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David Adamson Jan 2019
Last year's version of the mind-body problem:
my mind gives orders that my body won’t obey.
It’s a problem.

The body’s warranty has expired and
spare parts are scarce.  Plastic tubes
To help me drain have become part of my day.
So there’s still a will.  But sometimes no way.

I am now my sister’s age when she died.  
And some nights
as I lie down in darkness
there’s a moment of wondering
could this be the night
of the Great Reckoning
when everything I’ve said and done
goes mute and I am gone.

And crawling over me like a slow stain
is dread that everything important in life
has already happened. I remember some days  
less than my dreams.

But friend, not this tone!
Let us write a history of now.
Body and soul, stand up and shout
“Baseball road trip!”

Car:  check.  Best friend:  check.  Nostalgia for a simpler
time.  We can fake that one.
The red zigzags on our map turn into places:
Six ballparks in a week.
Detroit haze, gasping Chicago wind,
Milwaukee self-serve micro brew
Cincinnati chili and watering eyes,
Cleveland’s defiant self-love,
Pittsburgh’s Primanti brothers monstrosity sandwich—
Burger, coleslaw, and fries on toast.

The American dream tastes like fast food,
But the mystery lives between the lines.
Thwack of fastball into catcher’s glove,
Whock! of line drive into the gap,
Ball rolling free across the green
While the runner speeds for home.
Home.

Let’s keep going, friend.
There’s another bridge up ahead and
a ballpark’s lights shining somewhere in the dusk
of the upper Midwest and the open road
unrolls toward the setting sun.
gsx Feb 2015
the previous listener, who did so faintly and in a manner foreign to me, sat reasonably as I do now, or perhaps lain starry and jaded on some soft lawn riddled with the paused movements of those who watched, clouded with distraction, the life of a sweet nothing drown in descent from above as they cheered and screamed for it, for that meaningless treasure tainted by the vanity of their own desire, ignorant of the listener, of her own treasure then forming, as something warm and enduring in the seat of her chest, something to brood, to analyze, to cherish for a length, at great odds with the fleet and trivia that so dominated the struct of their noire.

but the listener had none of this, gulfed from the shaking and pressing, shielded the same from its symbol and write, opting to push for those few golden moments most certainly approaching her as the rest wraithed past, softly and shyly granting the scarcest and most shamefully starved of treelines, roadways and ballparks and wire staff, knowing but keeping that the few she would most deeply and fondly remember would be just these.

and so the listener and her lover stood past, sweeping over the artificial earths with little concern, not pausing or skipping for a moment to witness the wonder in the world around them and to soak up some indefinable fraction of its infinite offerings. from lain block to patch grass they strode, searching for their one moment, for that which so surely stood staunch and unmoving at some near point in their passage, but which always seemed to elude them, to taunt and hang and cackle in the face of their steadily growing contempt.

and then, as the crowd deserted their peaks for the safe and steady and trough, allowing those moments of elation to slip from them with ease, the listener let likewise all that was precious to her from her grasp, and fell into a similar place, one of deserted lows and recollections of the brightness that lay behind, of those very moments that felt their way independently into her heart and her soul, and left her love beside her, forever looking up into the dark.
written about a fond memory and the importance of loving the moment.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
transcript from a cult movie

bolec: O! zobacz bracie! spójrz jak oni sie ruszają; nie sądisz że polskim chłopakom też by sie przydało troche luzu? przykómaj te kocie ruchy! mogliśbymy sie od czarnych wiele nauczyć... koko-dzambo i doprzodu! to moje hasło, dobre nie? czasami żauje że nie urodziłem sie czarny. hej! chłopaki! a może macie ochote objerzeć film? ja ogłądam po kilka filmów dziennie: pościgi, strzelaniny, wojny gangów, to mój chleb codzienny... mam nowy zajebisty film... "smierc w Wennecji", nieźle brzmi, co?                spokojnie, zaraz sie rozkręci...

fred: ty jak ty sie nazywasz bo zapomniałem? kolec? stolec?

bolec: bolec.

fred: no, więc posłuchaj mnie teraz uważnie, bolek... byłeś w stanach?

bolec:  nie...

fred: no właśnie... a ja znam kogoś kto był... i opowiedział mi to i owo... w iesz skąd przyjechali czarni do ameryki?!?

bolec:  z afryki...

fred: no właśnie... handlarze niewolników przywieźli ich z Afryki... A myślisz, że to taka prosta sprawa wysiąść na plaży w Afryce, złapać w siatkę zwinnego, silnego murzyna i wywieźć go za ocean?!?

bolec:  chyba nie...

fred: no jasne, że nie... udało im się to zrobić ponieważ wywozili tylko takich co albo nie potrafili spierdolić przed siatką, albo byli największymi głąbami z plemienia i wódz sprzedawał ich za paczkę fajek, bo i tak nie miałby z nich pożytku. i ci wszyscy nieudacznicy pojechali do ameryki. pożenili się, porobili dzieci... świat poszedł do przodu... pojawiły się komputery, amfetamina, samoloty, ale co z tego, jeżeli ich serca pompują tę samą krew, są potomkami człowieka, który na własnym podwórku dał się złapać w siatkę, więc nie uważam, że naszym chłopakom brakuje luzu... kapujesz?!?


and it takes just another big **** to have a one night stand,
and a big enough heart to have a relationship
so the soul enmeshes the juices - that famous
W.D. 40 moment - and a cheap U.B. 40 moment too -
it's a drag like that, he can run a 100 metres in under
10 seconds, but when he swims you just hear
dolphin cackling in the background - not **** aqua
for sure, that's me, with the myth of Atlantis -
orderly, please! line up! take your badges and disperse,
we'll be back here again at the fire-evacuation point
in the the near future - in the meantime do whatever
it is you do, and do it. shame really - you ever see
the fire equipment of 1666? a large water bucket...
people either had a lot of common sense back then
or had magnanimous airs about them
(see how many lawsuits were made in the past decade),
primitive technology - i guess people thought a lot
back then... no talk of dementia - they were hardly literate
but they thought a lot, becoming literate meant
becoming aristocratic degenerates - excess wine, *******
***, scab and crawling ***** on the cranium
intended as barbers - then too many synonyms came,
you said barber and he knew the beard and moustache
was an extension of the head - sure, softer keratin, the harder
version being - i've ***** on my face! i've ***** on my face!
short and briskly - freshly mowed lawn... mm, nice -
fiddle the other part, i'll take a Sikh's beard and make a
violin's bow on the sly - see how Mozart sounds after
that. the Mongol stank and conquered the Alexandrian
Dream - before the arrows pierced, the stench overpowered.
it's just a dreaded affair - in order to give pleasure
i have to give my inner life up - the Greeks called it
barbarism the over way round - words from a *******
as if implying i get really jealous and bring out a knife -
the wonderful phenomenon of the schizoid condition,
or as prior worded, premature dementia, yet such people
continue to be fully functioning in a sense -
language debris - a meteor's tail - politicised psychiatry -
the easy route - say the noun hammer and you know
exactly what to do, unless it's Heidegger's hammer
and you realise he's implying two labourers talking
philosophy while working manually - in that
the ego (nail) should be hammered into a plank
of wood (thought) as easily as the reverse - the reverse
being the hammer (extended into the profession that
uses it frequently - i, carpenter) utilised (being, a) -
i.e. i, being a carpenter, nails, hammering in.
i didn't think this through - what's bugging my certainty
in how to explain it without conversation between
two carpenters discussing philosophy, which never happens,
is not what i'm bothered with, the real issue is i have
with the inherent negativism of subjectivity in English
interpretation of philosophy, crudely:
subjectivity is bad, wrong, self-indulgent, pseudo -
this stress in English thinking with its glorification of
objectivity is, to be honest, strange...
it comes from a book review of Wagner's Ring of
the Nibelung - equatable words: banal and subjective -
banal - trite - well given the "success of the human species"
i'm surprised it's not a universal truth that
we've come a bit trite given the numbers - i've seen
cucumbers fresher than people, we're bound by
an approximate of 70 springs, cucumbers are bound
by 1 spring, you get fresh in a supermarket,
you don't get fresh in books, what with the third butterfly
species σκoνιςμυγα (skonismyga - so not -muga?
up Saigon? i thought you cut off the bits you didn't
want and put the other letters with the cut offs together?
no wonder - upsilon [u] isn't said - just like in Latin
in English we have why - iota not y - dust-fly, i guess
Babylon did survive, in the variations disguising "dyslexia")...
but why is subjectivity so horrid? i thought
we all had our take on things and none of us wanted
to speak for the whole of humanity? Nietzsche warned
and defended individualism like that - who
would want to speak for the entirety of humanity?
in the political realm in the west subjectivity is defended
rigorously - because if you begin championing objectivity
in politics the Iraq Invasion was a bit stupid -
despotism, d'uh - yet in England the tradition is to
have a culture of literature that shuns subjectivity
and champions objectivity - why is subjectivity so
negatively perceived? oh, you're afraid someone is
so ardent on their choice of interest they they might
by accident speak-spit into your face?
subjectivity can't be so ****** negative, it's an expression
of an escape from what objectivity already
defined in the pinnacle by Descartes: res cogitans,
(a) thinking thing - we only write subjectively because
we've been caged in that little no. 2 of a waiter's james
bond tux - we staged an escape, a self-worth fanaticism
on the subjects we love rather than "have to" investigate
without passions, just hubris - which is what
critics use - hubris, disdain - the study of language could
have a similitude to the math of
1 (hubris) and x 1 = hubris, 1 and x 2 = audacity, etc.
in the synonymous table - the lubricant factor.
so, anger over, back to Heidegger's hammer -
nail (ego)            plank of wood (thought)
hammer (therefore)                   a table (existence) -
so why need proofs? why do i need to prove i necessarily
exist (when i don't) or that god unnecessarily exists
(when he does) - why prove something?
so another million schmucks can come along and
prove it either way? it's the nonsense attributed to
Descartes - he stressed an impossible objective-subjectivity
(grammatically more understandable, rigid:
noun-noun doesn't work, ah, objective-subjectiveness -
noun-adjective, pencil-sharpener, pencil-needs-sharpening)
in terms of others - hence the existential other -
well impossible for anyone else to have thought it up,
the impasse of wanting to plagiarising it - a real cul de sac -
well, that's me done on the topic - sonic -
as far as i'm concerned most people keep rigidity
a tight collar of using language not coming across a speedy
suggestion to not think about:
the speed-game of preposition juggling and contras etc.,
the acquisitive use of a language v. the inherited use of a language,
two different ballparks - what i acquired i thus express,
what the organically-historic entity inherited he
will primarily convene to call Poles vermin - a little
perplexed by a more labyrinth style of language used -
it gets personal day by day - but of course the ******* are
a protected species due to their colonial roots - at least
with skin-shallow discrimination you have the obvious bang,
and the immediate retort... this **** is swelling, slowly...
slowly... slowly... those were 8 million or so
Polish-Jews... also vermin... this **** already imploded...
it hasn't exploded... it's a dummy bomb... it imploded...
it's swelling... slowly... slowly... slowly... and when you
won't know it... BANG!
Ken Pepiton Feb 2021
sides in position
self imposturing, pre sep
paration, settling scores and bounds
separation
church from state… wait

what are these

things? Words? Or mental wisps
inter
daring done to render due
to whom due, honor or otherwise reknown.

Heroic words. I've uttered some,
imagining all boys did,
singing with their dad's, to Queen,
we
are the champions
of the world, we pretend, to the end, then

we fall away… or they
fall away … the anthems in the ballparks,
oh,
say. can you see… we are the cops,
we are the redcoats and the brown shirts
and the cavalry and the real estate speculators,

slipping my grip, the idea of me, citizen-soldier,
come limping home from the edge
of baseball,
where futbol over laps ancestral lessons
in rendering unto the owner rents ……….

How old is old?
Ask a child, for old men never
learn the bounds, or
if they do, I can't say,
there seem no theys I fit just right.

I
balance _ or I lie /I\ am lifted leaning lost.
…………..

Salt, salaried man,
spending time in reading strange sayings
as if
we
know there is meaning found some times,
we think.
we mentalate, cogitate, take a tic

to stop
and think
a gain or a loss, more sense or less, inessence
or essential point

in time? See? Say what you see? Squiggle wiggle
vermicule breeeze, or
whispy vapour
rising
above or diving into a period,
a point
in time to see ifery vanish in wasery wonder iffing
whatsitmatter,
any way.

We lived past that. Now, we make sense……..

Radical is root-related, as well as
edge
related… out on the edge of known
a
self awareness wonders at my existing
outside the inside
as seen on TV
via AI guides through the explosion of knowns

I am anonymous.
There is a canyon near my home
the sign says it is the canyon with no name.
The map says it is a slot-like canyon, with no name.

Thingery thinking in terms of lines and letters letting
all we knew
blow into the winding times told of in tales too tedious
to
recall
with Howard Bloom level detail. {he is unique}
He touches me, do I not touch back? The curio knows.

How sharp the edge of a point stretched from

the mind that could see the wind whip a spark to life.

Sense when nonsense seems the fashion, the way
forms fashion fasteners around axes,
facistical twigs and vines

something says this is missed as a message,
this ax bound in sticks,
I dare, I do, I ask what was the meaning of this,
and
while we're on my dime, what's with the wings
on the Phrygian cap,

I mean,
what was the artificer's source of inspiration, like
why is liberty always a lady
wearing fashion far up the ladder of learned things,
what is the trick
that
feminine wile, legendary lure, curious art, enchanting
c'mon
one bite.

That idea, boing, stretched so tight it threatens ever
if it
breaks once, just
once

the attention span…

An encrustation sensation overwhelms me,
I'm thinking
I know
I know
I know
nothing so important that it could not wait to be said
by you, reader/writer being ready
read on

words to the wise are plenty,
these who say we know bread, they say leave the leaven.

:they said leave it in Egypt:

But who knows how?
Sour dough is sour dough, y'knows, it don't cook with no bubbles,
no,
dough rises in a backpack tied to an ***, crossing the red sea,
near that place where
National Geographic got that image of a golden chariot wheel,
reminiscent of the drowned army,
or was that
not true?

Do you believe AI knows? I mean, does your believing matter?
Ask who knows what and you learn, the memory we share
holds answers to questions you are afraid to ask.
………….

One in 8 billion, those are the current odds,
taken to scale, with man, all varieties and models,
augmented intellectuals allowed,
the measure,
of all things…
but
two's a crowd.
Social distance morphic resonance,

send me money, I am drowning in debt…
do I doubt?
Don't you, what if… somebody is going to win,
I think I can.

Ha, Wattie Piper, child hood infection exposed
too soon  to
W. Clement Stone, do it now

selah, right word right time, just before
I lose my mind

na na na na
--------------

Is the universe friendly,
does it matter if we know or if we agree?
It is,
I say.

I made my bet, I go with the goodness aspect
of knowledge,
truth itself, yes, the idea, real, the whole

enchilada.
Good is never evil. That is a true story rule,
you can bet on it,
because life isn't fair.

Think no evil, see no evil. My side won.
My weapons are not mortal, I know.
Once fooled, once ready,
I know
the trick is knowing good enough to know
the difference,
by now. We are mostly post-

original disconnection beans being removed
at birth,
with that little blue **** thingy,
nigh on universal by 1948,

super bloom, that was the year, the pollen way,
say,
hey, see this singer singing home song long song
so
far away, way way way away
hey

---- dancing dust motes seen in sun ---
A scratched itch, if nothing more.

— The End —