Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Andrew T Jan 2017
Thank you. For everything.

Cecilia touched the red splotch on my polo shirt, removed it with her finger, and wriggled her nose, as the overhead light brightened with a hazy blue. She licked her finger. I was just glad when she pulled out a chair, sat down, moved closer to me, as I poured myself a ***** cran. Cecilia clapped her hands once, and then clapped them again, as the ceiling slowly morphed into a blanket of green smoke. I guess it looked more like the planet, as the smoke turned into small pockets of water blue.

She closed her fingers over my wrist and choose to look at the floor. "What happened to the carpet?" Cecilia asked, her eyes raising. "What do you mean?" I asked, looking down at my feet that were drenched in honey and chocolate. The TV crackled to life and a picture of Joey Biden appeared and he was writing in a diary. He wore a tennis hoodie, sweatpants, and Birkenstocks.

“What do you think he’s writing?” Cecilia asked, as she munched on a pineapple.

Joey put his pencil down on the desk, then walked over to the window on the right-hand side, opened it, and took a green **** sitting on his nightstand, ripped it, letting out a plume of smoke.

I shrugged and took a large bite out of of the pineapple.

“Something funny? Something serious?” Cecilia asked again, not seeming to notice the green smoke filling up the living room.

“You want my honest opinion?” I asked. The walls trembled from the hammers beating against them. A baby grand piano was being played somewhere upstairs. Outside, stray dogs were barking up a rainstorm. I tossed the pineapple over my shoulder and pulled a candy bar sticking out of the couch cushions. I felt the years of decay and melted caramel apple coating my palm, as I hunched forward, and tossed the candy bar out the windows. The dogs howled gratefully and crooned an old jazz bebop tune.

Cecilia laughed, clicking her heels together. “No, lie to me like you do when I ask you, ‘does this dress make me look fat,” she said, as Joey reached up to his bookcase and inserted his diary in between a history text book and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. He sighed, closed his eyes, and began to talk in Portuguese.

“He’s writing something about ****. Probably because he just got high,” I said, as I put my hand over my mouth and yawned.

Joey stopped talking in Portuguese and then he got up, walked over the TV screen, touched a button. The screen went black.

Cecilia’s face was shrouded in green smoke, green as crinkled dollar bills. “Do you want to go to sleep?” she asked, stepping over the passed-out brown bear laying in a puddle of honey and chocolate.

“It’s our anniversary,” I said, moving my finger gently over a plush red box. I turned and looked at Cecilia who was grabbing my face and kissing it. The box fell into the honey and chocolate, sticking to the floor.

I bent down, picked up the box, and opened it. A paper airplane floated out and unfolded itself, landing neatly in Cecilia’s hands. She began to read it, “Dear President Obama. Thank you. For everything…”

I closed my eyes and listened to an old Louie Armstrong record playing on a turntable a foot away in the kitchen. The needle scratched. Then, the volume lowered down.

The curtains closed.

And the TV buzzed as the dogs burned each house in the neighborhood.
Inspired by a youtube video featuring Obama thanking Joe Biden.
If I could fly I would know, what life looks like from up above and down below.
I'd keep you safe, I'd keep you dry.
Don't be afraid Cecilia I'm the satellite, and you're the sky.
Not my work.
Who dares invade my hallowed bounds?

It is Saint Cecilia's Bane
quavering and crotcheting
his Mammon-hymns in vain!

God's weighted ear
he cannot imitate:
spilled lilies strew the floor,
roses wither in the dry chalice
tucked away under his desk.

He said:
"I can't be your Daddy,"
to tell me my mind,
taking me aside to
chide me for my
freshly-ravished soul.

Cecilia, I consecrate that place and day to you!
July 2020.
(Contre qui, Rose, avec-vous
adopté ces épines?)
EPILOGUE:

When wisdom fills the old calabash,

It overflows and seeps in

The sun dries it to be stronger

That way it lasts with experience

So was the calabash of Atanga’s Granpa

On his very dying bed

He called Atanga to his bed

And had his last stream flow to him

GRANDPA:

My dear Atanga,

Please in the name all great Atangas

This is my last advice to you

If you wish to take a wife

Never choose either of these:

The woman with light skin

The woman with dark skin

The woman who is short

And the woman who is tall


ATANGA:
Ei! Grandpa!

Then tell me not to marry

Who then do you want me to marry?

Not the fair

Nor the dark

Not the short

Nor the tall?


GRANDPA:

Listen my boy

To words of old

The light skinned woman

Is the fantasy of all

If you choose her

None will help you prosper

Every man wants you to fail

So they can quickly take your place

So never dream of the fair woman

No matter how much you crave for her


ATANGA:

Oh! I see

I think I do understand

Grandpa what about the rest?


GRANDPA:

Never go in for dark skinned woman

She is the one that all your people loathe

She is the one whose people hate you

The only people interested are you and her

When disaster strikes, none will hear

So never go in for the dark skinned woman


ATANGA:

Oh! I see

Now I know

It is not the colour

Nor the character

A woman like that

Would do me harm

Now let us go on

Explain the rest


GRANDPA:

Never go in for the short woman

A short woman is the neighbour’s daughter

Her house is so close to your house

You can never have a moment of peace

Whatever you do

Her people poke their noses

You can never have your lives to live


ATANGA:
Grandpa is wise

So what about the last?


GRANPA:

The tall woman

Is the woman who comes from afar

Her home-town is far

So you can’t have peace

Any time there is trouble in her home

You need to pay

To get your people to go with you

Amidst the feeding

And transportation

How can you proper?


ATANGA:

Granpa is wise

Grandpa has lived

Who would have thought

Of these wise sayings

To an infant where thoughts are concerned?

Thank you Grandpa

So which type of woman

Must I marry?

Grandpa?

Grandpa?

I am asking you a question!

Grandpa!!!!

Grandpa please answer!!!!


MMA:

Grandpa is gone

To the land of beyond

Where sorrow is nil

And thinking is unreal

Just be glad you sipped from his calabash

Of wisdom before he left

PROLOGUE:

And that ended

Grandpa’s advice

Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia (c) 2014
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
this is truly a welcome break from:
freeing all the drafts -
which i imagined to be equivalent, or rather:
the 2nd parallel of the original adjecent -

i imagined it would feel like:
releasing doves with laurel branches firmly
lodged in their beaks -
just as the waters of the flood would recede...

but it truly felt like:
the inversion of the diarrhoea-constipation
"paradox"... because it felt like both,
but never giving me a clue as to
what was more prominent -

the sharp edge of a knife -
or the horizon when the sky becomes
the sea far away....

i'm not ashamed to throw this onto the fore...
it happened to me once...
but on purpose...
i wanted to compensate marquis de sade's
antic in a brothel when he implored
the ******* to turn the crucifix into
a ***** into his decapitated precursor
of a mary antoinette... puppet...

profanity in images and all the other seances
of the senses...
i wouldn't go as far as to make the crucifix
profane... or do anything profane
with it...

only the words...
hic (est) mea corpus - hic (est) mea cruor...
this is my body - this is my blood...
and i am aware the mead is the gods' ****
when they're in a good mood - all... jolly...
and that beer is the gods' **** when
laughter hits a dry run...
and that ms. amber or whiskey is but:
the blood of the gods...

i had to corrupt it...
to prove to myself: that i am not a god...
it was quiet simple...
once upon a time i was drinking
a glass of wine...
and as you do... on a whim...
i decided to **** into it...
perhaps all that drinking prior would
give me something to elevate the palette
of exploration that was to come...

hmm... at least that sorts out
hic: mea cruor... *** urinae...
but back then i did that on purpose...
and if only this was a desert scenario...
and i would have to drink my own *****
to survive...
well... i just thought: here's to starving
from a lack of better imagery...

i will come unto some Horace in a minute...
i don't know how i managed to find
this citation - it's only very losely related...
and yes i will showcase another draft from
May of last year...

but today i was unsure...
did i leave yesterday's pepsi max bottle
with only the stale pepsi left...
or did i forget to do the lazy sly wee whizz
jumping out of bed in the middle of
the night...
but i already poured this "cocktail"
over two shots of whiskey...
and i'm hardly desperate but...
my original intention of alligning myself
to the profanity of the crucifix...
i had to somehow make profanity
of the wine...

since i am... thinking how to compensate
being satisfied with wine...
how the ancient world was always
satisfied with wine...
the story of the 3 ambers of the north...
the beer, the mead and the whiskey...
all in a varying degree...
but i will not bow before the blood of a god
that's so... diluted...
whiskey yes... that can be blood indeed...
otherwise it's down in the trench
with gods' **** - mead if they are in a good
mood... beer if they are in a talkative mood...

thank god i wasn't thinking:
better salvage those two shots of whiskey
and drink this cocktail of the "ultimate" surprise...
and apparently eating a woman's
placenta is good for you...
as was... apparently once... breastmilk...
funny... give me the milk of a cow or a goat
and i'll show you: one dislocated thumb...
one dislocated distal + intermediate phalange
from the index finger of the right hand's
proximal phalange... no broken bones...

knock-knock... who's there? touchwood superstition.

it's not as bad as it sounds...
stale, yes...
but i am also known for sometimes
performing the antithesis of drinking tequilla...
*****... i'll sprinkle some cigarette ash
onto my hand... lick it... take a shot of *****
then throw one or two black peppercorns into
my mouth for the crunch...
each drinker and his own myths... right?
i call that the black cracovite...
cracow being so close to aushwitz...
and once it snowed and they thought it was
snowing... sure... ash from the furnaces
of aushwitz... here's my ode to... the dead...
in a drink...

hell better a cracovite than a cracowite, white?
i mean: right? seriously: low hanging fruit,
the elephant's testicles...

i will never understand this whole veneration
of wine: in vino veritas...
these days wine is better drank by women
and castrated monarchs of the clergy...
i had to check... so i ****** in my holy grail...
and guess what didn't come out
the other end? gods' **** (beer and wine)
or gods' blood (whiskey and wine)...
just this stale, almost bland...
water with a pinch of grape that has been
left to sit in a puddle on some
industrial estate in dagenham enjoying
the ripe downpouring of chemicals
that leave it with a rainbow of diluted
petroleum...

akin to: try shoving that sort of doughnut
into this kind of pile of ****...
not that i would...
but i have also been prone to test
99.9% spirits... or 96% absinthe...
with a locust mummified in the bottle's neck...
from Amsterdam...

i had to rethink: why become engaged...
when chances are...
to the displeasure of someone who read:
but never bought my work...
the self-editorial process...
the self-publishing process could be...
guillotined on a whimsical constipation
of a "dear reader"...
as it might happen...

again... Horace and the perfect example
of poetry with conversational overtones...
poetry as prosaic...
my god... paper was expensive back in old
Horace's days... surely you would need
something spectacular to write:
like a psilocybin trip account word for word:
wrong!
a certain don juan said to a certain
carlos castaneda: don't bring back words from
such experiences...
but of course: they did...
upon once upon a time loving the beatniks...
i started to abhor them...
getting drunk and smoking "something"
is one thing... exposing the altars of solipsism
of such experiences: words intact...
is a profanity...
each dream is individually curated
to the dreamer... the introduction of words
to relate back... for some next be disciple...
the "drugs" / portals of escapism are already
contaminated...

why wouldn't i: even if these are only
objective recounts of an experience?
perhaps because... they are subjectivelly null...
there are only the comparable heights of Gideon...
such experiences are best: kept to each individual's
right to enjoy... a freedom of thought...
and of silence...
each keeps a secret...
but what secret is left?
when the objective parameters have already
been stated?
i see no point... better down and finding
it at the end of a bottle...
or... ******* into a glass of wine
and drinking it...

they have been contaminated by words that
have been retrieved from such experiences
that (a) no one should talk about...
(b) surprise! the objective reality already
being stated as altered...
am i going to a ******* cinema with my body...
or am i going to a surprise
gallery with my thought?
doesn't matter... word contamination...
bigmouth struck his final last time!
at least the remains is what gives me
the labyrinth... the blood the **** you name
it the three sisters amber... for all i care...
it's readily available: make do...
with what's already been given.

me? i drink for that very special date...
monday 9 march 2020...
when all the orthodox jews get drunk...
that's one of those celebrations i wouldn't mind
being a part of... purim, festival of Lots,
funny... that period of history...
the Persian aspect of the hebrews...
never made it to the big screen...
seeing modern day Iran as day-old Persia
in muslim garbs...
we're still only seeing the: African adventure...
perhaps once the dust has settled...
we will get the Persian installement...
and then... oh... **** it...
we're all in it for the long run...
then when christianity is no longer useful...
the Roman bit of history...
and how the hebrews conspired with the greeks...
2000 years later we'll probably see
some prince of egypt cartoon movie
of the pristine romance and a mention of germany...
not yet... ****'s still to ripe to entertain
the universal child and children...
no screen adaptation from "their" time in Persia...
songs... we have songs!
Verdi's Nabucco - the chorus...
perhaps only in song from Persia and always
with movies and hieroglyphs when from Egypt...

but the festivity... of course! i'll celebrate...
cf. though... Puccini's coro a bocca chiusa -
the humming chorus...
before the band enigma... i am pretty sure my mother
would crank up the volume to at least
one of these songs... should they come on the radio...
i'm still to hear christopher young's:
something to think about - to be on air...
and to also be treated as a piece of classical music...
if wojciech kilar's dracula soundtrack can be treated
as classical music... what's wrong with a little
bit of hellraiser?!

perhaps, "again" is this desecration of the sacred not,
simply hanging in the background,
all, the, ******, time?
who is to celebrate wine giving it a god's blood
status in sips? one is expected to somehow become
drunk on the passion!
no one is here for crumbs of sips!
first they came for the loaf of bread...
and said you should fast and eat only a crumb...
then they came for the bottle of wine...
and said you should abstain and drink only a sip...
then they came for *** and by then
vatican was a monaco with better tax protections...

it's an investement: having to **** into a glass
of wine you're about to drink...
worse... you accidently "forgot" about
******* into some left-over pepsi max
and you're making yourself a cocktail
with one of the graeae ambers - 2x -
and you wonder: is this the proper state
of carbonated water, stale?
but i'm hardly going to bash the crucifix...
i'm here for the words...

the... transfiguration of the wine into blood...
and i say of my gods:
and here is their **** - beer and mead...
and here's their blood: the three graeae ms. ambers...
see no: clearer? no... happier?

i will get onto ancient roman poetics
with its conversational overtones in a minute!
first we have to settle the sacraments!
the metaphors and the sacraments!
i have no ivar the boneless claim of god...
season 6? to be honest...
i'd rather watch an english soap opera...
at least the intricacy of the plot remains...
even though it has been recycled
so many times...

i can't **** out the gods' ***** even if it was
stale beer... or ideal mead...
as i can't leisure a Seneca's bath filled
with the blood of the immortals...
problem solved... "problem":
as if it ever was...

why, Horace? a very short rhetorical retort:
if Dante had his Virgil...
why can i have my Horace, as guide?
again... what Roman poet could venture for
ambitions among the myths -
or extend his "consciousness"
to devastate the land and become
the mad Xerxes wanting the waves
of a sea whipped into submission?
why, Horace? if Dante could have his Virgil...

poetry... at least among the roman poets
there's no boxed in a box "without" a "box"...
the conversational overtones are ripe...
the almost complete lack of
character dimensions... beside their dimensions
from anecdotes...

to difuse wine, to desecrate the hic mea cruor...
**** in it!
then drink it...
or have one of my antithesis of a tequilla surprise
with me...
smoke a cigarette... drop some ash on the lick-part
of the space between the thumb
and the index metacarpal... lick it...
follow it with a shot of *****...
then throw some black peppercorns
into the hades of your gob
and we've arrived at the black cracovite...

and also the day when the orthodox jews
recant their story of their time
in Persia... the festivity of Lots...
when they become blind drunk and pretend to
have the sort of alcohol intolerence as
the Japanese... 1 shot! just 1 shot:
and hey! they throw their kippahs in
the air and we can all dance the ukranian 'opak!

looks good to me!
but only looks good...
when there's this plump drunk playing the accordion:
i.e. me,
and there's the sort of adrew rieu directing
an upcoming crescendo of a poliushko polie...
and we can all leave the auditorium
feeling, less than russophobic...
and then i can be told...
you young to be old yet still
profane pan-siberian peasant root!
indo-european leftover!
well... at least then i have been allowed
the scrap i'm supposed to see
before i showcase my *****, frost riddled fangs!
of the lesser wolf that i am:
as a rabid dog!

since the crescendo will come...
what better fathom of it...
esp. just beside a cemetery... twirling to the music...
ear-plugs out seancing my time in a grand
orchestral hall... plucked from the ears...
the crescendo is coming...
but... plucked... the orchestra of buffalo-sized
snowflakes... and... the worst kind of ballet...
a male soloist... doing his crazy
ukranian folk... maestro! the music never ever
dies! even in the silence of the universe!
however micro- or macro- this theatre will take
form... the music remains playing: uninterrupted!

but the snow was there,
the "ballerina" was also there...
the night was there,
the music was there -
albeit no grand orchestral hall -
couldn't ask for a better canvas
than a cemetery -
and all the heart's content!
comparative "literature"
to love like a muslim...
or to love like a sparrow...
or to love with a grudge like a crow...
mind you; site note...
i have been many a pigeons attempt
fornication unabashed...
i've never seen two crows attempt it...
perhaps they do "it" in the night
and never in the open?

crows... pedantic priests of the kingdom...
and where the widower king
and the widow queen among the swans?
where i and you will have probably left them...
admiring a family of ducks...

as asked by the serpent of the swan...
you and me of the same birth in a Fabergé egg...
me with serpentine spine...
while you: with a crooked neck?
silly... it really is...
of a being.... that was once
a t-rex roar... now a pickled brain
in pickle jar... boasting about being...
pure spine and tingles and...
the better part of what... becomes the mammalian
hibernation...
hibernating "hibernating" upon the
impetus of digestion...
a serpent would ask a swan about
a crooked neck?

because what would a **** sapeins look toward,
as he is always prone to to look elsewhere?
if not to borrow the fixed, rigid ontology
of other animals?
i better from the birds, solely...
the swans and the crows...
perhaps the fox...
rarely something that has lent itself
to being curated by man's leash and grip...
collective the known herd...
otherwise the refined bonsai tigers...
perhaps the fish without a knowledge
of a tide or a wave...

i call a dog the noble friend,
the swan the sombre monogamist...
the crow the priest...
the furry spider one's own reflection
dealing with aracnophobia...
the snake the old "say-what?"
or that pickled spine with a brain
the worth of brine juices...
the extinguished remnant
of a dinosaur's toothache... or some
transcendental exploration
of the carpals of the wrist
extending into the length of a spine...

i'm not going to cry over this one...
skål!
i feel disinhibited from writing a memorandum!
slàinte!
gasoline to the peddle and... off... we, go!

i am bound to get this translaton right...
at some point of hinging-on... i.e. beginning with...
and most probably at the opposite end
of having to finish...
hence "open bracket"... prefix-
and -suffix allowance given the archeological
excavation began with:

-seu pila velox molliter austerum studio
fallente laborem, seu te discus agit, pete cedentem
aera disco: *** labor extuderit fastidia, siccus,
inanis sperne cibum vilem; nisi Hymettia mella
Falerno ne biberis diluta. foris est promus,
et atrum defendens piscis hiemat mare: *** sale
panis latrantem stomachum bene leniet. unde putas
aut qui partum? non in caro nidore voluptas summa,
sed in te ipso est. tu pulmentaria quaere
sudando: pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea
nec scarus aut poterit peregrina iuvare lagois.
vix tamen eripiam, posito pavone velis quin
hoc potius quam gallina tergere palatum,
corruptus vanis rerum, quia veneat auro
rara avis et picta pandat spectcula cauda:
tamquam ad rem attineat quidquam.
num vesceris ista, quam laudas, pluma?
cocto num adest honor idem?
carne tamen quamvis distat nil, hac magis illam
inparibus formis deceptum te petere esto:
unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus
an alto captus hiet? pontisne inter iactatus
an amnis ostia sub Tusci?
laudas, insane, trilibrem mullum,
in singula quem minuas pulmenta necesse est.
ducit te species, video: quo pertinet ergo proceros
odisse lupos? quia scilicet illis maiorem natura modum
dedit, his breve pondus: ieiunus raro stomachus volgaria
-temnit.

it's translated, isn't it? no
stefan gołębiewski or no 1980 warsaw...
is to know...

- nec meus hic sermo est, sed quae praecepit Ofellus:
these are not my words, this said the simpleton
Ofellus - neither of which of us is a laurel-leaf
adorned Orpheus...

that via a living "game": stoking up an appetite
with this entertainment the appetite increaes...
as does one health...

sorry... pagans... bloodthirty people...
trouble with the translation...
apparently the mud slinging
***** and bricks are nothing new...

or when you "minus" the disk,
litter the distance, head with the wind into
competition!
after hardships of the body is good and
the meal is simple -
(apparently all of this is still "connected",
scratch of the ol' 'ed and we're fine...
we're ******* sailing!)
Falern will not hurt "us"...
seasoned by honey from Hymettis,
before the entré. Safaz left,
the sea rumbles, the zephyr of fish it protects,
storm, fishing made unsafe;
stomach grumbles, bread with salt:
excuisite; you do not have any better! why?
taste does not reside in the scent of dishes,
but in your self alone.
toil merely increases appetite's presence.
he who over-eats, will not know the taste
of an oyster, nor a turbot, nor chickpeas,
the northern bird.
perceptions take the scalp of the mountain
above the actual taste of the dishes
(one might scalp... but never eat the scalp)...
you will not take a chicken onto a tooth,
when you are given a peacock,
you will trust your delusion:
a rare bird, worth its own weight of gold,
a most rarified tail, how it sparkles
with subtle hues!
as if the tail were to lead -
and there was no head to be found!
do you allow yourself to judge the hue
of the feathers as precursor for the adjecctive:
that's it's "also" tasty? the meat, of course?
the old - judge a book by its cover...
is the oven baked... also as delicious / beautiful?
chicken meat... or peacock meat?
almost without difference.
therefore: light... albeit...
although only vanity lures the peacock
(to be compared to a poultry)...
let's go further... i want to know: after what
do you recognise this, that a pike
with its gaping mouth was left:
from the sea... or from the Tiber fished?
somewhere among bridges... or from some
conrete estuary? idiot-kin of the surname whim...
you admire a three-pound mullet!
do you take size... for the gauge of all measure?
when you... cut the bell?
then why... why... with disgrace
do you demand in appreciation:
elongating pikes!
evidently nature: this greater gave the proper
measure... and with it: the lesser weight -
an empty stomach will rarely -
being fed a simple thing - despise -
what is...

an empty stomach - rarely despises -
simple matters.

how true... i was allowing myself the time
it would take to drink,
and translate into the vulgate...
but... from no better source...
and i am still to add to this one of my...
"freeing of the drafts"...

as promised...
"draft"...

- a most confiscated man -
no italics included...

.the original draft:

binges, worth the count
of a liter of whiskey
per night,
for a year, if not more...
become so...
so unspectular...

          the world either
screams, or yawns,
generally:
it exhaust a desire
to toss a coin,
agitate the vocab.,

a grand canyon
huddling
in the "depths" of
a glass of water...

baron science
comes with his rubric
of bore,
      and:
i find myself,
most idle:
while the world
orientates
itself in keeping
itself busy,
bothersome,
always the prime concern,

the ant-colony coup,
the:
i always find friends
in the orientations
of an empty glass,
but prior to:

i drink
before no altar,
no mirror,
no confidante...

     pure flesh revels itself
in a blank's worth
of prior to dictum's
  allowance of, a page...

bothersome
the knot of the pretentious
anti- in scold of
the passing fancy:
expression...

            poker charm
of a love's affair...

_

i sometimes entertain myself
with ancients proverbs,
one slavic proverb reads:
better a sparrow in your hand
than a dove on your roof...

what, could, possibly be,
the interpretation?
care for the small joys in
your possession,
than, for the peace of your household,
which is, on the roof,
but not in your hands...

if i were paid? would i be more
honest?
probably not...
        what i see, is what needs
to be seen...
  em... simple pleasures talk...
once upon a time,
donning long hair, implied
you were a mosher...
a metal-head...
    now? three days +,
long hair, and you're not a
grunge fanatic?
  trans-, etc.?

   a man of simple pleasures,
i know what long hair,
jealousy, associated with
putting it in a french braid,
does to a camel jockey ego...
ruins and ruins as far as the eyes
can see...
    he replicates...
he grows his hair long...
at the same time boasting about
haivng a premature beard...
then you grow a beard yourself...
you start fiddling with it...
****, ***** on my face...
and then...
the "question" of a girlfriend
flies out of the window...
i'm happy with a beard,
thank you, very much,
i don't, exactly want to wish upon
myself, a female, company...

*** protest all you want...
the *** differences between men
and women, to my sort of understanding,
are, unrepairable...
     they were, never,
bound, to being, repaired...
savvy?
            i take my route,
a woman took her route...
  we're even...
                
      since what can only frighten a freed
woman, beside a monarch,
a free man?
                   a man with...
a gamble...
         i am a man with a gamble...
i don't like being told what
to be, or what to think...
like any man,
and like any man:
i don't like being forced
ownership over a being:
that can share my sense of freedom...
so...
    i find myself,
thrilled with relief,
at now having to answer to
a woman's subjugation...
like a woman, and, i have learned
from women: i like being
my objective's self...
rather than a "self" made subject...

i like that: thank you...
i can start feedings the pigs and the peasant
the diatribe life, and lie,
of: there being an existential cricis,
a need to reproduce...
and i, and i am, being demeaning
in this, way, for a justified reason...

once the peasants attack you:
you attack, the peasants...
you demean them in the same way
they demeaned you...

once upon a time i thought:
greater good came from the number
of innocents being salvaged
than for the few great of grand bearing
being salvaged...
even if bound to an ill will:
an ill command,
of a will, predisposed to pretend
actions of the blind...
but now i see...

   the many: if beside fulfilling
their petty deeds,
having to stand outside of those,
petty deeds,
  have ambitions equivalent
to their emotions...
            akin to something worth,
pity, akin to something
worth: as little as a rat's heartbeat...
petty, primitive bull-*******...
and all the amount of sorrow,
or pity,
or mercy...
              that, these, ******* allow...
are worth the same response
Pontius Pilate gave...
       there isn't enough of water,
in this world,
to wash my hands, clean,
of these people...
   even if innocent blood plagues
them,
    not enough waters have run their
due course,
to... release me from the indentation
of memory upon my mind...
and i am plagued by an elephant's
memory...
        we've reached the conclusion
of: some people...
  just do not see an insult,
             past the insult's eloquence!

i am a most conflicted man,
i binge watched vikings
for a while now,
and right now, i'm ready for
an extraction of what i have learned...

believe me: i am not someone
who has the sort of ego-presence
to fate myself in the role
of the protagonist...
     i'm too pedantic to have to
market my body and deeds,
for the fates tio see,
and history to ascribe fame unto me...

even homer was off too war
with troy,
   and blessed he became...

because? time morphs,
the longer something is kept,
the more, "unreal" is becomes,
a fairy-tale...
esp. now, with the onslaught
of journalism...
two things in this world
are insomniac,
money never sleeps,
and, now, apparently,
journalism doesn't sleep either:
well, given its ******
bed-fellow of political liars...
why should it?

             Rolo... a semi-minor character...
but i feel his angst at the already
fervent dichotomy,
(dichotomy, modern variety variant
of schizoid-affective...
or bilingual in turn)...

            music...
                    all these modły...
gesticulations of prayer,
phantom conjuring,
               lunatics with candles
at high-noon...
                  i am fated by music,
i am perverted by music,
i am swayed by music...
who is the god, patron,
of music?
who is the angel (demi-god),
patron of music?
         i do not seek the highest
influencer...
the minor one...

   when Archangel Sandalphon
met St. Cecilia...
but as such, i am, conflicted...
even though, this is the first time
i have heard of Sandalphon...

Rome, never reached my peoples,
the Vikings did...
   weren't the ugly vikings the founders
of Kiev?
  so they must have passed via
the Polen (field) land, no?

feelings are not important,
facts don't care about your feelings...
granted...
but i'm not hear for facts,
contra, feelings,
i'm here for the rivers...
what i feel, what my heart yearns for,
needs to attain an equilibrium
with my mind...
for that: i need to clarify my feelings,
to hush my heart, silence it,
in order to listen to my mind,
and the mind, needs to feed into
heaving the heart: to do,
what, the heart, desires,
autonomous to what the heart
"thinks", is right...
                    that's how it was forver
going to work...
consolidated...
and yes, i much envy the punctuation
of king Ecgberht,
a man of cunning: much admired...
abstract thinker...
        and a reality...
        pun-ctu-a-tion...
the delivery of one's speech...
   much admired, as much as...
                the crude brawl possession...
the chief protagonist of the story?
as important as is: the required from
Atlas... burden upon burden...
a man burdened with the illusion
of freedom...

so why am i conflicted,
but becoming less and less so?
    it was always the music...

songs...

           chavelier, mult estes guariz...
wardruna - helvegen...
           da pacem domine...
             agni parthene...

you know... there's much more beside
being a jazz enthusiast or
a classical music snob...
         there's folk... there's religious and pagan
chants...
if there's one thing to benefit from,
in terms of the Byzantine context...
the chants...
        let the barbarians do the thinking
from now on: you do the sing-along...
no people ever reinvented themselves
from an ancient glory...
   new blood had to come to the fore...

like today...
       i spoke with my father and my mother...
about the names of apples...
we must have talked for an hour,
we named so many lost "breeds" of apple...
nouns i will not write,
nouns i wish death to write down,
i want Samael to have,
beside the book of my deeds in hand,
i want him to have
my dictionary in hand,
my knowledge of the sacred script,
i want to listen as he recites me the words
i've used,
notably today's conversation
            about the many types of apples...
e.g.: shogun apples...
             kox...
                    szare renety...
          papierówki...
                    marabella prunes...
that's all i ask of Samil.
c rogan Dec 2018
I cant remember my dream.
I cant breathe.

Her thin painter hands open the door to the stairwell, the smell of fresh paint replaces that of a spring rain.  Skipping the clean stairs two at a time, she reaches the studio.  Walls of glass flank the empty white hallways that weave in and out, remains of torn masking tape shrivel on the walls like dying flowers.  The door looks like it belongs to a prison, too familiar.  

The sun barely moved, if at all, outside the window.
Tracing the outline of his body, she let the colors tell the story.


A stroke of shadow

Walking to the center of the room, limbic resonance.  A vaguely masculine figure melts into the painting.  It's silent as he dies.  

Her feet hit the pavement.  From the familiar soft dirt path through the woods, she crosses the courtyard to the doorway of the stairwell.  Memories flood her mind under the dull lamplight amidst the rustling dead leaves.  

Moving a stone from the crumbling wall of the school, she places her letters to you beneath the rubble.

Blinding white

I'm holding the keys but I can't find the right one
and the sun burned itself down,
the rain receded into the clouds

nothing is the same


He lies down in the stream
water rushing over him
relaxing, water replaces air

everything is different now.

Blistering Blue

I can't remember my last dream.
Out of space, out of time.  Unnatural surroundings.  
Muffled screams float in from the hallway.
Golden seam of light from the doorway saturates illuminated stitches.
He couldn't remember the last time this had happened.   When he almost lost himself in the pain---
It's like seeing her for the first time, over and over.

Suddenly his hands were covered in their blood.

But I remember them,
telling me to be quiet, not to fight it.  


Blush of Crimson

I've lost concept of time,
time to be quiet
I need to schedule my time
need to go away
Ophelia covered in glass
veins like kite string
he breathed in the water
I never said goodbye.

You know that feeling like everything's the end of the world
Next to the campfire, stars carved into her upper thighs
crossed like constellations as she moved closer to the flame,
gaze drawn up
The flight before the fall

He hasn't yet hit the ground, green flannel still in suspension.  Dew collecting on the leaves slide down to the earth and surround his body.
His eyes are already closed, a moment of vulnerability.  Still on the surface, cold blue water saturates his cuts and seams.

For the touch of a vanished thought caressed the back of her mind, like birds balanced on a live power line.  Digital ripped walls, lights leading to the intervention of the other side of the ghost city, building brick school, and infinite nowhere.  She lit her candle in the studio, watching the wick burn down and melt the wax, a ring of liquid growing from the center.  Strange to drown in heat.  It seems there's a wall of glass between her mind and this supposed reality, without any sound but her breathing and the occasional crack from the slowly burning candle.  She mixes her paint and doesn't think about anything.  The sun sets and rises and sets and rises again.  Sitting in the same place, the candle frozen in perpetual burning.  The room was clean.  And she was painting.  And the birds on the wire gently cawed against a white sky.  The echo returned to the blank room.

I remember that night she stopped answering my calls.  She doesn't pick up anymore.  Curled up in the doorway scrawled with tick marks from when we grew extra inches overnight, phone clutched to my chest.  I looked up and saw old Chinese fortunes folded above the doorway, hot tears spilling down my cheeks.  A feeling of helplessness, guilt.  If she answered I would have driven up there, taken her home.
It was 2am when I left.  I grabbed the keys from the counter, my coat, some chocolate, and a book.  walking to the car, I could see my breath suspended in the air.  Frost coated the sides of the windshield but I didn't stop driving.  I forgot my mittens.  There was a foot more of snow as I ran towards the old door to her dorm, yanking the handle hard enough that the lock slipped and I didn't need an ID to get in.  Warm stale air enveloped me as I gazed over empty security desk under fluorescent light.

Muted Undertones

The painting took up a whole wall of the room.  There wasn' any money to frame it, so it would have to always stay here.
Sunlight leaked in from the window like a steading dripping faucet against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
remembering his hands
as they gripped the wheel loosely
at 5am in the morning
reflective and
coated in glass
in the back of
his black pickup
the sun slowly
bled from behind the clouds
dripping like honey
illuminating blonde
eyelashes,
the dirt on
the windshield.
warm golden
air filled the truck
as he turned the heat on
one hand on
the wheel
the other
reaching backwards to
twisting metal,
broken limbs.
Connected below
the surface
of broken glass.

In between the falling leaves, she whispered 'see you' and kissed his eyelids as he fell asleep.

Neutral Tones

I knocked on her door.  Her roommate answered.  He hadn't seen her at all that day.  I've grown indifferent about my own problems.  So I walked in her room and picked up the scissors from the corner.  Put on her coat for her.  Walked her through the snow to the car.  Cecilia sat between the driver and passenger seat, hand in mine.  I wish I could heal her arm through our layers of jackets, taken some of the sadness away.   We didn't say anything as empty pavement and trees passed in every living moment.

I was thinking about him.

Occasionally we touch, but only in passing.  Shadows, we cover from the heat.  

Ridicule gnaws at these connection, scrapes paint strokes until the threat snaps, the pillars bow
And we take shelter in the cleansing water.  The clashes of flesh.   The segregation of interactions for fear of having ours be known by anyone at all.

(But still they talk, recite the script)
'Cecilia tried to **** herself and her clothes need to be washed'
(Look now, do you see it?)
'It looks like her soul
left her eyes'


Purple Haze

I knew it was a nightmare.  It's stuck to me.  These alien emotions; like a sickness or a burn, interdepartmental rhythms of my brain I'll never fully grasp... not artistic or poetic.  or anything fake and useful.  Just nebular, inhibiting, distressed.
I'm always trapped in something.  A heaviness.  A natural declining, dissipation, entropy.
A brutal and sterile resistance, inviolate and soft to the touch; a lapsing despondency.

He was the sea that he drowned in.  And he was the riverbed in the trees, too.
Swept in whirlpools and ripples and age rings, whispers of fallen leaves in the lucid water.  
Silenced by hushing rage of stone cut rapids.


Ultraviolet Love


He's not seeing normally.  Through the rippling surface her face is reflected into a million moving pieces.
Lines of tape surround his body, they shrivel in the heat of the sun.  This is not natural death.  There are no birds circling overhead, the stream continues to trickle over the rocks.

I drove her home from college started to run a bath.  The hot water faucet turned all the way.  I put my feet in, trying to avoid eye contact with the parallel lines.  Familiar to what i had stitched before.  Pale blue - green water kissed our skin as she closed her eyes.  

We are not creatures of visible light.
Alexander K OPICHO
(ELDORET, KENYA;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Okot the son of Acholi, hailers of Ladwong
The Husband of Auma the daughter of Acholi
The son of Gulu, fountain of African songs of freedom
I know your laughter is true toast of poetry
You only laugh because your teeth is white
Neither mirth nor joy is the pedestal of your laughter,

Okot I know how your mother, taller than her husband
was ever cooking by use of her legs, where the legs took her
Is where she ate, leaving you with anger of hunger
as you herded animals; Animals of the Acholi tribe
That has long horns which cannot give any gain
Okot you only laughed to show the whiteness of your teeth
Okot, you herded the animals in faith that you will pay dowry
That one time your kinsman will have you pay dowry with  the animals
The animals that scrofulously herded with a lugubrious look
that you may use in paying flesh eating dowry
For the Acholi girls which was a whooping one thousand shilling
and its kind worth is one hundred cows, or two hundred Lang’o cows
Okot how Nampy Pampy were you that
The long necks of acholi girls
The slender hips of the acholi girls
The sharp pointed *******
On their narrow busts
Made you accept
And goof foolishly
To pay such dear dowry?

They all made you desert your home when callow
Mostly unseasoned in your brains
Moving away from the beautiful
Land of Gulu going far to the land of money
In such of dowry for the Acholi girl
As you emotionally failed to disconnect
Yourself from the beautiful terrains of Gulu
To which you sang a poem of birth-place attachment
That; Hills of our home land, when shall I see you again?
Gulu, my home town, when shall I return to you?
Friends when shall we dance together again?
Mother, when shall I see you again?
Sister, my future wealth
When shall I again give you
a brotherly piece of advice?
Cecilia my beloved one when shall i
See  you and the beautiful kere gap in your
Upper teeth row again?
Or is only a dream
That I am leaving Gulu land behind myself?
Okot son of Bitek you remorsefully sang this song
As you moved away on foot in regular hitchhike
To Kampala the land of wonders
Beyond your bush civilization
You misfortunate son of Zinjathropus
The civilization you were bound to drop before the Nile
To leave behind the Nile before you could sing
The beautiful songs of the Nile; that wonderful ode
The ode that you sang in praise of Nile;  
Gently, gently, flow gently, River Nile
Move on, travel gently Victoria waters
Go and give life to the people of Egypt
As the birds at atura flew high beautifully
Diving into waters
To emerge with fish dangling on their peaks
And the birds sweetly sing that;
For us we have no worries
It is you travellers who are worried
We are in full contentment here
There are plenty of fish here
We have no use for money
Nile waters at atura are boundaries
For glory and suffering
For you the ones crossing it to Bugandaland
Be aware there is a lot of suffering
It is only the harsh world waiting for you there
Poor Okot son of Bitek peace to you among our ancestors;
For when you crossed the Nile into the land of banana
In the kingdom of Toro, Buganda and Bunyore
In their mighty city of Kampala at Namirembe
The poetic fountain in Makerere University
The germ of African burgeosie lumpenization.
When the young feudal land of Buganda
To crash a son of singh in the stampede of epilepsy
To Sent you  into a  poetic feat and berserk to bananasly sing,
Sing the nostalgic ballads of an estranged pumpkin
The true Acholi village pumpkin of Gulu,
Sing; sing your peasant ballads you Okot son of Bitek;
Bugandaland is the land of happiness
The land of great extremes
Sorrow; land of much wealth and dire poverty
Land of laughter and tears;
Land of good health and diseases
A land full of piety and stark evil;
A land of full loyalists and beautiful rebels
Full of witty ones and appalling nitwitted;
The land of the rich and the sgualorly beggars.

The hard hearted beggars
And that they only laugh the crying Laughter
The oxymoronic one of Okot the son Bitek
That they not only laughed because of mirthful laughter
But he did laugh to prove the whiteness of his teeth.
Jack Piatt Mar 2014
Turquoise blues guitars
Laughing baby elephants (that paint)
Melodies singing lullabies to sleepy baby elephants
(tired from painting all day)
Blank canvases full of blackberries on the inside
The antidote to love
All the dotes that didn't get doted
And all the ones that did
Playing badminton in the backyard of Cupid's summer home in Manarola
The ruby that died to make Dorothy's slippers
And the shortest hair from the Lion's tail
Wine filled grapes
Water balloons filled from hot springs and melted mountain snow
Two spokes from Steve McQueen's "Great Escape" motorcycle
Three kisses from Ilsa Lund
And a smile from Sabrina Fairchild
Tom Robbins' typewriter (it's magic)
A flying dragon
A dragonfly (grounded for not doing her homework)
Jenny's phone number
The pillow that hit the floor at Cecilia's that afternoon
The third stair from the top of the Stairway to Heaven (best view)
One of the lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
And a grain of salt from the sea the other is swimming in
An olympic size pool full of melted crayons
A vile of sweat from the ever fleeing muse
A refrigerator the size of Rhode Island
Full of magnificent lines of magnetic poetry
Poetry (all of it)
The monster under the monster's bed
Every foul ball ever caught by any kid
Hammocks (any and every)
The cardboard boat that never stopped sailing down the gutter of the world
The secret to everything
(kept securely under the bed of the monster, under the monster's bed)
Santa's real address (you won't believe this)
The blue ink from the blueprints of Atlantis
Golf carts with no maximum speed
The energy dust left from dancing, hugging and smiling
Freshly climbed trees
A warehouse the size of Antarctica completely filled
Wall to wall with raw, unfiltered laughter
Beer
Everything that was left on the field
Passionate embraces and embracing a passion
Apology free, but full of forgiveness
The wild of the wilderness
The tame of the un-tame
Language
Intuition
Conception
First kisses, waves and winks
Goodbye hugs and thrown in kitchen sinks
Art
Music
Pain
Puddles that have been danced in under pouring rain
Empty film cans
Films on screens
All of these ingredients
Are what makes up
*Dreams
(c) Jack Piatt 2014

— The End —