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Jeff Raheb Aug 2014
Havana, I arrive
in the sweaty thickness of July
caliente y picante
steamy sidewalks, steamy women
chocolate brown, tan and
black against the lemon-yellow walls
strolling through La Plaza de Armas
slurping thick café through weathered lips
in La Plaza de Francisco de Asis
dancing on the pregnant gray stones in La Plaza Vieja
timba, rumba, salsa and son
Cristo, Maria, Yemaya and Obatalá

Havana, I arrive
in the intoxication of your breath
between the acrid fumes
of insecticides and 1957 Chevy's
stepping past the dark grime of your slums
streets plush with tight round bodies
beautiful and sensuously swaying

I arrive snaking past the converted palaces
con las turistas ricos
and the buy-me-a-dress-and-a-ring ******
with their enchanting full-tooth smiles
and undulating earthquake-tremor hips
I hear your beat
the machine-gun laughter of your feet
on the hot cobblestones
with the jinateros and street musicians
chants of Santería drifting from pane-less windows

Havana, I smell your heat
under salty faded sheets
smell the long, tobacco-stained nights
with your hips swaying
to the pale drops of ***
spilt from red lips
and the red drops of blood
spilt from your revolutionaries
spilt from the gorging of Machado and Baptista
and 500 years of foreign dominion

In Paseo de Marti
banners of Che Guevara
flapping in the moist tear-laden breeze
Fidel, cigar in hand
tirelessly raging in black and white
on a Russian 1960's TV

Cuba, I can see the green in your eyes
the peeling-paint bedroom dreams and
dirt-poor joy of your richness
laughing out the despair and desperation
dancing out the oppression and the paucity
the aching of your past
the battles of Castillo De Los Tres Santos
of  the revolution
of living
and as I stand on the steps of El Capitolio
looking out at the decaying grandeur
I understand why
I will be back
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
.come to think of it... a fillet of meat never implores me to think about what's about to be eaten... nor does a whole chicken implore me to think about what's about to be eaten... but whenever i see my fellow man... esp. when my fellow man is begging to not be taken seriously... i do... tend to... in the back of my mind... attempt to bypass thinking about a butchers' cut... of what... looks pristine when walking or running... parcles of the "excess" of limbs... given a dead chicken... it's all readily available... but... working from a genesis of movement toward the study of both coffin and stone; and wind? i would most certainly understand ******... but then again... not all that ******... end up eating their intentions... which makes me make phantoms of nostalgia... ****'s sake... even the sharks these days will bite: but spit our flesh out... because... well: why **** something that you will not eat? because... there's a... Hadrian's wall counter-impetus?! but it's welcoming to think about ****** as... also a bit of a hunt... i guess that's what keeps me off a streak of tartare "justice": before i start gagging and imitation regurgitation... such a foul beast from an ownership of a tongue alone... forget that shambo of the mind... no wonder... man kills man without intentions to eat him... i'd sooner eat cat-****-and-puke... then again... unless it was the brain, the heart, the liver... those ackward limbs and muscles... i could somehow imagine eating the tender bits... never those... ostrich extensions of reimagining animate agilities of a kama sutra: study.

stupendous...

   i will hold a stone in one hand
and imagine a mountain...

i will hold a glass in the other...
and imagine the sea:

not from the brain...
but from the tips of my fingers...

stupendous... quiet so...

               otherwise less impressive:
most thoroughly...

then i will hold some ice in one hand...
and some black earth in the other...

i will scrunch some paper into a ball...
rather than fold it...
   then i'll lick a knife...
            then...
          
                if there's any more "quo vadis"
sensibility to go through with...
i'll remember: ask the anaesthetician
that question: quo vadis...

as he distracts you with the jab
before... that sort of "sleep"...

            i would like to feel the texture
of thought...
        perhaps even sniff it out
into a bottle - out from my head...
this perpetual (th)ought i...

had it been only a moral quest
rather than... picking
up stray lines that otherwise made-up
a concern for narrative...

                                yes: "or" this insomnia
narrative... all these bothersome
daydreams and counter-measures...

it's not merely enough to play
out monkey-dough roles...
tongue of a serpent...
body still functioning at best
in imitation...
inconveniences of noble feats
acquired from watching widow swans
in that term: monogamy...

or in a circus of a harem of walruses...
this chimera this man...
the loan animal and his loan
words: schnitzel puppy flip flip...

        unless it's pure history of dates...
it's... a mongrel of archeology
and etymology...
           to find the oldest word...
that has been translated: diffused...

beside og, da, i, am... om, to...
         w...      z...
           w tym: in this...
          z tego: from this...

a letter that can act like a conjunction...
i: "e"... and...
         or a pronoun...

wood does not have a chemical formula...
water does: inorganic matter does...
stones do...

air does...
            oxygen by whatever %... nitrogen by
whatever %..
i studied chemistry...
but the question only comes now...

what is the chemical formula for... wood?
well... wood doesn't have a chemical formula...
truly... even i'm astounded...

even Alain de Lille looks stupified...
i know... they have a list of formulas
for... ****'s sake... even the ozone!
O₃... which is "impossible" since oxygen
is doubly-binding...

shortcuts to god... i can't call them anything
but just that...
why doesn't wood have a chemical
formula?!

i will hold a book in one hand...
and a feather in another...

    you can have a chemical formula
for... stibnite...
    orthorhombic... Sb₂S₃...
of sure... you can have that...
you can have a chemical formula for:

millerite (NiS)
  zwieselite... olivenite...
          adamine Zn2(AsO4)(OH) -
   autunite Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2 · 12H2O...
benitoite...
                  
all these formulas...
these aquariums of inorganic matter...
but still... no chemical formula for...
wood!

lignin is only part of the equation...
what can be accounted for photosynthesis:
C₅₅H₇₂O₅N₄Mg (chlorophyll)...
      
you'd think water would be more
complicated...
    
beryl?
            hollandite?
         ­ tremolite...       so that's "earth"
all covered; no?

but where's that formula for wood?

good-luck looking for that holy graille...
either the cup or the cross...
cubanite... no problem...
   benitoite...
              goethite...

               am i drinking? oh right... that's me
waking up to a reality of not being
in a boyband...

all these chemical names coming and
going...
  glass...
trinitite,
made by the trinity nuclear-weapon test...
the libyan desert glass...
volcanic obsidian glass...

otherwise glass is:
silicon dioxide +
SiO2
calcium carbonate +
CaCO3
sodium carbonate
Na2CO3

             what's the chemical formula
for wood?!
any luck with paper?
a mixture... primer: cellulose (C6H10O5)n...

approx. 50% carbon, 42% oxygen,
6% hydrogen, 1% nitrogen, and 1%
other elements
(calcium, potassium, sodium,
     magnesium, iron, and manganese)

i guess it's one of those social media
relationship statuses: "it's... complicated"...
my bad...
   cellulose... polyose... and lignin...

something spectacular was supposed to
happen: there was an avenue of pristine
love waiting: i never managed
to wait for it... in the end...
run-of-the-mill stuff...
           there was this "this"...
and there was this "that"...
     pointers in braille...
      limintless echoes of uncaressed
agonies... splendours upon the attire
table of dead-meat: quasi...
     when inspected by the more eloquent
butchers of surgery...

            but the whiskey or the *****...
flowed like... it possessed the knowledge
of... gomme syrup...
of all the detailed memories
of: these people have lived...
the alchemists:
   - zosimos of panopolis
   - ge hong
- jean baptista van helmont...
    
  why is leonardo da vinci's mona lisa
so... forced upon us?
ever look at... Perronneau's
  madame de sorquainville?

i always "mistake"... albrecht Düre
with gustave Doré...
i implore you...
don't make me buy chocolates
or flowers... it's not one of thoese
dementia riddled "misnomer" takes
on Monet and Édouard Manet

here's my quadratic:
   albrecht Düre            Claude Monet



       Édouard Manet                     gustave Doré

very much a rhombus...
besides the fact that when i do pop the cork
"pop"... and "cork"...
the libido does rampage...
and i'm imagining myself in a brothel...
and i am the brothel...
and all that's love is about the basic
need for what's easil given
to a petter dog...
down my view no alley with
a grandma and a leash to look / feel
suspect... repetition of the times...
or some sort of allure for repenting
the deeds of youth...

              ****: to hell with stochholm cyborgs
and all that anemic clues...
those autistic plots and "twists"...
        
am i to suddenly come out begging
for my democratic right?
writing as an extension of thinking...
i hardly think it's an invitation
to speak...

              less... "inclined" to counter this freedom?
esp. now?
esp. now?
       now of all times... come... let's dictate
the future together...
let's start sharpening the meat-grinder!
let's keep up with the chisel for a tooth
of the grand earthworm:
wursecker... for the bone to become marror
to become: all but the plaster-work
of pâté!

         smear that **** all over...
                    oh right... what's being "debated"?
the self-employed being given
slave status or otherwise...
those given employee stature...
to be somehow above?
in england there are 5.5 MILLION self-employed
sub-contractors...

the bus driver gets a day off...
unions and what not...
  ******* kind and fellow examples of
non-replica me...
             unions, what unions?
here's to... what?
fizzying out the expandables?
      good lock and chain and "luck"...
no one came when i was i need...
no one came but they still had to ridicule me...

i am enjoying this... whatever "this" is...
i like to think of it...
what the darwinism ideologues
    have been spewing
all along...
recycling primer...
        getting rid of a tootache...
just enough to be... the sensible
english gentleman...
but not... a weimar **** in waiting ******...
sieve it...

we'd be lost in hope...
when all hope is but a blistering
bargain...
when most of us don't have
landlord credentials...

             pokey porky pie-yo!
i like this currency of a carboot sale...
happening...
i quiet like the clearance...
the easily available sale of death...
the darwinism that darwinism
doesn't exactly "like"...

hell... shove the weakest under the bus...
under the hittite slash and draw...
i'm trying to remain bothered...
so says the drunk...

or at least... when the government says:
curfew... no more than 2
in a public space congregation...
i start thinking about how pork torsos
are hanged in a slaughterhause...
then i start to imagine...
that meat-hook... plucked in under
the chin... that excess of a bonus tooth
for where the uvula and the tonsil
should be...

   oh look... it glides! it hangs!
to be crucified is such an obscure...
such an out-of-date symbolism...
how about hanging from a meat-hook?
for piercing those n.h.s. ambulances tires?!
or coughing in the faces of old people?
how about... being impregnated
by a pike inserted in a quasi-sodomite
pristine ****... reaching the ****** of
both pelvis and coccyx...
how's that?

   n'ah... i rather like re-imagining
the curcifixion dangling on your neck...
with a meat-hook and subsequent dangling
on the treadmill of minced...
right under the chin... where the tongue
begins... and ends... to lick
and slobber that last and lost retention
of vowels in oyster juices...
    from the concrete constructs
                                of consonants...
        
a hot-dog hard-on on for...
                                     for the benefits of
sigma humanity;
   i'll try to retain remaining obscure...
****... if i don't i'll probably have to beg
for the image replication of trimmed eyebrows!

— The End —