..



You whom I could not save

Listen to me.  

Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.  

I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.  

I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.


What strengthened me, for you was lethal.  

You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,  

Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty;  

Blind force with accomplished shape.


Here is a valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge  

Going into white fog. Here is a broken city;  

And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave  

When I am talking with you.


What is poetry which does not save  

Nations or people?  

A connivance with official lies,  

A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,  

Readings for sophomore girls.

That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,  

That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,  

In this and only this I find salvation.


They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds  

To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.  

I put this book here for you, who once lived  

So that you should visit us no more.  




                                                                                         Warsaw, 1945

                                                                                        
- by Czeslaw Milosz






st, 13 dec 13

All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.

Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at the light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.

*Warsaw, 1943

There has not been for a long time a spring
as beautiful as this one; the grass, just before mowing,
is thick and wet with dew. At night bird cries
come up from the edge of the marsh, a crimson shoal
lies in the east till the morning hours.
In such a season, every voice becomes for us
a shout of triumph. Glory, pain and glory
to the grass, to the clouds, to the green oak wood.
The gates of the earth torn open, the key
to the earth revealed. A star is greeting the day.
Then why do your eyes  hold an impure gleam
like the eyes of those who have not tasted
evil and long only for crime? Why does this heat
and depth of hatred radiate
from your narrowed eyes? To you the rule,
for you clouds in golden rings
play a music, maples by the road exalt you.
The invisible rein on every living thing
leads to your hand--pull, and they all
turn a half-circle under the canopy
called cirrus. And your tasks? A wooden mountain
awaits you, the place for cities in the air,
a valley where wheat should grow, a table, a white page
on which, maybe, a long poem could be started,
joy and toil. And the road bolts like an animal,
it falls away so quickly, leaving a trail of dust,
that there is scarcely a sight to prepare a nod for,
the hand's grip already weakened, a sigh, and the storm is over.
And then they carry the malefactor through the fields,
rocking his grey head, and above the seashore
on a tree-lined avenue, they put him down
where the wind from the bay furls banner
and schoolchildren run on the gravel paths,
singing their songs.

--"So that neighing in the gardens, drinking on the green
so that, not knowing whether they are happy or just weary,
they take bread from the hands of their pregnant wives.
They bow their heads to nothing in their lives.
My brothers, avid for pleasure, smiling, beery,
have the world for a granary, a house of joy?"

--"Ah, dark rabble at their vernal feasts
and creamatoria rising like white cliffs
and smoke seeping from the dead wasps' nests.
In a stammer of mandolins, a dust-cloud of scythes,
on heaps of food and mosses stomped ash-grey,
the new sun rises on another day."

For a long time there has not been a spring
as beautiful as this one to the voyager.
The expanse of water seems to him dense
as the blood of a hemlock. And a fleet of sails
speeding in the dark, like the last
vibration of a pure note. He saw
human figures scattered on the sands
under the light of the planets, falling from the vault
of heaven, and when a wave grew silent, it was silent,
the foam smelled of ioding? heliotrope?
They sang on the dunes, Maria, Maria,
resting a spattered hand on the saddle
and he didn't know if this was the new sign
that promises salvation, but kills first.
Three times must the wheel of blindness
turn, before I took without fear at the power
sleeping in my own hand, and recognize spring,
the sky, the seas, and the dark, massed land.
Three times will the liars have conquered
before the great truth appears alive
and in the splendor of one moment
stand spring and the sky, the seas, the lands.

*Wilmo, 1936

It’s the birthday of poet Czeslaw Milosz (books by this author), born in Szetejnie, Lithuania (1911). He grew up in a Polish-speaking family. His father was an engineer for czarist Russia during World War I. The family traveled all over the country as his father helped rebuild roads and bridges. Milosz was fascinated by all the different religions in that part of Russia, from Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, and Protestantism to Judaism and pagan mysticism. He loved listening to village folktales about the Lithuanian lakes, rivers, and forests, and these tales later influenced his poetry.

The family eventually settled in Poland. Milosz studied law rather than literature in college because, he said, “There were so many girls studying literature it was called the marriage department.” In 1931 he co-founded a literary group that was so pessimistic about the future it was nicknamed the “Catastrophists.” The group predicted a coming world war, but nobody believed them. He worked for Polish Radio for a while, but he got fired when he let Jews broadcast their opinions on the air. Another radio station sent him to cover the invasion of Poland by **** forces in 1939. After the invasion he found a job as a janitor at a university, secretly writing anti-**** poetry for underground publications. He witnessed the genocide of the Jews in Warsaw and was one of the first poets to write about it in his book of poems Rescue (1945).

After the war Milosz got a job working as a diplomat for communist Poland, though he wasn’t a party member. One night in the winter of 1949, on his way home from a government meeting, he saw several jeeps filled with political prisoners, surrounded by soldiers. He said, “It was then that I realized what I was part of.” He defected in 1951, and made it to Paris even though his passport had been confiscated.

Most intellectuals in Paris were pro-communist at the time and they thought of Milosz as either a traitor or a madman for leaving Poland. The poet Pablo Neruda attacked him in an article called “The Man Who Ran Away.” In 1953 Milosz published a book about communism called The Captive Mind in which he argued that people were too ready to accept totalitarian terror for the sake of an imaginary future. He moved to the United States and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. He had mixed feelings about the United States: he wrote, “What splendor! What poverty! What humanity! What inhumanity! What mutual good will! What individual isolation! What loyalty to the ideal! What hypocrisy! What a triumph of conscience! What perversity!”

He kept writing poetry in Polish even though almost no one was reading it. His books had been banned in Poland and his poems weren’t translated into English until 1973. Then, in 1980, he got a phone call at 3:00 in the morning telling him that he’d won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Czeslaw Milosz said, “I have read many books, but to place all those volumes on top of one another and stand on them would not add a cubit to my stature. Their learned terms are of little use when I attempt to seize naked experience, which eludes all accepted ideas,” and he said, “Language is the only homeland.”

Faith is in you whenever you look
At a dewdrop or a floating leaf
And know that they are because they have to be.
Even if you close your eyes and dream up things
The world will remain as it has always been
And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river.

You have faith also when you hurt your foot
Against a sharp rock and you know
That rocks are here to hurt our feet.
See the long shadow that is cast by the tree?
We and the flowers throw shadows on the earth.
What has no shadow has no strength to live.

By Czeslaw Milosz

.hey, so much for jack kerourac's on the road... but i have found this most pristine tour-guide... as that h'american hobo... "7 years later" duping the tourists down in Amsterdam... h'american... what else? well it's hardly the Nepal you were looking for... or those grand sand of Arabia with a Lawrence: better suited for a... what do "we" call them? androids... david... citing: the trick is: not minding that it hurts... stoicism or some otherwise weathered down, other... point of (a) queue? and yes... red hot chilli pepper's song: warm tape... off the album... i forget... is underrated... in between the salvos of... those lyrics based around a "narrative"... but when the chorus comes in? melted butter in a thick spludge of crème fraîche.... yes... i want to love like a john frusciante... but i know i never will... i see too much economics to: "bed the pardon"... ****... "beg" the the pardon... the girls i once loved have probably forgotten me... moved on... the prostitues "in-between" were always "her" tailor of best arranged hair via - gay riddles of "the cut" via never having to mind a barber... and all those manicures! mein gott! there was a time and a place to squeeze in politics of the "fathomable" populace... and a "perhaps a chance" to raise children? dire consequences... to no avail of... the otherwise prior mentioned: straits... there were times in my life when i felt in love... that i could give give give and never ask for anything in return... lucky for me i started to age and not perform the portrait gray act of stay-young-forever-young-vampire... i clinged to love, once... it was such a beautiful spring... a spring that could last within its season a spell of over 5 years... then... reality and autumn and a need to dispell delusions... she probably still "loves me"... with someone else... cameo cinema of memory? where, am, i? love, oh love, what a burden, a hurdle, a responsibility... it's never this quickened escape ease of breath lodged into fiction... somehow always constricting, somehow always burdensome... somehow and somewhat always... never the homeless cherry picking of mutt that made it to an elevation of being under the christmas tree! why would i have children "these days"... well... there's no history i'd be allowed to teach them... and modern day-old journalism? i thought the people were only willing to fudge bulimia down the throats of their "listeners"? i still want to love like a john frusciante... perhaps that's the mosti can offer... best sentenced to a riddle escaped with at a bechance of keeping distance.

being a video-tourist with roosh v:
the sort of h'america i always wanted to see...
like... gaining another 50ml shot
of whiskey under the belt and notches...
is like... imagining *******
ava lauren in a 1970s italian ***** movie
style... when even *** in a pornographic
movie feels: sensual...
joel osteen... an iron maiden gig
looks... just the same...
when the skin becomes a sterile experience
of leather: when wearing shoes...
and a belt...
when this worn skin becomes
this most adored leather...
when the exhausted "beauty"
of prostitutes becomes: something
equivalent to... working out the mandible
artifact... akin to the chew and jaw...
the old continent seems to sigh...
i once missed Handel's Messiah for a night
at the brothel with the Bulgarian harem...
the grand-orchestra of the acronym:
U! S! A! U! S! A! seems so vague and...
bewildering... i'd love to be an atheist in
h'america... so... ridicule prone and
the high-end sort of bag-full-of-counter-virtues...
but i just can't be...
i like being a god-fearing man...
skin... ****, i need to tend to my german:
wann haut wird leder...
akin to: when **** cheney half-had
a neu-herz...
we do come most humble...
we are, oh the most pristine: wenigkreaturen...
ZAMAR-ZNIĘTY... frozen... (he)...
unless... you see that R-Z outside of deutsche...
in the fwench: je, je SUIS! form...
hard to keep those two 'uckers together
in a rz-eton... (Ż)eton casino...
orthography... who am i to preach to a people
so... so figured out with their metaphysics
that orthography, quiet simply,
doesn't, concern them?!
i'm still thinking about ava lauren and
all that 1970s italian *****-sensuoso *******...
why not to forget? pontius pilate clause
akin to louis XIV paranoia:
the power lies in how "it" is perceived...
lying... i don't mind hearing about hog-mucking...
i just mind when it's don juan
mucking up a nun: that's not a nun...
i don't like hearing about:
the goat in sheep... in the mouth of a wolf...
i can stand metaphor...
i just don't like curtains made from iron...
or burgundy tinged silk...
or some other: BLATANT lie...
the one blatant focus for puritanical "superstitions"
of: third eye blind of the other is...
this... bogus f-ck-wit of an underbelly...
there really was a time when i wanted
to see little-life everyday-sort-of h'america...
how the... whittle people lived...
then i figured... no more and no less whittle
from where i'm sitting...
maybe i should be standing?
but at least i come from a continent where...
(a) a striptease is... like the slipped ****** pill
no one wants...
(b) the ****** don't bring their cameras
and film you while you're at it...
(c) and a (d) and an (e) that i will not even
debase myself with...
perhaps we do speak the same language...
but... that's as much as
relates shoeshine to a shoe
as it relates mewwy ol' england to this...
grand posturing that's the u. s. of... a.
perhaps i need to see the sights of: Moldova...
or... Switzerland...
last time i heard being land-locked is the new
best thing... given aeroplanes...
i did want to mid-west ****-hole h'america...
from england... eh... m'eh... all i need is to go east
of Germany... if i find myself in
the West Warsaw coach station...
i'm practically in Ukraine...
everything reeks of this... sediment of roach bathed
in rust... a perfume of mud,
concrete, and lazy metal...
and of course the doom and gloom of the skies...
like 25th of december in Chernobyl...
you just want to start aiming for sparrows
with a pellet gun and break your teeth
on sifting through dirt and haemorrhoids...
and by these standards?
punk will never bother to re-invent itself...
not with pink... and "pronoun concerns"...
or whatever you these days call a f-cking mullet...
and yes... because even if i could...
the white picket fence...
the 3 brats worth of a brood...
the gene patriarchy drive...
the alcoholic / neurotic spouse...
the dog name Bono...
and... each saturday a: bonfire of concerns
for my children's schooling...
sober: but the alternative is no better...
personally? as an "atheist"?
i'm not really thankful...
i can't be thankful for all of this...
last time i checked...
some people in this world are required
to have an omni-litany ruling over their ***-lives...
they want to feel: *****...
why would i even be an atheist?
to speak out something, snarky?
to be prone to... too much ridicule?
there's only so much comedy you can invest in,
before you realise: oh ****...
i'm not a stand-up!
this monologue has no stage...
no audience... it's going to eat me up
like any other solipsism without any escape
into a soliloquy!
atheism is a "thing" in h'america: no wonder...
who said it...
they're a bunch of puritans in public...
but in private? citizen porky?
you know... pig rubber masks and spandex
and s & m and... yawn...
a striptease is so condescending...
6 weeks of celibacy...
nothing: excuse me... *******?
i'm excused with the personal-relief...
yes, the line is drawn... once given the snip
but not the kippah?
em... **** galore: up in their air...
rotating toward... Mecca...
with the prayer...
like... i have the scalp to scratch my head
and ponder...
imagine if a circumcision was akin to scalping...
personally... do we even need ears?
i could be the first to say:
but not really...
a matrimony begins with...
the snippet... which transcends the symbology
of rings... i might as well see it as...
for a woman: she is to offer her virginity...
for a man? he is to offer his *******...
problem solved! Libra rejoice!
she gives up her virginity - which she will lose...
he gives up his ******* - which he will lose...
i can almost see Aaron making these
Levi demands...
what am i thinking...
i will never get to see ****-hole mustard seed
h'america... i'll sooner see Kazan...
but i still don't see the point of making
the loss of a woman's virginity to be equivalent
to a man losing his *******...
after all... prior to the snippet...
he'll *******... a woman will *******...
but... em... what the arm will not do:
the "oyster" will quench...
an i am a gentile figuring out the proper ways
of the monotheists...
speeded up eventuality of apes watching
the descent of dragons and dinosaurs...
bound to the noble profanity of swans...
and widow and widower swans...
brid-brains! of noble emotions!
huh?! no! not us!
i can see the point of male circumcision...
when it is brought with the virginity of a woman...
being circumcised with one woman
is much more than putting on a ring...
un-lucky for me... two protruding veins
like the caduceus worn into the skin of matrimony...
it's not simply that i won't:
i... can't...
hence my infernal tongue.

__________
one can only begin with: Б and В -
and then the nuance:
whatever "nuance" there was,
to genesis an adam and eve -
apple and: pears to combine
for the image of Иосифа лестница..
                  ц - ß - צ (tsade)
                   like one might begin with
something along the greek:
P and Π - amputee R...
rolls... rolls... past the goal-posts...
            the fwench hark
the english tarantula bitten
tongue-numb do not never will trill!
never mind:
       ščypta - szczypta - a pinch of salt...
wikipedia is so ******* wrong...
   щypta... it's a siamese grapheme!
thus shown... cisza: silence...
                       ciša..
ciШa...
                       you can rewrite ščypta /
szczypta in russian...
                     avoiding the щypta...
you can write: ШЧypta...
                     but given: щ (šč / szcz)?
                                    who's to argue?
here's my "revenge" against
organic chemistry's theoretical
electron migrations of schematics...
how about diacritical migrations?
more like electron ontology:
waves one minute, clouds the next...
czyszczoh...

https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&client=firefox-b-d&channel=trow&ei=vf84XaHyIMWHhbIPhtOPqA4&q=czyszczoch&oq=czyszczoch&gsl=psy-ab.3...750080.759383..760300...1.0..0.247.1771.0j9j2....­2..0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j0i67j0i131j0j0i131i67j0i30j0i13j0i1­3i30j0i13i10i30.wqdfvbgw6Ck&ved=0ahUKEwjhxKfi787jAhXFQ0EAHYbpA-UQ4dUDCAo&uact=5
(8 goodle results, nearing a -whack)...

Czyszczoń:
                     čyščoń:

                  interlude: Ђ? in cyrillic? isn't that a hindi letter?
via a mirror akin to Я ?            

czyścioch:
                 ШЧ / Щ -ypta - pinch...
      ЧyCЬKIOX...
          someone pedantic about staying clean...

                           :
  if you ever became riddle by pure
chemistry theory, and never walked into a lab:
that also employed you,
wasted years: performing electron bogus
schematics of "electron migrations"
in organic chemistry compounds...
in experiments...
          university as that extended waste
of time period: beside heavily politico
mickey mouse concerns of the dept. of
the humanities...
  sociology et al., well then?
you're right where you belong!
    
how about: the migration of diacritical markers,
orthography before naked english...
how's that?
     english the adam and ever...
all other languages attired
in the niqab worth a god...
__________

as i sit perched on my folded foot on the windowsill,
having a ms. amber cocktail with ginger ale,
smoking a cigarette, i gravitate to the empty
standing rack of shelves...
  what remains on it, as the paint dries?
a tub of wall paint: fine rosemary,
       tissues, sunglasses,
                  a game sheath: chess and backgammon
in one... a c.d. walkman,
      20 copies of my curricul vitae,
a 1:26000 ratio map of Warsaw...
                                  heidegger's ponderings VII - XI,
a thin book of poetry:
    Πoετιc Oπτoμεtρy - by some vague unknown
semi-anon. Mateusz Conrad...
          i'm hoarding about 200 copies of this work,
perhaps this lazy sod will finally get to
send this printed copy, some raw manuscript
pieces and a covering letter to
          Austin Macauley Publishers:
sounds like a good deal...
  they accept any manuscripts, with or without
an agent, published or not published,
expect a 3 week wait...
a letter dated 16 April 2019 for an appointment
at the Community Outpatient Cardilogy Clinic
  (Dagenham RM8 2EQ)
               with Anamaria Lunca...
24h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring
   (aged 33? not bad... <insert a snigger>)...
Plato's Theaetetus,
               Man-Bat: part 1 of 3, 1st. part,
DC comics, chuck dixon, flint henry,
    eduardo barreto - Feb. 96 - two $2.25...
Doctor StrangeFate, Amalgam Comics,
      #1, Ron Marz, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez,
Kevin Nowlan, April '96,
                                         $1.95...
Littlewoods F.A. Charity Shield:
Manchester United v Newcastle United
Sunday August 11 1996 Kick-off 3:00pm
Official Machday Proramme £5.00 -
venue? the old Wembley...
inside? another matchday programme...
West Ham v Manchester United
Barclays League Division One
Wednesday 22nd April 1992 kick-off 7:45pm
£1.50 for the programme...
- the mask returns: john arcudi (story),
doug mahnke (art),
      titan books, first edition October 1994...
Czeslaw Milosz - Zniewolony Umysł
     "Culture" Paris - 1953...
- Bartman: the best of the best 1st edition
January 1997...
- a few figurines...
   a porcelain tortoise: WADE - made in england,
a Kenyan shamanic totem -
a figure with a bloated belly and only one eye,
a polish clay cockerel,
           London's China town red figurine:
standing proud on coins of wealth roaring...
1986, my year, moderate wealth -
well... given this list... i had to move all
the books i own that are supposed to be on
these shelves into the hallway, some onto
the windowsill and some into the box room...
the paint has to dry...
          a boomerang...
                     a Wawel dragon figurine...
(hell, in the west the dragon is associated
with wealth... Smaug... in China the tiger
is associated with wealth... didn't know that)...
some amitriptyline 25mg tablets...
    tom waits: glitter and doom (live) -
seriously - there are only about ten albums
in this world where the live performance
outstrips the studio version,
notably? going out west...
                   a pencil and a piece of paper...
where i scribble my braille tally
to teach me how to drink sensibly
my two ciders and the banquet of whiskey:
currently standing at 4... ****...
oi! tender hands that never worked or
played the guitar, giv' us'us the braille
count to show you have no more fingers
than that tender index of yours!
                           ⠁⠃⠇⠧ ⠷ ⠿
                 it's working... 'nuf' said...
- virgil's the aeneid,
- h. p. lovercraft: against the world,
    against life - by michel houellebecq,
- NewScientist - 50th anniversary special
   (1956 - 2006)
- Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House programme,
i won't be dropping names...
****, i will:
           karim abdullin - soloist,
        maria alexandrova - principal,
artemy belyakov - leading soloist,
yulia stepanova - soloist,
                igor tsvirko - leading soloist,
- three letters from a Magdalena
Wielgołaska -
handwritten letters and all,
a pen-pall i managed to pick up a conversation
with in Edinburgh when she was
working a b & b for the summer...
         very self-conscious about her
height... well... she did play volleyball...
- old notes from university:
history essays... all a solid 2:1 grades:
    matriculation no.: s0458467
   tutor: kirsty chatwood (canadian ****
who became pregnant, great sense of humour),
e.g. why were there so many rebellions
in Europe in the mid-seventeenth century
(word count: 1,991),
   how and why did Napoleon succeed in
establishing French power over so much
Europe? (word count: 1,956)... 2% shy of a 1st...
so... no, not even i can answer this question...
since i also own copies of...
a traffic management copy of
my organic lab schedule:
   synthesis and acetylation of ferrocene,
preparation of 7-trichloromethyl-8-bromo-Δ-p-pinene
by free radical addition of
   bromotrichloromethane to β-pinene,
the photochemical interconversion of trans-
and cis- azobenzenes,
witting synthesis and photochemical
   cyclodehydrogenation of 1-styrylnaphthalene...
silyl enol ethers: a directed aldol reaction...
i used to do this sort of "stuff"...
but the pièce de résistance while i moved
my private library from these shelves?
ahem...

                 E. O. Richter & Co.
                 Präcision
                 Kopernicus IX set...
                 das prazisions-reiszeug

i.e. the most pristine instruments for technical
drawings... the sort of technical drawings used
in metallurgy, engineering, architecture...
people would conflate a hoarder with me...
me? i'm a connoisseur...
             i respect the sort of materialism that
transcends that shallow form of materialism
that equates itself with immediate gratification
not as a per se: but as a tool to attract...
unwanted attention...
  flimsy materialism, gluttonous materialism...
a materialism that occupies space
and short-attention span gnats...
    materialism of a temporal rather than
a spatial nature? now we're talking!

   and here's to toasting this day...
tomorrow i will erase that fateful day that
coincided with me painting my room
crimson - the Bataclan Massacre...
fine rosemary pale hue will replace
these blood soaked walls that have become
my gallows...
                    a shade much less the green
of my own eyes... and perhaps...
my mind will rest with a mild lapse into
a curiosity of a serenaded mind:
         i'm not even looking for serendipity.

it really didn't occur to me with regards
to the state of h'america...
  once upon a time any european would
look toward h'america as this unified
continent of sorts...
  prime cultural export juggernaut...
now? with the cracks showing,
  with individual americans making youtube
videos?
   clearly "we" europeans were lied to,
well: "lied" to...
          i would never have thought that the states
were so divided...
that even moving from one state to another
can be deemed as supicious...
maybe that's heavily reliant on the fact
that we're talking about a federation...
          in Europe they call it nationalism
what in H'america they call patriotism...
and populism is just the glue in between...
like that whole: ex-pat is not an immigrant...
but i love the h'american approach
to us old continent boyos...
styxhexen-... about the europeans:
'like we're enlightened and ****'...
         that really sums it up....
             notably, compiling the above list?
i almost forgot what i was going to write...
-hammer666 did enlighten me...
  i would have never have thought that
h'american "soccer mums" and goody-two-shoe
ruby-slippers christian folk would ban
children from reading 'arry Potter...
     well of course i knew of the satanic panic
music, and the gaming: thing...
but i never heard of 'arry Potter books being
banned...
     enlightened and ****...
      if Nietzsche was going to brag about reading
Stendhal... did him in my teens...
nothing to brag about... after all...
i did see a movie adapation starring
ewan mcgregor as julien sorel... and rachel weisz
was in it too... the first book adaptation on
film that spurred me to read the book...
if only the lord of the rings did likewise...
alas... not to be!
      no thanks to my scottish english teacher...
sure: of the g.c.s.e. curriculum?
i'm the king of the castle was the only
book of depth...
       yes, i'll give him this:
he did introduce me to jazz music...
   ben webster's how deep is the ocean...
   no other sax player as ben webster...
but: 'we're enlightened and ****' as an american
might put it...
   same teacher... on a trip to Glasbury-on-Wye
(Powys, Wales) -
oh god, i was dying to go on that trip for ages...
we were first supposed to go aged 15...
year 11...
  but the outbreak of the madcow disease
prevented us... so a year later it was...
    great place... caving, canoeing, horse riding...
and just in general the great outdoors...
any teen's dream living in the outer
east end of London...
              anyways... so the teacher inquired...
'what are you reading',
  he walked into our dorm while
guys my age were... snorting sugar dust
through their noses...
      fizz wiz space dust... yep... down the noses
it went...
   i was reading a book looking at them
like a gorilla might look at a human...
                       'mr. bunce? what am i reading?'
so i handed him the slim copy
of Marquis de Sade's groundbreaking short-story:
******...
          now, if you ask me...
the Marquis would have been the emblem
of short-story writing, he was the best as short-stories...
all those long repetitive regurgitations are...
well... 120 days of *****...
but Insect is where he shines,
the story is succinct in a citrus fruit sense:
i.e. piquant.
   succinct and piquant: such lovely
words could only have originated from
French and have to be treated as: loan-words.
besides: i find h'american criticism of europe
a wee bit funny...
     sure: an honest critique of the states
and the union, grandiose politics cogs and
all the labyrinths' worth of bureucracy:
like anywhere - same ****, different cover...
but when it comes to social norms and their
taboos... h'america is very truly backwards
when it comes to what culture its citizens
are allowed to ingest...
       me, in europe, reading marquis de sade
aged 16...
the equivalent of me, in h'america,
being prohibited to read: 'arry potter for
****'s sake!
sorry... on the level where my opinion
might or might not matter...
             americans are backwards...
those puritanical roots do not do them much
favors... esp. with their extravagant
punk-esque tropes signifying a rebellion
that never seems to occur;
christianity truly undermines the idea
of america...
                     if not bound by shackles,
then shivering under the burden of the shadow
of the cross: which none of them wish
to carry... the mere looming shadow frightens
them... and... mind you? american neo-atheism?
boring as sunday's midday sun.

i once helped a bee die... how? the poor thing was lying
on the patio giving his last twitches...
so i overdosed him on honey...
yep... picked him up in my hand,
squeezed a bit of honey and watched him
stick out his: maxilla, labial part,
proboscis and glossa (what a complex inversion
of otherwise calling it a phallus and zunge)...
and **** up the honey...

i don't know whether he was an old bee or he didn't
see the glass and minotaured the empty space
with a concussion...
but i did see all life evaporate when he finally died
from a sugar-overdose... thanks to me...
a little universe in the palm of my hand...
how else to **** a bee that's already dying?
i couldn't just flatten it with my foot...
why? i remember being stung once... all i can remember
is the mud and the lake...

unlike killing mosquitos... which is just fun...
of all things in this world: mosquitos i **** for fun...
i once took a selfie with a fly on my forehead...
don't ask me how i walked from one room
to the other... turned the computer on...
and... the fly in tow... to compliment a perfect
hindu bindi!
sometimes i would catch a fly in a glass and walk
up to cotton candy of some spider's lair and wish
that i might just: feed her something...
that's like winning the lottery...
but mosquitos? i **** for fun... i just wait until i see
that needle of theirs get injected into my skin
when then anaesthetic is being pumped in...
and then the splatter of a hand-guillotine...
when i was younger i watched to boys playing
by a stream... they would catch a frog and cover
her with lipstick... two sadists in the making...
and then they'd light her up...
i once dated a girl who used to sprinkle salt
on snails... but i still eat chicken...
perhaps because i want to retain a "moral superiority"
by also appreciating eating the hearts,
the stomachs... esp. the poached necks...

if an animal is to be killed: might as well make most
of it... i heard that deep-fried pork ears smothered
in breadcrumbs are a rave in new york...
no one this is supposed to make sense for me
keeping up with rigid religious dogma...
there is none in this scenario... there's just this freak
event... of watching a bee die in my hand
from a honey-overdose...
perhaps honey is like an ****** for these little buggers?
beside the point...
i always feel **** when i write something and it amasses...
a spike in readership...
notably: the words come of their own accord;
the ***** are a bonus -
i must have written something to estranged from my usual
diatribe... i must have prostated myself
in defiance to... compliment Iblis or something...
hunchback with wings...
i've heard that myth a long time ago...
concerned with the Eden story in Islam of...
in defiance Iblis didn't bow...

so however many generations later...
some "genius" decided to bow and earned himself
the title: the hunchback angel... formerly a man...
perhaps at my lowest: when something should
not have been written: but anything to escape
and not give into a writer's bloc is more necessary...
at least it must be entertaining for the many...
stick to the script remember:
you're not writing for the money...
nor the chance to collect a memory harem
of one-night stands...
in reference to the use of english - which isn't a first:
nor is it my first daddy and mummy:
t'ah-t'ah and m'ah-m'ah...
last time i heard t'ah-t'ah was a shared primeval
syllable construct also found in south africa...
to denote: father... which is "odd" how
it moved to poland... abscission...
that's the closest i've come to reaching a competence
using this acquired tongue...
what a past have i left...
unlike Czeslaw Miłosz... then again...
he was always a Lithuanian at heart...
i once heard from a girl in a pub that i kissed
and kissed mad drunk with love to hear any sort
of *******... forehead, eyebrows eyelids nose
and teased at the lips: as most drunks do...
we ****** the Lithuanians over...

in what respect? who's fault was it... the three partitions?
and the pseudo-Israel "non-existence" on
the map... this fear of losing grips on a language
are not new... oddly enough i allow myself
to be an anglophile... it's unique in that...
it doesn't have... orthography debates... just bad spelling...
and plenty of metaphysical fish from...
that sort of death yawns and a ship sails
across an entire ocean...
therefore i can't just "integrate"...
it would be bad psycholgoy to think that:
one tongue is better than two...
it would be like an amputee's ghost limp...
or worse... since to cut out the tongue...
first, later second... because it's a minority tongue...
and: what if i don't have anyone to speak
it with? how about i think in it?
what two groups of people were ever able
to sack moscow... the mongols and the poles...
during the polish–muscovite war (1605–1618):
poland - the cindarella of europe...
and she really is... just recently celebrating 100 years
of independence?

while all these other cases have had:
uninterrupted histories?
we ****** over the Lithuanians... how?
we ****** ourselves over to begin with...
a democratic monarchy - the commonwealth -
because it somehow started with...
democratically electing a king by the aristocratic
class - a swede once governed over this...
myth of a land... the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
should be regarded as a myth...
ancient greece would be a myth if no writing
was used in modern blah-blah...

my own... my own... shame that i don't write
in the language... but instead write in english...
i've given it plenty of assurances that it will:
or rather that i will be its most respectful host...
but given i see no need to point at myself...
perhaps the english in me has its own mind?
i sometimes "feel" under strict obligation to just sit
back and let the language express itself...
for some reason there might just be enough...
"unaddressed" points to consider...
should this language not find a suitable host...
perhaps... a subversive host...
that would use the language for: ulterior motives...
i don't have the skin in the game to...
throw tantrums and do nothing about...
psst... the grooming gang scandals...
i've been trying to bed an english girl for...
a better half of two decades...
australian, russian, french...
romanian, bulgarian... thai...
                           idealist me... *** is always ugly...
nice photographs... but any conversation
before or after...
**** anything that moves is the general motto...
steal kisses from prostitutes...
because this is not the time for: the jack of all spades
to tame the hearts of: the "less pure"...
oh sure... i could go back: to whatever "back" is...
perhaps i'm invested in england somehow...
like the r.a.f. squadron no. 303...
who have something to take care of...
outside of the "homeland"... home... i don't even know
where that is...
this doesn't even suggest itself as a...
perilous exile... for there to be some longing...
i can't even boast... become overtly pronounced
in myself: with said origins...
can't exactly sell you pierogi dumblings like
a turk might sell you a kebab or an indian curry...
so... pride... at which point? the current:
march of the black umbrellas... the... dead twin speaking
to the current: party president -
from the wreckage of Smolensk wreckage...
having a russian girlfriend... wouldn't have helped...
i'm sure...
winged-hussars... something special about distant
folk songs... that aren't in german?
oh they have to be in german... only the germans really
know how to sing folk songs...

question: how long did it take to defeat france
in world war II?
six weeks from 10 May 1940,
german forces defeated lllied forces
by mobile operations and conquered france, belgium,
luxembourg and the netherlands (42 days)

question: how long did it take to defeat poland
in world war II
35 days... wow! now i can ******* gloat!
it took the germans and the soviets... 35 days to defeat
poland... ha ha... riding roses against tanks...
that famous / infamous: charge at krojanty...
but it did take both the germans... and the soviets...
35 days...
i guess the gentile folk of western europe...
just 7 days more... to conquer a plethora of
countries... some that didn't have their existence...
put on hiatus... the welcoming **** of france
it seems...

fair enough... i've found something to be proud of...
woop woop!
mein gott! i come from this past...
why am i not passing my genes? och! **** lord miser
that i am!
here's to: not ****** any english girls...
or perhaps: it's the love for the welsh: just being welsh...
and it's somehow imploring the scots:
get some gaelic in you! don't base it on
a glaswegian accent!

yes... i am the host - and english is a "parasite" in me...
personally i think it has a mind of its own...
ever think that a language can never be your own?
esp. if it is acquired?
all that: from an outsider's perspective...
but not from a "racial minority" perspective...
beside the whitey you would have to tell me to:
wear my "brown" on the inside...
any excuse to not but otherwise troll some german...
for the giggles and fuchs...
if only this was written by some Kensington rascal...
but it's not... and it's not by a northumberlandian
either... i tend to forget the bristol wankers
outright... sorry... local prejudices...
you can never somehow escape them!
i.e. essex this, essex that... all the blondes and oranges
and... thick as bunch of doorknobs...
that's why i'd call them the bristolian wankers...
some prejudices just come with the language...
and locality.....
prejudices or merely a tease mark-up...
the usual west vs. east, north vs. south...
and to think... i came here... aged 8...
with no knowledge of the language...
watching cartoon network doesn't count...
and look at me now... entrenched in it...
the host...
                            i quiet like the analogy...
thrown in the deep end and shouted at:
now learn to tread water, you beautiful little
motherucker! swim! swim!
if there's no self-deprecating humor...
then there's no humor at all;
oh look... there's even a latin phrase for it...
i think i'll call this my modus operandi -
my caterogical imperative...
my cogito ergo sum...
         so it's settled:           sui deprecandi;
the biggest joke of all is that...
i can't fit the sterotype of being an eastern european
plumber... which is a shame...
given that east europe is... somewhat near
the the Urals... and...
of course... the czechs have had it easier
having capitulated... and they did because...
bohemia was their old pocket in the holy
roman empire...
piffy details... pitiable attention to details...
who's who in the game of:
what's to be bettered by it being corrected...
i hate this game...
then again: the best i ever said in school
was... a punctuation "oops":
- ****! ****!
- ****, my ***... in that common colliqual of:
what's it called: not really?
unless i'm about to endanger the native speaker
residence of language...
or that i need to be corrected: i'm all ears when it comes
to a typo...
the pride of the monolinguals...
call it pride... call it stubbornness -
but if i didn't retain my own "nativism" i would
have to probably resolve to speaking to my grandparents
in a gesticulating braille hybrid -
with an index finger pointing at air...
spotting carbon dioxide particle..
         guilty as charged... always paranoid about
whether or not i have succumbed to a tautology.

Hens scampering in the village of Parma
Appeasing the rooster's pride

An acre of corn nestling
The soft serving Earth

Some light years away
The explosion of a star
Extends the reign of darkness

Kristina in her T-shirt
Looking at her **** in the mirror
Wondering how much firmer they get
She is nineteen years old
And wants to become an artist
But her mother has other ideas

The clock chimes the midnight hour
And Tom is sitting in the dark
Debating whether to do it or not
Whether to dispel the itch or wallow in it
He is idyllic and knows nothing
Of politics, nothing of religion
And nothing of death

In the street corner
Harlots talk about tricks
Talk about positional preference
And talk about cunning
One day they are the masters
Of their worlds and the next
Objects of subjugation

A ****** of crows circle overhead
The pitch of their cawing growing

The clergyman wearing a purple robe
Pays tribute to ****** Mary
He is positive that his moralizing sermon
Would enlarge his drove of disciples
His submission to the Cross
Is double-edged: one about God's work
And the other about mammon

An osprey swoops down
And catches a trout

Silver and gold are bought and sold
In the marketplace
Asteroids surge through
The incalculable Space
Time effects and erases
Prospects of understanding

Mason is an obscured poet
He admires Rilke's philosophy of writing
Even though he is well educated
In aesthetics of language
His own poetry verges on insanity
He says: either mad or dead

The General brushes his mustache
He is about to give a farewell speech
To his subordinates
He is not going to ignite them
With bravery or his achievements
Instead, he is going to stab their spirits
What do they know
These fancy pants of generalship

The lioness fails to make a ****
Oh, but there is another prey

The Heart aches for peace
For eternal release from the binds of
Temporal tricks
The Mind, whether a master or slave
Miscalculates the essential needs
And the Body, sanctuary of soul,
Craves for food, ***, rest and breeding

Czeslaw Milosz would have been
The President of the World
Joseph Brodsky:
His Secretary of Independence
Robert Frost:
His Secretary of Freedom
William Butler Yeats:
His Secretary of Peace
Pablo Neruda:
His Secretary of Pleasure
Only if Fate had been kind enough.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain

                                      Li Po, “Ancient Air,” p. 84
                    A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

We read of the poets of China
In the days of the Golden Tang
In the time of The Gathering of Kings
When The Silk Road carried dreams

Government officials were the poets
And poets were the government officials
Who knew The Five Classics by heart
And wrote of China in Tang quatrains

They were writing to the Emperor
And now they are writing to us