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Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
the construction industry is filled with Englishmen... well, let's just say the management and bricklayers, and from i hear it's a ****** management, they think it's cheaper to loan a crane than to install one... as i heard, a typical construction site of has about 30 Englishmen tops, a construction site population of about 400... i might be exaggerating, but i heard it first hand, and i've seen it, well 10 years ago it was a bit different, but the cracks were already showing - how one Brit undermined another Brit, dehumanised one ethnicity using another's desperation / exaggeration of rewards: by lowering wages of the former's.

only a casual inference of the vote -
it's one thing pushing away the psychology
of the collective into the recesses of Hades -
even further into Tartarus -
well, you can see Tartarus from here -
the Titans are above us, Luna, and Helios,
Jupiter and Saturn and Mars - we rise
from this place, at least with faithful command
to whatever childish ambition -
psychology can shove collective psychology
of a populace into theory - that calm resolve
of reason, the unconscious and its archetypes -
but to concern oneself with passions,
that's also necessary - side with the "enemy"
to understand them, and then see past the fog...
in a fashion magazine... citation:
if we block free movement, and experienced
Polish or Bulgarian seamstresses cannot come
into the country, it is not obvious how they will
be replaced - "we couldn't have grown the business
without the help and support of these killed people,"
says designer *Christopher Raeburn
, who
wasn't able to find similarly experienced Brits
in London (pedantic note, the dittoing of that quote
should belong to me, i'm assuming direct contact
with the designer and the writer of the article,
ditto quotation starts with third party members,
people like me, not with the person interviewed
and the interviewee - i now understand how
dittoing works in English in terms of quoting
someone - in means as above, but by another person;
but i'm sure the quote was passed as word-of-mouth,
so the person who's first to pass a quote shouldn't
immediately use " " marks, he's not a third-person
encapsulation of a newspaper article, this isn't
a novel - simple math: origin (0, on an axis of
x, y, z), person who first encounters the origin-al
notes it with precision 'the sun will come up
tomorrow' - after that a person who encounters
'the sun will come up tomorrow' will then pass
the message down as: "the sun will come up tomorrow",
and then the dittoing cascade appears - the way
gossip spreads - it's not exact - it's ~truth -
people add to it, change it, overhear it and modulate
it - only the first person from the naked origin
should be allowed to ditto the quote - i.e. use
the " " marks - the second person directly citing
the origin makes a single layered membrane encapsulation -
after that it's a repeat of two layers, with the second
layer ably fluctuating, hence not loss of the origin
but a polymer of interpretations - Odysseus said of me:
'Homer' cited the 'Trojan war', we cite "Homer" and
the "Trojan war" as 'Odysseus' said, myth making in ambiguity
or the gossip factory, but given the sequence
0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2... nth
a, 'a', "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a"... nth we all have a
chance to cite something from the third person,
after all, isn't fiction's limit based on the third person?
the pedant in me had to mule over this to get some
alcohol frenzy from it... and hey! i did).
it wasn't immigration to be honest, the racist smears
were a smokescreen... look at it this way...
the English Civil War... a friend of mine at university
once said: 'no great nation emerges without a civil war',
i could have written something in excess of that
but then i'd be writing as a third person " " inventing it
and almost treating it as my own, which is a no-go
zone - but from scraps you get the idea - go home,
things are about to get ugly between our civil partners...
and it doesn't boil down to wages as such,
Brits love the fact that Swedish students come to
the Norfolk fields for strawberry harvests, or whoever...
you know what i think it is? London urbanity got
to the vein of countryside folk, or Manchester being
overshadowed, actually globalisation ensured that
only capitals are "representative" of each nation
(inverse the dittoing, that's insinuating a passing-on
from an abstract, like Sartre's notation of "ego" meaning:
imitate me in between each "ego" with my narrative) -
they're not, but the golden nugget in my reasoning
is primarily concerned with You-Tube Sensations -
you name them: eat a tablespoon of cinnamon
and then sniff a ***** sneaker - film it, earn a billion -
become a unit of advertisement, sell it, bin it,
record your life, people binge on it, earn a windmill -
Vlog Blog Bog Sven and Fjoorn - remember when
children were employed in Victorian England?
this isn't between a Brit and a Bulgarian - this **** is
about a Brit and a Brit, hindsight: the English Civil war...
one Brit is saying, deep in the countryside:
you know what, there are people in urban environments
that teach their children that milk comes from
supermarkets and not cows, there's a borderline between
milking a cow and ******* on a part of a woman's
body overly sexed up - this has nothing to do with migration,
well, party it does, it want labourers to understand
a master, some ******* Bulgarian who speaks one
sentence of English gives about two nanoseconds trying
to understand authority - it's not demeaning to him,
he's told what to do, and off he goes and does it and
daydreams about his family reaping the benefits back home...
but employ someone proficient in the language,
who understands it, who has leisure time in it,
and you get a different picture dear Oliver - please sir,
can i have some more? no! back to work you filthy
little Beatnik! it's the self-worth pride, the self-sustaining
pride of nations - the people are saying: did we reduce
our youth to write video biography entries that only
tell other young people to buy the stuff they're advertising,
and all of them have become so fragile as to write poetry?!
well... better think again! minus the influx of migrants...
the doctor that relocated the upper-part of my index
was Hungarian... if it weren't for him... i'd probably have
to use a door to pull it back in...
and i understand what they're saying: i'm not racist... but...
my own countrymen have become so ******* lazy
i have to disguise my racism against other ethnic races...
because if i don't... it's back to Cromwell and the
Parliamentarians of the Square Table.
Lawrence Hall Nov 2018
“Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison’s explosive Brit
in the FBI thriller The Sixth Day is now in paperback!”

One wouldn’t like to see an exploding Brit
Who would ruin one’s tweed country suit
Splattering English gore all over it –
That exploding galloping major brute!

But

Before the man went CRACK!
How did they ever fit
That pyrotechnic Brit
into a paperback?
Tabitha  Jun 2014
The Great Brit.
Tabitha Jun 2014
His voice should be made into a cassette tape,
I'd carry it wherever I'd go,
His eyes are so piercing I'd be afraid if the stars themselves go dull,
Images in my head, engraved in my skull,
I love it when he calls me "love",
Quite ironic if you ask me,
The Great Brit!
The Great Brit!
Great Britain you see,
Where I'd much rather be,
It's much more than what I could have dreamed,
Hearing his voice ring in my ears as lovely as can be,
I think he can't agree,
Agree with me,
He believes his voice is short of magnificent,
His voice is a sweet instrument,
Must I end this right now and here?
For all I get caught up in is his voice in my ears.
Ps. When british people say their accents arent nice, I WOULDNT SHUT UP IF I WAS BRITISH IF YOU ASK ME ITS BEAUTIFUL!
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
finding gravity on a bicycle...

surely... given that most people
don't write a ******* hemmingway...
and there's no william buckley jr.
doing the interview...
and there's no norman mailer...

and that: no one really bothers
with kierkegaard and that:
kant "famously" didn't marry starry crap...
why didn't i have kids
and start a family?
uh... dunno... mother's best lie...
or the best lie a neighbour brings
with her... whenever you're
being a 2nd witness without
the 1st witness being there...

and she says an "also" with regards
to her son having the same luck
with women...
when the comparison comes:
a koala bear versus a gorilla...
bonsai tiger!
like a koala is a ******* bear
to begin with...
cuddly soft-pouch toy-ah-thing!

but there's that great feat!
finding gravity on a bicycle...
my mother helped me with that...
and that famous fail of
a rotondo... well... more or less
a cricket ground egg shaped, oval...
or a rugby ball...
the shoulder on the salto bike
hard... rammed into a car....

as a child you were supposedly well
loved...
and this is modern poo'etry i hear about?
here's to: john sounding like johny...
will sounding like *****...
richard sounding like: **** and not richy...
it's cute... matthew... matti: finnish...
leonard is: leo oh leo...
why art we all not named: Li Lo Po!

of course everyone managed to spot
the tetragrammaton vowel catchers that's
hey'zeus! no... not the bloke strapped
to the mannequin of tailoring...
oh no... not the crucifix pendulum
"for us all"... by blood... by cross...
who is to exfoliate on the crucifix...
better than some well scouted for materials
on a mannequin canvas for tailoring
a suit?
the guilt?! oh the guilt!
well... thank god this metaphysician would
never address the material realm of
enjoying a... dabble with... wool...
when donning a suit...
or leather shoes... or any presence of suede...
beside the crucifix mannequin: replica
and pittance!

- but finding gravity on a bicycle is one thing...
finding gravity when swimming is another...
it's called gravity...
but some heretical circles call it:
balance...
after all... it is both gravity...
and balance... given that while riding
a bike... or swimming...
you're pretty much sure, assured:
to not be falling...

you can find gravity with newtonian hindsight...
of sure...
that's there... it involves the magicians orbs...
copernican mathematics and...
target practice when it comes to
propaganda spew...
and Steward... the lesser... Stew...
cousin of the house of Stuart...
not Steward... Stuart...
which is (again)...
a McKiteit and MacCoddlewit...
some Glaswegian *****-donor clinic
"miss-up" mix-it: tend to...
lounging busy... which is of course...
besides the "look"...

5 bazookas cleared for a salvo!
hip hip! burger-pound!
hip hip! boom shizzle shoom!
hip hip! hooray!
oh now we'z getz uz best
partay birth doy wishy-washy
"protagonists"!

but given the current Persian affair...
i couldn't help to notice...
love actually... the narrative...
the u.s.a. and england...
the Z-spezial re-la-tion-ship...

so... who's spastic... and who's fantastic?!
spaz: B-bristolian-esque joking...
never aside...
who's the spaz and who's the frizzy-fuss?!

spe-zial mother russia talks down
to dog Kiev: yes, it's in (the) Ukraine...
spezial iz not what iz?

h'america... kept a yorkshire terrier...
media leetches of england
firmly in its grasp...
cuz onez we woz: once -
the militia contra the crown...
of north virginia...

coz b'rah: a 79-year-old man
who lit himself on fire protesting
against russia's language policies
in the capital of the volga region
of udmurtia has died;
name? alberto raisin...
which sounds terrible in its
non-native spanish...

but there's something worth of gravity
without debating
the heliocentric model...
finding one's balance on a bicycle...
a posteriori events...
but... the same balance can be
translated into a swimming session...

my god my father tried to teach me...
if i was supposed to learn
to swim in the sea...
with the fear: of not seeing the depth?
isn't that like a thesaurus
congestion of: acrophobia?
isn't there a word in the borrowed
lexicon of the ancient greeks...
concerning... fearing to swim in a body
of water... where you can't see the bottom?
i could learn to swim in a swimming
pool... thankfuly all because and due to...
moi...

i also found gravity in water...
i could... lie in water and become...
the antithesis of: the body consists
of 90% of water...
yes sherlock watson & sons... ltd...
but in water i'm mostly fat...
if i find the right balance...
i float...
which is why swimming is a bit
like riding a bicycle...
you find: the center...
or gravity...

again... in this special "relationship"
of bruv-love...
between h'america and whittle brit-pop interlude...
oasis on the continent...
my my... blur, even...
breakfast at tiffany's back in the dough-dough-us...
who is the ******* SPASTIC?
in this "SPEZIAL" relationship?
i guess the english must be the SPEZIALS...

a bit like watching:
go-go-gonzales trip up on a spelling mistake...
which is all i care for...
like a comedia...
a deviation from the informal, later,
subject of language implementation...
and all this peacocking prior...

where else does gravity allow itself...
a presence of the multi-vector?
up and down... left and right...
it's not as easily explained as:
on a ledge... with an apple...
drop it... newton with a header!
a 1-all equalizer in stoppage time
an F.A. cup re-match!

gravity on a bicycle...
it's hardly a drop affair...
gravity in water...
it's hardly merely swimming...
there's that aspect of finding... buoyancy...
there's not need for you to swim...
to exhert so much effort...
that you might as well drown 10 meters
in after swimming the 'undred...

no buoyancy: no chinese fortune cookies...
i still don't know which is more grand...
beside the acrobatics of... olympic level
acrobatics...

it's not bound to youth via lifting weights...
or supreme mao tse tung's winter olympics
of: hunger strikes in Vinter...
the gravity bound to a bicycle...
or the gravity bound to swimming...
after all... the latter is a bit "funny"...

"levitation" and buoyancy...
the dracula soundtrack:
only because of gary oldman and the composer
wojciech kilar... and the given, current...
b.b.c. spin-off and how...
yes... it's that terrible...
i don't even know where those five-stars
came from!
the archetype of feminine romance novels?
the syphilitic lover? the "vampire"?

yes, no? two guesses as good as: nein - keiner...
and, quiet honestly...
nothing could make this exercise in:
not engaging in any of all the available
comments sections on any website...
any worse... than it already is...

it comes as no surprise that: i write this poo'ems
not because i don't write poetry...
but because i will neither write
a poem by standards reserved for
pedagogy or demagogy...
or write identifiable puzzle-bog-trots of...
language reserved for politicization:
and not for... counter-marxist...
"psychiatric" post-...
hardly modern or... "today's journalism"...
eh... pushing it toward a Beckett-clause...
concerning language that is not expected...
oh but i certainly do know
a difference between formal language
and... this... the informal language...
the cognitive extension that does not
require a "free speech" protection bias...

none of this was spoken...
it was seen...
weaved into "thinking"...
that's the difference... isn't it?
from my end of the tenniscourt "promenade"
i've heard nothing but clickick...
off this dead-end replica piano
of a qwer
asdf
zxcvbnm

unless my shadow spoke... or there was some
telepathic connection
with the schizoid "group-think" of me
sourcing my sometime odd...
cognitive-murmors of "thought"...
"hallucinations"...
so be it...

this defence of a freedom of speech...
how does that even extend into writing?
i will never know...
and to be honest? i don't want to know...
writing is an extension of thinking...
which is also an inversion of speaking...
but it's never speaking...
where's the audio on this piece?!

how about... plucking your eyes out,
after fating yourself with the
original curiosity to begin with?
sounds better: than... what still persists as...
not being, said!

this was written, it wasn't said...
this is not a transcript...
this is not a transcript...
if this is censored...
then my... "schizophrenia" is not even
my original thesis of: bogus
mono-lingual parody of bilingualism...
no need to cite **** sapiens
jurisprudence advocates...
lawyers... the thesaurus bargain barons etc.
this is... what's those words they use?
invasion of the tabernacle?
do my "auditory hallucinations" stem from...
these words...
a private investement in internet access...
again: nothing is being said!
because this is a "public arena"...
a "forum"...
and the eyes on the other side of this text...
are c.c.t.v. eyes?!
not private eyes?

what's the point of freedom of speech?
when the freedom to think:
and subsequently write... is bombarded
by being who: see via reading braille...
and read... comments likes dislikes and all
those other ratios?

writing is an extension of a freedom
to think... most people who speak freely
don't speak via a precursor script...
that's not free speech: that's scripted speech!
and just because it happens be placed
in a public "forum"...
that's the argument that this writing
is a freedom of "speech"?!
really?! i guess your average u.s. citizen
is more despotic than the *******
president... then...

again.. blah blah blah blah blah...
blah blah.... blah blah blah blah blah...
blah... blah blah... blah blah blah blah blah blah...

you'd sooner convince a parrot to sing
you a song in sparrow than call this "debate"...
evenly focused on one or neither side "winning".
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
poet, or philosopher, it doesn't really matter which is which, or whether the two are indistinguishable, notable in the former scenario, when someone has an eclectic bounty of interest is simply not love-scorned or love-nostalgic, love-idealistic, does it really matter? i was once called a philosopher: a teenage girl said in third person (as if she was a puppet and some-thing was moving her tongue): 'talk to this philosopher'... not in that sarcastic way that philosopher is an misnomer or an abused term of: self-gratifying grandeour, it was quiet genuine, but: imagine my shock... i had an ambition in life, it was to perform a service to thinking: without doing as much as hammering a nail into a plank of wood, that's the ambition of any thinking man: to borderline on telekinesis or telepathy... that was Hegel's modus operandi, his categorical imperative... after all: ego is a metaphysical tool, while thought is its metaphysical canvas... the mere suggestion that a copernican inversion can happen in physics "contra" metaphysics... it's already apparent, any word can behave like a hand touching the sacred object / subject of transfiguration and become something else, even a misnomer can find itself given solace to the user... for now i've forged a belief in the ultimate: away from the absolute in relation to omni in unum - one first has to learn to think, before having to learn to feel... mind you, i don't like the current nietzschean inversion of the cartesian equation: (ego) sum ergo (ego) cogito... esp. among the youtube political commentators, too many examples to give: i'm a classical liberal, i'm a progressive, i'm a liberterian... i don't really like seeing: i am, precede i think... i don't even like the origin-argument of this inversion: i exist for the sole purpose of thinking... after all: i think prior to being, since i can also daydream and not be what my thinking suspects as a possible truth-outcome... that's the nature of the freedom of thought: i don't have to be what i think, i can find thinking to be a pleasure, when the senses do not offer me any pleasure derivative, e.g. eating can sometimes be boring, chewing, chewing, *******... i eat because i need to live: i don't live to eat... i really have under-appreciated Hegel, i should really visit my grandparents for two months and read the phenomenology of the spirit: i'm trying to replicate the saying attributed to him (verbatim), but i doubt that i will, i don't have the patience to sift through all the quotes, but it goes along the lines of: beware oh wordly man, to not be a pawn in a thinking man's game... hence my suggestion of philosophy entering into the realms of telekinesis and telepathy: you get to see things play out and people express the origin story, of your own memetic generation of the original idea... how are poets finally alligned to philosophers? good thing that i studied chemistry at edinburgh university: we return to atoms, words are no longer enough, sure, they are, contrary to the statement...  (why did i under-appreciate Hegel? ah... had my head stuck up heidegger's and kant's *****...

  integration? great!
but i'll meet you halfway...
    i'll eat your fish & chips,
your englush breakfast,
  i won't sing your anthem: god save the queen,
****** anthem, too short,
but i will whistle through:
the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
like i might through la marseillaise...
i'll meet you halfway...
i'm not a former colony member,
commonwealth,
   i'm not some ****- paying bribes
to the british powers
to join in on a world cup of cricket...
this is what happens when immigration
turns sour...
they either lesrn the host tongue,
or they don't learn it...
or they can't distinguish the two:
speak polonaise at home,
speak the hosts' sprechen outside of it...

   if the ******* aren't suspect:
by not being bilingual...
the arab beatles... jihadi john...
          ringo star h'ahmed...
  george ali...
                paul mecca rashid...
oh i'll settle for integration...
but don't you ******* think i'll give
up my mother tongue
for "c.c.t.v." close-ups back home,
home being my private lodge...
like ******* will...
  i'll speak your tongue in public...
but i'm not ******* former commonwealth
****- riddled with a need to play
cricket, "forget" my tongue in order
to compensate for olives
              and sun-burnt bananas!

a former colony ****-**** is about
to dictate the rules for fellow
europeans, on the tram-ride from
Birmingham to Nottingham?
seriously?
        but of course the englishman
will favor the former colony pet bush-monkey
from sri lanka...
since the brit can't really dictate
to a fellow european his superiority
complex... which he can...
with a petted copper skinned
toy-ting...
who brought 'im a korma curry!
nice one, ol' laddy...
        right on the plonker...
                 i'm not finished!
                        i'm just getting started!

gehirnablassen:

perfectly respected immigration,
given that so many english girls just love
the attention their **** minders,
sexually abused,
not really making it as nurses
or... ahem... karaoke superstars
worth the while of britain's got talent
or voice of britain,
or...whatever the ****** show was
that gave birth to one direction...

so a.... brain-drain? good immigration?
the best!

i can sit awhile by myself and count...
1. the sparrows,
2. the swallow,
3. the starlings,
   4. the crows,
5. the magpies,
6. the pigeons,
7. the woodland pigeons
(fatter, with dog collars),
8. kestrels
  (one is enough to begin
the count)...
9. the blackbirds....
10. seagulls... seagulls?! 25 miles from
romford to southend! seagulls?!
this far in-land?! fair enough...
11. a robin...
                   12. goldfinch...
i just sit and watch these birds
in my garden, i sometimes spot
a darting frog in the garden,
i'm more english than the english...
i actually enjoy owning a garden...
the "english" surrounding me
exemplify a bbq. as a luxury parade...
what's so luxury about marinating
some meat, and then grilling it?!
please! enlightend me!

    gehirnablassen...
                   brain-drain immigration,
the type asiatic tiger-mums brag about
at child olympics...
   for the required rubric stature...
******* mothers, basically...

1. χaron χaos - cha-cha-cha       khaos
2. theaetetus - so / ma   letters / syllables:
     graphemes: sz phi theta
      compound syllables (caron s) - Na (sodium)
3. music choice...
       brain damage perturbator ft. noir deco
    virga iesse floruit, gradual of eleanor of
britanny...
4. pride / stubborness (not equal to) honour,
tolerating islam is not the same
as respceting islam...
   german 19th century fascination
with islam...
     θought and φilosophy...
   greek in warsaw, giving him directions,
talks: sounds so much like spanish...
5. england a nation of singletons,
idiosyncracy... social pressures in poland
and even in h'america missing in england
to marry...

1.

chamaleon tongue,                    shape shifter,
bez akcentu w piśmie - więciej akcentu poza pismem
(trainspotting scottish), welsh, cockney,
east london altogether, pakistani english, etc.
e.g. rather, or raver, i.e. not rayver
(someone who parties at night on ecstasy pill)
but ra'ver, like verging on a new discovery,
it's not even the = ~v but is actually v...
english is a chamaleon tongue, you say 'nostic
when you write gnostic, i say diagnostic,
therefore say gnostic, you say 'nome, i say gnome,
as cf. with diagnostic;
then there's the case of the per se:
you say chamaleon - no kappa there apperent, eh?
but there's chappie, chap, chuckles,
no kappa in a millionth chance
to also say nough'ledge for knowledge,
a bit like that gnome of yours...
as i said before: a language without
a written insertion of stressors / distinctions
will produce a massive array of diacritical
stressors / distinctions outside the written format,
but it will also become as complex as to
allow adults with learning difficulties e.g. dyslexia,
and that horrid internet slang of shortcuts:
i ate my 8 when i was late for my disco date
with the cha cha cha melon.

p.s. if there's a hay patch at the beginning, the nasal flute
will ask larry 'the lynx' saxophone to hark it out with rasp
gritting of phlegm... but if it's somewhere else down
the piccadilly line... it will act like a nudist spy and resonate
less than expected; probably mingling with f, i think.
Paul Butters  Nov 2015
True Brit
Paul Butters Nov 2015
With a Jewish religion and a German Queen,
Who has a clue where the Brits have been?
Mum’s clan were Huguenots,
Dad’s maybe Welsh.
Lots of Africans in our football teams.

Keep out those immigrants many do say,
Even those whose parents came from Bombay.
We’ve lots of patriots from Pakistan:
The younger generation, Brits to a man.

But some are Radicals I hear you say,
We should be sending them on their way,
Back to Asia where they belong,
To the tunes of a UKIP song.

So what is “British” we must ask,
For this is not an easy task.
Justice and Democracy I hear you shout,
Tiny islands with some clout.

Shakespeare, Beatles, Rugby Lions,
Churchill clapping foes in irons.
Let’s be glad that we are free
And settle down to a cuppa tea.
Paul Butters
Rule Britannia! PS there must be a character limit here as I did Not give Bombay a separate line myself.
~
November 2023
HP Poet: Lori Jones McCaffery
Age: 84
Country: USA


Question 1: We welcome you to the HP Spotlight, Lori. Please tell us about your background?

Lori: "I was born Loretta Yvonne Spring in a tarpaper shack on Lone Oak Road, Longview Washington, on New Years Day in 1939. That means I’ll soon turn 85. In high School a boyfriend changed my first name to Lori and I kept it. At 29 I married and became Lori Spring Jones. (I signed poems “lsj”) I had one child, a daughter, and when 20 years later I divorced, I kept the Jones name. I married again, in 1988 and became Lori Jones McCaffery, sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes not. I’m still married to that Brit named Colin and I speak “Brit” fluently. I sign everything I write “ljm” (lower case). I didn’t know about handles when I joined HP, so I just used my whole name and then felt I may have seemed uppity for using all of it. If I had a handle, it would likely be POGO. Short for Pogo stick. Long Story. I have an older sister and a younger brother. Both hate my poetry. My parents divorced when I was 12. My mother’s family was originally from No. Carolina. I’m proud of my Hillbilly blood. I went to college on a scholarship. Worked at various jobs since I was in high school. Moved to Los Angeles in 1960 just in time to join the Hippy/summer-of-love/sunset-strip-scene, which I was heavy into until I married. I read my stuff at the now legendary Venice West and Gas House in Venice Beach during that period. I’ve been an Ins. Claims examiner, executive secretary, Spec typist, Detective’s Girl Friday, Bikini Barmaid, Gameshow Contestant Co-ordinator, Folk Club manager, organizational chef, and long time Wedding Director. (I’ve sent 3,300 Brides down the aisle) "


Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

Lori: "I wrote my first poem in the 5th grade and never stopped. I had an awakening in 1957 when I worked at a resort during school break and met another poet, who unleashed a need to write that I’ve never been able to quell. I joined Hello Poetry in 2015, I think. Seems like I’ve always been here. I tend to comment on everything I read here. I’ve received no encouragement from my family so I feel compelled to encourage my “family” here. I do consider a large number of fellow writers friends, and value the brief exchanges we have. I don’t know if Eliot intended HP to be a social club but among us regulars, it kind of has been, and I love that."


Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

Lori: "Living inspires me. The intricacies of relationships, and the unpredictability of navigating society. A news story often does it. A song may stir words. Other poetry often sets me off on a quest of my own. I write very well to deadlines and prompts. I adore BLT’s word game and played it a lot in the beginning. Seeing the wonderful job Anais Vionet does with them shamed me away. I have hundreds of yellow lined pages with a few lines of the ‘world’s greatest poem’ on each, all left unfinished because I’m great at starts and not so great on endings. Some day, I tell myself….some day."


Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

Lori: "Poetry has been a large part of my life as long as I can remember. I would feel amputated without it. I recited the entire “Raven” from memory in Jr. High School. I still remember most of it. More recently I memorized “The Cremation of Sam McGee” Poetry is my refuge - with words I can bandage my hurts, comfort my pain and loss, share my opinions and assure myself that I have value. It is where I laugh and also wail. I would like to think it builds bridges."


Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

Lori: "My favorite poets include Edgar Allen Poe, Robert W Service, Amy Lowell (I read ‘Patterns’ in a speech contest once), Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, and Lewis Carroll."


Question 6: What other interests do you have?

Lori: "I’m a collector. Whippet items, vintage everything, I read voraciously: 15 magazine subs, speculative fiction (SF) and anything else with words written on it. I try to read everything every day on HP. I watch Survivor religiously and keep scorecards. Ditto for Dancing with the Stars. I’m a practicing Christian with a devilish side and involved heavily in Methodist church work, which includes cooking for crowds and planning events."


Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to get to know you, dear Lori! It is an honor to include you in this series!”

Lori: "Thank you so much for this very undeserved honor. This is a wonderful thing you are doing. I know I write with a different voice than many, and it is empowering to be accepted for this recognition. I apologize for being so verbose in answering your questions. When you get to my age you just have so many stories to tell."



Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed getting to know Lori better. I learned so much. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez & Mrs. Timetable

We will post Spotlight #10 in December!

~
Aaron McDaniel  Dec 2012
Brittany
Aaron McDaniel Dec 2012
Falling in love with sarcasm wearing a onesie
From across the pond, I see your smile
Shining with a sparkling nose ring right above it
The sun hitting you just right
One day I’ll see you
You’ll see me
And we’ll grow old giggling about “poot” and “vee-tuh-min”
To everyone, you’re just another brit
To me, you’re royal family
Princess Brit
I challenged myself to write a poem for anyone and everyone of my friends that retweeted a tweet on my twitter. This is one of them.
david badgerow Aug 2015
our coolest babysitter lit a long joint and drove us to church
in her well worn '87 oldsmobile with chipped gold paint
a drooping side mirror and a tape player
that smelled like stale london gin mothballs
and a sunset butterfly heart at the same time
it had a deep ocean green calcite mandala
dancing from the windshield mirror
and a steal-your-face tattooed on the back glass
she used to blare brit-pop trying
to make the speakers bleed

that day when they finally oozed she swerved us
left through the other lane and sunday morning fog
to cut a jagged path through thick woods and into an oak tree
with a soundtrack of slow motion oasis and screeching tires
i clammored to the backseat to block the window
glass from your beautiful angelic blonde head as
dew sprayed into the vacancy from the ditch and
when i pulled the seatbelt spiderweb out of your mouth
and lifted you out of the car i was standing
barefoot in a cluster of bright red sumac next to
an ant hill pile of twisted steaming metal
and you were dripping blood from your eye and knees
asking me if we'd be late for sunday school
but you were awake and trying to smile so
we followed the powerlines back to the main road
holding hands dizzy and sweating
worried no one would ever find us
limping while the springtime songbirds
held their tongues for us but
when the hot ringing in my ears finally stopped
the sirens grew loud and close and the
birds too began their wet lipped eulogy

sometimes i think about
missing church that day
when the weather's bad
on nights like last night
sometimes i remember
our babysitter when
the fog rolls in over
the road in the morning
i wonder if she still
gets high on the
good stuff while
she drives or
if she's just
a treehugger
Dennis Scherle Jan 2014
twelve

         If i could write a letter to my twelve your old self, i would mention the pain your about to face, with self loathing and mental health is far worse then the years before. I would mention how when you wake up wipe the sleep from your eyes and read this letter and find two people you loved gone from your life forever. When you leave your plastic car framed bed you will find an empty room in the basement. The first loss is not death but abandenment leaves no answer to the sting a heart can feel when your older sister meant to guide you has ran away.  She has left, and to what you shall soon find out, left you to your death. The second loss has less thought to the idea of why? but still i did cry. It was my great grandmothers time. Her slow pace death lead to suffering till one week to the day after i turned twelve.  Emotional asking questions why, three days later i tightened my silk tie putting on a suit and ending the night seeing the casket of one of you. To think of you as dead eased my head for a while but still have to replace my frown with a fake smile. After all i lost a sister, when i needed someone to talk you were never there. Instead i just found myself cutting and dyeing my hair.  This is the year you feel your fathers strong hand as you tremble below it. This is the year you tremble in fear this is the first year you want to die

Thirteen

      To my thirteen year old self, im sorry life doesnt get better. im sorry that this is year your parents admit they don't care.  Im sorry this is the year you hear the three words no one wants or deserves to know their pain. Even though the words "I hate you" Were uttered in vain. Im sorry no one was there to hold you in there arms, im sorry of how when looked in the mirror every morniing after you showered  telling yourself its a new day and the pain is past. Im so sorry of how you found out how long the pain really lasts. Look at what you have achieved though, this is the year you win first in all categories invited to Kick Canada to again win. You achieve a bronze as a group, silver in your weopons, and gold in kickboxing. With you feeling weighed down your still weightless, with your amazing place and the smile on your face to look in the croud hearing the aplause. Somethings missing though your parents no where to be seen. Im sorry they wernt there to say good job im sorry your dads hand still strikes strong. This is the year you say enough though, you say no and strike back your foe. He stands stunned for a minute and walks away, the bruises faded away from the surface, but inside i still see them.  It is the night of my birthday i fall asleep praying tomorow will bring a better year.

Fourteen

     Im sorry this is not the year it gets better, your father never lays another hand to your dismay doesnt matter for his and your mothers word fly freely. This is the year they make you cry, only to insult you further "your nothing, your trash" there tounges did lash me. Til  i crashed under hate to my untimly fate, your mother is sick and you walk into the room as she slashes the blade across her wrist, you watch her bleed amd scream for help but she pretends u dont exsist she  spends the next year and eight monthes in psycitric care. Left in a house with nothing fair in the air my invitation ti nationals came and past i did not go in fear of leaving my mother would effect her more vast, past her yelling at ke eberyday i walked in the light blue room with the curtains always closed filled with gloom . While my mother on her last heartstrings looked for strength from her groom . Only to be filled with hate she saw me as a reminder he exsists and how he doesnt visit but i did. I walked the long path every **** day to see my mothers face still i wasnt good enough but that is just my luck. It is my last night of this age. The house is empty amd quite but still remains okay just praying thiis new year brings joy to the now broken boy.

Fifteen

     This is not the year it gets better neither, but this os the year your mother is released. It took a week for the smiles to wear away. Then i saw once again the skin tare from her flesh. Soon hate took over the tone under her breath and malace mixed with spite is the only thing left of my mother i once knew. This is the year you once again face death, you and your mother are in a car driving counting breaths singing along to eminem, reciting robert frost. when suddenly a car passes us and my mother is crossed the mid age lady on her phone swirving around, not paying atention to anyone or anything i still see her frown. She ran a stop sighn without a thought hit by a garbage truck in front of our eyes now i know the cost of when her cellphone conversation stopped. This was the first time i watched someone die. Still shocked  my mother had to call the abulence as i and the garbage man saw the damage in case she still did breath. In the end blood filled the scene as me amd the garbage man covered the front window with a sheet to protect what is left of this womens dignity. This is the year you fond a little blue pill that not only eases your pain if snorted aslo goves you a thrill. This is the first year that you almost sucsessfully kil.l... yourself going to sleep for this living hell praying next year could be better aswell.

Sixteen

     This year is a self medicated blur, this is the year you forgot who you were. T3s replaced with perks and shots only to be soon replaced with oxys in your black box crushed and lined one at a time up your nose the powder glides. The first night you try an 80 you overdose nearly comitoce as you spew a frothy white  fluid from your mouth but my freinds saved me to this day i dnt know how called said i passed out and cant drive home so my parents could never figure out how i lay on the tiled floor back from death after this a pill is never again accepted that is your debt 2 days to your birthday that cursid day your sober but that was just babby steps and i promise little soilder babby steps you would not regret.

Seventeen

      This is the year you stopped praying for help thinking you did this to yourself i promise it wasnt you. How could it be your still just in youth. This is the year you watch your father fall. You find the trail of debt 100 thousand dollars owed mine aswell of been a million for we can barely live so how would you like us to pay it back i finfd him stealing money from my backpack. This is the year you find out your dad is the same worth of a rat and you dont have to take his crap. This is the year he snaps and instead you help him back up. He was in achoma five days as you stayed never slept jus sat beside his hospital bed praying this did not mean death. Death came in a different way with your cousin brit stabbed to death by her husband on febuary fith.. this is the year you wished you diddnt exsist.

Eighteen

     This is the year.... you found the courage to see you will always be...good and thats enough for me.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
anyone spot what's so wrong with these?

Al Muhajirat
@ummmuthana2
sisters come to the land of freedom!
we have everything here for you...
Dawla university to learn your deen
and practice what you learn!        meaning religion in Arabic

first of all... can you please string-me a
complete sentence in fluent Arabic,
then add the relevant idiosyncratic
markings of geopolitical: here's Scottish
with a fragrance of Yiddish,
here's Welsh, and here's Northern Irish...
no, seriously, i'd come with my spare clothes
and tent, but i want you to encourage me
to do so in fluent Arabic,
otherwise you just sound like some Jehovah's
witness strawberry picking (not even
random words but) established words...
in the times of the quasi I.R.A.,
so much for home comforts,
like **** will i ever abandon the sedative properties
of alcohol... fair enough on
the Ram Bam Dam month - fasting does make
me focused... i'm just waiting for someone
to find my writing so offensive as to **** me,
properly, so i'm dead, not this puny amateur
crap that leaves me partially disabled from
the life i used to live: mainly Spartan,
physically; can you ******* just do it properly?
i'm tired of faking death, even death is
*******... it's like a case of Rasputin...
when is that ******* going to die?

Oum Dharr Ash Shaami
@UkhtiB
Wallah, your family will be the biggest
test for you once you make Hijrah. They're
either with you or without you.
                     i swear to god
               and Mecca to Medina 622 trip
    respectively...
                                 so you're basically saying
that northern people were Vegan turnip pickers
while the dawn of civilisation came from
Palm Springs and the shaking of coconuts?
my ancestors must have really loved the horseradish,
and given what the end product of monotheism
gave us: globalisation, and this frightening media-centred
origin of all things... mine's quiet obscure
in all honesty, and i like it like that...
thank god for Scandinavian mythology being
remembered, i'd call the Slavic history a complete
success on ethnic cleaning with the incorporation of
Christianity, the prime ethnic cleanser tool...
what a great improvement...
               haggling with the Irish, are you?
well... save me a spot when the next congregation
of Worms takes off... i'd love to don a bishop's headgear
and spit into a burning fire to get a sizzling critique back...
call it bacon? i'd call it anything i'd like.
eat bacon, economise salt.
                                               and no, god isn't taken
seriously, never was, never will be,
                                we have too much human potential to
risk in not expressing itself: humanism,
or another word for it? making tyrants the prime fetish...
not bedroom fetish... real life,
                 on the public pavement fetish:
we love them! we pet them like cats...
until they mature into people that gauge out
the cats' eyes... Vladdy Vladdy Vladdy...
a Sr. Christopher Wren man of kindred spirit would
really love to see St. Basil's Cathedral once more,
like he might want to see the orange of a carrot,
or the yellow of banana, but not necessarily
the van Gogh sunflower covert gay ****;
i heard it, it comes from the ****, the great big blank
entombed in the great big bang...
what a great choice of words to describe our history...
big... bang... a blue balloon would do just fine...
and for all that censoring of subjectivity in the west...
all that censoring of subjectivity?
means we all share one concept,
      the most tyrannical form of government,
not democratic, but autocratic, meaning we accept
everything on an Utopian level...
it's Belgium alright, flat as a pancake...
the plagiarism plateau - we all sound alike,
feel alike, isolated, redundant, and most probably
prone to terrorism and such-like adventures...
the BBC went bankrupt because of the Jimmy scandal...
Blue Peter's ship was capsized by the tears of
irrefutable lack of judgemental destiny...
Disney... well, Disney's just a placebo drug:
it eventual-ise / -ize / -eyes, something becoming
eventual, incremental revisionism toward
a predictable result - Disney placebo L.S.D. -
more from the tweets from Twatter

Umm Dujana Britaniya
@UmmDujji

Sisters who want to help making hijrah can
contact me on surespot: UmmDujji May Allah
put us on a path that will please him most.
                                          a secure messaging service.

and finally
Bakr Britanyia
@OmmBakr
food free... house free... ya3ni (like, in Arabic)
                           that's it, i'm done,
i've never seen a language incur so many mutilations,
it's not even funny, it goes way beyond circumcision,
or tattoos, or piercing... it's revolting...
                             ya free knee
                                       ya fry fri? huh?
                     ya free nigh?
                                     3 3 3 e...
        *******...
                                       when is this ****** carousel
going to stop?! neveR?           oh, i like that,
write a capital letter at the end of the word
when asking to revel in dropping the exclamation mark
ditto: neveR?              v. never?!
                                                         ­       yes,
language and the entrusted phonetic codices entrusted
to me are what Thesaurus Rex does to the dictionary,
a multiplier, and a Bach sympathiser, he
engages in language polyphony, i.e. synonymous
covert tactics of saying the same **** via
the long-way-round... bubble gum Gilgamesh...
i've seen weird **** done in the English cuisine:
sandwiches with crisps in them,
i've seen chips in buns... but come on... avocado
on toast?! what's wrong with guacamole?
that's why i mentioned Gilgamesh, say g g g,
you know, acquiring a vocabulary is one thing,
practising it effectively is another... and succumbing to
mortal pangs is yet another...
                                  and i can't do crosswords for
the love life... it's just BLANK...
                                        i don't treat language
as a way to learn in, and then waste it on games...
this is this and that is that... clear division...

nonetheless i'm still peeved about these tweets...
i'm betting the same people who endorse
a full competence of Arabic have these kind of minions
who they keep restrained by only spitting out
a few Arabic words, and only signifying words,
instructive words, not anything resembling ego...
which is a shame, ****** unconvincing mind you,
i'd love to do a Byron scenario with them,
but it's the barbarism of their fake adaptation
of Arabic that is worse than their beheading propaganda...

*a jak chcesz? to ci po Polsku też coś zaśpiewam, gnoju.

— The End —