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Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
free from the irishman's arbeit macht frei on the building site:
****** worked the tools for a few years, got promoted and started
to kiss pig snouts - thinks he's the god Merovingian,
people hallucinate a potato where
his head ought to be and laugh -
well, how the most of society is sheltered
from the construction site in the west:
foreigners out! willkommen... now you
get you spoofs to do the hardened labours -
see how they fair, poncy fairies couldn't
even lift a shitload of bricks: but there they
go into the temple of hamster wheels
and brass muscles and kissing bicep meat-heads...
they could be utilised to generate enough
power to provide energy for a corner shops -
so yeah, the Romanians were on holiday,
it took them 5 days to reach their village
flying from London to Bucharest -
the cultural improvement of the Kazakh nation
was filmed there, after 5 weeks free from
the shackles of the irishman's version of
Auschwitz: a regular staple around here,
i get the smuggled cigarettes -
but after smoking tobacco smuggled from
god knows where, these Benson & Hedges
feel like torpedoes between the index and middle...
odd what 3 packets of 50g tobacco does to
perception, for a while i was smoking chop-sticks,
next thing i'm smoking torpedoes thick bulging
sticks - the smoke v. drink dynamic changes...
is Mary Poppins about to teach me a lesson
in how the HM & Revenue is sacred?
i hated that nanny when she said: to preserve
the health of the public, and to invoke a need
for proper taxation... well... **** that...
ever smoke Беломорканал сигареты?
       (belomorkanal sigarety)?
i thought you haven't, i have, i wouldn't even know
where to begin if i had to lie and tell you
i visited the Lenin mausoleum -
Беломорканал сигареты though? see the neo-Greek
in Cyrillic, or as? talk about evolution, i'd talk
more about more recent events in linguistic,
how Greek evolved in Cyrillic and Latin into added
diacritical markings: English held onto puritan Latin
impression way too long, instead of diacritical markings
we have U.S.A. accents, Scottish Irish and Welsh accents,
regional accents in England, Australian and South African...
it's like this inverse sense of insomnia:
    the sun never, ever, ******* sets on English,
steroids and amphetamines, continually news -
must be hard to keep up, to keep the local reference
in a world adequately suited for the day-to-day
marching orders - but yeah, smoked those cigarettes -
they don't have filters, well, cardboard "filters" -
you squeezed the ends and smoked the workman's
tobacco - while you were digging that god awful trench:
the white sea-baltic canal - and she was the lovely
middle-class lady who introduced me into smoking
them, after she realised she had the poker hand -
it always happens when the middle-classes meddle
with someone originating in the working class
who wants to become a chemist... they say: work!
whip for a tongue... i swear you need shampoos and toothpaste...
oh right, i'm from the land of brick and mortar?
well, if you're going to maim me, damage me,
obviously i'll stage a rebellion utilising poetry...
should have left me after infringing the damage on me,
should have left me to do the work...
but no... she calls me up and exposes me to
a schizophrenic virus: i.e. the atypical symptom -
and i'm like: huh? voices? what are voices?
what do you meaning you're hearing voices?
i guess the conscience kicked in -
                         oh how angelic everyone thinks they are...
    i call these symptoms: a rotten conscience,
  the fact that anyone would appreciate having one
is already a miracle... but seeing it rotting
    is a bit like a Dorian Gray revelation -
shock! awe! but the picture is there!
                                               funny how people who
plan a baby sometimes never score,
              and funnier still how some people invoke
   getting impregnated without the state's laws
of matrimony to blackmail a man into matrimonial
laws, use the meanest, bleakest, bile-fuelled mechanism
to erase the person from all the pages of life,
   then spectacularly fail: a bit like Jesus on the third day,
and the person in question blahs his way into
   something resembling life -  the typical
Hollywood plot: they killed him, but he got away...
        now i'm just waiting for a Mr. Chapman to finish
the job properly - because he might say:
                                his talent started waning...
    oh sure... i'd love to reach threescore & ten -
  and wait for the gimmick post-: every year after that
   is god's blessing... can i speak to the god in Sudan?
   can i get an audience? no? ah ****.
better start planning early mortality plans
while others are thinking of retirement.
                **** me! i used to be so into life that i'd
probably have written a poem a month apart -
    and now i'm left with a ****** biography that
could be encompassed in a year...
   i'm not even obsessing about it, it's just an elephant
in a box room that started snorting ******* and
playing jazz real good -
                                 then they blamed me on marijuana,
   i'd be the laziest person alive if i overdid that drug...
and however much i tried to become a Catholic
apostate, not getting confirmed and what:
   i was forced into Christian lessons of forgiveness,
only because i didn't have enough money to
pursue an argument in court... grand... just pitch-***
perfect -              mind you, they are really ****** lessons,
    i wouldn't go banging them to anyone
  who hasn't experienced injustice in this world:
gravity is probably the only law we can all experience
with true justice... as you can see, gravity wasn't
man-made... so good luck arguing your cases
     with murderers not being punished
  thieves not having their hands cut off for stealing jewels...
   if anyone was god at the birth of Christianity,
it was only Pontius Pilate - he washed his hands clean
from the matter... to me that's who god was in that
story... i'm washing my hands of anything that
might come from this.
Anthony McKee May 2013
A C H T U N G

  acht         neun         acht         sec­hs          vier          fünf           zwo
sechs          drei         eins          fünf        sieben          acht           null
   the         radio            spews             over          and          over         again
  void of      meaning.           or                 so                 they          want
   us to         think           as          the       concrete           wall
keeps       standing.        they         came           to        liberate us
which         they               did. of       thought of        speech
   of         word.             see             the        ashen         blocks sit
aren’t         they        pretty?           as         dark           red        blotches
stain          their           smooth       surfaces           like        lipstick on
wine       glasses.           an           old          fan          turns         slowly
    in a         dusty         room          just               south of
Leipzig.       men        dream of         hazy       Stalinist        façades
    as          she        brings a      cigarette to           her
rouged        lips. Belomorkanal.       the        rusted          olive        uniform
  pulls        tighter           as           she        draws in.        octaves
bellow        from           the       speakers. it is           time
    to         hear          from the     homeland.          how         sickles
gleam         for           the         Union          just like they
   did          for         Lenin. we         don’t           talk          about
   him         now         though.         sickles         don’t         gleam here
   like         they          ought to.          the          reels          revolve
unforgiving   to the cry           of a          winter’s
  night.         the           ruby          snow         glints            in         torchlight.
   the          night          goes on. it           has    to.
sieben        sechs          vier          zwo         neun           drei          sechs
  eins        sieben          null         sechs         acht           fünf          sieben

E N D   E

— The End —