Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2022
precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.
I keep my answers small and keep them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.

The huge abstractions I keep from the light;
Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.

But the big answers clamoured to be moved
Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

Even when all small answers build up to
Protection of my spirit, I still hear
Big answers striving for their overthrow

And all the great conclusions coming near.
I kept my answers small and kept them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bullwark to my fear.

The huge abstractions I kept from the light;
Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.

But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

Even when all small answers build up to
Protection of my spirit, still I hear
Big answers striving for their overthrow.

And all the great conclusions coming near.
radiating
street lamps
ionized the
indigo blue
haze charging
the night air

sparking the
city’s eclectic
currents coursing
through the
abandoned raceways
and empty streets

energizing the
phantoms of
the city’s
restive spirits

the ghosts of past
Great Falls Fests came
jitterbugging back
to life

transparent
veils lifting
and falling
with it, a voltaic
indigo blue
billowed out of the
abandoned stadium
pouring smoking
oboe moans
into the cavity
of the great gorge

“I was one of the last
to perform at
Hinchliffe Stadium”
Duke proclaimed
with his usual  
distinguished air

“it was also one of my
last concerts”, he added
with a tinge of
sorrow in his voice

“the band was rockin
the Art Deco tiles,
splintering and shattering
into bits of earth toned graffiti
the last vestiges of
a bygone Jazz Age
dissolving into the
disco fizz of the
Seventies”

the indigo mood
clamoured off
the rocks absorbing
the sonorous waves
like a stand of
hallowed
sequoias

“I’m trying to
remember what
my last tune
was that night.

was it Caravan?
or a Prelude to
a Kiss?  No no
too mellow
we always ended
on an upper
a real crowd pleaser,
I recall the boys swung
a medley before the grand finale
that medley included
Mood Indigo, Caravan,
Sophisticated Ladies,
Prelude to a Kiss.
We opened with Kinda Dukish
Rockin and Rhythm
we closed with
Satin Doll
Yes I’m quite sure
I waltzed them
off the floor
that night with
Satin Doll”

Duke ran his
fingers through
his processed hair.
He grabbed my shoulders
raised his baggy eyelids
And looked me straight
In the eye

“Yes, we followed
Tito Puente, he killed it
we upped our game
He was just starting out
But at this time Silk City
was going Caribe
Juan Tizol was
out of his mind that night,
I thought him and Babs
we're gunna jump ship
and join the Salsa Circus
Yeah El Rex and Celia Cruz
were that good

El Rex had the place
jumpin and jivin
it was a glimpse of the old days
livin in the here and now
just like the old days
I couldn't compete with that
so I waltzed them off
the floor with Satin Doll
a little cheek to cheek swoon
maybe some guys got lucky that night
and maybe some girls fell in love
Yeah Paterson was changing,
the ***** Leagues long gone
the last ****** Auto Races
crossed the final finish line weeks before
when the raceways in the stadium
replaced the raceways to the factories
we knew it was coming to an end
and with it all the good paying
jobs, whatta shame
just like me and the boys
watching El Rex
the Duke was dethroned by a King
just like Silk City
we had our day in the sun too
a Satin Doll Sun
Those were some good times,
sometimes”

Duke scratched
his head,
and he looked down into
the swirling noise
of the Great Falls
“on a night like this
the mood indigo
takes you into the
darkest hues of blues”

fragment from
Silk City PIT 6:
The Great Falls

Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins
Mood Indigo




Oakland
3/30/13
jbm

(FRAGMENT WORK IN PROGRESS)

Part 6 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Hope and Labor is the city motto of Paterson NJ, nick named The Silk City.
(FRAGMENT WORK IN PROGRESS)

Part 6 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Hope and Labor is the city motto of Paterson NJ, nick named The Silk City.
Marshal Gebbie Oct 2010
Written in the language of the hard hats and dedicated to each and every one of us who have endured this horrible ****** Winter weather*

Rain in gouts from June till now
There's blue clay mud forever,
Orange excavators ply
With sturdy tracked endeavour.
Lakes of water, turgid brown,
Are Swirling  with the flow
Of four inch pumps in overdrive
With ****** all to show.

Streaming rainfall day by day
As dogged men press on
To concrete saw and generator's
Screaming, nearby song.
Welders, under shelter, flash
Their lurid silver light
And ghosts of reinforcing bars
Reflect like day is night.

Mightily the ironwork
Descends by crane to trench
And snaking snout of concrete pump
Disgorge their load to bench
The magic of the bentonite
Performs it's subtle dance
And the concrete locks for centuries
As thunderous skies advance.

Knee deep in the morass
With perplexed furrowed brow,
An engineer is pondering
A sticky problem he has now
How to isolate contaminants
From mud to water flow,
How to guarantee the purity
As seaward tonnes of it does go

And still the deluge thundered down
Relentlessly it poured,
Day to day and month by month
Despite the plea's implored.
Relentlessly the hard hats
Bent their sodden backs to task
And forged a mighty work of progress
.... More than anyone could ask!

Amazing the endeavor,
Just amazing how they work
How men can face adversity
And simply will not go beserk!
How bounteous camaraderie
Generates between ranks.
When the hardship is shared
And the boss smiles... thanks.

For the roof beams are settling
And those deep holes begin
The tunnel takes shape
As slanting rain whistles in
And the big trucks do loiter
To idle there for a bit,
As the loud water blasters
Clear the clogged wheels of ****.

And the public all clamoured
To wait and queue in the stall
To watch and to witness
A quite remarkable call.
For the old Birdcage tavern
On that grim cloudy day
Promptly lifted her skirts
And slowly scuttled away.

All the glue and epoxy
And the rivers of nails,
And concrete trucks queuing
As the ******* flails.
And steel by the megaton
All rusted and twitched
And worriers worrying
Till the problems are fixed.
And the augers are drilling
In a great tandem arc
And nobody knows
Where the **** they can park!!!
  
Then the bright sunshine breaks
And the smiles all appear
And the work rate accellerates
For the way is now is clear
To inter that  dear old Vic tunnel
Down deep in the sod
Then you'll hear us all chortle
"We've ****** done it ...Thank God!"


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
3 October 2010
I said to Love,
“It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
All else above;
Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,”
I said to Love.

I said to him,
“We now know more of thee than then;
We were but weak in judgment when,
With hearts abrim,
We clamoured thee that thou would’st please
Inflict on us thine agonies,”
I said to him.

I said to Love,
“Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
No elfin darts, no cherub air,
Nor swan, nor dove
Are thine; but features pitiless,
And iron daggers of distress,”
I said to Love.

“Depart then, Love!
Man’s race shall perish, threatenest thou,
WIthout thy kindling coupling-vow?
The age to come the man of now
Know nothing of?
We fear not such a threat from thee;
We are too old in apathy!
Mankind shall cease…—
So let it be,”
I said to Love.
Edward Coles Apr 2017
Lived the life of an artist
long before I became one.
Pressed to guitar strings
until my fingers were numb
to all exposed skin
that was not my own.

Listened to one thousand sad songs
over and over
until the pointless chords
clamoured over one another,
psalms of living
fall on deaf ears.

Trawled archives of *******.
Lauded aristocrats of cheap whiskey nights
and black coffee mornings.
Garnished my days with addictions carried
by better men
in love with real women.

Grew thin, moved about the apartment
in the graveyard hours
tacking songs to the walls.
In the absence of chains and ***
I fixed myself with neon lights
and cigarettes.

Spilt paint over undeserving paper
beneath the halogen bulb
to colour radio silences
of past friendships,
mountains I should let recede
like a ship in the night.

Stood alone in crowds
to witness the onset of a moment,
openings and closings of mouths and doors;
each one to allow another person in.
I go home alone
and sleep with my thoughts.
C
Shofi Ahmed Nov 2019
God before penning the very first word in the book of creation
He knew the last that reflected in inking the very first drop
composing the bottom line that gravitates every creation.
In the know so much so what was yet to be He could call on
indeed assembled all the future humans on the Day of Alast
when He asked ‘Am I not your Lord?’ Yes, we said aloud.
Responded to Him long, long before our physical birth!

The whole shebang was in the beginning in the first set out
Bounce before the Big Bang the number zero before that
and within its circle was a marvelous exponent the pi
constantly pops up with the reasons to be alive!
The first creations were even before all of that
Foundation was laid the stone is a man and woman
indifferent grounds sprawled the eternity in between  
that embraces the two with its endless varied beauty
making them truly the distinguished two for the one reality!

God made them with love from the bottom of the heart
Oh the bottom is nectar and more so the rose in bloom
embraces a sweeter debut flowering off a honeyed bud  
God's ink flows, the sweetest ocean bellows, from the start
and to the end, all that heard it mellifluous!

Before the cloud basks in the blue dancing in the air
then rains down in serene melodies bedews the atmosphere.
Oh the all transparent ocean of God's first drop of ink goes viral
Fathima rises from the midst, the first spiritual woman swims out,
sipping every drop of this potion ‘there is more’ she clamoured
The begins the end yet no end God’s first creations triumph!
Cyan Tendency Jan 2013
The rain's been relentless
I've been soaked for two days
the wind blowing sideways
Unavoidable fray

Cold to bone, I run bathwater too hot to handle
Want to sweat it all out, and to run myself pure
Pale steam 'round me rising, obscuring the candles
and thoughts of you run though my head, like a lure.

My clothes lie bedraggled, cast here on the floor
kindling flashbacks of searching for mine in your room
fully dressed again, kindly you'd showed me the door
and I left, leaving heartstrings caught up in your loom.

So here I am, aching
so here I am, tired
so here I am, glad for the perfume you left

So here I am, hopeless
I'm mystified, following
bright flashing memories, indeliberate gifts.

How can it be, chest cavity filling with sorrow
What small sweetened curse did you drip in my heart?
Chemicals mine, and chemicals foreign
weave conundrums of pain as your next work of art.

I loathe to think you've one resentment against me
Did I clarify all clamoured in heart and head?
moth to flame, I remember you hate them,
don't hate me
but also, remember- they all end up dead.

You'll never know, just what a blessing our time was
Precious stone, as you know are important to me
I am that Roman candle, actinic in pearls
my fog soon in passing, and I will be free.

So please, don't let too much dust cover our glow
Synchronicitous, meant to be, beautiful, rare
Something splendid as that, should be held in the heart
Hands of time have a tendency- obscure and tear.

so here I am, peaceful
so here I am, salient
the memories of your arms around me, your chest

so here I'm imagining your face before me
how perfect our moments
Thankyou, lover;
I'm blessed.
john p green Aug 2018
Your rambling on seems just that to minds twisted so tight.
Suffocating their sight for sweet melody of the real.
Megan Sherman Feb 2017
Mistress of my passion, by whom I am enamoured
Thou art the golden yoke unto my soul
For thy tender affections I have craved and clamoured
To thee I dedicate this enchanted howl
To bear love aloft, to dedicate thy self
To the duty of Heart's compassion
May make the spirit swell in good health
And compel it to exquisite action
In thy light, which begets a radiance
I feel the guidance of a divinely wrought star
Enamoured of our mutual dalliance
I pledge and worship to thee from afar
    My sweet entreaties I refine
    To fathom love and soar divine
Ben Jones Jun 2013
Through a garden bedecked in the finest façade
In a natural beauty of eons compiled
An assault to the senses which quickens the pulse
Yet soothing the detail, organically styled

Its borders haphazard yet clearly defined
By a frenzied assortment of pollen clad blooms
Enhancing creation with lust and a craving
With nectar, ambrosia scented perfume

The thickets and bushes, with industry cloaked
A sprawling utopia thriving therein
With bees and with butterflies drinking their fill
And drizzled in webs which the spiderfolk spin

A meandering trail through flourishing life
An encouraging push from the sun to my rear
Entrancing, the chill of the dew underfoot
Yet thrusting itself like an ice laden spear

My sight is attracted by hidden desire
To a door at the crest of a flurry of stairs
And the stone of the flight is as fire to my soles
After languishing still as the midsummer glares

The door is ajar and within comes the sound
Of a single piano, adeptly caressed
Each note sends a shiver rebounding around me
In purity soaked and perfection possessed

I make my way forward and darkness inside
Removes me of sight as my pupils adjust
And the air is intense as a northerly breeze
And shimmers in motes cut of sunlight and dust

My eyes become clear and before me they see
Cascading and dancing a musical frieze
A picture in motion, a fairytale path
In a spectrum of tones and a myriad keys

Inspiration her name and the course she describes
Is a poem in light to beguile the mind
She speaks with her body, a wordless refrain
Of a mystery poets have clamoured to find

A pipe cuts a harmony no one could play
Distilling forever the passage of time
And though such a symphony draws at the tongue
Causality never once utters a rhyme

A pattern of shimmering images form
Behind inspiration and quickening pace
To fade with the music and ever be lost
Lest the pen of a poet can hold them in place

Most fickle of muses and teaser of tongues
To flirt with despair and to promise elation
We chase but remaining just out of out reach
Is the ghost of a girl which we call ‘Inspiration’
Olivia Kent Nov 2014
At the front of the church stood the coolest guy in town.
Awaiting by the altar for the day to match his wildest dreams.
He stood.
He shook.
You could almost hear the rings jangling.
Silently waiting.
Anxiety sensed.
Adrenaline high.
Friends and family clamoured eagerly.
Waiting to see the beautiful lady.
That he was taking for his bride.
The local ladies loved him.
The local gents were jealous.
The door at the end of the aisle swung open.
Beauty personified?
The congregation were astonished.
As the groom and groom were gay.
No-one knew except the vicar, the best man and the two of them.
(C) Livvi
NOW TO FIND THE WITNESSES
Sam Irons Feb 2015
#7
We are possibility.
Nothing undone:
the red key swung,
the pins aligned.
     Spite and Malice -
you won in Burque;
in Buffalo, in April,
I'll be writing in coffee shops.

Cage made fake acrostics
and clamoured more than us.
He watered himself in blenders
tacked his piano like stigmata.

But really, he just put the right letter
on the correct line (if he
ever wrote a line),
but our house was a mess
of books and skulls
and everywhere you looked
too perfect a nest,

so we tore ourselves apart.
Why don't we stop?
Someone will spend graduate school
anthologizing our correspondence,
analyzing the details we missed,
et al., hic et nunc.

The girls dancing in Budapest
and the guys making passes at you in the snow
reduce us to baser instincts
by counting how we
could, might, tentatively
hurt again
on our second-class driver's test.

Fortunately, I am with you
when you look at computer screens
and you're with me at the bar
when television commercials
show off their bras and the beer hits
harder than libretto
and snus drips down the candle wax
making arcs like the Scott Monument.

The imperfection is bliss,
the knots loosen and move
up our spines. We'll soak
the tub and swell
our glands with menthe
and tumble
     further down the mud,
until we either love or ****
what makes us whole.
swans and swanettes
all clamoured to dance
with the cygnet's undesirable
admission's prance

they didn't know that this male
was such a bragging exposure
and would strip their secrets
leaving them without composure

a waltzing of blackmail
was called in his revelation
the lovely feathered ones
trust divulged as intimidation

they only saw the charade
of this not so perfect ballroom chap
who'd tell all if they were unwilling
to twirl on his spin's tap

in fear lived the honeys    
of his fox trotting troupe
as their private steps
would be made an open coupe
The palindrome falls on shadowed riots,
clamoured mediocrity
and fever of falsified truths-
hyper-normalised until we’re writhing
in animatronic snake oil.

What’s worse, the hysteria or the disease?

Over-indulge the fascists
kiss their fists as they flail in cognitive dissonance-
white knuckles dragging to the rhythm of another media blag.

Patriotism cradles their fear and wraps it in red, white, and blue;
a stifled tricolour vision,
bathed in sanctified blood-clotted volition.
They’ll never let them come clean
they need their repugnance,
and inability to see that hope is an option
but the disparity is always just a news broadcast away.
A nice cheery Brexit poem <3
I close my eyes
And you’re still there
you washed your hair
whilst the pots
and the pans
you left in your shower
clamoured for water
in calming tones.

padding feet
careful tread
A dancer? Maybe…
And I watched from
the ribbon of hall light

as you

wrung out your inhibitions
cleansed a small torment or two
Somewhere I hear a piano
your eyes found mine
and for a second I loved you
for a second there was but that second
and nothing, nothing more.
Yogita Tahilram Jul 2017
The last time I saw you,
I begged for
Stillness and silence
From the questions causing
Tremors in my head;
And for a split second,
They obliged.

After which they morphed from
The whimpers of a lovesick girl
Into an army of
Screaming and indignant women.
They flooded my mouth,
And clamoured against
The barricades that were my teeth
Held in a tight, fake smile.

I could feel my tongue
Straining to replicate the
Echoes of the questions
That had been seared onto
It's surface.

“What is this?”
“Is it supposed to hurt this much?”

I can't possibly let them out, can I?
So I chew, and swallow and
Chew
And
Swallow, and
Wince at its rancid acidity.

But they are relentless,
For I feel their sharp words
***** against the backs
Of my eyes.

They substituted tears,
And filled my eyes to the brim,
In the place of
A smile that never reached them.

I think you should
Acknowledge my tears now,
Its time I asked you a few questions.
Sin Nov 2015
Did you  read the news someone blew up the stand where the boys and girls band play for the TV crew

They clamoured and shout get the **** out as tears run down their cheeks

And who is gonna prey to Jesus and who is gonna say don't cry today it'll all be okay but you and I know that's a lie

And in our hearts and minds
We watch as crazy people destroy, the ones we love and nobody can save on this day

Blood on the hands of the different man the death dealer of now, who hides behind faith and jokes in our face as we carry the dead to their grave

And so the song fades away
And so we go off and prey
And so we listen and say
Who we gonna trust, who will be the next
And the bombs just keep comming all day
In case my last to say goodbye,
It all came from a broken heart.
Falling in love from being shy,
To rising high falling apart.
No, it wasn’t for false honor,
Nor suffering for all to start.
From time said, “He was a goner,”
Kissed love not spoken left to ****.
To be buried deep in maroon,
We pray not to sleep damnation.
Tears daring to hold back not soon,
What left to read but a raisin?
Old and clamoured not to tell them,
“I love you” - which lonely - seldom…
I will always be here in loving spirit… thank you… I love you…
Megan Sherman Apr 2017
O Muse, thou art a maker of tireless melody,
Who with thine scintillating passion maketh my own less illustrious,
Thou art the source of - yet anodyne to - my tender malady,
For thine assiduous affections I have clamoured industrious.
Should your song run dry and run out of harmony,
And the coda finally end,
You truth will be nevertheless understood for thy cosmic symphony,
A truth that Heaven dare not forfend.
O let my lust be reciprocal,
Or my own Heart's strength will decay,
Upon thee I have been attentive, focal,
For hope that thine Heart could assuage my dismay.
    Yet away with me, I hear you say,
    Administering poison in the fifth act of the play.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
this... this long awaited bottle
of wine; that's for omome,
but not you... if there's going to be
a me and you...
we'd needd a ms. amber...
and some hereafter...
that bouting with the bridge
and bride of hades
and... whatever...
come tomorrowland....
i will not birdge any gaps
or any other interludes...
save those bits that welcome
the last of life and that killing joke...
here, now, the better half of
me... closed circuit worth of a
pundit...

lingo sputnik that one into an equation
for the basis of oasis that
never clamoured to burden the eurotrash
with blur
and pigeon shtiting clarificastions....

manchester chequers...
n'ah n'ah hey jude... ******* worth
of wriggling and teasin'...
  
happy to have made cheese...
says anyone beside...
an alex james...
   gear up to be riddled, moi...
something sharpening in
tone-deaf pain...

no... 4 down-under
3 across a "crew"...
             he's also greaved in
the soloist "moisting up" of suicidal tendencies...
linger me for that spot
leverage: major major of rationed bacon...

you really don't want the kinds
of me crafting a ridicule of
your naked ***... making
tabloid "oops"
of that always appeasing moon
whips and tenures...

two birds with one stone...
except the arithmetic of twenty-two...
and there's a whoop-catch
of the better half of rottten tomorrows
of the intelligent:
hardly an i.q. tester, tester, count...

i come from this affair all..
all ******* dehydrated...
and fixated on a d.n.a. of the wirth
of argumentation for the worths of
tomorrow...

hardly the happy slap...
          we... the governing
lords of salem...
                        that last misendeavour;
culprit, corrupt...
of that what's best salvaged...

mein besitzen!
           az én saját...
                               mano savo!

refresh... the death upon the crucifix
of golgotha...
then again...
that death of being impaled...
to dangle with death in tow...
but then... being impaled...
all that glory-******* the tenets
of homosexuality...
then one is being impaled
via the transcedence of buggery?

it's one thing to dangle on
a crucifix... hands outstreched...
quiet another...
to have ones hands tied
behind one's back...
being impaled...

           na pal z tym skurwysynem!
i will just listen to enough
wading through the glories of
the cossacks mingling with
the crimean tartars before...

                             crucifixion is
hardly the worthy bargain of torture to be...
exemplified...
there are so many, more...
na pal...

   to be impregnated by a quest
of making **** *** normie-proud...
at the crux of where the pelvis ends and the coccyx
begins...
at the point where the birth of the iron maiden
welcomes the weeping willow...
as a response of being
the sulking bride of commerce...

i do pity the emblem of the crucifix...
there's being subject to the pike...
one can be made to suffice in this
instrumentation of torture...
with a leonardo da vinci exegesis...
the limbs extending...
but never quiet so on a pyke...

                          butterflies of all
held hostage high heavens...
as ever... the inglorious stump...
sharpened... a death proclaimed...
two weeks short but then
the interlude... of the agon. of "waiting"...

it's called the highest crucifixion...
the lesser **** forthcoming...
the hands are tied
and the body is made to pivot
on the pelvis come coccyx...

              no angel will come here:
in spite... or repose...

                    i have lost my amibitions
to imagine... thus, this,
this torrent of whimsical expenditures;
bone-breaking
copper nibbling skimming
of loitering examinations of:
the awaited loss of value.
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.
rm Jul 2020
hardly embraced
by the
darkest memories
he can never
rid himself with.

softly clamoured
by the
endless disgrace
and disdain
she left
his arms.

bewildered
and mesmerized
by the simple
things
he made,
it was ephemeral.

lustered
with bits
of sparkle
left in his eyes
through the glares
of "she" which sullied the
plain, beautiful sky
and cries.
Salmabanu Hatim Sep 2023
1400 years ago,
Hussein had no mass media,
To narrate the neither humongous tragic events of Kerbala,
Nor his horrendous massacre.
Actions speak louder than words,
And today because of his sacrifice more than millions,
Walked from Najaf to Kerbala
Lamenting Labaik Ya Hussain,
And thousands clamoured to serve food, water and accommodation in the name of Hussain.
Hussain who sacrificed his head for Islam on the scorching sands of kerbala,
Hungry and thirsty for three days.
Hussain belongs to not one religion,
But to humanity truth and justice.
5/9/2023

— The End —