoy some beef...
i.e. i believe in the superficial superiority
of animals... cats... dogs...
mostly cats since: i don't have
to equip myself with a leash...
Robert C Howard Jul 2013
The bittersweet harmonies of
Barber’s song of ruing
carry me back two score years
to that day I sat intent on the bench -
Barber’s accompaniment on the stand.

Ben Walker exploded into the room
“Have you heard about the president? ”
My blankness answered,
“Kennedy's been shot! ”
My stiffened fingers lifted from the keys.
Dread-filled I stammered,
“Will he be all right? ”
Unable to utter the words,
Ben shook his head.

Scenes flicker on our mindscreens
like scratched newsreels -
tears staining Bernstein’s face,
Eroica and Resurrection
weeping our televised agony,
Oswald doubled over Ruby’s bullets,
a toddler's unbearable salute.

Watching motorcade frames
repeat in slow motion,
we careen on rubber legs:
a nation’s heart shattered in Dallas.

The somber song plays on:
Housemans’s words
Joined with Barber’s melodies:

'With Rue my Heart is Laden.'

*April, 2007
I was practicing the piano part of a song by Samuel Barber set to a poem by A.E Houseman (With Rue my Heart is Laden). I was preparing to accompany Ben Walker, a baritone friend who was to sing it an upcoming recital when he burst in and gave me the horrific news.
Mateuš Conrad May 2020
.at what point am i not... so ****** angst-prone teen... suppose c. g. jung and... akin to h. p. lovecraft... when there's a keter: ha-shem: ehyeh asher ehyeh... so many "deviation" from the name... new gods... new names... cthulhu and abraxas... jesus ******* ****... + christ all you want... nothing desires a sanctimony of the sacred... nor the death of a chris cornell... unless... it can only be pardoned with "the passing": i.e. death... patient spider... patient stone... patient stab-in-the-back... the solipsistic russian nation of mongrels... to lesser ears: the tipshar of albert alexeyevich razin... udmurt & "udmurt"... jokes... are... currently... reclining... how they would suddenly feel obliged to: scoff-off on a whim... the dead: are sleeping... "concept" of Katyń... no... the dead are besides sleep: they are the tombs what we agitate into life: the best we can... from neither the realm of sleep nor the realm of death: life is our... grace... death: our downfall... there's only mindinf the "creativity" of being left with the in-between...

lay my tired bones and aches into this everyday
shallow grave of sleep:
    i care not for dreams or for other:
unfathomable "questions"...

and when all is done and i have,
no more use for sleep...
lay my tired mind and captured
breath of 21 grams of worth...
into... the sleep of sleep...
        into the architecture of death:

and let neither the obnoxious
insurgence of a dream like heaven
or a dream like pandemonium...
starve me from exercising...
        my... wish to retain obscurity
within the confines of stones, bones...
rust and decay...

lay my bones and aches into
this everyday shallow grave of sleep...
lay my mind and "soul"
into the grand architecture of death...
don't think that you will find
me content with sleep and dreams...
so much so:
content with death and a dream
of dante's geometry of heaven...

   somehow i can cherish the sleep
without the dream...
as i can death...
     should death sentence me to
a fate of Sisyphus: and no demon guardian
with a leash, a hot-rod of agitation
to be my shadow...

who said: the fate of this cheater
of the gods: orpheus the gnostic...
   sisyphus the gnostic...
was to roll the stone... under who's supervision?
tell me again: of that... cat-walk
of evolution...

from the hunched ape to the upright man...
and... the comedy...
back to the hunched spine:
of how an ape borrowed a crow
to ponder... or took a cat and petted it...
in vain hope that:
when sleep would be the spice to escape
the gross mundaneity of recurrent:
similar days...
      a dream...

sisyphus rolled the stone...
sisyphus could just as well... have sat on it...
how one defines eternity:
the grail of vanity...
                        is how one can
master enough: cognitive labyrinths...
to be entertained by a stone...
or "nothing": yes... esp. diese nichts...
and... da(s) nichts...
           the extremes of mediating:
ontology... aeons before the cinema
of saturn... aeons before jupiter...
gloom... and aeons more bound to
neptune...

             the planets: seen: by the naked eye...
no telescope postcards of:
oh yeah... it's there... naked, blunt truth...

as the gnostics might have said...
there are three tiers of truth...

  prosta (simple) - einfach
                           pusta (empty) - leeren
                                          czysta (pure) - rein...
anything outside of simple geometry
of explanation is... the fourth (exempt -
via the thesaurus of antonyms) -
but by the fifth: gradation...
                
truth is beauty... which is devoid of geometry...
no wonder then... that was is most
beautiful... is harangued by... the criticism
and... its self-implosive hypocrisy...
truth is a beauty that...
                    suggests: not everything
good is beautiful... a moral act is not beautiful...
that it is necessary...
one is obliged to find out...

truth as beauty is: simple...
   it is empty... and it is... pure...            

truth is both: good & evil...
          those topics of necessity and...
the... not necessary "additions" come to mind...

it's no longer worth citing truth: per se -
science... facts... a rubric of psychology
in a secular... materialistic world...
a logic behind a soul... body / meat and two veg...
what soul?

truth as a regurgitation of scientific facts
and statistics... a new an old orthodoxy...
perhaps: perhaps not...

          all in all...
             truth: what i can muster to deem vague:
because what's required is not...
nor will it ever be: in vogue...
   a hyphen prefix stressor:
             truth-
                                     and...
   the three adjective suffixes: with the hyphen
included -pure
                        -empty
                                 -simple...

death is a sleep i cannot fathom...
        death is a sleep i cannot fathom...
death is a sleep i cannot fathom...
       if only life was a dream:
that didn't require me, to fathom, it...

"reality": and the so-called "questions"
i.e. reality being... that sort of canvas...
of walking around in...
someone else's... fiction?
at least the rocks the stones have
a somewhat agreed-upon reality of bible:
geology - and no worship: etc.

letover: just... snippets...
but the original theme is given light...
on why it's recurrent...
why did sisyphus toil with the stone:
did zeus give attach to him
a shadow handler with leash
and a fire-riddled poker like the man
was less a man and more:
a work-horse?

couldn't... the myth come up with...
and finally... sisyphus sat on a stone...
curled up his once ***** spine...
took thought before the court of eternity...
and decided: lest i be... "mistaken"...
what happened to gregor samsa
is one coin-flip...
  
   yes... today i was cleaning the shed...
and i was witness to a genus of spider...
when touched by an "invisible" hand / poker...
once... will fli: bellyside up...
curl its anorexic extensions and
play dead...
honest to "god"... spider play dead better than
dogs pretend, to... play... dead...

no... one day... i wasn't faced with
the fate of gregor samsa...
although the mush and the exoskeleton
of thought god soul and:
journalistic nuance of:
the alt. to priests of the 20th century...
carl bernstein / bob woodward /
  paul avery...

once upon a time in the 20th century...
where... journalists could be credited
with status... of... Manichaeans...
when journalistic integrity was:
credo... and... the ditto-heads
were... the apes in a zoological
confinement...      splendid times!
days when... one would... admire...
journalists...
          
   mental health / psychology /
the iron maiden of... finding a simple daft...
expression of... also... made...
coincidental with catching a breath...

          the worst kind of "reality" is
bound to the "future" of the narrative
and esp. off the narrative...
of what... is the sort of people...
that also: deviate from reading a paragraph
of fiction!
"reality" and... -itz...
                          the reality of:
someone else's fiction... a solo project...
from under the iron curtaian...
through to: and including... the silicon veil...
much later:
  but hardly the bed-fellows
coming to terms with the niqab...

      i die: believing that there are...
countless impromptus... serving me...
akin to make replicas of richard the lionheart's:
odes to being: without "stock"...
while john, lackland...
capitulated... for worth of the time: that's ripe...
an affectionate: gyrocentric whoosh!
of a ****-buddy...
and the magna carta was, ahem...
signed...

                     kant... the forever basis of...
the bachelor party:
no stag no hen parties...
the deafening stillness of...
sometimes and "something" in
between...

confines of: pity me for petting cats...
but... he loves me... he loves me not: sunflowers...
i totem a cat... not the petals...
for hope of these grand architectures of dreams:
that people: supposedly acquire...
they even mind telling others that
they have had recurrent dreams!

who are... these people... who have had
recurrent dreams?!
i want to know them!
who are... these people...
who have had recurrent dreams?!

   - moi! ******* son o' german: **** it...
both...               mir!     mich!
the orc: the east... extensions of the mongol
borrowed space by the slav...
hardly... something from...
bothersome south... akin to africa...

stereographs of the modern...
western: "man" is... orcs are not... associated
with... mongols... slavs:
the u.s.s.r.?
they are... allocated a status for...
african migrants from 2015?
on those... inflatable boats?
these... these... are your... orcs?!

           ha ha! pale orc... ching-chang-yin-yang
orc... etc. etc.
            no... never down south...
not when hu-chow and salman ibn
hussein took over kenya
and the the east coast of africa...

i imagine the orc to be meme: toe in toe
with the mongol -
the tartars of crimea...
      pale orc: what?! zee zulu black
panthers: panthers of south h'america?!

hassan i sahba... without exception of
muhmmad... and his name was...
muhammad ibn "abn / abu"...
pray pity: but! there was
a figure of grandfather and uncle:
sometimes the father gets it right...
sometimes...
sometimes the mother gets it right...
but... for fear of ******...
i drink and i tell you...
i'd sooner want
25% of me under my wing...
than 50% of me...

for the love of grandchildren...
god knows what one is to do with children...
send 'em to the crows... and swans?!
i can... love is diluted...
25% of me with the grandchildren...
which implies...
that 50% of me is not relegated
to dispose of with:
a mimic impetus to
"continue"...

                we can be friends at 25%
replica: in its immediacy...
at 50% we're talking: *******...
or on the rare occassion:
it might work: jesus joseph & mary...
according to the zodiac:
jesus was a bull...
joseph was an ares...
mary was a pisces...

           alternatively...
your pick of rat pig and barry...
      yes, of course...
            all formality of a tux-lingo...
dear sir...
sky 'as fallen!
   kind regards...
             better this... than a crossword:
for pedsntry in straitjackets?

new-age ******* of re-learning literacy
because... 2nd act of...
the phantom: all opera shun itself
to the nieche...
masquarade...
                   new learn ways of spell..
new learn ways of recite...
bogus trivial
abracadabra variation of
sudoku...

                    christine was
never a christopher was never: but probably
was a byzantine... cataphracts...
a name for every kind if beloved:
an ogling father in tow...
to mind bori g conservatism...
and all the flamboyancy of lies...
white lies: and hardly...
all the bitter truths...

     all that is mine isn't...
crown and the breeding: what i most likely...
in that: most feel obliged to fear:
the patience and stealth
of spider pin-knuckle rubric...

yes... hello: "today"...
and tomorrow... *******!

random extract:

                 the thuluth:
and the thoth: that became
             the signature of muqlah shirazi...

— The End —