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if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah
Homunculus Feb 2019
As with everything else in American life, the national government is just another commodity packaged for mass consumption. We're all being spoon fed a spectacular narrative which by its very nature is designed to evoke the passions.

Every day, someone gets on TV and says or does something which provokes outrage, drawing the viewer in like the iridescent lure of an angler fish, and keeping them hooked just long enough for the hypnotic messages of the corporate sponsors to burrow their way into the collective consciousness between "newscasts."

It is precisely for this reason that these frivolous displays SELL like hotcakes. There's no government going on here. There hasn't been for who knows how long? All that is left is BUSINESS. Raw and unfettered. The United States of America is now nothing more than a 'reality' show, and boy, I tells ya, the revenue stream is OH, SO LUCRATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sleepy eyes open glimpse high ceiling red wood beams house built in 1920s glance out window tree tops blue skies mountains in distance flock of birds flying east chirping sounds passing car engine accelerates inhale deep breath through nose stretch legs plantar dorsal flex feet raise arms over head stiffness in shoulder feel strange sensitivity in right pectoral above ****** cautiously examine with hands feel coarse lump growing more like nub smell moss glare down at growth protruding from chest panicky by soreness rise from bed to mirror on closet door tree stem jutting out from chest inspect dark bark like calloused growth little leafs budding this cannot be race in nervous tantrum run to bathroom suffer painful weight pulling me down clutching carrying foliated limb with arms see myself in mirror horrified stagger back to bed lie on right side branch resting on mattress breathe anxious breaths reexamine pectoral area feel sinewy roots spreading under skin across chest up neck down over stomach waist legs forget how to get home disorientated nauseous exhausted what is this flora invading me ******* kafka metamorphosis post-modern hyper-real narration without accountability jorge luis borges metaphor without mindfulness fairytale run wild jean baudrillard simulacrum psychosis room now filling with plant undergrowth stinking of earth dirt gooey slugs worms shells bugs festering climbing towards windows voracious for light warmth moisture blocking out morning sun entire body trapped in tangled twisted leafy twigs excruciating pain fright lungs gasping suffocating encroaching darkness fatigue loss surrender wake up 4 AM from nightmare scared to fall back to sleep
Monica Jun 2016
Tick tock went the clock,
echoing
through monastery halls,
synchronizing the actions of men,
building up modernity’s walls.

Creatively destructive,
eternal
yet fleeting,
modernity was paradoxical,
according to the Harvey reading.

Art had expanded,
abstraction arises,
and Sigmund loves his mom,
more than anyone realizes.

Our friends the id,
the ego and its super,
tell us who we are,
Freud has the world in a stupor.

A catch-22 for dear Pablo,
who will sleep with a ****,
but is terrified of syphilis,
as is seen in his art.

There was power and truth,
and Foucault says we’re repressive,
but suddenly things change,
Postmodernity becomes quite impressive.

PoMo cares not for beauty,
or what pleases the public eye.
It’s style for style’s sake,
in the buildings stretching toward the sky.

Uma dances with John,
a young boy finds a severed ear,
Joaquin loves his OS,
PoMo film is, well,
Queer.

Yuppies love pastiche,
their lofts were once a workplace,
they’ve coated them with chrome,
they’ve gentrified the space.

Unlimited breadsticks
have soiled the very Italian name,
Baudrillard says it’s simulacrum,
there is no truth, it’s all the same.

We traipse through this
postmodern world,
not knowing postmodernity
is where we are.
We wear workboots to fashion shows,
we worship that reality star.

We think we’re special snowflakes,
and skinny jeans make us cool,
and media exposure’s made us cynics,
quite impossible to fool.

What we don’t realize is that
we are not our own,
we are pseudo individuals,
through PoMo we have grown.
written for my Contemporary Civilization final
there is no beauty
in the freshly fallen snow
it is all a lie
it may appear
unblemished
immaculate
innocent
but takes little
to disturb
the perfection
this is a version
of what could be
but is only temporary
and cannot last
as we strive
to live it
our every action
spoils the purity
unveils the flaws
leaves us regretting
what we once tolerated
maybe next time
we will make it
last longer
snow winter depression perseverance lies false fake hope beauty time
Akemi Jul 2018
THE GULF WAR DID NOT |
THE GULF WAR DID NOT |
THE GULF WAR DID NOT

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Staid quanta of individuality. Phenom asks if they can go. The Big Mouth replies, babble babble. In a fit of rage, Phenom shouts, I’ve had enough of this. They wrench themselves off the dissection table, fetters flying into the air, but a sudden bout of vertigo sets in. They lie back down. The Big Mouth sticks a thermometer into their mouth and begins heating a can of corn soup.

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Professor Kippotkin takes the stage. She coughs into the mic to quiet the audience, but they are caught in sordid *******. She coughs again, managing only to project a trail of spit onto the shoulder of the nearest security guard. He turns immediately, a perfect ninety-degrees spin, automatically signalling the first in command. He has been trained since seventeen for this one task of momentous disciplinary precision. The first in command bellows, Let her speak! a phrase his colleagues repeat in serial down the chain of command.

The crowd soon catches on. An isolated few nod in consternation. Let her speak! they yell from the pits of their lungs, Let her speak!

Thank you, thank you all, Professor Karlpoppins exclaims, cheeks flush with amazement. More and more of the crowd join in. It is a rousing spectacle, a poignant display of human decency. But something is awry. The professor’s gratitude is swallowed into a cacophonous whole. Let her speak! The carnal grip of the big Other’s command unleashes the crowd’s jouissance. United in the master discourse, the crowd fragments into a bewildered totality. Let her speak! they scream at one another, arms jostling, heads tilting back, necks bared to the beating pulse of the earth-sky. LET HER SPEAK! Their combined blows begin to generate an ominous om.

Pl-please, Professor Kibbiezsche sputters, please, everyone! but the crowd have already forgotten her existence. Reams of toilet paper fly through the air. A crashing plane sounds in the distance. Crops burn.

The security team are forced to intervene. They close in from the sides, wielding riot shields and tear gas. HYPOCRITES! one of the members of the crowd screams. OPPRESSORS OF THE WORD! another follows. Footage of security guards flailing on the ground circulate on social media, tagged with the phrase WHO SPEAKS MY SPEAK?

Within twenty four hours, the whole country is ablaze with media coverage. Political scientists gather with literary scholars to speak the unspeakable into commercially-viable forms. Semiotext(e) sign a deal with Hollywood to write a docudrama about Baudrillard’s turbid *** life. Professor Kubblebutts is flown to Hawaii to give a speech on combine harvesters.

WHY WE OPPOSE:
I desire, therefore I am not. Incantation of the other spills through my greasy fingers as I fumble towards the hot sauce, dollop dollop, chicken salt strewn across the nommy wedges. That’ll be $4.50. They have already handed me the note. Our fingers touched for the briefest second, an anointment of the greasy chicken, the wedge fingers, the have a good night mister gurgle bop.

The taxi man sits outside in the cold, back heated by the friction of the smoothie machine, an indefinite spin, western civilisation’s meltdown. The turgid heat breezes past my neck and I sigh, almost in delight, but mostly out of convention and solidarity with the other workers. I hear the pitter pat of my shiftpanion as she scoops hot chips into the fresh night; it is so fresh, there is still so much night, why are you giving me $5 dollars, there is a bug on your face.

I take a break. The cool taxi man glances over just as I put my hands down my pants to shift my boxers into a more comfortable why is it always like this.

Everyone blames Foucault for destroying agency, but agency only arises in the gap between discourses, which is never a gap in power, but rather, the transversal of one power relation into the discursive matrix of another; what appears original is merely the same performance in the wrong site, that’ll be $24 for your **** and condoms.

The crumbled fish is shrinking with each passing day, little gasping body beneath the heat lamp, waffle waffle, waffle waffle, I am suffocating :)

WHY WE OPPOSE:
|||||FEeling BOLD? FeEL BOldbous ;;;; new Paracetamol Jelly and the KINK-CATS tour out the last week—
Thank you for holding. Please note this conversation may be recorded.
To continue, please state: 'my voice confirms my identity'
||"my voice confirms my identity"
and again, please state: 'my voice confirms my identity'
||"my voice confirms my identity"
Please note that this conversation is being recorded for the purposes of confirming your identity.
||"thanks"

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Slowly, slowly, Juniper sinks into the bed frame, the draughty window, the rotting sink. Hibiscus coveted for its prophetic dreams, pale steam smites nostalgia for a vision of the beyond. Streamlined entry into New World, an endless reshelving of family-value Mi Goreng, stormwater through the hollow vessels that twist beneath Juniper’s soles.

Juniper climbs the Garden steps. Pale trace of past motions set to automate at the slightest incline. The cloying rot beneath the pines pulls her closer and closer to the vital cache, the hidden excess. Another hedgehog climbs the mound; it admits its body, it expands in putrefaction.

Exiting onto the street, Juniper is greeted by a sign that reads “Caution. Night Shooting. Stay Out.”

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Steam creeps the mouth of the lid. Pallid flesh of yesterday’s body, settles the kitchen table, the hand, as motes crumple beneath gravity’s well. Mottled refuse, tied with a plastic ribbon, thrown into the street. Keys digging trenches, grandfather, the hollow behind my knee.

Last summer I waited for the rain in the dry concrete channel of the Leith. I was alone with the kayaks and the road cones and the fish, holes festering, showing their ribs in the walls of our flat, legs spread wearing high school sweaters, unable to breathe through cling wrap.

The summer before that, I watched films of myself bashing in the heads of strangers. Every night the ceiling of my mouth would transfigure into a doorway and I’d force my tongue through its serrated edges, waking with a new face. The cassettes would arrive soon after, testimonies of a brute physicality I could not remember enacting.

Earth grins, death strides. Hydraulic incisors pry the dead awake. At the smallest unit of life: phones, condoms, water bottles.
a piece i wrote for a zine

a piece
tangled
upturned
headed towards demise

ouroboros in its last desperate gasp

kingbabel.com/2018/07/09/faff0-plastic-death/

collab with hellopoetry.com/abloobloobloo/
Akemi Oct 2018
Three tabs of acid and a year of postmodern novels will ******* up in a shorter span of time than doing a degree in poststructuralism, and only an idiot with a death wish would do both. Manic romp to reach nowhere in a political field that never arrives, except in France.

Well Sartre once said nothing, and so did Derrida, and so did Baudrillard. Endless procession of words for the sake of filling a vacuum that didn’t exist until it was filled. Enter Freud; exit Bernays. All meaning atop a Golden Bough.

Sitting in your flatmate’s room the acid kicks in and suddenly no one is themselves, every line that leaves their mouths traceable to a media product, the perfect communion of pluralism arriving as the terror of integral capitalist banality. To speak is to add to the mockery; to say nothing is to let the mockery continue.

Forget it all by watching Youtube videos at 0.25x speed. Displace the terror of your own situation through the consumptive behaviour that had constituted it in the first place. Watch in gleeful delight as the eyes of whatever presenter happens to be on the screen at the moment dart between this or that object of desire, ever unsure of where to settle amongst an infinite number of existential refrains, none of which deliver from the anxiety of the prior.

Holding a caramel slice in the departmental tea room, your lecturer waits for you to respond, but all you manage is a cough.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2021
oh winter sun, how benevolent you are,
how tenderly you peer into the realm
of what once had is now finally losing colour,
on the realm of hibernating insects
bound to hardened cocoons...
           of flowers that only remain root strong...
oh winter sun, how benevolent you are,
work slows down, people become bearable:
less arrogant in their attire...
finally these women can put on clothes that
scream: decorum!
finally my libido can rest...
finally no more inverted, imploded niqab for
the eyes... still the sunglasses but finally...
my libido can rest...
but of course, it happens... there will be some
idiotic ***** who will entertain a Saturday
night out by wearing miniskirts & exposing
their bare legs to the elements of December,
January... years later, most probably:
pokraki... i.e. legs mangled from exposure to
the cold, the wind...
it happened once that i sat outside a nightclub
fully attired... warm cotton trousers...
a t-shirt, a shirt, a hoodie & an flimsy army shirt...
                hood, beneath the hood
a wooly hat...
there they stood... the goosebumps worth
of geese... standing there: chattering a strange tongue
that only teeth understand via Morse code...
silly little imp-girls...
warm up on the parquet of the nightclub,
drop a few ***** shots, yes?
oh sure... that will warm you up...
         silly little imp-girls... who goes clubbing
in winter wearing nothing but a mini-skirt...
the whole lot of them... hugging themselves...
trying to jump up & down in stilettos:
but not actually jumping...
                    it was a beautiful sight...
a man supremely cuddled by the clothes he was
wearing, gloves & scarf too...
drinking a beer & smoking a cigarette...
sitting on a bench outside a nightclub...
as a line of geese that had their feathers plucked
while still breathing were gaining entry to,
probably... the worst *** they'd get in their lifetime...
drunk ***...
      a little bit of alcohol... but too much is:
too much...
- yes... finally my libido is at rest...
no more libido insomnia...
   for the most part they started to dress like grannies...
of course some pull off the classy granny look,
the: mah-tue-rrr look (trill the R, please,
i know the French hark theirs but that's no excuse
to: tarantula bit my tongue when it's an R
in syllables, stressed, sure... forget the trill in words...
no one wants to sound like count Dracula:
blah blah blah...)

O benevolent winter sun... how you grace my skin...
how much brighter you seem than in summer...
since there are so few hours of you throughout the day...
come 3pm when you begin your weary descent
how blinding you are...
yet how you also do not scorch the skin
to make the golden serpent wake...
   how in a month or so i will loose the copper-neck
& the copper-sleeves on my forearms...
back to my white, vampiric, anaemic...
Hyperborean look...
        
O winter sun, i thank you for your retreat,
i thank you for your retreat with
such gleeful bliss...
i thank winter itself too: for pushing you away
(my my, is that a heliocentric or a geocentric
formulation? does it matter...
to read a map, to get from A to B...
a round earth perspective doesn't do ****...
the earth need to be flat in order
to read a map, esp. when standing on the fore
of a group of unruly teenagers,
when... the team at the Glasbury House
for Outdoor Education Centre split the participants
into two groups...
the older boys doing their A-levels
with the younger girls doing their AS-levels...
the older girls doing their A-levels
with the colts doing their AS-levels...
being of the former group...
the latter group was dropped off closer to the return-to-point,
they only had to walk back directly...
perhaps there were some shortcuts...
but could any of the girls read a map?
or, rather... would any of the colts
unloosen their imaginary head that might be
their phallus from imagining potential
suitors... not a chance...
- now, i have to write about this,
i need to discard this memory... i need new
memories... this one cameo cinema is
fudging up my uptake of new memories:
the hope is... if i write it down...
         i'll be released from it...
i was in the group that was dropped off...
**** knows' where, but certainly further afield
than the first group...
someone gave me the map of the vicinity:
i don't know why they handed the map to me...
so... i just asked: where are we?
cheat? every single ******* map in any urban
information point has a map & an indicator
that states, quite (not quiet), quiet plainly:
YOU ARE HERE... a bit like sticking one of those
HELLO MY NAME IS "X" at a speed-dating
event (mein gott, i've been to one of those
when at university, horrible event,
i don't remember it)...
so i asked, where are we? again: cheating?!
what's a ******* point of a map when you don't
know where you're starting from?
sure... you have to find where you're going from
the map... but what's the point of not knowing
where you're starting from?
like... Christopher Columbus didn't know
where Lisbon was... when he set off to find...
the Americas... sure... but this was also an experiment...
i knew what place i was leaving: Glasbury House...
& i was being dropped into an unknown location...
well i need to know at least one thing,
i can't navigate with two unknowns...
that sort of scenario would invoke... being...
rafted... on the seas... a quote comes to mind...
Coleridge:
  water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink;
water, water, everywhere,
   nor any drop to drink...
                         point being...
a phantasmagorical finger "levitated" over me
then... like... ugh... faux pas...
like like the depiction bound to those *******
*******: perhaps Adam ought to have made
a circle with his index and thumb?
when the depiction of God extended his
in that Michelangelo depiction...
mind you... look how weak, how feminine Adam's
hand "posture" is...
he should have been firm... "God's" finger is coming...
to hell with touching phalluses with
a nail's bite worth of scribble on flesh...
here! here's my index curled up with my thumb
slightly curled: O my ****'s worth of interactions
with you! that hand posture is feminine...
on Adam's behalf... God the protruding agent of
the index... Adam the: oh! ah! kiss my hand will you!
*******... ugh...
and look at the statue of David... anything... ahem...
"weird" about? it's disproportionate...
the head is too big for the body!
a massive ******* head on a body that would see
the head topple it like lumberjacking at some pristine
******* pines...
Titian's Paul III...
                  Perronneau's Madame de Sorquainville...
look at the smirk on her...
Mona Lisa can hide in shame...
or rather: her "smile"... is a... HANS! GOTTFRIED!
OTTO! CONRAD!
encore: ein wachslächeln (a wax smile)...
Rembrandt: a precursor to Turner...
almost the same Parkinson's disease...
but at least Turner conveyed landscapes... not portraits /
scenes...
something's blurry about Rembrandt...
like i already knew...
the people of the past weren't exactly
****** or deformed, or ugly...
****** artists, that's all...
well if someone like a Helen could: muster...
a 1000 ships...
she must have been a stunner!
a tenner for every penny saved...
         hmm... i'm still rummaging...Kenneth Clark's
Civilisation.... i'm looking for the antithesis of
Michelangelo' David...
oh i'll ******* find what i'm looking for...
even if i have to stay up to 5am to find it!
ah!   'ere we go!
    Riemenschneider's Adam...
          now that's an "Adam"... one i'd want to ****...
where was i...
oh ****... too many plotlines: ergo no plot...
it's like ***** Burroughs took at interest in
my writing from beyond the grave,
the whole Beat Hotel from Paris woke up &
brought back Tristan Tzara to decipher...
no cut-up methodology here...
i was just reading some Rousseau & thought
the language... eh... slightly "constipated"...
congested... on point... rigorous as one might expect
1 + 1 = 2 to be...
unless...
well no one ever said that a consonant must precede
a vowel... that there must be clear syllables...
that you can't allow two vowels or two consonants
to interact... on rare occasion you might end with
a specified consonant: an N...
or that vowels can exist alone... & that they can break
the rule of crafting syllables: & can meet...
ah... but they can't... i was wrong...
青 "=" アオ
               AO... blue...
but the meaning blue is an ideogram "concept"....
it's not a meaning that can be translated phonetically...
****'s sake... even in Japanese two vowels cannot meet,
nor two consonants...
although: they can... when as something
akin to a grapheme / a Chinese ideogram...
what would manner (NN) look like...
or... chatter (TT) should the Siamese Æ (sorry,
not grapheme, a grapheme would be the greek theta:
for th-ought) diphthong...
call an apple an apple... there are too many technical
terms ruining the narrative...
i'm bound to make one correct noun into
a disaster of a misnomer...

- thank you, winter sun, for receding to the point where
the moon can finally reclaim the night sky
and borrow something from the day,
no longer are the nights so ugly without him,
glaring in the sky, ever mindful cyclops
compared to the beauty of seeing very visibly
with almost two eyes, both the body & the shadow...
myopic moon... obstructed by clouds...

- back to the Glasbury event... we were dropped off
further down the road... i was given a map,
so i implored, were are we?
a finger descended onto the page & indicated:
YOU ARE HERE...
i took charge... mind you... it wasn't easy...
i had a popularity complex in high school...
it wasn't a "popularity" complex when it came
to entertaining the company of the "popular" kids...
the black boys were popular with the white girls,
the white boys were popular with, saic X...
i was leveraging the ******* nerds
playing video games, collecting Pokemon cards...
then again: with the ruffians...
spending Saturday afternoons in car parks...
trying lady luck by spitting down on them from
four stories up...

Peter Richardson... Kieran O'Mahoney...
endless Saturday afternoons...
cheap white lightning cider,
a youth club once existed in a church where
we played snooker where now,
most probably a mosque now stands...
blah blah...
we were once tricked by two girls...
before a wave of rowdy boys came up to
give us a beating... they oddly enough didn't
while Kieran lay on the ground crying...
semi-kicks & me imploring the bunch:
he has my walk-man! i need my music back!
Peter's younger brother was also there
but he did a runner... so, **** me...
3 against... 10, if not more?
those two ***** that enticed us...

well... we managed to escape the scene seemingly untouched...
ha ha...
Kieran did more damage to himself:
by himself when we overstayed out welcome in
South Park & had to climb over the fence...
me & Peter clamoured over... jumping onto our
feet as if we had four...
came the turn for Kieran...
standing on the top of the fence... jump! jump!
so he jumped... & managed to lodge his
underwear in one of the spikes...
for a millisecond we watched him dangle
quasi-impaled by his underwear...
laughter... well... i couldn't imagine it might have been
a particularly enjoyable ****... *******...
i came to my senses, Peter synonymous...
we lifted the poor ****** up & then down
from his predicament...

Glasbury... YOU ARE HERE... again... that's not cheating,
asking where you are, is it?
a benevolent finger descended on the map
and i was off... we took a shortcut through a road
that led into a little wood... we passed the wood
& emerged onto a pasture field...
some cows were grazing... the guys thought it might
be funny to push a cow over,
i advised them against it...

summa summarum: we ended up "beating" the other "team"...
clear as daylight...
i remember we were asked: since there was some spare
time... to exercise in the yard...
clear as daylight... we're exercising...
30 minutes if not more...
while the defeated team descends from around
the bend... all the girls, my peers with an expression
that could only be best read as: HUH?!
paint that... paint HUH?!
can anyone paint me: HUH?! on a woman's face,
can anyone?

i'm looking for a painting of woman, or several
women that reads the meaning of: HUH?!

oh **** me, i know i was spinning some other plate...
i hope i find it...

as usual Peter & Kieran got in the way...
perhaps Samuel might have joined the memory reel...
but Samuel is an altogether different matter...
almost a sacred memory...
that's for me to disclose when ready:
i'm not ready...

done, memory: begone!
fickle creature... of course it will remain...
but i hope it will be less prominent...
after all: i was almost 18 back then...
such memories are building blocks...
i managed to... read a map... guide a group of unruly peers
to success, "success"...
we just arrived early & our reward was some more
exercise... no... the reward was mine...
i managed to read the map & discovered shortcuts
in the make-up of the land...
to be told that you are at a disadvantage because
you are dropped off further away from group A:
while you're the disadvantaged group B...
well... placebo effect? i don't even know the correct naming
of this psychological experiment...

pair up older girls with younger boys
vs. pairing up older boys with younger girls...
only one year apart...
what the hell is pedagogy? eventually: at best...
a cocktail art... hey! let's see what happens!
esp. outside the classroom: in the outdoors!
as much as i'd love to dabble in the chemistry of
the inter & intra-man...
at a distance... i'd rather concern myself with
things that do not speak, pretend to listen,
pretend to see... pretend to feel:
or rather... i pretend for them... most certainly:
do not speak... zilch!

i couldn't possibly want the responsibility
surrounding the moulding of man
should "said" man not become... the ambition
worth of a statue in a public sq.
if i can't be an Aristotle shaping an Alexander...
i see a hammer: i see a nail...
oh... right... "of some use": no... pristine use...
the extant pivot!
beer is an extant pivot too, mind you...
what better way to "drown one's miseries"?
i was thinking of a make-up word...
exactant... EXACTANT...
                   out of: acting upon stasis: loosely...

i'm so almost content in stating:
whiskey first, the cider second that i can't finish a cigarette
having to subsequently write this...
not that there's much to write,
leave me: strain... i would very much so like
to watch some t.v., some movie...
some sport's & Sparta...
no... these toils with letters & memories...

Rousseau & the social contract...
even the name alone... Row-Sow...
look at it in Katakana: impossible...
snippets.... ロ
                             ウ        セ
                                             ウ...
or rather... Row-Sue!

i was wondering... what album did i hear, first?
Tool's aenima or tools lateralus?!

well me & Samuel would head over to
Romford... RM1 was a club... once upon a time...
where teenagers could enter & enjoy under-age drinking...
not that i was unfamiliar with the "practices"...
me & Samuel would walk back from Romford to
Ilford singing Backstreet Boys songs...
while the whole time we were 'ard-up punks /
metal heads... skateboards:
he stole his mother's credit card to pay for "my"
skateboard... he was later found out: fined...
i cowered like a leech when the pogrom on his ethics came...
what was her sisters' name...
Isa... Jessica! one of the Ursuline corpus!
oh i remember the Ursuline girls...
not that i had a hard-on for them:
i learned to ******* early... aged 8 i was doing the Onan
pledge... no... it was more about... RHO-MAN-Sssssss...
paid of like investing in... Sony's mini-disk "ingenuity"...
but every single morning...
those Ursuline girls on the bus...
beside the perfume of the morning... nothing worthwhile
mentioning... Samuels older sister Jessica
& Alex's older sister Samantha...
i remember one sleepover when
i purposively ****** on the toilet seat & one of them
noticed it... i was scolded (obviously)...
but the "matter" was quickly laid to rest...
on a bunch of nothing...

i scratched this CD so much: how?
from over playing it!
i wondered... when did i first hear of tool?
when i was a ****** 16 year old teenager...
how? Kerrang!
                                                my now estranged
uncle used to buy the magazine...
maybe...
(god, let me finish... i want to relax by
listening to some political "dialectic"...
opinion spewing... garbage... ditto-head echoes)...

i'm reading some Rousseau and listening to tool's
aenima...  i ought to hae a stipend for
makings "****" chronological...
in common parlance: **** = thing should a philosopher
ask... thing, nothing... blah blah...
lost appreciation for nouns...
or none to begin with...
i must have listened to aenima prior to lateralus...
i must have put down my homework
& be like: what the ****'s this?!
from stinkfist...
  i never heard anything like it!

it must have been aenima... i remember that summer
back in Poland when i started & finished reaading
the Three Musketeers... long before
Stendhal arrived on the scene with the Red & the Black...
one of those few adaptations on screen
(Ewan McGregor & Rachel Weisz)
of a book that might want you to read the book...
all of Sienkiewicz worked in reverse...
lucky me...

all ******* Celts though, Peter, Kieran, Samuel...
well... perhaps not Peter...
perhaps write an ode to... Alex... Martin:
the crooked teeth so crooked it felt uncomfortable
to bite a sandwich by him?
friendships... oh thank you professionalism...
i don't want to come too close...
friends once were:
now?
      oh forget about... to hell with "adoring" fans too...
someone's interested: fine...
they're not... to the pedestrian line with "you"!
i can allow myself the luxury...
it is a luxury... pass enough distance... animate
objects take on an inanimate object tinge...
hue... hue of... blurry... forgettable...
point of interest at a specified crux via transit...
but... otherwise... a celebratory forgetfulness surrounds
them... not out of spite... or my self-importance as
somehow superior to their: existence...
a shared value... they value their own freedoms
as i value mine...  it's strange: therefore...
how fame arrives at the fore... not posthumously:
yet when the said famous person is still alive...
fame as a reiteration of "fame"?
the hyper-reality of Baudrillard?
sounds like... the overhyped-hyper-reality of... "X"...

but i finally solved the "debacle"... did i listen
to tool's aenima or tool's lateralus first?
aenima... i'm listening to it right now...
i'm getting flashbacks... of the one club we used to go to,
when i still lived in Gants Hill & Romford was
this sacred place... for underage drinking...
**** me... the club didn't have a hard floor...
sickly sweet carpet underlying...
some other club...
     the DJ played STINKFIST...
     ooh... i'm gonna: stinkenfaust!
  i lost my head... i danced like a berserker...
what?
  on the same night i had my second kiss...
what could that kiss taste like: should memory be judged
the proper authority before the court?!
numb-cherry / ox--sweat...
  
that tool's aenima is an eulogy to bill hicks...
bill hicks... a very painful introspective on...
the stereotype of H'americans...
stereotyping themselves...

for me the greatest bill hicks moment came,
not telling a ****** joke...
undermining the concept of metaphor
with the reality of time...
sure... the bible didn't mention dinosaurs...
but sure as **** we were drawing fire breathing
lizards before the discovery of dinosaur bones...
lizards like makeshift "skyscrapers"...
undermine the metaphors of Moses...
such a finite little... loot...
new, "new" poetry "borrowed" from the old....
never undermine what Moses ought not or ought...

no, his greatest moment didn't come
from telling a joke,
it's his look of concern when...
he was asked to share the same interviewee
posit with, a very much drunken
Oliver Reed... no one could have played
Athos... like Oliver Reed did!
no one!
there was Bill Hicks... comedy extraordinaire
reduced to... perhaps tears...
laughing at a drunk... like that...
oh god... it hit: him: hard...
Oliver Reed: Athos! dinosaurs not in the bible:
ha ha... so what's up with humanity conjuring up
dragons?! ***** of fire... who said where
that... astronaut hit earth while the moon was
yawning: the what if: the moon was on its guard...
& the astronaut hit the moon...
earth with a ring of shrapnel like Saturn?!

perhaps i could remember the names of
the women i once loved... Promis... Priya...
Isabella... Ilona... n'ah.... what love i already gave
has now probably become an elephant's graveyard...
it's better to have memory of friendships in one's
progressive years...
i better retain Peter, Kieran, Samuel, Martin, Alex...
ought, within the confines of these times: be deemed
worthy to explore: the unknown...

tool's aenima: a priori...
tool's lateralus: a posteriori...

such sweetened acidity governing this cider...
i want to drink liters of it,
this gods' **** juice!
mehr! mehr! mehr!

proto-german then...
   mer! mer! mer!

proto-german, i.e. not Finnish...
lisää! o.k. that's ****** up...
doubled-up on the umlaut...
so whst's that? lisaaaa?!
                               my ******* arithmetic "wrong"?
is there a transvestite raeding this?
i can stomach a transvestite...
i was once, one, drunk...
trans- "****": the world of
popularity contests can stomach that....
digest it... just as wel: i want to forget about it...
the world can *******: with these "regards"...

i must have missed something...
yes, me & some ivory beautifies,
living it up in the safeguards of Kenya...
my god... some of these Kenyan girls...
past burnt mahogany...
past auburn... past autumn's flares...
i somehow almost forgot about my...
oriental fetish... of petite "things"...
geishas... what not...

             if i'm not being scrutinised...
i'm worried... i scrutize others:
eh... not so worried.
I did conspire to love you.

2. The moon was happy with us.

3. Baudrillard’s concept of “Object Fetishism” is more relevant than Marx’s.

4. Thank you.

5. Trees are closer to heaven than the angels. (I know, you already know that, but I like the line).

6. You have the most beautiful sorrowful eyes.

7. The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. (RILKE 1912)

8. Locomotives fall in love going in opposite directions.

9. Certain earthquakes do not like themselves.

10. The more one contemplates the less one lives; the more one accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less one understands ones’ own existence and ones’ own desires. (Debord 1967)

11. I did plot to love you.

12. The black crow on the wire is not me.

13. Umbrellas can be opened inside. (Only black; counter intuitive, I know).

14. Your touch; my body remembers softly.

15. I did love you.

16. Clocks sometimes stop for no reason.

17. Even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that contains a desire or its reverse, a fear…Everything conceals something else.
(CALVINO 1972)

18 Sometimes letters sent, never arrive.

19. Only you ever made me blush.

20. In the end, everything is just a dream.

21. This poem will maximize your interval times.

22. Love is ambiguous, at best a “Contamination”, from the Latin *** tangere. “leaving a tactile print.”

23. I will let you go.

24. I will publish this poem

25. I will always love you.


Sincerely Mr. Leibow

— The End —