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Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
the minute you write on the other side of the napkin... the fold, you get into tattooing a Braille itchiness.

the napkin is a variant of compressed wood...
it's not a piece of paper...
you could wipe you *** with a napkin,
but that's hardly considerate of your ***
being as hard-edged to do so, likewise,
with a piece of paper.

intro done, the loadage...

it's almost bewildering that we employ so
many people to talk,
but not a single person to listen -
   so many people are paid to talk
but no one is paid to listen, so the crowd moves away.
language, as poetry:
in the modern application of it, is already trying
to do the Alcatraz (summed up and staring
Clinging Eastwood Cry Baby, or Baby's got
a Burner, or Hot-Draw! **** me, that's
adventurous!)          diversion tactic (you might
still be reading this mea culpa of mea culpas
that's prescription drugging you into digging
into the classic novella)...
escaping the Alcatraz       /     straitjacket
of conforming to recognisable forms of poetry -
i say fake! to the person who uses metaphor
announcing the use of...
                 i want uninhibited poetry,
i want poetry that bumps into poetic techniques
unconditionally, strangers in queue-ball
antics on the street getting cravat or guillotine
standards for lottery...
           but conscious conformity?
                  get me jack-in-the-box to ola a hello
once more to revive Sherlock Hitchcock...
                   any phobia is atomic,
the world is created from little fears,
            emerging into the big fear: a life not lived...
but then there's an antidote to that:
       if given a miniscule life... don't fear it...
examine it... at least you can then become entertained
by theatricals ascribed to the greater lives...
or have beens.
                     i want uninhibited poetry...
when i say poetry i want opera, not graffiti...
   which is to say: being conscious - premeditating
the use of, e.g. a metaphor...
          it's not good enough, i don't want to read
poetry as recognised as poetry, or poetry
recognising itself as such, i want to see the automaton,
i want to see an art so well engraved in the
provider of such enticement as to paint
as a decorator might paint, even within the framework
of a monochromacy... the parts he misses in
covering a bleak wall of white to be redone...
again, and again...
    but what i expect of poets?
a gamble... only *one
attempt... any second or third
attempt i deem incomprehensible in terms of
beginning in the thirst place... ya: thirst.
i want to see thirst: the bulging larynx more ready
to gulp water in a desert than entice saying
something, meaning the latter has no power
over conjuring an oasis, or a fatamorgana.
continued?
           but everyday usage...
applies no similar acknowledgement of orientating
grammar, to be conscious of certain words as being
nouns does suppose an obstruction for the fluidity
of language... there's the everyday fluidity of
language than transcends such emulations
      of acquiring a desirable stoppage forwarding
dogma... yet poetry is bound to a dogma of
applying distinctive orientations,
to suggest that a piece of scribbling is actually
poetry.
does one (kingly pronoun collective,
meaning with entourage) thus say:
to fall in love also equates to celebrations of
Valentine's day,
or to go to war also means: waving a bayonet?
to generally emphasise...
  man was not established with this system
of encouraged "learning" tactics...
           there's no point talking evolution
when man is stagnate, sedimentary,
upkeeper of the status quo...
                   which almost insults the man
that encoded sounds in runes...
             perhaps the rune-encoder didn't
end up encoding while donning spectacles?
the emphasis is on making language more
fluid, and therefore acceptable,
   rather than what's advertised as this
solace-space of sofa, duvans, and free-spirited
******-load of artificial smiles.
oh, mind you, artificial intelligence has
not emotion, a bit like a woman on her
first extra terrestrial date...
                    with honing: having no
emotion means there's no conscience -
meaning crafting an artificial intelligence has
not ontological basin in man -
as man has no ontology to begin with...
  just as god as no ontology to begin with,
since we're already in his deviation from
the beggars' question: to no greater pleasure
has it been to create something without
man's thought in it.
     but not only is traditional poetry respected,
as in stressing an awareness of metaphor
or pun, as a sense of desirable technique
with even more desired identifiers...
      but then language per se, can't see
why someone writing a rubric sentence
need to grammatically categorise and give unto
their use of language a miser dissector...
        for example: the tradition of writing letters,
reduced to a pseudo-postcard form
         of the email...
              the formal begins with: dear ms. judy
the informal begins with: hey yoyo!
                    there's no dear ms. smith
(or the careless mrs. smith -
get on with it, the waltz and ballroom died
   when we groped under too many chandeliers
and gagged for the *******'s reproach
to dating) -
            as with the lateral diversion:
the internet not see as a possible place of
thinking has reduced the possibility of expressing
thought, into a conglomerate
         of seemingly necessary conversationism.
i'm not talking: i always thought that a white
page, whether in shrunk oaken or pixelated
and written upon: was the double-standard
expression of surrender...
formal letter writing was replaced by robots...
all the letters we ever get (via email)
are informal...
       addressed to no one exactly,
beginning with hi, hi, hello...
               give us a ******* handshake
rather than this pristine tofugu...
yep, that, and then ******... but that's how it
avalanches... you write on a napkin on
one of the sides, you turn it over
and then you realise you tattooed something
akin to Braille onto it.
sickophantic Jul 2021
my vision blurs and refocuses around the sight of tamed blue fire. i am waiting for the low wheezing sound of the kettle as my mind wanders everywhere i wish it not to go. there was always tea ready for me at my therapist’s office; i think that’s where it started. we used to talk about my parents a lot, me and my old therapist. i remember telling her this one time: I love like my dad. I rage like my mom. she asked me to elaborate and i couldn’t give her much more to write down in her little notepad. i wish i’d said something about how sometimes i wish oranges could grow out of apple trees.

this is one of those days. every move i make has been pre-programmed. i grab a mug from the cabinet. i place it down on the counter. i am trying very hard not to cry. the teabag bobs to the surface so i stick my trembling finger in the water, i drown it until skin turns red and sore, and i’m thinking, You know, maybe I’m not so above it all (hurried whispers, clashing teeth, the hesitant theatre we make out of our long-starving hands). Maybe i need it, very badly. but then again, i’m not bad at being in love; it’s the being loved part that always gets me.

it's funny, isn't it? the paralyzing, nauseating threat of requited affection. funny if you’re the dissector and not the dissectee, that is. ****, but isn’t that what we all want? to be seen? for someone to finally notice everything we love about ourselves and love everything we hate about ourselves? would i not rather see myself through the reflection of your eyes than my own, unforgiving? sharp bathroom LEDs can’t ever beat half-dark and candlelit. see, i know that much. but such is life. some people will walk towards the light and some people will run from it.

from the bottom of my cup, the teabag stains clear water a dark, muddy brown.
i should definitely be asleep
Walter Alter Aug 2023
can't even **** anymore
without kicking up a hurricane
halfway around the Earth
according to reports this has occurred
at a great loss of life and mind
within minutes of the methane
the dominoes began to rumble
and poor Flash who was
merely greeting the morning sun
became history's first flatomaniac
Flash was burly with hair
up and down his back like
a mink in a 5th Avenue perfumery
he had always been a cartoon
playing the 3 color hope card
in a séance with the laboring masses
at the Union of Opposites hiring hall
I was merely giving the citizens
an anatomy lesson your Honor
I should be given a cash stipend
for ennabling public elucidation
fortunately no witness has come forward
his only defense was the tenuous claim
that he saw the ancient god Apollo
leaping out of a moving taxi
the effect was so dramatic
that his legs had to leap too
they haven't stopped since
his testimony was a monstrosity of detail
in conclusion my rebuttal established
several seemingly salient selections
I am a dissector by trade your Worship
and a taxpaying asset to any community
Flash was sentenced with stern admonishment
you will henceforth exercise your libido
within the confines of spherical propriety
to which Flash meekly assented
without the slightest ******* er objection
and somehow strangely unafraid
the Flasher of Costa del Mar
disappeared one star sprinkled night
****** into the belly of an alien craft
over the cattle lip badlands of Montana
they commenced their hideous experiments
as Flash mused without anesthesia
on the incalculable immensity
of the scrapyard Universe
and watched a mobile home run amok
across 9 lanes of traffic

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

— The End —