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Mateuš Conrad May 2016
sure, the romance, they are the new gods,
     Paris, Rome, Barcelona (don't ask me about Madrid,
                                                       too royal),
a Venetian mask i would don, and become the quixote fighting treadmills rather than windmills -
although to Rome i have not walked
                for my footsteps to encounter the pave,
but in the Venetian pirate lair, plunderers of Byzantium
i have set foot on, at the same time to have learned
of the number 613 near a synagogue and heard the shofar.
Paris (not the Trojan) is the cliche synonym of Eros -
elsewhere Gemini: St. Petersburg as the Amsterdam
   of the north, and Edinburgh as the Athens of the north.

well, such a verse does indeed desire
                                                 more translation of Horace,
as in nimis ex vos, sed non satis ex "ego",
  yes, "ego" the abstract component of you that's
free from the three tier psychoanalytical *******,
what superego, what id? forget it! there's only you
and only "you" - work with me:
               too much out of you, but not enough
               from your alter (synonym of "ego" -
               Jungian shadow porridge);
but as promised, yet more Horace

               deus inmortalis haberi dum cupit Empedocles
               ardentem frigidus Aetnam insiluit.
               sit ius liceatque perire poetis:
               invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.
               nec semel hoc fecit nec, si retractus erit,
               iam fiet **** et ponet famosae mortis
               amorem. nec satis adparet, cur versus factitet,
               utrum minxerit in patrios cineres an triste
               bidental moverit incestus: certe furit ac velut
               ursus, obiectos caveae valuit si frangere clatros,
               indoctum doctumque fugat recitator
               acerbus; quem vero arripuit, tenet occiditque
               legendo, non misura cutem nisi plena
               cruoris hirudo.


but of course i'll translate, but prior in dogmatic proposals...
keep the book of revelation of the Ιωαννης,
discard the rest... the four primers are a parody of
the tetragrammaton - so gentle in his own land
yet such a vicious serpent in Egypt? which one's the fraud?
messiah of just hanging, standing still,
40 years in the desert or 40 hours on the cross?
and all that iconoclasm and modern too via narcissism?
"bring out the selfie shtick! oh wait... my hands are
nailed to a ******* crux!" and this persistent 2000 year old
negation - and being spared, the Romans, or
rather the alphabetum, Roma est mort but you
can still ask the italians of a cappuccino - Chino and
Khaki elsewhere with the Lombardy League ponce
rubbing shoulders with Saxons... Chino Versace
whistle at a Bella... you can still see c b g long after
and the coliseum in ruins... it wasn't swallowed up!
i too though the second H in the tetragrammaton was
intended as a déjà vu - it would sit perfectly with
anti-, the concept, but not the man as such,
and indeed the Y would make a perfect tree of Golgotha
in that tweaked geometric, then W and seas
and continuance - Roma alphabetum, sole constructor
of computer robot? maybe... but you see, the H
is a slippery *****, it's silent, like in Khaki... or
as is the usual case in Hindu - Dhal... it's not so much
déjà vu but silence - a necessary surd to make spelling
pretty... dyslexics think spelling is a bit like arithmetic...
it's actually an aesthetic, but they do find it as hard as
arithmetic, and that's why they're genius at numbers...
but the aesthetics is missing, so they cling to numbers
and the aesthetic is missing, and everything associated
with money... well, it's a bit ugly, isn't it?

... (postponed translation)... yes, London is Hades...
    doom and gloom.

but indeed the Gemini in the tetragrammaton,
but first the principle of three-dimensional space (Y) -
just look into one of the corners of a cube (yes
the room you're sitting in),
and lastly the principle of waves, whichever,
sine or cosine as you will, looks better that way
than mediating the ad infinitum of 1, 2, 3 etc.,
sea and constant fluxes (fluctuations),
pin-point the opposite, the principle of one-dimensional
space (a definite coordinate, rather than three-dimensional
space and that ****** indefinite coordinate) and
subsequent ripples, which aren't necessarily waves:
my tools? a-       and -the            and every other ism
that might act as an auxiliary attaché - time (W).
but indeed the anti- implementation that serves as
direct Gemini chiral-ism: the latter serves no close
resemblance to be guided to Golgotha,
hence guided toward Megiddo, and a crucifix also there?

**** such religiosity twice over with its vortex,
as promised the Horace translation

       Empedocles, desirous of godliness in being so,
       having icily strutted toward old age and by
       old age near frozen, was prophesied to jump
       into flaming Etna. as they want, let the poets
       have a right to a death (of their choosing).
       who whomever against his will saves,
       twice-over rattles the suicide's intentions.
       it hasn't been the first time, it's not that easy
       to say it: i am human. he wants to immortalise
       himself, fame posthumously. he writes poems.
       why? maybe he urinated on his father's grave,
       maybe in a place basked by throngs he took
       from it the vices and in solitude became
       desolate with inherited uncleanliness of urbanity?
       like a bear with scars, prison bars he breaks open,
       scares off the wise and the foolish, such
       the adamant nature of compulsive poetic labour,
       whoever he grasps with recitations he
       finishes off, the leech attached to his skin will
       not fall off, until satiated with enough blood.


**dicam Siculique poetae narrabo interitum.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
it’s saturday night and it’s that time of the week
when all the days disappear into diapers of new births squatting
with umbilical chord necklaces,
i open horace’s book, maxim something then close it:
‘too pedantic,’ i think then say it:
pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas,
which means i’m living in england when prog-rock was heaven sent -
where did the englishman disappear to, the 1960’s?!
then comes glasgow with bukowski (i found
him there with ivan karamazov) and i like the fact
that i’m drinking whiskey at 3am
with the neighbour’s kids watching from across the patches of green
while i: drum with my fingers against the collar bone,
weep over singing in german, wear sunglasses to dim the night further.
you know, many lucifers came with the crucifixion of words:
******, stalin, mao... jesus (the jews really took the golden calf
seriously now, although it’s pinned up and
it’s very diabolical to say the least - well d'uh...
        torture for iconoclastic reaping of the knees to bend) -
but few satans - who came with the motto: the silent waters
nibble at the shoreline.
my grandmother said that one, all credit to her,
so about me and the lamentation of singing in german,
a little bit of enlightened thinking: brehta - which in silesian polish
means... he’s laughing... very close to schprehta - he’s talking in a foreign language -
good for commerce.
then i forget the strain and feverishness of lying in bed listening
to the clock tick tick tick...
i stand up and undress myself from the monkey suit worried
about tigers and mammoths and fleas...
i stand up, plug in to the ploughing of sounds, smoke a cigarette,
have a drink... and play with the kids across two garden’s worth of length
pretending to be the madman.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2021
it always makes sense: to make your own
blueberry ice-cream...
or raspberry ice-cream...
  come to think of it: having watched a lot
of Australia Master-Chef...
hmm... beetroot ice-cream...
basil ice-cream...
                it makes sense because it's
a quintessential happiness...
altogether something different from...
making your own wine...
but this has to be the most pristine base recipe:
2 cups of double cream
half a cup of sugar: perhaps even less...
one quarter to half a cup of sugar...
5 egg yolks...
obvious beaten and when the cream sugar milk
mixture comes up to 165 Fahrenheit...
the ideal temp. for roast chicken: mind you...
i remember those Sundays when
both my mother and grandmother
turned chicken ******* into chalk...
all the men in the house would be gagging for
the dark meat: near the bones...
since that couldn't be overcooked... over-baked...
obviously if i were to compare:
taking out my little culinary chemistry set
when making a curry...
is one thing...
but there's something: i don't have either
noun or adjective to suit this adventure...
it's: ******* blueberry ice-cream...
you could almost reinvent the thrill of riding
a bicycle heavy-traffic when
making ice-cream...
i'm more of a savoury cook...
when it comes to sweet: baking irritates me...
ice-cream i can stand: under...
but cooking sweet is so less alchemical
than cooking savoury...
whiskey ice-cream: it's doable...
double up: coffee-whiskey-caramel ice-cream...
oh... wait... that's tripling up
    on the effort...
sure... some cheap vanilla extract to boot...
but since blueberries are blueberries...
and not raspberries: there was a sly squeeze
of a lemon...
i'm hoping for a good harvest
of grapes this year...
i'm assuring myself to be able to...
squeeze out a dozen bottles of row-zay...
looks ugly: phonetically... no?
i'm not going to introduce an acute on the E
to morph a rose into a: hue...
7am tomorrow... a romance with the bicycle...
and all that's Loon'don...
running through advertisement in the river
of thought of all that's: subliminal...
after all: journalism no journalism no...
they still get that itch from time to time
to replicate the glory days of Woodward & Bernstein...
for me... it was a one off...
these days journalism comes too late:
or too early...
too pawn-brokered...
   i still read the newspapers: mostly like a solipsist...
not that i'm somehow immune
to the everyday: greyish horrors of...
average people: i guess i'm one of them...
because wouldn't i want to think
somehow more of myself:
i can hardly scold... demean the prostitutes
i visit from time to time...
it would leave me supposing an ownership
of a pair of two left hands...
drinking a bottle of 70cl like it might be
a bottle of milk:
thank god i didn't have the "bright" idea
of mixing it up with a shy... 35cl of beer...
sure... it might work in an ice-cream:
coffee... whiskey... caramel...
    this ugly necessity of being agitated: prompted for
no great purpose other:
perhaps... i'd rather not talk...
fixing some shelves in the wardrobe...
making the ice-cream...
hence my demand of propping the advertisers above
the "journalists"...
it's good that i don't have the sort of money
they're gagging me to spend...
insurmountable joy arrives from
the clarity of: not having the sort of money
needed to be spent given the effort
of advertisers to make you: want to spend it...
you don't need to advertise whiskey...
or beer...
Franziskaner Weissbier:
                           but Carlsberg needs the slogan:
probably... it isn't... probably or otherwise:
****-juice at 3.5% at the keg...
the monk's brew i'll buy:
with or without an advertisement campaign...
it's most probably a niche product:
only niche consumers buy it...
i don't suppose the art: is it still called that?
of poetry: ugh... rhyming cripples...
caged rhymers...
    it would be more fun to play a game of:
slap a ball against a brick wall...
to reiterate: i don't Horace ever had a care
for rhyme...

deus inmortalis haberi dum cupit Empedocles,
ardentem frigidus Aetnam insiluit.
Sit ius liceatque perire poetis:
invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.
nec semel hoc fecit nec, si restractus erit,
iam fiet **** et ponet fanisae mortis amorem.
nec satis adparet, cur versus factitet, utrum,
minxerit in patrios cineres an triste bidental
moverit incestus: ceste furit ac velut ursus,
obiectos caveae valuit si frangere clatros,
indoctum doctumque fugat recitator acerbus;
quem vero arripuit tenet occiditque legendo,
non missura cutem nisi plena cruoris hirudo...

Empedocles: wanting to become a god...
chilled by old age: was supposed to jump...
into the burning mouth of Etna.
if they want (it), let the poets
have the law unto their death.
who: whom against their will saves,
the suicide double condones (finishes off).
not for the first time:
not so easily said: i am human.
he wants to glorify himself with death.
i write poems. why?
     maybe i ****** on my father's grave,
maybe the place has been struck
with a thunderbolt: spread and is now impure.
like a bear in a fury, breaking the bars (of the cage)
scares the wise & the fools:
thus a wordsmith interloper...
      whoever he will catch... with recitations
puts down... not even with a leech from
the skin will not fall off:
                                           until satiated with blood.

he who (against their will)
               saves: the suicide double condones...
knuckle-head stunts...
not for the first time.
it's not so easily said: it's not easily said...
i am: human.
he wants to gain fame through his death.
i write, poems.

the book fell from my hands... onto the floor...
the floor breathed...
i spoke: no more...
like some ghostly wind...
if i don't translate it proper...
there was some wording about:
******* on one's father's grave...
turning the pages quickly like:
a pigeon might be flapping its wings...
328.... 329...
pages...330 & 331...
a book fell... like...
a woodland pigeons might flap its wings
while i turns the pages... "haphazardly"...
i'm no poet caged to rhyme...
i'm... Horace's horse: prosaic...
i turned the pages like...
the sound and image...
of a pigeon... flustered... wing-clapping-the-wind...
                                               might... just might...

i wash my eyes with cold water...
ensuring the rest of my face is:
welcoming a tiredness of day...
if i done things proper...
i'd throw my naked body into
a bulge of nettles
for: some... adequate... revision of...
what's to be felt...

why?
    maybe i ****** on my father's grave...
maybe the place: thunderstruck... spread...
and he became: impure.
how a bear in a fury...
breaking out from in between
the cages's barricade of bars:
shuns the wise and the idiots....
such wordsmith: poetry minding: ambition...
agitation... whoever it befalls...
with recitation doubles down on:
second-hammering...
a leech will not fall off the skin:
until it is satiated with blood.

one might start calling it an:
agitated wardrobe?!
                the dead leave us pardons:
so many that the living will ever allow:
i don't want to be among the living:
i want to be among the dead...
i want to juice up as many prunes
as there are grapes
and still... leverage what half harvest i might
have from the ..
i forget at what point i'm to care about
being an investment prospect...

i would never say that translating Latin was...
somehow: fun...
wordsmith interloper?!

— The End —