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Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
as a usual Saturday, a sniff of whiskey left
from the previous night -
that'll do - it's not much, but it steadies
the nerves and handshakes with ghosts
of dead writers and poets -
but then the paranoia kicks in -
this isn't the same utensil as a fork, or a typewriter -
this keyboard is attached to a matrix -
it extends far and wide,
i don't know... you can get paranoid
after writing at the height of your drinking
the previous day and wake up the next day
and consider it as nothing more
than diluted prose - which it is, a snapshot
of Joycean ergonomics - but you then
by accident hit the F5 button, yep, the one just
above the 5% button: are there poets
out there, still writing as if they are holding
quills and their fingers have ink stains
and they're airing their frustrations at a blank page?
seriously? i freaked out for a minute having
pressed the F5 button, panic! sheer panic!
panic is worse than fear, i thought for a splinter
second that the government was trying to
censor me... that i was somehow in deep ****,
writing propaganda for some obscure government
that allows 12 year old children perform public
executions by shooting culprits in the back of the head...
what does the F5 button do?
it freezes / blocks / denies the laptop mouse -
a rectangle mat and two buttons incorporated into
the actual laptop - for those few seconds
i felt monitored - standard paranoia of the 21st
poet / writer / whoever, but not quiet enough
for a spy novel... just bog standard feelings... which
are very much linked to printed book materials...
e.g. **** deus: a brief history of tomorrow by
yuval harari - about how we're getting dumber
because someone smarter programmed something
and we weren't given the manual...
funny... they started selling computers like they
were selling hammers... they said: easy, easiest
thing to operate... i'm well chuffed (i guess i use
that word to replace being surprised - local
ingredient - how they bang on about organic
locally grown potatoes and beef, same thing,
only with local vocab) - but they don't sell computers
with instruction manuals - so obviously
the smartest kids these days get on the app. rather than
the mortgage ladder - but **** me! you
could have at least included a little booklet that tells you
what F5 does... i never use it! i'm one of the few
lucky ones, i have some literacy in this department,
but i'm not a techno-philiac as such -
i'm one of those people that says: well, so much
for the building, but you have to put something
meaningful and human in it for the building
to be worth something... not what it is, but:
what it's about - i once learned to use Excel...
****! gone, not coming back. i once learned to
code and build a website... ****! gone, not coming
back, goldfish syndrome due to excess drinking...
but what bothers me is finding something
interesting in that book review... the invention of
humanism as a religion in the 17th century (
funny how Nietzsche criticised Christianity when
as an academic he would have known about
humanism, but dumbly persisted to criticise
what was already being replaced... unless...
he was anticipating American Evangelism,
which might be true) - so i'm trying to look for humanism,
and i come across Copernicus and Galileo -
because, apparently, (as already mentioned)
'Christianity was gradually dislodged by a belief
in the scared status of every individual's feelings
and judgement; we became the centre of the universe,
placing our trust in an unease alliance between
science and moral instinct.'
so there me thinking: so this goes back
to what we're experiencing now, heliocentric humanism
and geocentric humanism -
like i already mentioned, what's west for
nautical calculations past the moon and where's up
or north? it's still flat, the earth, if you're
trying to get from A (Lisbon) to Rio (B) -
so it's happening now, the great schism in humanism,
one side demeaning, angry, frustrated,
the other optimistic - heliocentric humanism
suggest that humans have all the great answers,
that we're all little Louis XIVs, about to dream big
about sorting hunger with spaghetti with a chance of
meatballs machines lodged in our head...
cure for cancer, etc. but then the geocentric humanism
movement is also strong: carbon footprints being
more important than carbon dating, global warming,
you know, typical ****.
still, the F5 paranoia was great,
writing this with an unlit roll-up cigarette was even
better, puckering that luxury before
the last word, and Houston: we have lift-off.
ghost queen Nov 2019
You ask why I am anxious, why i am depressed, let me list for you the reasons why:

Global warming
Melting glaciers
Heatwaves
Polar vertices
Category 6 hurricanes
F5 Tornadoes
Droughts
Desertification
Floods
Wild fires
Snowless winters
Ice free arctic
Antarctic ice shelf collapse
Greenland glacier melting
Perma forst thawing

Ocean warming
Ocean acidification
Coral bleaching
Sea level rising
Coastal erosion
Over fishing
Fisheries collapse
Plankton extinction
Fertilizer run offs
Chemical pollution
Raw sewage dumping
Red algae blooms
Vibrio explosions

Ozone layer depletion
Lack of fresh potable water
Acid rain
Top soil depletion
Dead soil
Deforestation
Banana palm tree cultivation
Evasive species
Overpopulation
Urban sprawl
Insect apocalypse
Animal extinction
Lower biodiversity
Bird apocalypse
Bee apocalypse
Bat apocalypse
Amphibian apocalypse

Aging nuclear power plants
Superfund sites
Radioactive contamination
Three mile island, Chernobyl, Fukushima
Endocrine disrupters
PBAs
Autism
***** count collapse
Effeminization of men

Noise pollution
Light pollution
Chronic stress
Diabetes
Metabolic diseases
Over eating
Obesity

Drug resistances
New and emerging diseases
Epidemics pandemics
Swine and bird flu
Genetic modification
Biotech tech
nano tech
Crispr
DNA
genetic testing
Designer babies
Aging population
Health care rising
Unaffordable medications
Uninsured
Medicare of all
Medical bankruptcy
Social security bankruptcy

Rise of terrorism
Rise of extremism
Far right
Alt right
Lack of education
Masculine identity crisis
Emasculation of men
Decline of boys
Rise of girls

Increasing depression and anxiety
Increase anxiety depression among young girls
Lack of human connection
Social isolation
Social awkwardness
Snowflake generation
Disintegration of the family
Suicides
Social media addiction
**** addiction
Drug addiction
Alcohol addiction

Lack of equality
Political corruption
Kleptocracy
Corporatocracy
Plutocracy
Oligarchy
New American aristocracy
Too big to fail
Privatize profits, socialize losses
Decline of democracy
Fascism
Terrorism
Religious extremism
Religious tension
Political divisiveness
National unity
Second American civil war
Helplessness of the common man

Big data
Data protection
Algorithms
Internet tracking
Lost of privacy
Artificial intelligence
Singularity
AI white collar job lost
AI automation
AI back office
Autonomous AI
5G supremacy
Quantum computer supremacy
Virtual reality
Augmented reality
Cybernetics
Chronophobia
Outsourcing
Off shoring
On shoring

Over education
Under employment
Skills gap
3rd world immigration
La reconquista
Cultural dilution
Status quo
Declining economies
Housing crisis
Housing cost
Homelessness
Illiteracy
Hunger
Unemployment
Full employment
Racism
Intolerance
Race relationships
Increasing crime
Student loans
Credit card debt
High mortgages
7 year car loans
Inverse yield curve
52 week high

Wars
Military interventions
Social uprisings
Dwindling resources
Resources conflicts
Rare earth metals
Depletion of helium
Peak oil
Fracking
Water wars
Climate refugees
A list of worries people face today that is causing anxiety and depression
C B Heath  Jan 2014
Refreshed
C B Heath Jan 2014
When my Grandparents were young, or relatively young,
say, the age I am now, coincidence still had a name;
that is to say, was still rare enough to warrant one.
They had to wait for them - if they did wait at all.

But I am fortunate, am I not? I do not have to wait
at all, never, no way. I use an automatic service,
administered by somebody else whom I do not know,
deployed in ways I do not fully comprehend, utilising
techniques I do not fully comprehend. I have one
function in the algorithm: to press F5, to press
F5, and then - ! - a page appears which seems to know me:
'Lightning over Tucson'. Did I pronounce that right?

When my Grandparents were young, or relatively young,
say, the age I am now, coincidence still had a name:
'coincidence'. Did I pronounce that right? F5. F5.
Jazmine Moore  Apr 2014
F5
Jazmine Moore Apr 2014
F5
Wrestling through the sheets I found myself feeling alive.
Your lips have awakened my soul.
Your tongue became the key to the prize that was locked away for so long.
I tremble with just the thought of your touch
As you trace your fingertips down my spine, I am slowly unraveling.
For you do not know about the storm you have just created..
The rain pouring is filled lust and are the only one who can seize this storm.
Baby.
Here we are again;
It's dangerous what we are doing..
Playing in this storm as if the lighting can't touch us.
Whispers of wind can't even stop us.
It's too late.
The storm has just begun.
David  Dec 2014
F5
David Dec 2014
F5
endlessly refreshing the page
grades mean more than knowledge
grades mean more than time
the red dot notification cages
my inner peace
until further notice
F5 is my life
Riq Schwartz  Aug 2014
F5
Riq Schwartz Aug 2014
F5
I fear I've become
formulaic and dishonest
though honesty has never
flown freely when I bleed.
I instead inscribe
insolence, decadence
dolled up in demand and
hand picked participles
to show my snappy wordsuits
down this two dimension catwalk.
I've tasted the fraudulent freeverse fantasy
and washed out what I've done
years past, former lives,
servitude to scheming rhymes
and tracking down the feet
meter by meter.
See!
I own the jargon,
jot it down freely
with a casuality undeserved.
Read carefully, cause herein spouts my effort.

Slink back to default,
once in whiles,
show them that you
got it still.
Baring teeth or
gleaming smiles
differ at souls'
windowsills.

And simply so, it seems again
like pox against my aching skin
I simply substitute some time
to rhyme and let it all begin...
Sometimes you need to
Reece Oct 2013
I could tell a thousand stories about a boy.

There are dry crystals of DXM on the desk on which he writes CVs,[1] and as he writes he listens to Lou Reed because of his apparent lack of knowledge of Reed's back catalogue.[2]

He takes Molly on Friday nights, because rappers say its cool, how could Chief Keef be an idol to reasonable people?[3] Spouting buzzwords and memes in public places, hoping to be noticed and applauded for a knowledge of he knows not what.

The Twitter feed reads like toilet paper, with less information
Fooling himself into thinking that he needs that rapid a-disinformation[4]
He wonders why there are still advertisements for MySpace, is it not dead yet?

He uses a trusted torrent search engine to download every episode of TV shows he watches religiously. Is that not an indicator of a profoundly unhappy person?[5]
A liberal thinker in his own right yet still regards the BBC as having unabashed liberal motifs haphazardly forced into all of its programming and news coverage.[6]

Why have hashtags stumbled into the global lexicon, and is this an example of cultural Marxism?[7]
Why is he never noticed?
That sweet jazz serenade that emanates from speakers in his lonely house, is but melancholy drones, might as well be Tim Hecker as opposed to Jack Teagarden.[8] His record collection is vast, the smell of vinyl pungent and nostalgic.[9] Obsolete so they may be, but those indie movies sure make them seem cool.

Oh he watches Truffaut, Fellini, Tarr and Michael Snow, he does it to appear cultured, but to who? Since nobody exists.[10] Antiutopian music videos, depicting *** and violence, he could make crass judgments on society but he knows that he loves that Robin Thicke video and what Kanye West did with New Slaves.[11]

Spending hours at a time, ******* to amateur **** on some seedy site and pictures of girls that he probably shouldn't have seen. [12] And after such laborious efforts he can return to an endless cycle of hitting F5 on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, 4chan, 420chan, VICE, TheYNC, BBC News, Mishka, 2DopeBoyz, World-Star Hip-Hop, Fetlife and Hello Poetry. Amassing information and retaining so little that it hardly seems worthwhile.

Yes he reads, when so many do not. Nabokovian purple prose and the way Bukowski was so ******. He read Poe in elementary because 'goth' was new to him, and now he loves Whitman, Plotinus and St. John of the Cross because Ginsberg mentions them in Howl and Other Poems.[13]

He uses words he doesn't understand like 'catechism', 'ecclesiology' and 'female ******'.
A sprawling mass of words, never ending streams of thoughts, the constant reminder of drudgery in modern times. Wishing he was from some other period, but the idea is ridiculous in and of itself.
He makes crass jokes and thinks they're actually funny.

He's lost. He's empty. He's sad and he's a fraud, its how I knew him best.[14]
[1] Even after brushing the back of his hand across the surface in hopes of ridding the cheap IKEA MDF of tobacco and cannabis leaves.

[2] Information he can use in further conversation, fooling himself into thinking it matters or that anybody cares of his extensive knowledge and new found love of Songs for Drella since Lou's passing.

[3] The same can be said about Codeine that purple dream. Promethazine, in the bloodstream, enough to make a grown man lean

[4] Why even use toilet paper anyway, did the Mother Nature Network not provide a convincing enough argument for the use of a bidet?

[5] Especially considering he cannot watch said shows without marijuana, painkillers, dissociatives, opiates or all of the above. A consequential addict.

[6] Why too must we have 24 hour news? Many wasted hours spent filling time with puff pieces, non-news, celebrity gossip and speculation. When did news stop making the news, why is this only a new phenomenon, and can we always just blame the internet? #NEWS

[7] He won't admit that he doesn't actually understand the intricacies of cultural Marxism but willingly throws the phrase about each room, hoping to be noticed.

[8] More noise to drown out the bipolar thoughts and ringing in his ears from years of abuse at punk rock shows and over crowded, dangerously loud clubs and free parties.

[9] He still maintains a last.fm account out of some convoluted sense of self-worth

[10] He could just watch The Hangover, The Fast and Furious and Transformers, perhaps he'll make friends that way. #CommonInterests.

[11] He still makes aforementioned judgements whilst never outright damming his favoured videos.

[12] #NabokovianFantasy

[13] He is a hero of our time, and Pechorin rolls in his grave at the sentiment.

[14] The author of this "poem" does not actually know the subject.
April Hapner  Jul 2012
Re-Fresh
April Hapner Jul 2012
I've hit "F5"
waited in line
for this wave to crash and burn ---
Just to get a drink.

feel dry, but not yet parched
i see waves in the heat;
need a moment;
need to breathe.

its too dry...
my mouth begs for a cool splash,
the engine overheats,
I'm stuck wondering
[is it 120 degrees?]

a suburban village
a hum and stream of cashflow...
leaking through unsettled buildings
and cracked doors....
only my feet have begun to feel a sensation of cool
as shade from the trees...
bakes away

i need the rain to make the area
bearable, wonderful
and breathable.
maybe the summer should hit "F5"
and let it rain so maybe
a sense of refreshment
can take over and soothe the panic
of those who cant access the "WWW"
to work,play,
and feel as if the summer from hell
has made its stay short,
so we may 'Fall'
and the screens we look through Re-Fresh.
This Heat Wave Is Enough To ****.
My town broke its heat record almost everyday then after the mid Atlantic and mid west storms hit north of me, a ******* storm hits my town like last year and knocks out my power.  im lucky it happened at night and the breezes at night were cool, in fact COLD.

This is probably going to be a first saying this, im ready for fall and winter.
---  Mar 2014
F5
--- Mar 2014
F5
And here I sit
Refreshing my email
What do I expect?
Jonny Angel Jun 2015
Ross was a fullblooded
bronze-skinned buddy
from the Navajo Nation.
He was a diehard Okie,
and a machine gunner,
carried the M-sixty
with twenty pounds
of extra belted-ammo.
He was a big guy,
had brown deep-set eyes,
high cheeks and
not a single hair
on his burly body,
but some high and tight
pitch bristles on his head.
He had a weakness.
Pure Straight Whiskey.
Whenever he had too much,
he was an F5 tornado,
a wild Tasmanian devil,
to be reckoned with.
I remember when he had
his front top teeth knocked out
by some civilian bouncers
at a local drinking establishment.
He kicked the **** out of
three huge muscle guys.
It was him versus them.
A regular melee.
Ross won.
Once on a Saturday night,
drunk as skunks,
we made an illegal turn
on the Interstate south of Denver.
We ended up flying down the highway
with four hundred feet of wire
attached to wooden poles,
sent sparks flying everywhere.
I never saw a guy laugh
so hard in all my life.
He ****** himself hysterically.
We gave Ross his first Native American name.
We were out in the field,
just hanging out
in battle gear,
shooting the ****
around our APC.
We called him Prancing Moose,
Moose for short.
He loved it when
we called him that,
gave us a toothless grin.
He was a warrior to us.
In another time and place,
he might have been a Chief.
He was courageous,
fearless and
a good friend
to have in your side.
From time to time,
I think about him,
and pray he's okay,
still alive.
He was our blood brother.
We were in hell together.
I miss him, too.

— The End —