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Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
to willingly listen to some russian punk...
they call themselves:
Sierpień - well... Sierpien -
нь is floating around somewhere -
august... август....
perhaps the ****** word "rhymes"
with sierp (i młot) - sickle and hammer...
pień? trunk - stump of wood...
etymological fascination...
august where no emperor augustus
ever stood... unless a Kaцпer...
sier(p) - sickle
(p)ień - stump of a freshly cut tree:
or trunk...
hence the birth of a name
of a month: harvest the trees...
and we are talking about a russian
post-punk goth-punk band...
almost more congested and less
atmospheric the cure...
old kaц the hangover comes in and
says something with a mirror
and fog...
but i'm sure... living under the much
despised (ras)Putin regime would
never give you such music...
look at the people of the...
look at the free peoples of the western /
hinterlands!
no... thank god the view count is only...
what? 3,880 views...
it's an oyster affair...
Sierpien - Cмeрдит дo caмых звeзд (2016)...
people can still produce art of this sort?
is a (ras)Putin required? really?
democracy per se...
power-struggles from among
the populace...
ever hear the petitions of schizophrenics
in the western lands?
a holy grail status for some...
the "nuanced" *****...
or bilingual...
but this album current saved me from
a despair... a friday night is happening
somewhere... and i'm more than happy
to not be there...
i don't even know what's popular
in terms of music in the hinterlands...
the bellybutton of the world: London...
doesn't exactly spew out pointers
to digest what's new and pop with
the crowd...
how long did it take me to hear about
psy's gangnam style?
a good half a year... but then it was already
playing on repeat...
perhaps not in a way that...
once upon a time... Microsoft wanted
to use R.EM.'s it's the end of the world
(and i'm feeling fine)
for an advert...
and R.E.M. refused...
i can't exactly see any use of an advert...
but for the past decade...
perhaps... the outliers of dubstep:
distance, vex'd... burial...
10 years have passed and i don't even
know what music people listen to...
like i said... i'm listening to something...
only about 4K people also listen...
notably in Russia...
i'll translate...
śmierdzić do samych zwezd... gwiazd...
smerdit do samych zwezd...
10 or so years later i'm at this point...
there's no need to invoke Ms. Cмeрц
but it almost never figured for me...
ц somehow borrows from щ...
that's of course ч is related to ш...
to stink of **** up to the stars...
that's how the album name,
"sort-of" translates itself...
in the past 10 years...
this is probably the sort of music i should
be listening to...
i would somehow abhor myself
being the fully integrated western mongrel...
allowing my soul to die and
this language to dictate the fashionista
dictums "from above"... like a good puppy...
origins mostly focusing on...
Lebanon... the old Raj...
i honestly did think that: the de factor default
implication of the word: integration was
to speak the language...
this is not the great h'america where
you'd call it an alliance to a patriotism...
this is england... where people are not
exactly responsive to the word patriotinism...
and whenever it is used...
it's the ugly word nationalism...
so... this is not an extension of thinking
that can be "accomplished" akin to somewhere
in h'america...
this is england talking to itself in me...
or rather... me... looking at england and trying
to find the sort of footing for a tango...
born 4 hours shy of warsaw doesn't help,
either...
still... as names go...
no one was a cooler name for their capital...
come on... war-saw...
beats washington d.c. -
but... loon'don... that's mighty close...
all the democratic arguments aside...
i'm listening to these political commentators...
and i'm wondering...
what sort of music are they listening to?
i'm still looking for a playlist
i inherited that included bands like...
it's dire to even begin to name them...
the best i found are still...
demdyke stare... and that's not really
being pretentious... vomito *****...
but "once upon a time" music could make
a man stay up into the stillness of the night,
far beyond the night,
he might have sometimes glimpsed
a new unfolding as he would go to bed
from the graveyard shift with
some neglected words being seized...
i've just skimmed through u.k. top 40 chart...
i can't relate...
i can understand just having the vote...
but to have the vote...
and be left... in this barrage of...
i understand that man is a political animal
and somehow social...
but a vote is enough...
no wonder good culture hasn't "happened"
in the past 10 years...
i don't like being informed of culture
via the prism of: it's all or not political...
i don't like being
polarised i don't like being politicised...
all i have is one vote...
and i'm nearing 34 and seeing how...
since i haven't already used it...
it's pretty much a redundant affair...
as long as the status quo is there...
as long as there's a status quo...
and there's the shady bureaucracy cushioning...
but how can one expect to find
a tartar stake of sustenance...
when everything resembles an english
sunday roast: with the beef being over-cooked
over, way over well-done?
the meat is butchered twice...
once as the cow... second time as a piece of roast!
i'm not fond of criticism...
bad... i know as a foreigner but also as
a citizen... only the pakistani grooming gangs
are sacred cows in this, this whittle english...
past allegience to soviet russia?
because, what? russian post-punk takes
my fancy...
one! one benefit of a doubt...
justin bieber's jazzy interlude in:
love yourself... and that's it...
i decided for the: leave me alone button...
and for all the vitality of the western ways
i'm left either the window-licker prized oscar
nominee or some lethargic melancholy prone:
a decade on and a decade without
the better part of me...
i somehow own about 10 pairs of shoes
but every time i only walk in single pair...
until they are worn,
until i can almost imitate:
no borrow metaphor from the african
continent... my second mother siberia...
and the indo-europeans and whatever tag!
tag it necessary! caucasian and la la land...
this was political... before it even started...
even whether there was a demand for my vote...
the tide came, the tide went,
i wasn't given so much as a sniff of civil rights...
my civil rights had to be political rights:
in a redundant format best described:
as a vote... opinions first, vote later...
by then the vote is already a confirmation
of how many more ***** will sink
to this level of: humpty-dumpty...
a culture can thrive when power is clarified...
there's no culture when the only
despotism is the finding the lost
in the labyrinth of bureaucracy...
since i base my focus via Kant... yes...
these are idealistic words...
because idealism is - the already focused on
status quo... and again...
the status quo... perhaps even stasis qua!
- but i'm not listening to current music...
from a "certain" place that once could
salvage the rest of the world of bodies
with its beacon of soul...
not "current" as in: where meat is more mince
than steak...
it's all fine and dandy...
to have the provisions at your disposal...
but you can't expect an annual supply of carrots...
or meat... to feed the mouth that neither
opens, nor bites, nor chews,
nor swollows, not ******* saliva
for the premature process of digestion...
you can't expect this most perfect supply & demand...
something has to be missing for
the soul to have... the realism of the fact
i am bound to a robotic / unconscious body...
what conscious decision do i have...
over the already calibrated heart?
the delusion that the brain... is somehow...
freed from what?
psychological metaphysics?!
i have an automated digestive system...
and an automated ****...
i don't exactly know when i'm going to ****...
but i do **** - and with so much pleasure so...
that i would forgo all homosexual exfoliations
for the mere pleasure of...
easing a **** out of that ******* bang hole...
than allowing a vaselined cockrel in...
quiet a disgust pecker of high ambitions...
when it comes to enjoying
massaging the prostate muscle when sitting
on the throne of thrones...
i am trapped in an automated body!
the only aspect of me agreeing to evolutionary
biology is to invoke the soul...
as something ex "nihil" in coprus...
from "nothing" in body (intact)...
hello intellectual safari of the thesaurus
and the synonym chasers...
from under the Iron Curtain...
once more... thrown under the Silicon Curtain...
but there is something in me that
allows me to escape the already well oiled,
this well calibrated body... shy of being
merely treated as baggage...
there's something that allows me to restrict...
when i will **** out a full bladder...
from time to time...
but this is still oh so mechanical...
the fickle nature of man's own self interests:
the only mirror i could find
to compensate the complexity
of deus ex machina...
i'll last 10 minutes with a swollen bladder...
until i give way...
that's when i know that i am rebelling
against the mechanical nature of this body...
- nonetheless the conversation run down
a different route...
i want to be, as i once was...
politically starved... give me the vote and lace me
with civic duties... minding culture...
don't give me this politico journo-*******...
this spare straitjacket of "opinions"...
opinions that do not hone in on a dialectic...
but a dichotomy...
while under (ras)Putin there was a resurgence
of post-punk... brutalism debauchery...
in the vest of the west...
do i really have to give gil scott heron over?
see? what power do i have?
i have.... a chance to glimpse how a culture
can thrive... musically...
no... oh no! no Vlad... you're not getting off
that easy...
Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture...
tell me... as a cat might look you in the eyes...
and cats do... when you find it uncomfortable
to lie... a cat will look you in the eyes
when it knows the agony of you telling
the truth... too frequently...
now... tell me...
of the 1812 Overture...
how close was Tchaikovsky teasing...
plagiarising... la marseillaise?
oh i think: this close ||.
i still don't know: listening to classical music...
is supposed to make people,
"somehow" smart?!
- just like Beethoven hides / licks /
alludes to the crescendo of
ode an die freude that is to come in the 9th symphony...
lots of crashing plates and banging
templates of cooking vessels in between...
a crescendo is almost like...
but not quiet... no... it's never exactly a chorus...
but Ode an die Freude is revealed
in a subtle way somewhere in the vicinity
of the genesis of the 9th...
i'll ******* duel over this remark though...
if it takes blunt knifes and spoons...
so be it...
negate: Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture does
not allude to La Marseillaise!
*****, test me! i swear to god -
you tell me this russian кaцaп is not alluding to?
what sort of culture are to speak of,
as citizen... if we have to be...
worthwhile less the already invalid vote...
and more the sway-ghost-vote of...
ditto-heads and less and less...
i remember when i would start a conversation
with girls on the basis of: so...
what music are you into?
has... the don mclean prophesy come true?!
the only music is the democratic opera
of the inability to hush competing interests
of the less than homogenous, cerebral hive?!
wow! believe me when i state:
i would truly rather shun my state of being:
stunned!
to me... people have forlorn to "worry"
about petty, ahem... "petty" cultural worries...
this political transfusion, verbiage,
look... a broken arm of a word that used
to resemble pref-                 ending in
the loose limb that ends with 9...
scary language... informal language...
not exactly the english standard: terse /
whimsical... "way-hey-hey-ha-witty"...
hardly anecdotal: mein herr kapitan!
oh but this is certainly a cultural desert...
i'm still doing my best to shake off the 20th century...
what's it called... what's it called...
you are... ah! 20th century inheritence...
not that i'm by any measure a man
of the 20th century...
come the year 2000 i was still a mid-way
between child and man...
2020... 34... i am a 21st century man...
as i also have circa 10K of student debt to pay off...
but this is england...
a chemistry degree gets you nowhere...
i always fancied the Leibniz route...
a garbage man... perhaps "the librarian"...
the street-cleaner...
10K worth of pounds of debt...
paid? when one earns over 15K per annum...
bless ol' england... this debt will be written off
after 30 years...
i really wanted to find a job akin to being
the street-cleaner...
i wouldn't even mind... seeing as how i could
come home and write a rhythm
of a crooked guitar... perhaps doing some work
in the industrial sector...
the scottish widows' h.q. roof, near st. paul's?
i did that... well... part of the team...
industrial scale roofing...
whatever... this is not going to become
"yet another" autobiographical sketch...
a degree in chemistry led me nowhere...
some lucky fist-first-think-fewest landed
their english B.A.s and:
"the authorities" would never let them starve
having... their poo'ems better read...
oh i wish i could think without having
itchy fingertips and what words i want
to say when i however have to say the mundane
formality of the everyday...
i'm the sort of jack spicer *******...
that i cannot work with this lexicon beside
what's always greeting me with a welcome return
of surd applause...
i can't speak the everyday language
of the everyday -
even my punctuation is suspicious -
an *****-nilly I.R.A. bad device...
i can hold the hounds of bark, leash, girdle and muzzle
until they finally find the dog...
but not until i have feasted upon
the blank canvas that will never see any colour...
but this x-ray of hiding faint hues
working in the subtle grey-of-no-grey area
that comes with these words, these bones...
i have to drink...
to find these words... and an echo prior
to the cave... this being the cave after i heard
the echo... even among drunks i couldn't
speak such words, such sentences...
under them the drunks cower...
and... this is the better part of a friday night...
i best exclude myself to this page
of rummaging... because even if i drink...
i wouldn't find a conversation among the drunks
to compliment this! to compliment this
with an immediacy of a dialogue -
a shared experience...
better i write this... and wait for a delay...
better i wait for a delayed response...
in the quantum sense of:
when observed a wave... when not observed...
a particle.
science as this cohesive orthodox litany of
dogmas to undermine religion...
science is more vogue than religious dogmatism...
science is modern...
it will only and has only succumbed
to modern finicky... vogue... science is...
hardly a... blind sighted hive brain-drain focus
of the replicas and clone surds nodding...
this language... would never be spoken among
the drunks...
i hardly think it would or even does:
deserve a stage... perhaps only if i wore face paint...
if i were truly an entertainer...
but these words deserve more than a stage...
they deserve an: umbratempus...
zeitshatten... a time-shadow...
cień czasu... (время тень)..
regurgitate something to me, akin to:
T4T (oliver baez bendorf)...

see! i knew нь was floating around...
it comes... back... full circle.
http://youtu.be/RGFytiWwsRo
(this is a link to a video that I created for this poem)
Ridgewood (Where We Wait)
We take the most delicious train
to the Queens-Brooklyn border to get here
Where everything is liminal, uncertain, undecided
Even the foundation, Arbitration Rock, at the house on Onderdonk
Was buried for centuries, dug up, and chucked on another imaginary line
The streets are on a grid, and the border on a diagonal
making a stair-stepping hypotenuse of the confused
A challenge to put your time to good use
even on the oz-like yellow brick road on Stockholm
You hear Poles on the street muttering “Marnowanie mojego
czasu tutaj” through the bachata dripping
from the apartments above the stores on Fresh Pond Road

Two of the best restaurants in the boroughs
Rosa’s pizza and Zum Stammtisch mark
the north and south borders of the hill where we wait  
During the seventy-seven riots, Ridgewood
seceded from her stepsister, broke from Boswijk and Breuckelen
-
There’s racism here like carbon monoxide smoke:
at the Ridgewood Y, a man sweats through his shirt
revealing swastikas pierced through the skin underneath
and the Romanian dentist down the street drilling
says “Cred ca am pierd timpul meu aici”
through the machinery scream and burning enamel
she won’t say this if you understand what she means

Walking past the 99 cent stores and the pharmacies,
remembering that there is good, fast, and cheap
But you can only have two of them at the same time,
Crazy Loretta, under her navy knit woolen hat
in her pink sweatsuit and winter coat, smokes
her shaking hand-rolled cigarettes below the train
trestle grinning with her jaw-jutting through
her inch thick specs.  She waggles her chicken bone fingers
saying, “Hiya honey” when you walk by.
If you are brave enough to stop and talk to her,
she’ll tell you that her nephew plays
for the Texas Rangers and her daughter
is a doctor and she’ll probably give you bedbugs
She’ll tell you, fascinated, like a child: “when you squish them - the blood comes out”
She’ll tell you the same thing tomorrow - Loretta forgets.  
In her mind, a phrase like green smoke from her youth
Ich glaube, ich bin meine Zeit hier

The playgrounds are packed with children
practicing how to swear, the girls huddled
reading Twilight like the Bible, and the boys
huddled reading the girls like the Bible
A woman yells to her son to come home a third time
and mutters “Creo que estoy perdiendo mi tiempo aquí”

Buried in Machpelah Cemetary less than a mile from my house,
is the place Houdini is still staging his greatest escape
He has a wide audience.  Sometimes I think there are more dead
residents of Ridgewood than living ones.  The cemeteries stretch
the borders of the appropriate spilling into Christ
the King high school’s front lawn.  Driving Cypress Hills street,
the Manhattan skyscrapers rise looking tomb-toothed parallaxed and
blurry through ephemeral sepulchres, stones, and cement angels pointing at the sky

On one of the stones it says simply: Videor perdo temporis hic
I think we are wasting our time here.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
czytając filozofie po polsku, ojciec mój który wyrósł na chemika obudził dziecie, a dziecie pochłoneło ojca mówiąc: od teraz zaczne, carpe annum, carpe zenith ex tempus, filozofia z logiki czy to z rzeczy rosnących - i w garści magika które wzamian za słowa hocus pocus wymawiane są słowa jan nowak urodzony czwartego kwietnia roku 1912 / zmarł rokiem 1973; czy to z rzeczy stabilnych w sensie inspectio ex continuum, czy też na skali micro (atomów), czy też macro (gwiazd); to ja wydam wartości nie-czytne mym ozorem, abyś ty zerknoł na to co jest warte czytania - obudź mnie w ciele ośmio latka twym ciałem dwudziesto latka... bo sam wiesz że przez tyle lat, nic cie nie nauczono -nawet ten bat i ta dysciplina nie wzruszyła cie aby zgodzić się na kawe przy domu pogrzebowym wraz z myślą: jaki to ma być, ten nowy samochód? z dala - ‘taki aby i trumna też mogła zapiąć pasy.’*

zza młodu dziad powiada wnukowi: matematyka, fizyka i sport...
przed dziada rokiem młody odpowiada:
chłód zimy, spacer i myśl;
kocham obiekt zwany kobieta... lecz nie temat...
mój sam bardziej wypełnia sześć kątów niż jej obecność zmartwień,
co jest jakby gra przegrana, więź tematyki mniej
jako wąż a bardziej jak glizda...
lecz chodząc miedzy kratami i domami anglii dostatku...
widze więcej glizd niż kobr czy też pytonów...
skoro geneza słowa jest brana od onomatopeji imitacji bydła,
nic dziwnego że my tesz na bydło zeszli
biorąc teorie lingwistyki darwina przez ch i es -
nic dziwnego że nie jego,
ale czemu brać pod uwage słowem: jak się widzi
kogoś pukającego w dzrwi w tle “słów”
jakby nie jeden knock-knock żart, więcej limit
tego że z nie animowanych rzeczy nic mądrego nie przyjdzie -
tym bardziej dodając do słownika -
jeno ta pierwsza lekcja zagrożenia małpy bez drzewa
z tym pyskaczem wężem, czyż nie?
jaki jest sens utkwić nową lekcje od rzeczy samych
niewinnych swoją interakcją z cieniem lecz bez machania...
jakie zagrożenie od nich? ah wiem, jeno arachnofobia wedle
kamyka rozmiarem ciągu gór mienia: tatry.
więc szkeliet tego boga zwany: komunikat - przez poetów
wyzwany na igrek i mieszanke czasu w pralce
czystości pomieszany: czerń i biel nada szary -
aby zerknąć w igły dotyku bez wargi,
aby te zagrorzenia zostały które miały znaczyć że
zeszły nam z drogi... aby potem tym samym małpim okiem
patrzyć na rzecz dosyć stabilną i sprawdzić istnienie atomowego ruchy
w stajni, między ślepotą a ruchem, mgłą a cieniem.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
Dzień dobry,  ok, ustalimy koszty na 100 egz. zajmę się tym po świętach, bo będę wyjeżdzać. Wiem, że miał Pan prawo zwątpić, ale w Polsce inaczej mimo wszystko podchodzi się do poezji, mam wrażenie, że tu nadal jest ona ważna. Bardzo wiele wydaje się tomików poetów - amatorów, są oni zrzeszeni w klubach poetyckich. Cieszę się, że Pan ma też swoich czytelników, to super, myślę, że tomik Pana zadowoli i oczywiście wieczorek z poezją też. Może uda się Panu przyjechać ? ale to jeszcze dalsza perspektywa, mama mówiła, że może sierpień. Pozdrawiam.*

oczywiście, skoro pani prosi, przyjade... wiem, ta niesfoboda różnic perspektyw, na zachodzie jest ważna muzyka, ta forma ubustwa poezji... rym na rym na rym etc. ile czasu jest potrzebne tyle racze zgodą i kiwaniem głowy, nie chce sie wpraszać z tą obawą zaniedbania... w sumie nie ja wykonuje tą "brudną" robote publikacji. oraz dziękuje za brak formalności z tymi słowami przed moimi... chociaż rękopis by wiele więcej wykrył w ramach odpowiedzi, tzn. czułosci; jednym słowem: dziękuje.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
to co... na migi?
hu ha
     ham ba ha ra ha?
owszem, an glee
to nie typowy marsz
oprucz w pępek...
bo pępek to Greenwich's
timetable - wersat
o zmianie czasu dla
wsi inhabitants,
    czyli the October party.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2017
ah, grand are the hours after taking the final shout-out to mr. ****, grand amusement entails, a wriggly *** waving dance around the house, and a deep breath, matched with a deep sigh, gone are the hours contemplating whether he's coming, or he isn't.

- you're bloated, you reek of alcohol.
- i know, i sometimes look in the mirror.
- your liver is giving up.
- i'm not bothered,
   i'm like a child with cancer,
   fearless:
   i prefer the death of youth,
  than the supposed wisdom of old age:
it's a roulette after all...
    the mind has the capacity
   to be like iron: turn to rust.

and that's how conversations go; i said to her:
lepie swój grób przedczasu -
lipie go, wiem, wiem że igram z ogniem,
a nie z ogryskiem jabłka...
to przecież wiem, i na tyle dobrze -
ale lepiej mi umrzeć, złożyć swe zwłoki
przedczasem -
  ale mieć w swym oku gwar
                            zainteresowania
              i zamknięty zegar podziwu...
gwar, phe! tonący statek nie danej obietnicy
   o chęć o jutro!
lepiej mi umrzeć przed swym czasem,
niż ten marny widok starości...
  jak to mówią, ci na tym marnym szczycie,
  na tym szczycie garbatych -
        z tym pięknym pokłonem przed
                                          ołtarzem czasu?
    ah... *starość nie radość
...
       wole przed czasem - za młodu -
aby tonąć w kwestiach podziwu na to
wszystko -
  niż w jakiejś poczekalni -
          bez ambicji na podziw,
                   bez aspiracji na coś po jutrze -
wole za wczasu niż w czasie -
               kiedy czas przestaje chodzić w koło,
czekający nademną - wisiący,
                                  jak gilotyna -
  i jeno myśł, że skowronek opuści młot
                         na huk:              kaput!
i pogna w lot ku kolejnego serca,
  ku kolejnego dnia, mówiący:
   ten, już swoje zrobił, dajcie nam następnego!
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2018
dasz mi klucz?
        czemu?
            ide w noc
na cmentarz...
            z krzywym
   grzbietem
kruka,
     zerkać nad
tym dnem
    czasu,
tym, grobim
tatuażem...
         to co
podobno jest "moje"...
tzn.,
        chcem
koncept cienia
   w mym ciele
spowrotem,
         a nie w nim,
na nim: przedemną;
huj, ze mnie
żaden hop-hop-hopin,
chatter: sha sha.

— The End —