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Julian Jun 2018
The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!
Sam Conrad Dec 2013
So I've got this story...
And it goes a little something like this-

There's a girl that I hurt really bad on way too many occasions that I love more than anything. Pretty much everything I write on here is about her. She became the love of my life, and I told myself she was the one I wanted to spend my life with. Except I was a ****. She was going somewhere to an event that lasted 2 weeks and was really important to her and let's just say I ****** it all up really really bad. She made a lot of friends there and it was a great experience for her, kind of like camp is for some people, how boy/girl scouts are for some people, and she learned a lot there, and had lots of fun too. I was so horrible to do what I did.

At least we're young though, and there's still time to grow...right? I'm only 18, she's almost 18, and we both have lives to live ahead of us. I feel like I need her though. She treated me perfectly in our relationship. I mean, looking back, there's nothing I can fault her for, at all. I just got ****** at stupid crap that doesn't even matter.

Except, she's into somebody else now and probably thinks I'm no good for her. She doesn't talk to me anymore. Anyway, I'm rambling, I haven't gone to bed, I took a bunch of pills, am getting sick, and it's 7 AM...so here goes. This story is somewhat censored, though.

_________________­___________
"The Worst Weeks of Our Lives"

I met this girl and she became the love of my life. She took me places I'd never gone before and her and I fell in love like some people wouldn't believe. Ask my friends. Ask her friends. No, her friends probably wouldn't admit to it anymore. But I choose to remember the things they said. Kids were like totally rooting for us all day every day. We were so perfect. It was great.

So with a few mistakes here and there, (mostly me...all me, really) we realized we weren't perfect. But it didn't hamper out love. Nobody is perfect, right? We realized that. Overcame.

But then, we went too far. Her parents drew lines we weren't supposed to cross. Oopsies. Her mom really put me in my place. I'll just leave it at that. Asked me when my 18th birthday was, so she could mark her calendar as the "day she could touch me". Told me I was a liar. Husband in the background drunk and screaming, as usual. Except screaming "that ***** ain't sorry. He ain't ******* sorry, ******* ******* marking up my ******* daughter I can show him how to be ******* sorry"

Lots more. I'll go crazy if I speak the rest. It was a hickey on her neck. We didn't do much more.

I got really scared. I mean, they were brutal. I wasn't used to that kind of brutal. Psychotic levels of brutal. All of the sudden I became numb. I stopped being so intimate with my girlfriend. They told me not to come around their house anymore. I started doubting myself. If I was any good for her. She cried and cried. Told me how sorry she was. For getting us in trouble, and for what her parents did. But it wasn't her fault. After all, I am the vampire that bit her neck.

After a few weeks, her parents dropped it completely. I didn't though. I was so traumatized. I'd been getting flashbacks. Nightmares. So scared, I was. I kept avoiding her, not only her parents. I mean, I didn't have a car anyways, so the only place I could go to see her was at her house. She reassured me I was allowed. But with no contact with her parents since the phone call that changed my life I was reluctant.

This was around 2 months before she was going to go to a 2 week event. A special event to her. One I'd even wished I'd gotten involved in. Really, I did wish. I just missed the application deadline. Throughout the next two months, we grew more and more distant. I was harsh on her. I hurt her. I'd get mad at her and then call her and talk to her until 3 in the morning. I made her hate herself, and then she felt bad about me feeling sorry too. "You always force yourself to be nice to me just so I feel better, but I'm ****, I'm trash, I'm nothing, I'm so sorry" she would say. Most of the time, she didn't even do anything wrong. One of my best friends died at the same time her parents killed me inside, I spent all my days sleeping and crying and when I wasn't doing that, I was getting angry at her (and quickly regretting it), manufacturing conflicts that were completely unnecessary. Not to mention I'd had health issues, and my parents kicked me out of my house a few months beforehand.

In the time before she left to her special event, I really tore her up. I said the dumbest things I've ever said to someone in my life. I'd never even said such dumb things to even an object, or myself. Why I would say them to a girl who saved me from suicide (I was very unstable and depressed when coming out of a bad relationship, and getting kicked out of home) and why I said it all to someone I wanted to spend my life with I'll never know.

The dumbest things I'll ever say to anything that breathes in my lifetime. I told her one night that the "only reason I was still with her was because if I left she'd hurt herself" (she had a history of self harm, even though she's the sweetest girl I've ever met) and another night I told her "If only she were going somewhere important I'd understand" and lots of other insensitive and selfish things that I can't even believe came out of my mouth. I mean, the whole basis of it was that her and I hadn't spent much time together (really because of my own selfish fears) and I was going all *** on her testosterone-fueled-rage style for days over and over and over.

Don't I sound like a horrible person? I was. I was horrible to her. As much as I hate to say it, I'll probably make similar mistakes again someday - It's like relapsing - but I'll make every effort I can to learn from my horrible past and never be that person again.

So when she went to the event, I was with my grandparents out of state and I downloaded my favorite sad playlist (Staind, great band) to listen to on the trip.

Yes, seriously. I told her that stuff and called her event unimportant and then I went away too. How stupid I was for what I said. I should have been slapped or something.

A day or two after I'd left, I realized how stupid it was of me. For the whole thing. That whole time. That whole span, those two months where I not only neglected her, but emotionally ****** her.

There's a song called "Tangled Up In You" that has the most wonderful and intimate lyrics and I listened to it and sung to it over and over and over late into the morning (I'm talking 3-4 in the morning) every night for like 10 days and along with a song called "Right Here" by the same band. I cried myself to sleep so extremely ashamed of what I'd just done to her.

I knew I was wrong, but what I didn't know was that she was crying her eyes out wrapped up in (someone else)'s arms at that event...
I didn't know she was getting all kinds of love and support.
I had no idea...not that it was bad, it was good because she needed it.

But it got her to thinking about me, what kind of person I was.
When we both got back, I started making more of an effort to spend time with her and go out of my way to talk to her, make her happy, and basically, stop being such a ****.
Except she just got confused and conflicted because she was numb and falling out of love, because I was nothing that anyone should love, to her, over that prior time.

Her mom broke us up about a month later, after some...you know what, I'll just leave that bit out...
I told you how the first phone call went. The phone calls I got from her and her husband in the end were just so much worse. I don't even want to think about them. I went into convulsions and kept dropping the phone.

I went back to these two songs to help keep my sanity and I belted out "Tangled Up In You" every day in my car... so loud I was losing my voice.

I'd had some communication with her, surprised her at her work one night, bought her flowers, wrote her my true feelings on some napkins, showed up when she got out of school one day, when she was deathly afraid, and surprised her with a smile and drew a heart on her hand...

Her and I were on the same page. She still loved me. She was just hurt. I still loved her. I was just trying to make up for the compromised mental state I spent so much time in. I had compromised hers too. I needed to get her out of it. She told me she would wait for me. That we were in a speed bump, that it would all be okay.

So some weeks passed, a month, and she still had my back. As strong as ever. Her parents found out I bought the flowers. They found out I'd been talking to her. But...

Knowing she still had my back, that she still loved me, and that she would wait for me...she called what her mom did (in breaking us up, in our break) a "speed bump"...I was okay with it. I mean, I really wanted to be a part of her life, but man, her parents HATED ME! (In retrospect, probably with good reason. Shame on me for the things I did to her. Really.)

We had some major issues (mostly due to my inability to shut my stupid mouth) and I decided that maybe some time to ourselves to focus on ourselves and think was a good thing. She could focus on loving herself again and I could focus on becoming a better person.

I mean, when her parents found out her and I were still talking to each other after they broke us up, they blocked my number on her phone, went to my church and made up extra stories to my pastor, (told him I'd came and banged on their door at one in the morning one night), when I called to apologize to them they didn't pick up, called me back later to cuss me out and hang up on me, logged into their daughters facebook account and blocked me, then told their daughter that I had called them when she was sleeping and cussed them both out, and that she was to have nothing to do with me again. They threatened legal action against me, too. Tried to make my life hell. They didn't want me around their daughter, ever again. A blind rage that went on for a very long time until every communication route was blocked.

She went to school and told her friends the false stories her parents told her, and her friends already didn't like me...I mean just look at what I had done before...it wasn't good. Not for me, anyway. Also her. She felt duped. Used. By her parents. She didn't know who to trust or what was real. Everyone was telling her how horrible I was.

I got a chance to talk to her one day. We talked for hours, face to face. Sat in the cold and talked. It was an amazing talk. We caught each other up completely on our lives. We talked about our love. Our past. Our emotions. All of them. Good and bad. But we told each other we'd always love each other. She stuck by me, and also reassured me that she always would. I left that conversation feeling so secure. The most I'd felt since way before I'd become a total **** to her. When her and I were so deep in love.

She's always wanted to go far away from college. She told me stories of her past and what her parents did to her, what she did to herself that were not good. Not good at all. She wanted to get away from her parents.

Meanwhile I was so caught up in the feelings she gave me when I was in her arms, I almost couldn't handle the fact that she wanted to leave. I pleaded for her to stay, in a time that her and I were both unstable and it was already taboo that we were even on the same property. But still, she said "she wanted to stay" because her and I work so well together...when we work together, that is, and I and her were both determined to work together. I told her I would do anything for her. In all of it though, I told her that the decision was in her hands and I would still love her the same if she left, and that I would wait for her. Because I loved her more than anything.

After that talk, things got quiet. I guess, too quiet. I was legally bound to stay away from her. I talked to someone she worked with and asked them to tell her hello for me. I thought though, we were on good terms following the talk, I thought she'd be elated to hear from me.

She never responded.

One day, a couple weeks later, she told me I really needed to get over her. That she didn't love me like that anymore. She told me she'd been falling out of love since the summer, and she'd gone crazy and needed space. She said she wanted to be friends, but no relationship. No relationship anymore. She said she couldn't handle it. She said she couldn't handle a relationship in general.

She made that message a bit accusatory. I'd been talking to two friends, one who I'd known for years and a new one I'd just made. Both overlapping friends with hers. Those two helped keep me sane.

She started that message with "I heard you've been messaging my friends, and to be honest, I haven't had the heart to message you back." She repeated multiple times that I needed to get over her. She told me that it wasn't anyone else's influence too. She even listed people. People who'd separated us. Hurt me. Hurt her, in a way, but encouraged her in others.

At the same time, she blocked me on facebook again. She had unblocked me when she found out her parents did it for her. Odd though...I thought she wanted to be friends. I mean, it was like the only way I was able to have her in my life at all. To read her facebook posts and her read mine. To have discussions with friends. We have a lot of overlapping friends.

Man, she killed me. One second I thought she was my soul mate and the next I was in the bathroom puking my guts out because she was telling me we'd never be together again.


So fast forward to today...I still love her. And she's basically in a relationship with someone else. She's also either on the fence about her sexuality, or decided she doesn't like boys anymore. I feel bad about that too. Its like I ruined male relationships for her. It's only been a few weeks since she told me I needed to get over her. She doesn't talk to me anymore. I go to high school events even though I graduated last year just to see her. When I don't approach her, she ignores me. I'm just another person in the room. When I do approach her, she has such a scared look on her face. She doesn't want to talk to me, but she can't be mean to me. She's falling in love with someone else and she's getting happier. She doesn't need me showing up everywhere just to depress her.

Yet I keep bothering her. Because I'm a sucker for her. I can't help it. I love her. I want her to be my future. But at this point I'm grasping at straws. So hard. I shouldn't be trying anymore. But I'll end up trying until the day I die. And only then will I stop believing in her and I. I know it's a pipe dream. But I'll hold onto it. Because it's the only thing I have left of myself now.

Last night, (I mean, right before I wrote this around 5 AM, it is now 8 AM) I played those two songs again. I forgot they were at the end of my playlist and I started shivering and crying my eyes out. I got chills. I got so cold. The tears just ran. They ran down my face faster than I've cried in a long, long time.

I'm only okay right now because I took a bunch of pills. Pills that have this kind of effect on me. They make me kind of numb. Kind of happy. Upper and downer both.

That's pretty much, my sad ending to a sad story.
I'm living the kind of life that only people like Shane Koyczan know how to explain to people.

Ironically, she loves Shane Koyczan.
I do too.
We grew up in broken homes and lived broken lives until we found each other.
Then we broke each other.

But she's falling for someone else, because I wasn't what I should have been to her, and she knows
But she doesn't believe in me anymore, the way I believe in her...because I wasn't what I should have been to her, and she can't hold onto me when I'm a 50/50 chance, of bringing her down again.
If only she would let me hug her again, kiss her one more time...I could die happy, knowing I poured all my heart and soul out into that last kiss.
But I'm a gamble. And she can't put her heart out on the line for someone who wasn't always good to her. She used to call me her "sweet boy" and she still tells me I'll always be her "sweet boy", but the fact of the matter is, it doesn't cut it to only be sweet s
I needed to write this. I've been going crazy. I told her I needed to talk to her but she's been avoiding me. If she reads this, I know its hard for her. There are more explanations I need to give her, I hope she will let me speak to her someday. I've found out a lot about myself in just the last few weeks. Stuff I don't talk about in this story. To you, my dear...if you read this, I'm sorry. I know it's tough. Its very tough. But look at the positive, dear. I'll keep living. Maybe I'll be okay someday. Your happiness is what matters to me. If you're happy, I'll keep myself going. I'm going to go to sleep now. Finally, I have some peace.
Debanjana Saha Apr 2018
I was duped last night
By the Transgenders beggers
Most of the time I ignore them
As if I never saw them
But last night
I was a little scared
As I knew I had money in my wallet
For no reason I stopped
And they forwarded towards me
Asking me for money
I somehow thought that poor people
They have no place in the society
So they beg
Not fair that people neglect them
So took out little money and gave them
To my shock, they wanted to see how much more money I had
They kept saying they would just keep a coin
Took out the whole bunch of money
And I kept saying No,
Don't take
Don't take.
I have no more money
But 3 of them in agressive voices
Kept telling me
They will keep the money back
Swearing in the name of God
I was not leaving the money
Until I saw them being more agressive towards me
I left the money
And they took and kept again
Obviously I knew half the money won't be there
But I was scared
As everyone was just a mere audience
I had to save myself
Money I can get back
But thought if they attack me
That might be more tragic.
They folded the Money and kept back and questioning me in more agressive voices-
Why don't you trust us?
Why don't you trust us?

They left after that
And I left the opposite side
Checking my wallet
They took more than half the money
And left little money for me.

A lesson learnt, during hard times
Nobody comes to rescue
Rather I have to be extra careful.
I was scared the whole night
I know people would laugh at me
Saying why did I stop there
Or take out my wallet in the first place.
I didn't plan for all these
Just thought may be being helpful might be good.

Duped as I was.
While trusting and helping people, we need to be extra careful. Better to ignore as usual. Helping might not turn out to be good for few cases but also, I know due to their situation they had to forcefully take my money. Safety comes first than money. I am still in trauma and obviously I will give a second thought to it.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
sample precursor: there are three binding directions of a chemical group (e.g. CH3) to the benzene ring - the ortho-, the meta- and the para-... but i'll ask a different question: what is copernican north what is copernican east a copernican west or a copernican west without a "flat-earth" / how else to read / navigate a 2D map going from point (a) via vector (c) to point (b) along the short-cut of the hypotenuse - which, isn't a short-cut, but the logical conclusion of walking neither the middle path nor the right path, but the logical path? we're no astronauts... we didn't see the proof... we can only entertain the "idea" of a 3D object we live on, but we're still strapped to a "flat earth" in order to navigate... endless stories of how GPS tech. fooled people off the edge of a cliff... "flat earth" is no reverse psychology ploy... i'm no ******* astronaut... i never stood left right or center on the moon to have the foggiest sense of admiration for that awe-balancing moment that leaves so many deluded in it being otherwise: first come first served, last come: what's there's to serve that last man if not merely the drudge-report of a commute? besides... trans- and cis-, why are people borrowing from chemistry and attaching gender to what is exlusive to chemical compounds? look at them... pop chemistry... cis-trans isomerism... fine, let these people have that... my new n.e.w.s. (north, east, west, south): orthography, something clearly missing in the anglophone world (no diacritical markers, i and j do not count)... ergo? orthography = east... paranormal = west... since the west is obsessed with either aliens or hush-hush military projects... now... both north and south are meta- coordinates... on the basis, on the basis of what? two words really work well to establish a foundation: from ars poetica? metaphor (borrowed from a change of mind - meta- and -phren - mind, a change of mind, all mental illnesses are changes of the mind, alternatives to alleviate the stranglehold of the commune of the greater picture known as society)... but... there's also metaphysics... which is in the interest of philosophy... how else not to explain the obvious, how else to treat both the reader / audience as the well informed genius(es) but mistreat them as would be grander genius(es) if the socratic endeavour of "pretense ignorance" was not to be established? it's a hard juggle... east is already well established in orthography, west in paranomal... literally: metaphor - a change of mind, literally metaphysics - a change of groundwork physicality of things... a rock remains a rock in either "heaven" or in "hell"... metaphysically there seems to be a direct translation... this is why i'm terrible at crosswords, this whole puzzle structure of either working from a direct definition to the word itself, some random geographical posists, some historical posits, some outdated out-of-vogue words related to specified period idiosyncracy, a tinge of the therausus... my current crossword is an interchange: meta-phor, meta-physics, meta-phot, meta-physics and on and on it goes: even with the isolated prefix of meta-, if i return to the words: as they are... would: denoting a change of thinking (state of mind) or... denoting a change of physics, i'm met with metaphysics, i.e.: a branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles... sounds like a priori physics, yet all i can fathom if i wrestle this word to its casual use: isn't it a posteriori physics?! the what comes after physics? i should think that most people understand metaphysics on an a posteriori basis rather than an a priori basis... hence the question: what happens when we die? last time i checked: death happens last... birth happens first... any question-worthiness (according to heidegger) should begin at: the beginning rather than begin at the end, in the same way that all questions should be sought in a medium of predating the dates of events, rather than with a spirit of hindsight, hindsight belongs to the "what if" of history in that dynamism of expressed time... on the canvas of an infinitely expanding space: we seem to be riddled by a very cul de sac concept / expression of time: our quill - given that ****** didn't learn from napoleon when it came to russia... perhaps finding out what copernicus found out: "we" figured: get me off this ******* celestial carousel where i can't even feel the dizzy immediate of a ferris wheel! again: i'm terrible at crosswords, sudoku? no problem... but words: if not gushing out of me, waiting like a lizard predator for a linear narrative spew? count me out... i don't play with words, i use words... i'm a wordsmith, hence the ethnic origin denote: słowianin: slav - i don't know where these west-saxon punks derived their etymology from: słowo = word... *****-liquor juice teens thought it was: oh fo' sho' smart... still: metaphor, metaphysics... metaphor... metaphysics... disgruntled with the immediate compound readied for pop use... meta-physics... the vector is the prefix... why do philosophers push metaphysics so much, but in turn rely on the crutch of metaphor? to change their mind, if metaphysics is an abstract theory with no basis in reality, then the schizoid / metaphorical mind is an abstract in an abstracted theory of the mind - which has "no" knowledge of reality, or rather: "reality" excludes such a mind from ever absorbing an expression in it... a schizophrenic can't explain the reality of a person who can solve crossword puzzles... just as someone who solves crossword puzzles with a fear of alzheimer's: who treats the fatty tissue that's the brain as a muscle... given that the cells of alzheimer's disease are killer proteins... proteins as the antithesis of white blood-cells that feed of fat tissue... after all: what else could the brain be if not fat and water? slow burner... first the sugars, then the more complex carbohydrates, then the fat: last? the proteins... the process of starvation... you want up? you want down? again: metaphysics / metaphor... ta meta ta phusika... the things after the physics... so what's with the inverted: prior things? hence people associated a life after death... hence how philosophers have to escape into the poetic realm to quickly change their minds on the definition... a change of mind is much easier than a change of what physicality entails... most spew metaphors but keep on course... after all: given the genesis of the metaphor, a metaphor is just a tool, a humble stop-off pause... born from humble poetics: it's only a literary tool, it's not some grand pillar of morality associated metaphysics, which nonetheless dictates: first principles come last and last principles come first... here's my crossword puzzle: metaphor, metaphysics, meta-alpha, meta-beta, metaphor and the meta-alpha, metaphysics and the meta-beta... etc. etc., i will not solve this crossword puzzle, even though it doesn't look like a crossword puzzle... it's a narrative crossword puzzle, i'm just looking for the sort of fixed point people associate with prime words: red, left, blue, right, up, fox, dog... words of readied vocabulary, readied vocabulary dissociated from puzzled vocabulary... i want to established a fixed permanence of the dissociated close proximity grounded in the meta- prefix of the words meta-phor and, meta-physics... i'm starting to find this impossible, given how the words have dissociated themselves from the grounding in the meta- prefix... phor alias phren (mind) and the whole gush of isolated metaphysics of beginnings: meta a priori vs. meta a posteriori - and of course: meta a- apriori... hell if i can't solve crossword puzzles: since i already have a crossword puzzle in my head... what am i to do? try writing pop?! a dog does what his master orders, a jester tells a joke his king would find amusing... i'll just treat this enclave of an audience as a bunch of people subscribed to ulterior forms of voyeurism (dissociated from pain / pleasure gratification, esp. that of a ****** nature).

.you know like in latin you had the interchangeable tongue twisters æ and œ? well... english resurrected one more... au... oh stralia... auntie; ******* hell i've been speaking this since aged ate and i still can't get my tongue into that phonetic plughole... or what's that onomatopoeia for: it really hurts? awe... nah... aw... aw... well no cute kitten about to say aww.

well it began with the usual... i wish i didn’t...
sitting in the autumnal garden
drinking coffee and eating a nicotine croissant,
watching the fog recede into nothing
while the earth showed its naked cleavage
after what seems like centuries of arcane dryness
befitting a story of an egyptian idol...
then the panic set in...
what to cook?! what to cook?!
my mother is away visiting her parents in poland,
who celebrate the feast of all saints with the usual
tackle formidable in poland:
forget the paris fashion week, forget the london fashion week...
forget the next gucci advert...
all the action happens in poland’s annual all saints’ fashion week...
through the cemetery (ahem) cat walks
(more like death on rollerblades donning a tutu
and looking fatter than size 0 models)...
because that’s when the fur coats are worn,
the make-up is heavier and everyone comes
to discuss the materialistic jealousy of a small town...
it is a small town after all...
death knocks with all the nine cat’s lives just to prove
the point...
anyway, so i’m the head chef, and in panic
i search for a recipe... i’ve only got pork on the ready
in the recognisable frozen state...
but i also have shrimps... tiger prawns...
so i look through the usual suspects... thai green curry...
ah ****! no coconut milk!
what’s it going to be? prawn korma curry
(better mild than hot i say, with all this maple syrup
and honey colours about... talk about decay),
active ingredients? chilli powder (1/2 tsp), cinnamon
(1/2 tsp), turmeric (1/2 tsp) and ground almonds (2 tbsp),
there ready... looking suntanned my gorgeous twirls of seabed manure...
enough to spare my father making himself sandwiches (i always
disguised my “dyslexia” by associations... sandy witches...
the t broke the barriers and the floods entered)...
with toasted nannies / au pairs... relatives of some sort...
then onto writing my father’s invoices:
project plaistow hospital and some housing development near
the city airport... beckton we call it... backwards and forwards
stink crowned with drinkers regurgitating on the pave...
now that is a *******... recycling centre or horse manure?
then to tesco... for the nightcap...
oddly enough tesco has become a friend of mine once more,
i divorced the turkish shop, they added 10 pence to the polish beers,
now i’m on the sedative medication of this bottle bavaria beer
and whiskey... 1 quid for the former... 10 quid for the latter -
i’ve sold my soul! never mind...
then to the beacon that’s home... it’s night... it’s spooky...
it’s essex: that non-touristy place in england people with passports
never dare to visit, shambles.
well one thing came out true... none of the above though:
you ever consider the theory of the aeroplane syndrome in writers?
you know, like with rock stars you get the full package,
you get the aeroplane and the retrieved delay of the engine mushroom,
but with poetry (which is competing with music,
philosophers just wait in that queue for the cheese, wink, whine and wrinkle)
you only get the sound... that delayed mushroom...
you see the poet but never hear him...
it’s a typical delusion i’d call parallel or even adjacent to narcissism,
you walk down the street and the closest you come
to someone recognising you is a stranger uttering out: ‘hey richard!’
‘name’s matt mate.’
‘oh... sorry.’
it’s this aeroplane syndrome theory... it’s perfectly acceptable...
you have the image but don’t have the delayed sound...
you have the delayed sound... but you only get a photograph...
you have the english national health service mental health unit crisis...
and then you have people shunning intellectualism
trying to cure people by burning / not reading philosophical books;
the day ends with drinking and reading
an article about keith richard’s antics in the sunday times’ supplement
and the thought: well i gave her a stabbing chance
at feminism... she thought the active ingredient in anti-contraception
pills was placebo... she phoned and gave birth to me...
i said abort... you’re no post-teen mum at university, you won’t be...
******* was great but i’m not that much of a match from a cosmopolitan magazine quiz
(as duly taken on my way from st. pestersburg to moscow to see
metallica play), plus there are no roofing jobs in scotland...
the scots have mountains already... there’s no point building
scratched sky skylines with mountain ranges nearby...
so even though i went to a catholic school...
i did my first redemptive act by reading about gnostic heretics...
and not getting confirmed being the second...
i would have not taken first communion... but playing the xylophone
at the nativity play was too much fun...
plus it is the only salvador dali bit of the story...
after that you have st. sebastian...
plus you see where this is going... the greeks translated
the tetragrammaton into the gospels
of st. matthew, luke, mark and john...
and the romans were duped into the legality of
things... first name, second name, confirmation name...
surname.
K Balachandran Dec 2014
Yet another day of pain was put behind,
She lets out a sigh of relief as if the beast
That stalks her is duped for now, once more.

The last Metro train that night, slows down,stops.
To return to her regular prison she gets in hurriedly.
Emptiness bares it's fangs, that looked sweet in fact,
In comparison with the experiences of the day gone.

A suspicious bundle on the floor stirred at her touch,
A frail women almost frozen,living dead, eyes sunken
in sockets." How did you end up here?" she quarries.
"I fainted, didn't eat anything, for the past few days"

"Mother, you need to drink something hot quick.
Come with me I'll take care" her eyes get moist.
Then she smiles thinking how fortunate she is.
"My share of sweet misery is here to teach me
practice humility, even in an empty compartment"
TreadingWater Jun 2017
,...now
whatcouldyoupossiblywant¿
you're rea  _  ch  _  ing  _ ou _ t
when-we-both-know
that door's ~~******* | shut |
all. those. times.
you { ****** {me {in
just to spit> me >out >
oH; you're_wind//ing/ it/ up
again
& i'll dive 》right 》in
cuz\ ****\ if \i
can
@lovemyself
enough
to  ]] resist ]]
Sun at its peak, everything outside is so bright,
but her room is giving a horrific sight.
She stands in front of mirror wearing his favorite dress.
Her reflection looks back at her, asking
"who are you?"
She touches her lips, closes her eyes.
"You're a freak and I love it. Can you be mine?"
She opens her eyes wide,
as woke up from a nightmare,
or maybe it was only a haunted memory.
But something is breaking inside.
She picks up lipstick, paints her lips red.
Looks damaged but but beautiful outside.

"I love you so much. You're the best thing happened to me. Stay with me forever. You're my life."
She walks towards the side table.
A suicide note is waiting there to get read.
Burning it with her lighter, she smiles.

"Why are you so depressed all time? What is bothering you?
Why you get this anxiety? You got me baby. Its all fine."
She turns and makes her calendar marked 6th of July.
Putting all pain behind,
she lefts a sigh of relief as if the beast,
that stalks her is duped forever.

"Why are you so possessive? I hate it.
How can you have a lot of Internet friendships but no friends in real? You gotta change yourself."
She walks through the door.
A new life is ahead her.

"No you don't have to change yourself this way. Don't be childish."
She is going down through stairs.

"There is nothing normal with you. You always exaggerate things. Sometimes I hate even myself to be with you."

Suddenly she hears a phone ring coming out of her room.
Her stomach drops.

"Things are not working out baby I'm sorry..."

She is going back to her room.

"We must get separated."

Her hands trembling, her heart making a one last wish.

"Why did you cut your wrist? I hate you even more now"

Mommy's text was there that she might get late today.

"You're a freak. Get out of my life."

She smashes her phone into mirror.
She is done with being all fine.
She is not going outside now to show the world that she is strong.
Her screams filling the room.
"I love you please come back."
But only echoes are there laughing back at her.
And here she goes
writing again a suicide note.
Lately I wasn't feeling fine and I wrote this. Maybe there are some mistakes but this is what all I have to write
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
when globalisation strikes...
the arabs want to be vikings,
and vikings want to be samurai,
e.g. a duped tree’s spring blossom:
which usually happens in february,
but this one pre-matured in december.
MST Aug 2014
Everyone complains about the "system",
how it is rigged, manipulated and controlled.
But they do not take a moment to listen,
or to take a moment and break the mold.
Work out and do not eat those fries,
then you will say goodbye to those thighs.
Work hard, work long, and get the paycheck,
take a chance and stick out your neck.
Become what you despise,
or stand and rise.
Because you can lie down and die,
and let them walk on you,
curl up and cry,
and let your whole life turn blue.
But your failure is your own fault,
not the systems,
you were not locked in a vault.
You have been duped,
or you are duping,
So stop singing the song the dupees sing.

Updated from my tablet which my white upper class parents bought me to prepare for my pre_paid college
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
i never intended to write poetry within a framework for the purpose oration, or too keen for it to be memorised; in the latter instance i know what puts people off poetry: the schooled induced need for memorisation, as if each poem were a national anthem; that's at a basic level, on the more advanced level people are put off poetry because the analysis of poetry, the transaction of but a few words into entire pages of essayist epics, the need to identify poetic tools, and admire does poets who are conscious of applying them puts people off, hence they easily grasp and turn to journalism of the daily news, to be easily duped and perhaps informed; it's harder to be duped by poetry, the tarantula venom in poetry works both ways: so too the poet amazed by an incomprehensibility due to the spontaneity and, something akin to lithium reacting in water: froth boom splash sizzle pop!*

i.

a ****** reader of philosophy books
will realise the hardship of the endeavour,
such books are more for thinking
after than talking a book reading club
to talk about them, in any casual conversation,
a whole philosophy book becomes
a single sentence that's memorable,
and the dropping of the philosopher's name,
nothing more, only because so few people
tackle the subject matter to try and speak
about it after, unless they're in academia
and instead of casually talking about it,
extract what's necessary and popular and
simply teach it - so unless you're paid to read
the material, it's a rather cold world out there
for talk of philosophy over a pint of beer
or a cup of coffee; and why did i start reading
these books? world got complicated, couldn't
escape reality with fiction, had to add to it,
plus it was a welcome change from reading
chemistry.

ii.

this is what i find strange in relation to poetry
and fiction narratives - with poetry you simply
can't get a sense of achievement as you do with
fiction - there simply isn't a sense of achievement
after having read a book of poetry, not in the same
way as there's a sense of achievement after having
read something beastly like joyce's ulysses:
it's the way it's packaged - it's denseness, it's need
for ramble ramble dabble dabble: the more depth
a narrator's consciousness has, apparently the more
critically encapsulating thumbs up too - compare
that to poetry and you see poetry as a form of
pure narration, not contaminated by plot or characters;
plus as franz kafka said: they didn't do two things
i asked of them: a. they didn't burn my work like i
asked, and b. they didn't do as i asked about font size,
it's tiny! any intelligent reader will realise that they
could lose their eyesight reading my works! i said
BIGGER FONT! and compare that to bukowski being
considered a "prolific" writer where his chapters are
knee high and his font is MASSIVE
so poetry is gentler on the eye - it s p  r  e   a    d     s,
cuts short, doesn't bother packaging to be a best-seller,
but it also doesn't do what i mentioned previously,
there's no sense of achievement after completing a poem,
because most poems are actually completed by readers
rather than discarded at some point...
and that's where dis-satisfaction creeps in with reading
prose: you just have to finish them - because i find
with fictive prose that there's no satisfaction i can immediately
find in poetry, the bird spreads his wings and isn't
a curled up hedgehog, or snail, or tortoise -
you need to finish these books to get what's intended
a feeling of achievement, the only satisfaction from
prose is when the last word is read, the book is shut,
is put back onto the shelf, and you look at it and admire
yourself with the thought: gosh jolly good, i've read that.
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)



In response to the United States versus European Union  deliberations on Ukrainian- Russian stalemate  that were concluded on 25th may  2014 at Brussels , in which President Barrack Obama looked at the Putin’s political  behaviour in global set up of the postmodern era as a weakness, I beg to take my position within my capacity as global citizen, to go contrary to this stand of Barrack Obama by positing that President Vladimir Putin is a fact of global urgency , but instead it is Obama who suffers from universal class intellectual deficiency often  observed as insensitive rhetoric but branded as unmatched eloquence.
Firstly, let me give the sequential enumerations of facts which validate my position and hence this discourse. Barely the facts are; Ethnicity, Islam, terrorism, Guantanamo prison, Sino-African relations,Arab-springs,politics and human psychology and American political culture as state and an international citizen.
President Obama has always refused and rejected his ethnic connexion with Africa, he always refer to Africa as the land of ancestors. This is a stand that has most irritated Africans. Both in Africa and in the diaspora. Obama never learned a simple pre-industrial wisdom that every man needs ethnic identity for positive reasons. Because as per now Obama still stands as a Kenyan and as well as an American. This connotes a political fact that he is neither a complete Kenyan nor an absolute American in terms of political emotionalism. The empirical position of all these abode in the fact that there are a thousand and one Americans who feel politically belittled to be led by a first generation African American. Thus, a leadership fact has to be indentified in this juncture by inferring that, their voter consciousness as Americans is not fit to be crystallized as emotional resource to be enjoyed by Obama politics. In a sharp contrast Vladimir Putin has acquired substantial political strengths from positive recognition of Russian ethnicity. Putin recognizes Estonia, Crimea, Georgia, Serbia, Moldova and all small and poor lands around Russia in terms of ethnic connection to Russia. He calls these lands as the dear burial grounds in which Russian military heroes were buried. In a comparison, America has a lot of racial connection with Africa, but president Obama has earnestly worn blinkers on this. He only looks at Africa skeptically as a land of injured civilization in which terrorists abode. He has been wrong. African folk wisdom has a lesson that, you may not need your tribe in peace, only to need it in war.
Why did president Obama masquerade as a Muslim when he was vying for his first term? Moslems feel that he duped them only to turn around and **** their leaders. In Islam it is a heinous sin to pose as a Muslim when you are not one. President Obama mobilized the plotting which had to occasion the killings of Muammar Gadaffi and Osama Bin Laden. These two incidents fuelled high strength in anti-American feelings among the societies of the Arab world. Reasons are that both Gadaffi and Bin Laden deserved fair trial the same way Henry Kissinger was not tried when he perpetrated macabarous mass killing in Vietnamcong war. Muslim community least expected financial and ideological funding of the political hullabaloo known as the Arab Spring, through which heroic Moslem leaders were killed, to come from Obama government. But the contrary was surprisingly a fact. The meaning of this is that , in this tussle of show of mental mighty between Putin and Obama, All African and Arab states are behind Putin, China is behind Putin. Maybe it is Tanzanian and Ghanaian presidents who are in Obama camp, but not the Moslems in Tanzanians and Intellectuals in Ghana. The perceived rationale for this positioning inter alias is that the Number of North African Moslems in Guantanamo prison is the highest of all the detained terrorist suspects.
China is all over Africa today; African schools are teaching Chinese languages with passion more than they do with English language. The University of Nairobi in Kenya, has established the most prestigious Kungu Fu tze institute. Students in this institute are more self-confident and hopeful than those in schools of English and literature. China has designed a special business city for Africans, known as the chocolate city. Africans are more dignified in this city than their counterparts in Chicago.Negroes in Chicago of today still taste a vestigial pepper of negative racism on daily basis. All these conditions have graduated into appalling status from George Bush high school to Barrack Obama state University. These at times confirm the Russian Joke that Barrack Obama is an avatar of George Bush without a Nobel Prize. A political condition not evident during the Reagan and Clinton administration. Obama did not benchmark the shrewd equation of Vladimir Putin; good politics is equal to putting people at center stage.
Psychology of politics has a theory that being eloquent is not a connotation of political effectiveness. It may be sheer rhetoric. This is not a necessary variable for effective policy formulation and implementation. History of politics also has a testimony in confirmation of the same. The French society goofed when it fell victim of Napoleon eloquence, same to the Germans when they became emotional captives of Adolf ****** due to the razor sharp garrulousness of Adolf ******, which he adopted when selling **** values to German voters. In Africa Tanzania is the poorest country without hope of initiating any development this century. And all this is a preposterous protégé of utopian communalism planted through eloquent tools of prosaic socialism wielded by the articulate Julius Nyerere. The American society has also gone into annals of history to have collectively failed in its political choices as a national society by succumbing to rhetorical but policy insensitive conference management knack of the one Barrack Obama. These have happened in a capitalist conduit in which capitalism is killed by its success, just the same way which ignorance is never murdered but at most commits suicide.


Alexander K Opicho, is a social researcher at Sanctuary Research agencies ltd., in Eldoret, Kenya.  He is also a lecturer for Governance Research Methods.
Erin Suurkoivu Sep 2016
The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.

According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.

Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.

Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.

Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.

I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.

So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.

Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.

Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.

But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.

Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.

Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****––
retaliation – ******* in my dream.

Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.
The Honey in the Lion, available on Amazon.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
thankfully Hamlet is taken to a couch,
that's hardly a sick-bed,
for we all know: psychiatry is half
of medicine, it breeds more ill men than it claim
to have cured.
and there be that thing, that shadow,
that resemblance of a man,
stalking the highlands, and drinking
at the Lochs...
until there are three,
under a street lamp with due walk,
and a brick wall near,
                         a man and two shadows,
one more full than the latter more fog,
    and the sudden thrill, as if being followed
by one's own unsuspecting guise...
           usurper strong, a Judas in a Judea...
asp tongue, wasp thought,
doubly piercing the status quo of today...
as said, by only a single word,
macbeth, macbeth, macbeth,
into the night, shrill of violins, shark-infested
airs of a witch's shrill cry at the black sabbath
around the fireplace...
    macbeth, macbeth: said: deep frozen
into the night...
   to a neared upon usher of equivalent tear...
avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
(and hades resurrect thee!)
...
   against all that encompasses the noun zeus:
and fathering wisdom for care to lose repeated
cohorts of the titans sun, moon, gaia...
  aye, and a bold one, that dare
          look on that which might appeal to the devil
;
have you no care to not flog to these
past expressions, reading them,
as reading our modern undermining into
things of origami consort?
             folded, folded once more,
a piece of paper is a metaphor,
that blooms into the end result of it being
treated as metaphor... a piece of paper
given the status of metaphor, later becomes
   a paper-folded swan, and origami swan...
  that icon of monogamy...
           or how swans like to see it:
in sickness and in health, beyond death do us part...
ever look at a widow swan and not feel
a pang of hope to be given the altar of death
upon the crucifix mound?
        just a little bit?
who may i rather challenge for unkindness,
than pity for mischance!
-
        can one man's love affair be as short
as another man's play,
given the chemistry suggest that the man spent
the four seasons in the stated place of concern?
had i been invited to Erasmus Denmark,
my sparrow would have sung differently...
to a less Celtish drum of heart...
             and the man in question would
remain as curriculum material for a midsummer's
night, and romeo and juliet and shylock...
         here, we keep promises...
  just here... every time i read a philosophy book
of deep under-sea thinkers,
   i am the quasi-acuatic animal, a sly
mammal of the seas, a whale, a dolphin...
  every time i read a philosophy book,
and subsequently re-enter shakespeare...
i am that same old mammal keeping his breath,
to surge back toward the heavens of a sea-level
atmosphere...
                   i say: contend with reading philosophy
books to then reread your choice of shakespeare:
for me, nothing beyond macbeth...
    thus said: learn, to live again...
          as i have done on countless opportunities...
   i can not prescribe a most perfected dichotomy...
  oh sonnet so pale, oh other works so well preserved
that they encourage memory dementia
with a workload of pristine recitations...
     just a chance encounter, when psychiatrists
faded with Hamlet, that Macbeth arose from
the ashes and said: i stand as a sword firm in hand,
and i will not reach the safety of
   lounging in gleba...
                  to merely be a dead entertainer of
some obscure theory...
                     and with every instance
upon seeing the **** thing,
   my eye be blunt, and my tongue be sharpened....
likewise in reverse, concerning the same thing:
my eye be sharpened, but my tongue be blunt...
of these two essences, man first thought...
    and had only thought provided man with
a simple yes, or a simple no, wouldn't
the point of thought be more than if not less
bewildering than arguing from its own existence,
an existence of a god?
        not man, devoid of god crafted this deformity
to later impregnate an icon with...
       but man too bewildered by thinking,
that spawned this horror...
       of thought, thus said, no moral grounding,
but merely the numbing, the selective numbing
of the senses, as ailing man suggests,
the ailing via hearing,
   the hedonism feats suggesting exploration
of seeing...
   of feeling numbed, and apathy creeds to experience
as many people as possible...
   thought mediates the sensual-numbing we
all see... and none of thought, is concerned
with being injected into a moral theory,
since thinking is too simple, and a lie a too great
opportunity to be mislead into mis-use...
  for a simple yes and no - the theta-ought...
would not have spurned the phi-nought
    and if the senses are not duped,
then what story are we to be told?
            that might provide a throng, and an opulence
of a campfire for it to be tought?
to the last syllable of recorded time, said Macbeth.
Austin Heath May 2014
I asked if there was anyone there remotely my age,
and she said yes. I had just dumped all the money in my
wallet into trying to make my savings not negative.
It didn't work.
I walked over, stepped inside,
and saw teenagers. She told me,
there's a guy outside and he's twenty.
I got ******* duped by a kid.
Her parent's left, unwisely.
I met another half-black person,
a 15 year old girl who had dark skin
and hated everything that resembled
"blackness" or "black culture".
She even called herself white.
Here I was, outside drinking grape soda
out of a hello kitty mug,
discussing radical feminism
to teenage girls-
and ******* five shots were fired.
Not even 15 feet away, behind the garage.
[A fake 100 was exchanged, to which distaste was shown,
also this sentence is in parentheses,
and technically doesn't even exist].
So now there are teenage girls crying over gunfire,
hyperventilating, the high school boys jogging-
people in a swarm heading indoors,
and me.
The stupid-*******-tragic-yet-benal artist,
running in his stupid ******* circle,
trying to decide if he should go inside
with the crazy juvenile people, or see if he can get shot,
because he already lives life awaiting some
stupid ******* narcissistic tragedy
to wipe him off the map.
My opportunities had rushed away already however.
I walked inside and sat on the couch hugging
one of those puffy round pillows and laughing
maniacally. It was intense after all.
Kid Duper tried to relate to me.
I know she didn't get it.
No one ever really ******* gets it.
Understood, maybe? No one understands.
I left shortly after with a copy of Fahrenheit 451.
I was told I could borrow it.
These events took place at around 10:30-10:50, Friday night, May 25 2014. Last night.
Paul Holmes Jan 2012
Relaxing peacefully on her lap
Her fingers ran through his hair,
And,speaking soft, soothing words
Waves of calm caressed him there.

Delilah used her feminine wiles,
Honeyed words dripped from her lips,
A sense of serenity enveloped his soul
From her tender fingertips.

The secret of his amazing strength
Was reluctantly revealed to her ears
Leading to open the floodgates
Of times of sorrow and tears.

On her lap he continued to rest,
Unawares of her subtle scheming;
Carefully his luxuriant locks were cut
With scissors sharp and gleaming.

Little could Samson have known
The intentions of her black heart,
Her cunning and overpowering charm
Hit him as with a poisoned dart.

Samson’s strength suddenly left him,
As weak as a kitten he became,
Delilah had truly duped him,
Although it seemed to her a game.

As hard as granite was her heart,
No true feelings of love were there
Else, why would she hurt him
With no chance of any repair?

His life had a very sad ending,
Of this most people have heard,
It’s recorded for our perusal
Within the pages of God’s Word.

The lesson to be learned
From this ghastly episode
Is that disloyalty is as acid
That the heart can corrode.

Like a wilting yellow lily
Under the sun’s searing heat,
Samson’s strength melted
Into a pool of utter defeat.

Remember this we should
And be careful how we act
Lest our deceptive hearts
This drama we re-enact…
Bob B Nov 2018
For what would be a change of pace,
Check out this unusual place:
Persecuted groups came to create
A place where they could discriminate.
1840s gold rush dreams
Preceded years of get-rich schemes.
Nutty religious cults explore
End-time prophecies galore.
Believe whatever if that's your conviction,
Even if your "facts" are fiction.
You can construct your own reality;
"Whatever goes" is gaining vitality.
Anti-intellectualism
Accompanies attacks on secularism.
Fewer people think it's not odd
For leaders to wait for messages from God.
Satan's causing natural disasters,
For he's out to get us, according to some pastors.
Hustlers hustle the hustled, you see:
Religious theatricality.
Snake oil is sold for a quick fix;
Someone always has a bag of tricks.
Charismatic visionaries
Hope their income never varies.
Though P.T. Barnum is gone, we can say
That humbuggery is here to stay.
Homeopathic cures are widespread.
Devious mediums talk to the dead.
Scare tactics of foreign "invasions"
Keep popping up on numerous occasions.
Some have rewritten the history of the South.
Fake news spread by cyber "word of mouth."
Commingling entertainment and news--
Called "infotainment"--can spread one's views.
Acting out your fantasy makes you feel
That fantasy--NOT reality--is real.
People are duped by made-up scares.
The "National Enquirer" peddles its wares.
Cosmetic surgery transforms features.
People are abducted by strange space creatures.
The fantasy industry proliferates:
Fox News infects all fifty states.
Prosperity-gospel preachers are abounding,
Hoping their spiritual interest is compounding.
The war on the devil is not metaphorical,
For scripture, some say, can't be allegorical.
There are always the paranoid ones
Who fear the confiscation of guns.
Groups attempt to change the rules
So creationism can be taught in the schools.
Anti-establishment's becoming the norm;
Mistrust of experts is taking greater form.
Lies don't matter as long as you
FEEL that what someone says is true.
Some fear "invaders" crossing the border;
Others fear a scary New World Order.
Distrust places the media on trial
And fosters climate change denial.
Some say vaccines do great harm
And GMO foods are cause for alarm.
They say gun laws will only provide
Guns to "bad guys" with something to hide;
That regulations on any level
Of finances are the work of the devil.
A con-man leader will always keep spinning
The fantasy that with him we'll be winning.
That fake news is harmful and only distracts
People entitled to making up facts.
Voter fraud's still the talk of the Right;
Conspiracy theories keep coming to light.
Con artists boldly state:
Conversion therapy makes you straight.
If an alternate universe is in demand,
Then WELCOME, ALL, TO FANTASYLAND!

-by Bob B (11-12-18)

°Inspired by Kurt Andersen's "Fantasyland: How America
Went Haywire"
Dorothy A Mar 2015
Pastor Nate Yarborough knew since early on that he wanted to be a clergyman. He grew up in a Christian home and believed in God as long as he could remember. He dreamed of being a minister someday and becoming the pastor of  his own church. At only thirty-one-years-old, his dream came true. He was young, yet head pastor at Hope Christian Church and had a medium sized congregation that was thriving. To add to his dream-come-true, he had a beautiful wife, Veronica, and darling three-and-a half-year-old daughter, Michaela.

Jesus was the center of his life, but Veronica was the one who kept him grounded. Michaela was just the light of his world, a special blessing in his life. She was a happy baby who was just a typical daddy’s girl. When her father came home from his job she would squeal with delight and go running to him, at first as a wobbly toddler and then to a quick, little girl who would sprint to the door.  

“Daddy’s home!” she would announce in a big voice.

Nate would swoop up Michaela up in his arms as he planted gentle kisses upon her little cheek. “Michaela, my sunshine girl!” he would shout. “There’s my little beauty!” He definitely wanted more children, but he was thankful and felt so blessed to have her be his very first.      

“That is how we should with our heavenly father”, Veronica told Nate, in admiration of those two in action, “and not run from him in fear.”

Yet one day Michaela was having seizures and became quite ill. She transformed from a bubbly child to one who fussed and cried and didn’t want to play very much.  Her worried parents took her to the doctor, and she was put through a battery of tests. The church was praying for little Michaela, but the diagnosis was grim and shocking. She had a brain tumor. Her parent’s worst fears had been confirmed. Her tumor was malignant and it was inoperable.

Veronica would open up the outpouring of cards and letters of well wishes from parishioners. So many people were praying for the family. Veronica had hope even as her husband was growing distant as his little girl became sicker and sicker. In spite of treatment, in spite of prayers, little Michaela succumbed to her sickness. Her bright, little spirit was forever gone from their home.

“We will have more children”, Veronica assured her husband through her tears. “We will get through this—together. With God’s help, we’ll get through this!”  

Nate didn’t respond. Veronica felt him stiffen in his lackluster embrace. She stiffened, too, for she knew that wasn't of Nate's character, and she could tell by his face that he wasn’t buying any of it.  

His sermons now became shorter, far less engaging. They weren’t full of encouraging stories or inspirational words of faith, of challenging the defeated to never give up, and imploring everyone to always turn to the Lord—in bad times as well as the good.  

People in the church rallied behind Pastor Nate and his wife. They offered meals during the time that Michaela was laid out in the funeral home and finally laid to rest. They offered more prayers, encouraging words, and hugs for the couple to make it through this rough storm in their lives. A pastor friend of Nate conducted the funeral but Nate hardly heard a word. Veronica grew worried.

There were many in the congregation who grew concerned, too. They still were supportive, but now the elders and deacons had no choice but to gather at a meeting and figure out what to do. Nate’s leadership role was falling apart. His life, no doubt,  was falling apart.

“Why does God punish some on this earth who are innocent?” he asked one time at the pulpit.  “There are no answers when your heart is torn out from you, when you serve God with all you have, and He does this to you. Why? Perhaps, there is no such being as God. Perhaps, it is wishful thinking and we have all been duped…I’ve thought about it and I’ve searched the Scriptures, yet I get nothing there . I think the atheists aren’t so out of bounds, after all.”

Sitting a few rows back, Veronica looked nervously around. She heard some of the gasps in the crowd, heard many whispers, and saw the shocked faces. She laid her head in her hands and was too scared out of her mind to even pray.

“We are sorry, Veronica”, one of the elders told her one day. “We tried to reason with your husband. We care about you both, but this cannot go on. We asked Pastor Nate to get seek out some help—to step down temporarily—but he didn’t even flinch. He says he’s never coming back. He just doesn’t believe anymore. And he just doesn’t care. ”

Veronica tried to get Nate to go to counseling with her. She needed it, too, and he wasn’t helping her any. This church was his dream, and sure his daughter had tragically died, but he needed to hold it together—for their sake. To crumble on her was too much on top of losing her daughter. He just couldn’t do this!

She could handle her grief far better if they could remain a team. But he didn’t want to talk, wouldn’t listen to anyone, and now how were they going to make ends meet without his role as pastor? Nate fell into a severe depression, and Veronica felt helpless to do anything about it.

After a few months of trying to get through to him, her faith grew dim. How could this happen to them? To save herself from going down with him, she decided she had to walk away. She didn’t want to, but she had made up her mind to move back in with her parents.

“It’s for the best, for now”, she told him. “It doesn’t have to be permanent.”

Nate sat there, staring at the blank TV. “Do what you want”, he replied.

One of the parishioners, Craig DeArmond, decided to pay him a visit. His mother, Marge, always admired Nate’s sermons. She was a big supporter of his, and wept when she heard of the news of his daughter's death. It was evident to her that his faith took a huge dip—actually a crash landing—and his world that revolved around his belief lay in shambles.

Craig was saddened by how quiet the place was, how unkempt and uninviting it appeared. He’s been to the house before, a once pleasant place to be.  Now, it was bleak and joyless. “Will you talk to my mother?” Craig asked him. “She’s sad since my dad passed away a week after last Christmas, you know. Forty-eight years of marriage has been much of her life . My mom could use some counseling.”

Nate looked at him without much emotion. “Let her talk to the current pastor. She doesn’t need me.”

Craig said, “But she looks up to you, and it might do you some good, too.”

Nate scoffed at that. “Look, I’m not in the faith business anymore. There’s no way I can be of comfort.” He dismissed Craig with his hand and said, “She goes to me or she goes to a fortune teller—tell her she’ll get about the same results, either way.”

Craig stood up over Nate, hoping Nate would look up at him. He wouldn’t, so Craig was about to walk away but turned around and replied, “God forgive me, for I want to make this clear. Listen to me, Nathan Yale! You are one selfish *******!”

Nate suddenly shot a look at him. “A what?” he demanded.

“You heard me”, Craig said, his arms crossed. “I know you are a man of God—or at least you used to be.  He grew more bold, was on a roll and said, “Look, you are pushing everyone away! People who love and care about you have lost you! Your wife, for crying out loud, is a wreck! I know you’re in pain, but—”

“What do you know of my pain?” Nate shot back. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. Perhaps, he had been crying or even drinking.

“I don’t know!” Craig shouted. “But what do you know of faith?”

Nathan didn’t know what to say, for he was never prepared for this. Craig continued, “My mother lost both of her parents by the age of thirteen. She grew up in an alcoholic home, so she watched her parents slowly drink away their lives. She had no choice but to live with her aunt while her other siblings were spread out to stay with other relatives.”

Craig had Nathan’s full attention now. He took advantage of this and pulled up a chair and sat right in front of him, saying, “Her aunt’s husband—her so-called uncle—wouldn’t stop pawing at her and trying to put his hand up her blouse. She had no lock on her bedroom door and so this guy would sneak in--and guess what? He ***** her! At first, it was shocking! The second time, it was Hell. The third time it was worse! The forth time….should I go on?”

“Oh, God, why?” Nate said, tears in his eyes at the thought.

“Yes, he ***** her”, Craig repeated, “until one day she was pregnant and her aunt was demanding how she ended up this way , calling her a **** and shaming her. Mom finally blurted out that it was her uncle who got forced himself on her, and the aunt didn’t believe her.”

Nate was fully engaged. “What happened to your poor mother?” he asked, trying to keep his mouth from quivering.

“She was kicked out on the streets... nothing but the clothes on her back. With nowhere to go, she went to a friend’s house. The stress was so bad on her that she miscarried the baby, laying on the floor in agony. So the authorities placed her in a home for girls and never did she have to live in that house again…but the scars are still there--ugly, deep scars!”

So Craig left Nate’s house, but Nate had joined him in the car. Craig told his mother what he had revealed to Nate—without her permission—but he felt he had to do it. She agreed it was the right thing to do.

Nate gave Marge a huge hug during his visit. She was such a motherly figure, and he admired her for what she went through. “How on earth did you survive?” he asked her.

“Like you”, she confessed. “I was so angry with God. I hated Him, just hated Him. But when I was living in the home for girls, I met a girl who had huge faith. It was sickening to me, at first. I thought to myself, ‘How can you have such faith when you’ve ended up in here?’ And she didn’t know what happened to me, for I was too scared to tell anyone back then.”

“But you have great faith now”, Nate stated. “Better than even I ever had, I’m ashamed to say. I’ve seen your faith in action! ”

Marge put her hand to his cheek. “I fought for every bit of it”, she said. “I didn’t want to believe in God, but their was a nagging presence that wouldn't go away!”

Nate smiled. “I love the way you put it, Marge”, he said.

“Well, I had that friend who talked about Jesus, and then I went to rent out a room of a woman who took in boarders. She had a strong faith, and she took me to church. I’ve never been to church in my life, and I just wanted to get her off my back for asking! But my heart slowly softened, for I never thought that I’d ever believe in God…and didn’t want to…ever!”

“Neither did I…after loosing Michaela”, Nate said. “I loved her so much." He began to cry and put his face in his hands.

Marge put her arm around him and said, “But I found out that I really needed God. I needed to forgive a lot of people—my mother and father, my aunt and uncle—especially myself because I felt so hateful all the time.”

Nate sobbed, “I feel hateful, too—and guilty. I don’t know if I’ll ever have faith again. It scares me to feel that way.”

Marge held him in her arms like he was her little child. “Oh, but you haven’t really lost it, Pastor. You see, I didn’t want to believe in God, either, because I felt He was against me. If God existed…well, than how come my parents were alcoholics? How come my uncle ***** me? How come I got pregnant and the baby died? Ended up by myself? How come…how come? I think we all can ask our share of questions in this world.”

“They are valid questions”, he admitted, tears still streaming down his face. “Frankly, many problems pale in comparison.”

Marge couldn't have disagreed more. "No, Nate..,pain is pain. Yours is just as valid as anyone else's.  It just is just when it is an excuse to be bitter that is dangerous.  And I used that as a reason for being bitter!” she said. “But the bitterness was killing me. Slowly, I was dying.”

"But you made it through. You're quite alive, Marge, quite alive... and quite amazing."

They lingered in conversation, for they both needed this to take place. After it was over, Nate went home, feeling like a dam of walled up emotions had been finally released. It was certainly a start. He called Veronica up and he managed to say, “Veronica…please forgive me. Let’s start again…our lives together…” before his voice broke and the tears poured out again.

“Of course”, she responded, her voice trembling. “I already have forgiven you because I’ve been waiting and praying for this moment to come.”
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
the proust edition of la recherche i had, which i gave away to a charity shop; if you could stitch or strap the edition to my hands clenched into a fist (it was, after all a cheap 2 vol. edition), i could have knocked you out. no, i didn't read it, which is why many people never bother to use the dictionary, because it's always a one volume edition.

it became so haunting to have sang with david
with the lyre the lyrics:

             i'm happy, hope you're happy too...
             ashes to ashes, funk to funky
             we know major tom's a *****
             strung out in heaven's high
             hitting an all time low

it was so eerie i felt goose bump hoofs on my
cheeks adding for extra five o'clock shadow
that i never knew i had.

that's the thing about having european editors,
the ****** day, the whole theatrical approach,
it's just a ****** book of poetry,
it's not exactly an atom bomb,
but they sent the draft which i'm hoping to add
to with my *hoc erat in votis
to armenia,
Armenia, yes, once an incorporation of
the soviet rather than tsar's empire:
so jui-seph shtalin involved himself with the russians
from georgia, and my first idea sparklers will
come from armenia - good place to ask napoleon
to escape elba, i say, ol' chap.

and after the teenage girl hype period of an artist,
ziggy, you know what i'm talking about,
you get a process where an artist matures,
becomes prone to criticism, has no hype factor,
has no real monetary appeal to the less
hyped-up juice-of-genitalia army,
has to become a sensible economist -
there! catch him! that's where an artist
translates to other mediums his actual worth,
i feel privileged to have lived at a time
when david bowie released his heathen album,
one critic pointed that it was his best album
since the 1980 release of scary monsters,
so then i bought scary monsters...
i worked backwards...
i didn't feed the ziggy & space spiders from mars
gimmick / egoism, or even the rebel, rebel choir
of cult followers, and you know what?

              i'm happy, hope you're happy too...

it worked, now i can listen to the music like a distraction
tool, refrigerator buzz, ambiance, the freelance
artistry of it all, less care for kids, more care for
the insolent kids that aged and donned their employment
qualifications as 'art critics.'

but what i listen to isn't exactly what i write with,
it would plagiarise the thought process
so much that it would destroy it - the moment's gone,
the ingrained concept of time has allowed
for the same space of the origin of the narrative
to look different, even though nothing was moved.

so with this anglo renaissance circa 1950s -
1990s (nietzsche was critical of the reformation
when martin luther attacked the renaissance creativity,
no great composer in the counter-reformation,
just ignatius layola and the jesuits),
with the beat generation poets (preceding them,
the spirit of influence that was ezra pound
and no other i dare to admit, a seal-off point,
built a hydroelectric dam in nevada f. d. r. did)
you then had the explosion, and i mean it,
the EXPLOSION! 1960s psychedelia,
1970s ******* infused black sabbath etc.,
depressive 1980s with depeche mode iconoclasm
and the cure's slit your lips if not wrists,
the great digging of ***** duran duran,
scandinavian love hopes of a-ha, etc.,
then the shift back to the geographic place of origin,
seattle, grunge, rekindling of thinking man's
rock amiss the ******* fuel of the decade
with prog rock bands, i.e. tool;
and then of course the brit pop decade
(oasis, blur, the stone roses, the la's among many,
bands that still invoked a sing-along even
in such odd places like taizé in burgundy
for the wonderwall chorus)
and then... the death of it all...
artists getting rich, flamboyant, eccentric,
and the people seeing how they were "duped"
deciding enough was enough...
came napster, came pirate - ye har me mateys! -
and the death of the anglo renaissance
with kareoke culture - indeed if
the germans never conquered england,
and that book man in the high castle
by philip k. **** isn't true...
why did we allow the japanese to conquer
our culture? huh?!

p.s. when you realise all those 5.5K reads,
all those so called morale boosters... on websites
such as these, don't have a £ / $ in front of them;
and as i learned, after being reported to a website
similar to this accused of being a troll
for simply asking the long-ago standard
a.s.l. (age, ***, location) but only sticking to location,
losing some of the haul i'd liked to keep,
i realised i can lose that, no problem,
i rather lose that than lose what i have inside of me.
J. W. May 2013
Ishmael Run; So begins the Journey.

Thoughts lead thusly; there is no death, only the fulfilment of purpose. We live relatively long and for that period of being and becoming  we mostly find a petty meaning for ourselves but in this we stand wrongly. This is a sick joke we are involved in, there is a dark underlying purpose that eventually swallows us all into the ground to become a part of something monumental; the compilation of events known as history.

I am no cynic, and neither am I depressed, ashamed or even slightly darkened by this thought, on the contrary it is this knowledge that allows me to live. Without such inspiration life would be empty, totally and utterly discredited. Because there is enlightenment, to know the meaning to life as it is to end it, there may be ease within the world and no pitfalls of delusion or false hopes to fall into. I need not to push beyond myself or anyone else, I have no reason to attend to anything, is this a freedom?

Although, do not listen or take heed too much of what i have to say, we are afterall only the blind leading the blind

The knack of evolution has been lost in a flurry of Televisions, computers, fast food, consumer complexes, all devices to steal the process of thought and create an illusion of contentment.

this is no revolution.

But who am i? Who am I to comment so boldly on the degradation of man and lay out the pathway to salvation? Well, in truth I am no one. No one particularly adverse in anything at all, I simply exist. Like the underground man, I was spiritually sick and that sickness drove my spirit to death, and now  I am free!  I am enlightened and my burden is lighter for it, but if the truth is to be told there is nothing special about me. It is the conclusion of a lifetime that anyone could come to, before my eyes were opened, I knew nothing. Now, I know I knew nothing and I now know I still know nothing since it is simple; there really is nothing to know. Since everything you know you only think you know, why think of it? And this is the trouble with our current state of existence; we are duped into believing there is something to know and something to gain through the advancement of knowledge when really, it is to no gain to gain knowledge. They say knowledge is power but, the trick my friends, is that knowledge is a pack of wolves dressed in snowy coats. People who are in the know are so sure of themselves that nothing else could be right, people in the know believe their words are powerful, how wrong they are. You may say knowledge is power because those who have the knowledge to build bombs are powerful, they are powerful ideas and powerful Ideas are stolen by nations for their own purpose and gain. It is not knowledge, but resource. However if all these intellectualls are wrong, how even more wrong we are for elevating them on pedestals! Those who know believe their vast knowledge amounts to something but in truth brothers, it leads to nothing since we all share the same inevitable fate. Some may talk about how those who are wise or those who know, live a life that matters, a life with substance, but unless they abandon their meaning of, and the importance they place on knowledge they will never live a life of substance. If the world is based upon paradox, then it is in nothing that the substance of true life is. That is half the point in life, right? To find meaning and truth and all that guru fulfilment crap we have shouted at us from every corner, but I speak logical sense brothers when I say that the world is corrupt, and due to its self inflicted corruption you can trust nothing that comes from it. Because of the nature of truth, truth is something that can be portrayed through lies and so continues the pattern of the paradox, in that way a misanthrope does more for humanity than the praised philanthropist.

Something we must all look into at one stage or another on this terminal walk called life is who are these fellow pilgrims? The drunks, the smackheads, the dropouts, the insane, the depressed, the clinical, the lost and beyond, the type of people who colour life with variety. Just where are they? Those who have overcome life and succeeded its brutal shapes, forms and sizes. It is something everyone ought to ask and they are a people whom everyone ought to seek out.

indulge me and let me tell you a story of something I knew once.

An untimely death**

I met with something remarkable today, an experience I have not to this moment known, I fear it has crashed like a meteor into my brain and will leave its weighty crater for some time to come. I witnessed the death of a young man; an untimely death. The fulfilment of his journey caused by his own actions and now, where is he? He exists in memories, he exists in my memory. He has handed his existence over to me and I must choose what to do with it; whether to discard it and have him lost in the shadows or whether to create something of significance to him and he will rest in the illuminated paths of history? If I discard him he will continue in another memory, in a number of other memories I’m sure but to me, he will be dead and no one will see or know him ever again, what anyone else might think of him, is by definition, meaningless to me.

My memory of him is this; as a blur of colour and heightened emotion he rain past me on the platform at Waterloo underground, I barely caught his face except for a piercing glimpse of his eyes. Dressed in bohemian colours he was there and like the most eloquent dancer he jumped with glory, his legs bent back and up, his arms raised to praise his fate and then he was gone. Replaced with a loud crashing thunderous echo and flashes of red and white, red and white and then, everything was gone, all was calm on Waterloo underground. Everyone seemed amazed, people around me covered their faces in their hands, or hid their eyes, I could not stop gazing at the spot from which he made his final leap into a state of conclusion. That was it though, he was concluded and everything he may have ever worked for, lived through or experienced was concluded in those final moments; the most magnificent and pulchritudinous thing i, or anyone of us could ever only watch, performed by the greatest actor of our lives.

You see my comrades, the truth is the greatest theatrical shows are those that make an impression, the ones that take a lifetime to forget, and witnessing a death so splendidly done is something no memory, no matter how much amount of intoxication or denial would ever erase. To attempt to destroy that memory is to dishonour the greatest person one never met, or possibly did. Those of us who understand the meaning in life also understand that those who conclude life on their own terms and by their own means are martyrs, the martyrs of life who are usually all too readily forgotten. You will find plaques and statues commemorating those who died to save the ungrateful masses, or died to save their motherland; a more noble, albeit pointless cause. To those who die for the cause that life has become unbearable because society has pushed them to the edges of high cliffs and gently, tenderly, lovingly lowered them down to be smashed against the rocks by the rising tide; well, where is their remembrance? We will engrave the names of those who we sent to be murdered into the pages of history, but when it comes to those we ****** ourselves? Well I think those are the ones who we would rather sooner forget out of guilt because they are the evidence of our failures.
KRB Apr 2014
why is it that whenever we–
women–
show the slightest sign of anger or strength
we are presented with one of two masks:
the *****, or better yet,
the Joke.

why can’t we demand anything
without being called fickle or foolish
while a man can do the same and be called
Boss?

why can’t we choose to look like the calla
and not be chastised for pettiness,
for wanting to feel pretty?
after telling us that we’re duped and doped by media,
we’re labeled with a laugh
or the scales of a serpent when we want
to to bite back.

you chuckle when i bare my teeth,
you tell me that i’m cute when I’m angry.
I dare you to tell me why.

i am not a *****
i am far from a Joke.
i have skin and bones
hands to work with
eyes to see and most importantly
i have guts.
*i am human.
Kush May 2016
A little guilt goes a long way
Even the sturdiest oak can be made to sway
Figments of people duped by atavistic views
Waking up from bouts of fervor
A most sadistic snooze
They repose like overgrown fountains of youth
Their dreams rusted, forgotten and that’s the truth


In a lonely forest, oaks fall with the loudest screams
A somberness aided by clouds and defective sun beams


My soul has finally given in to moralistic cracks
For now it’s about as clean as mud pies and tire tracks
I’m wobbling down my lifetime from crutch to crutch
Wondering when to finally whisper “****, I’ve seen too much”
So please, return me home, send my spirit way down below
To lands of rusted dreams and toss-turned pillows
Mike Hauser Mar 2018
My muse
is tired of being abused
as I use my pen like a whip
making it do what I want it to

My muse
had no clue
or one eye inkling way of thinking
what it was getting itself into

My muse
doesn't know what to do
since it's chained inside my brain
master of it's every move

My muse
needs a redo
from being kept where it's at
to a new rendezvous

My muse
I have surely duped
into thinking that I need it
only for it's creative juice

My muse
would like to fly the coop
make it clear outta here
find a gig entirely new
Simon May 2021
"Being Processed Overload", doesn't come with many benefits, when your already tolerant of one thing, and one single thing...ONLY...!
By any chance, what do you think that one single ONLY thing is...?
Well, it's nothing more than what's come beforehand, or afterwards...
After all, what becomes fully "silence" at the end of the day, is nothing more than what is generally written, or seen, or even displayed (fully), "between the lines".... And it won't make a single slither of sense, unless your willing (to give yourself that one single "affordable" chance), to not be in a state of "Processed Overload", anymore!
Implying, that the most obvious results ("had"), and ("will"), always hide from deep within the states in-between the things that "can be seen", and the parts (of those very "things", that for some strange reason haven't fully yet been discovered), had remained entirely significant in part towards those very things that..."can't be seen"). Hiding, (when you least expect them to do so).
So, the whole point of being processed overload, is the very claim, that you are witnessed to something that can't be entirely seen... Or else, you'd become entirely "Overloaded" with too many processes!
When you’re already dealing with enough as it is... Especially when those very states in-between are hard enough as it is to see ("from within"), to begin with.
It's a full contact sport (when life get's significantly rough for your own eyes to become terribly outwitted by all that processed overload)!
It's when a totally realistic testament for truth (in itself), when being faced with so much, (without enough benefits to help you grab hold onto what's entirely tolerant that comes and goes either beforehand, or even afterwards...) Eventually speaking, it is the very basic lesson of things being entirely...ruled out.
So, it doesn't keep sticking too you, like a VERY BAD THORN IN YOUR SIDE! Forevermore telling what you should and should not do. And lastly, forcing you to see reason, as nothing more then for "control" to be seen as a pure...illusion.
While being so discouraged of (once being able to see from within, "at one moment" beforehand, then entirely fully dropping afterwards, when met with yet another, "specific moment", that most important...)
This most potential realization, (if at all you have caught onto it by now, of simply being so, where you'd learn from it, as who knows...you haven't particularly been doing it to begin with, as of yet...) Then, it's safe to say, that (while you try and try some more, eventually coming around to some type of partially known/partially unknown progress being involved...), doesn't exactly mean there's a type of significant progress in your failures, (for simply being able to understand).
You understand because you think you've made progress with the main issue, which is now clear for...ALL TO SEE!
Then suddenly out of the blue, (and as if it hadn't already been obvious enough...) Things start eventually becoming baseless. Coming to a very abrupt "fixated" halt!
But that doesn't actually mean you have seen (and then most prominently, "recognize") "why you do it!" Which forces you to start believing that everything is truthfully..."unclassified." Enabling everything (you once held dear).
Typical beliefs (within your own once secured belief system), now suddenly become...flawed!
Since the only expectation, was other's approval (apart from your own). And if you’re not able to see what is obviously in the states from in-between, then you’re literally going to see a one-sided viewpoint of everything for the remainder of your life. Controlling you in a pure illusion... From never explicitly being able to see (the other half of that entire viewpoint), with a straight open-mind.
Meaning, lifestyles will remain forever warped!
And your own lifecycle will continue to both shift drastically. Which in tune will remain as the very same dramatic "repeat", forevermore!
For the lack of reason that slowly but surely keeps both flowing inward, and outward... But not in the right type of recognition for your very self to both handle with careful consideration towards that very recognition, or for that very basic of acknowledgements just so you can handle yourself as you make your way through the different "fields full of clutter" (that seem to forevermore block your sights from simply being able to see clearly), with careful consideration...for your own identity to bear!
Because at the end of the day, identity (especially one that is trying to ALWAYS find different ways to sense, then fail here and there...)
Is nothing more than a tired effort...full of such actions...that keeps significantly turning into consequences...full of doubt.
(However, it may never be real doubt happening, when the consequences are just blaming you for your past, AND present faults of a tired effort that can't use their own actions very well anymore, when you’re also not seeing clearly again, anymore, either). Except, when your own presently perfect and overused (always in the limelight) doubt that of course, starts "sugar-coating" the very truthful actions (when you know you obviously already did something wrong), with nothing more than a good old dose of...guilt! Your regular and normal perception of things becomes utterly...twisted! Mangled! Bent out of shape! Stringing you up and wrapping you ever so tightly! Abruptly popping out a random pitiful bow (like on a present) full of both negativity and unprecedented bad luck on top of an entirely disfigured and misshapen present! (Not to mention the very wrapping paper that had become this HUGELY distorted pattern, that influences you in such a wrong sort of way, because again... So, you won't see clearly!) Until there was nothing left but...silence!
Silence at the end of the day, is seeking pleasure (in the moment of doubt, which significantly amplifies guilt), without taking the necessary time to fruitfully take noteworthy details into account...), that you truly have been "duped" this entire time...by your already currently corrupted self...who had been entirely "compromised"...long ago!
(And here's the very sad, and worst part... You didn't even see it happen....) Totally not your fault. It's just lives very bad tempos full of those constant rhythmic beats (that turn entirely into HUGE gimmicks that detests the very pattern...), which doesn't become soiled...when it's (even worse then EVER before), where the very beats have been already weeping alongside your own strides full of hesitant footprints that don't relate to the same old size shoe of the many lookalikes of footprints that followed after the other.... Almost as if everything then started with a beat full of such a rhythm (that came and went, as it naturally would). Then become suddenly confused when it's nothing more than for the sensation/feeling to become abruptly filled...as an everyday common joke. Then...for a pattern literally too weep alongside moving forward ever so gently, (by gently striding with the slightest of common footsteps you could literally muster, where there's no such accumulation where everyday common footsteps could be seen...) But here's the catch (which comes with a GREAT kicker involved...), where you can seriously see it from within, (and not entirely from the outside of yourself). Which entirely distorts this very meaning to begin with.
Even if you had... It had already been too late! When you were truthfully blinded from the very...START!
If only whatever comes (beforehand), or fully starts tolerating the (state that comes beforehand), where the (state of coming afterwards), then of course comes...after, (that which "what is beforehand"), is then helpful enough in being simply portrayed as nothing more...than what you could have already fully expected.
Except, when you anticipate something even more wrong...because your very own expectations (about the very main situation at large/involved), had become unsteadily stranded for dear life. Drifted away, since the very compatibilities didn't match up correctly. (And while being potentially forevermore left adrift without so much as a single change of scenery, (since you'll always stay the same...) Because you simply didn't know how too! Or even worse, being so processed overload, that you have let everything grow around you like this constant "Underbrush"!
An Underbrush seems to always be full of such twists and turns! Overly protruding vines that both poke and ****, according to your very own limitations wasting away the only strength that you held bear for so long... You are just lucky enough...you had lasted this long...! A truest claim among such miracles, that can only tolerate itself long enough...before it truly realizes what's been in front of it's very self (this entire time). And at which time...forces you to again, realize (and then sadly force you to then in its entirety, to acknowledge...), at just how much you've been in the "wrong"...this entire time....
Which in doing so, HEAVILY influences the very reasoning right out from under your own logic, which makes your own reason EXPEL that very logic, and just...throws it directly straight out the window like it's some yesterdays unimportant choice of reasoning! (Even going as far as to then look at it like it's pure...trash!)
(When today, it isn't truly looked at as the very center of one's own ordeal!)
I mean, of course it is...but your now stuck in that very illusion, (where now thinking control is this very illogical, negative, immoral, etc.), piece of obstructed, and nonsensical piece of doo-doo! ...And that isn't right about ANYTHING! Except, for what you have yet to ("properly see").
Guilt then (forevermore) forms into doubt...and the same lifecycle repeats, repeats, repeats...REPEATS! Until it had ****** YOU DRY! Of every type of energy reserve, you had (within yourself), in order to now begin compensating the very same structure of energy again, (in your very self, by simply using back-up energy reserves, or whatever "juice" was left from those previously already still presently being ****** dry/infected energy reserves that had already been literally either fully, or at the very least, nearly ****** DRY in itself!), of everything it held within it's personal possessions from both ends of the same spectrum.
Just so you can then simply "use" in order to clear away the many obstructions that have spread FAR AND WIDE...!!!
But word of both warning, and that of course of...caution.... Is that it's not going to be some easy and sane type of task, where you are able to just miraculously cleanse...EVERYTHING!
Just so you can then become (even more) an inner victim of your own already corrupted self.
"Being Processed Overload", is a state of INTENSE "ramifications"...of being filled with an already unrecognizable consciousness!
Limiting yourself (by chance itself), is a necessary battle for the forthcomings of both an "inner war" to begin seemingly out of NOWHERE! And for the efforts (if there was actually ANY from the very start), to not simply follow thoroughly through from what was already too structurally important from the get-go.
Simply hinting at, if you can truly follow-through with that main logic, (if you haven't already "expelled" anything worthy of your own self, from not EVER AGAIN being actually able to equip yourself and combat the very such obstructed force from within...) Then you might just have that very chance at recognizing what had truly happened to you.
Druzzayne Rika May 2018
The chances are never perfect
I am disappointed
because the world has never stood up to
what is ideal
what is right is hidden behind the veil
Innocents are tested each time
and the fight goes on.

Bending the rule,
using people as tool
dead and alive
making every fool
and the normalcy
spreading this sickness
over what is going on
so wrong.

Moving on
getting over it
forgetting every little bit,
we stick to our lives
protecting us
what possibly how
we can also be duped
and save ourselves
from becoming the national news.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
when she got all the righteous requirements of expressing liberty and i looked at her expression i was like? so i've been duped into being fed the oedipus complex for 100 years while she wrote as if looking for her father in a theme park? right... gear up the revs of that feminism of yours... keep them writing, by god keep them writing, let us learn all the secrets that were so attractive once when she pampered herself with corsets and bangles and rings and earrings and perfumes! come on feminism, drag them out into the bright open blank canvas of the page like dragging witches to the stake!

in my library i only have books by women
in the range of sylvia plath and anna kavan...
believe me, feminism gave women
second thoughts about
joining the ranks of men
writing, she's having second
thoughts because she doesn't
want to reveal her secrets,
she doesn't want to internalise
life, she wants it to remain
a volumptous (voluptuous,
which sounds sexier? the former
implies volume, the latter a monkish stress
of orthographic orthodoxy) affection
to keep fingertips sensitive to skin
smooth like soap and coarse like
pavement - touchy touchy - feely feely,
she's scared that by outlining
all the secrets she'll be no longer
able to wear a corset and as theory states:
bigger the earrings of loops, the eagerer she's
to be bedded, it's a shame i don't own
more books by women who'd write like
men, and i dig the part where books
written by women are so tightly bound
by social formalities of longing for love
in long-winding sagas of the harlequin
publishing house -
feminism seems like a faulty bomb
when it comes to women writing,
i mean, a girl starts writing she looses her
predatory allure and instinct,
she starts writing she becomes vulnerable,
exposed, when *he
does it he
gets depth and confidence he can't use
in ****** interaction... historically speaking
women used to walk without leaving
footprints, men used to walk moving mountains,
she was the countless secrets and secrecies,
feminism kinda duped her,
she started making footprints via writing,
and sadly all the former allure faded -
we became apes and peasants
slightly bewildered by an atom bomb explosion
like a falling autumnal leaf;
where is that crafty ***** with a library of intrigues?
Seher Seven Oct 2015
time changes
and I realize the world needs my LOVE.
so I want to write more love poems
and infect heartstreams,
bursting valve seams, repairing flows.
carrying capacities need expanding,
deep breath felt.
simplicities stacking, and all else is.

decension, the reflection of ascension,
is being dug.
the perspective has always been from above.
time to root down, bury down, dig deep
in the ground and bring the LOVE down.
in the darker side, where light struggles sometimes,
here, this minor level, that many feel is
real,
this place needs the panting of love
to be rained down.

souls duped to believe
evil is abound.
cycles are always dark and light
and layers are thin.
pay closer attention to the place
where to the two meet again,
that point, moment, peace.
listen to its speech, the flow of a new
sprout on a tree,
the fungus sprawl through its wood.
stretching its love from underground,
above, to feed and seed and heed
the lessons here.
biodiversity, nourishment, interdependence,
just being loving. nurturing,
to      your     self, the total inclusiveness...

our carry capacity for LOVE is infinity.
eights will flow infinitely, so we just let it be,
walk easily, stop and discover those on our path.
discover the magic of home.
Let’s face it:
Vietnam was a purge.
An undeclared yet official
War on largely Black, Chicano,
Mostly urban, poor White-trash--
Any of that unlucky-cohort--
Coming of age, mid-60s America.
A purge yes, but 'Nam was also an
Intelligence Test:  them that went,
Particularly those who never returned,
Those scoring at least two standard deviations out,
Outside normal, therefore inferior genetic make-up,
Those the country could surely do without.
“Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough.”
www.genomicslawreport.com /.../three-generations-of-imbeciles-are-enough... So wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Buck v. Bell, a 1927 Supreme Court case upholding a Virginia law that authorized the state to...”
I couldn’t have said it better, Justice Holmes!
The Nam: those of us who did survive were
Nonetheless, mangled and traumatized,
In both body & spirit.
We knew right away we’d been duped,
Particularly those gun-friendly southern boys,
Hunting ***** for sport and Country, now contemplating
Remorseful acts of mass homicide 40 years ago.
The real poindexters of our generation, of course:
Got a medical deferment, or
Stayed in college, or
Went north to Canada, or
As I did, joined the Coast Guard, unfortunately,
In addition to my nightmare Indochine,
My personal Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
Based on Joseph Conrad’s
Congo Nightmare Novella--
Heart of Darkness.)
And Józef wrote it in English.
Which was for the native Pollack,
His third language after Polish & French,
Which is probably a good time to
Encourage each & every young punk
On the cellblock to make good use of their time:
Learn a foreign language., e.g.
Why not Spanish?
Given Obama’s farcical, unrestricted border policy.
Soon to be a pervasive lingua Esperanto.

My politics? Sign me up for a little T.A.D.,
Manning a 50-caliber machine gun on Donald’s Wall.
Donald Trump:  A Modern Hadrian?
Don’t get me started on politics.
Take a Spanish class.
Finally, you’ll know what those
Grease-ball Mexican landscapers are
Saying behind your back, right in front of you.

After the Army, & after college on the G.I. Bill,
That’s when I joined the Coast Guard.
OCS in the 1970s was a difficult (read:
Lower Standards) recruiting time for
The Armed Forces of the United States,
Including the U.S. Coast Guard.
OCS: The Oklahoma Cook School we joked.
Officer Candidate School: graduating
Nautically savvy 90-Day Wonders,
Inculcated with conduct becoming &
Other archaic, chivalrous values,
Imprinted with Chain of Command obeisance,
Etched deep an acolyte’s primer on class-consciousness.
Blimey! What a difference after my previous
Two years stint as an Army grunt which leads me to
An overwhelming question: Why do Officers live
Better than enlisted pukes?
The Military: last refuge for scoundrels,
Escape artists & last bastion of medieval feudalism.
Officers! Welcome to the Aristocracy.
Mazel Tov,
Bienvenidos!
It's the Class Structure,
The dominant organizing principle for humanity,
Since the dawn of human history, perhaps longer,
Consider, if you will, “Alley Oop.”
“Alley Oop” Lyrics | MetroLyrics: (www.metrolyrics.com) “There's a man in the funny papers we all know . . . Eats nothin' but bearcat stew, A mean motor scooter & a bad go-getter . . . King of the jungle jive.”
Even longer if we go troglodyte era,
Some mean-mother, some swinging
Foucault’s pendulum set of *****,
Some club-wielding Duke of Earl—
Simply put: some Alpha Male,
Sticking it up whatever polygamous
Multiple Missus *** just happened to be
Bending over within my field of vision at
Any given moment.
I am the block’s biggest, baddest, meanest cat,
Made right by might: physical power &
Will to use it.

Then came Divine Right: Dieu et mon droit.
French for “God and my right.”
Conceived by the shrewd ones,
Those staying out of trouble,
Cringing in the corner of the cave, AKA
The inherently weak, concluding, at last, with
Marx: “The history of all hitherto existing
Society is the history of class struggles.”
Daniel Magner May 2013
I was once promised
that I would be
loved until
the end of time.
The clocks are
still ticking but
the love is
missing...
© Daniel Magner 2013
Sara L Russell Mar 2015
Sara L Russell 17/3/15 at 13:25

What will they say of you in future times?
Were they duped by your duplicity
or did you fall on your double-edged sword?
Was the devil we knew any better than the unknown?

The future has a way of arriving early.
Are you ready now, for what it yet may bring?
Will you be knighted, or, benighted and beleaguered,
Fall fallow by the wayside of your ways?

Will the name of Cameron carry on,
Whatever else is lost or left behind?
Will David slay the apocolyptic giant of global warming,
yet terminate the service of National Health?

Was it wealth, or a poverty of emotional maturity
that led to such flotations and privatisations?
what sensations did you feel, did you reach referendum,
did you feel the earth move?

We never saw your manifesto made manifest.
We, the voters who voted not for you,
yet saw you rise, anticipate your fall.
Do promises count as any kind of plan?

And the future is arriving post-haste,
like a present waiting to be unwrapped.
Elections have a way of arriving early.
We are ready, with a big sharp X.
Sally A Bayan Mar 2014
"...from dust thou art..."

It was one peaceful evening we were having,
ruined by a message; distasteful and disturbing,
a misunderstanding? no, never had been..
.but it had always been the easy way out...
it was an overflow of misunderstood courage...
someone  shouldn't have had the face,
but really had the chutzpah to reach out...
one that stood up to the last moment
to gird, to break, to wreck.....and won...
to be...to feel they belong,
this, could be allowed no longer...
this must...has got to stop...

here comes the CLOAK of non-acceptance,
it quickly spreads overhead,
but repugnance PERFORATES!

to be duped anew,
ah, brings back to life old hatred,
for those who think they know better,
but never again, to swim in bad blood...
feelings to be repeatedly exploited,
this, can no longer be allowed....
this...has got to stop...

ashes that were hidden,
ashes that were forbidden,
ashes i didn't feel like seeing
an urn of ashes i firmly refused to hold,
ashes i firmly refused to be anywhere near me.
and now, they suddenly ask,
where to take the forsaken urn?
they can just pollute the river
let the ashes flow with the current...
or, be indifferently blown by the wind
atop a mountain...
for God's sake, why not just buy a vault for the urn?
give the ashes the much-needed peace it longed for..
and let those who were once denied and deprived,
have their own share of much needed peace...

ashes may be carried away
by the sea or the wind---
but there's only one known place:
to the ground we all go,
cremated or otherwise...
so, why fuss on where the ashes should go?
"From dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return."


   Sally
Copyright 2014
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan


Biblical quote, from Genesis 3:19*'
"Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return."
(...what bad memories ashes could bring...)
Kelsi Herring Jan 2014
It’s funny how these things end
Love stories and happy endings
I’ve never been the sappy romantic
And from the beginning I could have never predicted
These feelings that have grown just for you
A place in my heart that beats uncontrollably
With a ferocity unmatched by any others
Already I know I’ve become the fool to be duped
Sometimes I get scared
Sometimes I get lonely
Sometimes I get confused
And then I remember the day you held me
And you said, “We’ll be okay”
I’ve watched you carry your burdens
You’ve seen me shoulder mine
We’ve not always been the closest of friends
No secret bond to share in the closet of skeletons
No fleeting glances that could be hidden
No secret love that has been written
We’re not Romeo and Juliet
But when you walk by I still find myself smiling
I tell myself I’m not meant to feel
Not like this
And not for you
So I have to lock my heart and thoughts away
To a place where no one may see my dismay
I tried to fight it
Tried to ignore it, pretend like you weren’t right there in front of me
Too afraid to voice my feelings
Too afraid to not be loved
Maybe one day though I’ll find the courage
To live with just being friends
Just talking could be a start
Laughing and joking
I could be okay
Never asking for more
Still I’ll always find myself hoping
In the shadows of the stars
That you’ll grab my hand and smile
Before leaning in to whisper
Will you be mine?
january 01//--
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
3 weeks, that's all it takes,
      how many necessary things could have
been said, but weren't...
    i could have written to my local m.p.,
or say - an imaginary letter to
Lorca, like Jack Spicer -
     instead, i wrote a few pieces of
verbal-diarrhea - sheer frustration -
      how debasing i sometimes see myself
becoming, all this talk of self-censorship,
     it's this ominous shadow of some third
party sources... the more you write
it seems, the more you start fearing
in the existence of that famous chestnut
known as writer's block...
                         it's such a fear that it's
impossible to call it irrational,
a tiny fear, a phobia, fear without a narrative...
so you end up becoming debasing for a while:
thankfully: there's nothing in concreto
about it...
                    you begin almost in trance
blurting out words to no civilised purpose -
  just to go beyond the rust and stiffness of
3 weeks sober, as if starved from the world:
because your grandparents don't have an internet
connection...
      and you return from a place where
you have to time to read books, and be content
at being fed by a television set...
                rather than having to feed
the computer and that amassing of knowledge
and shared experience...
      a digital detox they call it...
   i call it a double-whammy detox... and strange
how doable it is: it doesn't require
a rehab...    or some guru telling you
       that you have to block out thoughts
immersed to the internet...
                    but then again, is it about that?
all i can claim to say is that:
    the internet can really become a cul de sac...
i'd feign to believe that anyone with
   it can read a novel these days...
                       i know i can't -
     in the most ordinary circumstances -
                     a complete shut-down can provide
enough furniture to be so less itchy
and nagging to touch...
                               and it wasn't even a case
of a self-imposed hiatus...
                    don't know what it actually meant
other than an immersion in: what
life was like in the 20th century...
                              and on that touchy subject of
certain words being treated as if said
by children and deserving the scorn from an elder...
well sure, would that give us many more
graces to: write in the fxxx?   and if i actually did -
if only the english language used some sort of
orthographic, but it can't: since it has no diacritical
markings...
    the aesthetic is so different in Poland...
you don't censor certain words so might think you're
talking roses and adorable puppies for some
grand social project...
       there's a graffiti joke in Poland...
              and there about four different variations
of the same word (as it sounds) -
huj                         hój
             chuj                                and chój...
  there are no others... but there's only one accepted
spelling of the word: given the orthographic convention...
and if this word is seen on walls
   without the correct orthography, it's a good joke...
  (it's the first spelling of the word that's correct,
if you want to know)...
     what i can't understand is creating these excessive
emotional associations with words,
not sentences that lead to a fuller meaning:
but isolated words...
                         it's a simple bewilderment that
using such words, for the sake of using them, might
suddenly lead toward some antagonism of
an ethnicity -
                                 it's black on white -
there are no hues of words... but when it's used
from fear of a writer's block, and it has to be used,
once again: not in concreto...
                        then it's again, used like i might
throw everything into grammatical categorisation of
words, and get back a lesson in grammar...
    that's 3 weeks without a keyboard - you're
bound to vent out some frustration...
                    at least there's an antidote to it,
on saturday i experienced zenith of the frustration,
until it dwindled away, overnight...
                             rarely do you see a review of a poetry
book in english newspapers...
   perhaps the guardian, but in the times?
               once in a blue moon...
           the review: if jeremy corbyn wrote poems...
    for almost a whole evening i was experiencing this
sort of: debilitating paralysis, debilitating because it
was wholly mental... i equated reading this review
with an experience of: ethical monopoly of vocab...
    and it really does exist... its not a question of political
correctness, but a case of ethics:
                  could i use the word nxxxer or not?
    can it really be so scary to see that correct spelling?
and what if i wrote about the river Niger, because
i felt like it... or took to the fancy of a trip to Nigeria?
       boy, Niagara falls must be stunning to look at too!
i don't understand that privacy can be so usurped,
so wrangled out one's on comfort...
    so we have our closet racists and closet intellectuals
(who i call the bearded white boys
                 in chequered shirts and torn jeans) -
    but in a fit of personal transitioning, are we really
about to censor each other, and on what ground?
      yes, i have a ku klux **** hood in my closet
and i'm about to shout ye ha! on a lynch frenzy...
      it's a word said out of context with a historical content
still ascribed to it... if this word were taken into
an urban environment: it would be an epitome of
what once was used with the words *******...
         i'm not concerned with the word historically...
       historically speaking: it's urban now...
                               it can literally mean: thick-as-night...
and can you start to begin finalising such
nano experiences in life...
                           some people get to sky-dive,
or hunt lions on safaris...
                                i'm stuck with a wasted evening
duped into thinking this out:
  like so horror minority report, said the word:
predestined to do the most god-awful evil...
                       or like i said the word:
and that's equivalent to not washing my mouth for
2 weeks... 2 weeks spent on a diet of onions,
garlic and raw beef...
                           it's this absurdity that has nothing
fancy about it, this could not be written by
Albert Camus... it's too worm-like absurd...
                 i don't whether to laugh or cry, or tell you
how i had to find a counter-frustration...
but i did, the review of a poetry book in a saturday newspaper...
philip collins' take on unreconciled - poems 1991 - 2013
   by michel houellebecq...
                               i'm guessing the actual book
would make me feel less frictive than the reviewer's take on it...
   such this huge ball of fungus dropped into
my cranium and started to cannibalise itself with
digestive juices of nihilism... thankfully reviews like this
would spur me on and make me want to read such a book...
just to get the antithesis (if that's correct word to use)...
   to me, it sounds like a book
that's supposed to oppose the european use of the haiku...
   for me not all haikus are philosophical...
     although i know they're intended as such...
personally, i think that the art behind the haiku is
more than the actual haiku...
    say, someone who invented this medium,
yes, an easterner would probably write 20 haikus in
a period of 20 years...
     writing too many haikus (usually done by westerners)
is precisely the opposite of the art-form...
      how can a haiku be written without a year-long
restraint, and when finally the pressure is too much:
you get ''so little''?
                      well sure, i can write a haiku any moment
i can... but i'd have to have a gnat's worth of
consciousness to write one without having meditated for
a year...
                we europeans can at least write
absurd excerpts from our rigid lives...
                        and houellebecq does that -
   we live in these snappy narcissistic observations taken
from the world we have so made systematic -
    and i guess reason is a big tender dog -
given that unreason is a ******* chiwawa that
constantly keeps barking... or any other small dog
for that matter...       well: once again -
who told these people who review poetry books that
poetry is an Ikea manual?
                               lack of imagination, i'd say...
   and i'll say that about any other liar out there who
can say that visualising poems is easy -
     modern art can be seen as pretentious ******* -
but then what can you verbalise about it is the whole trick...
   just asking, because i was thinking about when
that famous school of fine art in Florence is going to
reopen, and why no one bothered to remember the techniques
using oil on canvas...
                 evidently something is up in the zeitgeist -
    i'm guessing we'll not see a **** study by edward calvet
any time soon... and it'll remain so, for quiete some time -
something is being revised - i'd call all modern art
by the movement: revisionism -
                      well: the dark ages were revising something -
everything's crude once more...
                  as came with the over-exposure to our
******... and did i say there's something wrong with that?
but evidently seeing too much fucky-fucky
    has created jelly in the eyes of artists who have to
go back to basics... it's like artists are looking for words...
they want to return to a dialogue of the reneissance...
    or at least it sounds like that... oh no, not from them:
from the people that have a critical eye on the matter:
the intellectuals... i see it as a hope for coming back to
dialogue... if you can't return to a dialogue over
a very simple modern canvas... there's no point
talking about the greater intricacies...
                             that leave you speechless -
  i mean: what's the point of talking about a mona lisa
when you can enjoy a joke asking whether
the devil didn't have his hand up her skirt?
       or the ecstasy of st. theresa... what's there to talk about?
i look at that statue and just want to get a hard-on...
but first i guess i have to rediscover a dialogue
with what the current times prescribe me...
and these really are works of prescription... there's no
point look into pharmacology's list of prescriptions...
   as going about saying it's all a load of *******,
leads to the first step toward modern alienation...
       if darwinism can be a humanism, a study of
the human... i can only give it a motto:
there's a reason behind everything... there's a reason
snakes don't have eyelids...
                              or that giraffes look funny...
             or that camels are the most vile mammals
to walk this earth...
                       personally i
Derek Yohn Nov 2013
Ooooooprah...
it is time for us to
have a little chat:

i have heard you say,
on video, that opposition
to Obama is based on
racism.  Haters gonna hate,
you say.

i disagree.  While surely
there are some who feel
this way, since America
is such a big and diverse
place, i think you have
discounted a much more
appropriate reason for
opposing the O:
incompetence.

If not that, how about lying?

If not that, how about hypocrisy?

There are more, but my space is limited.
Do any of the above do
anything for you, besides
racism?

Keep in mind, Oprah, that as
a percentage of population,
white folks still are the majority.
And you are now filthy
rich, thanks in part to those
same white people, some of whom
dislike the president.

So...being pro-Oprah and anti-Obama
are mutually exclusive?
An awful lot of white folks
helped you get rich, does
that mean to you that they are
race traitors?  Are you trying
not to be?

Race sure does seem really important
to you.  And yet America (even
white America) elected a black man
twice to the presidency.  It wasn't
important to most Americans what
color he was.

They are mad now because they were
duped by an incompetent lawyer.  And
now they know it for sure.

So when you, Oprah, fall back on
race instead of logic, you are
playing your last card of desperation.

It has no merit.  You know that.

In fact, Oprah, to my mind
YOU are the racist.

The only other alternative i see is
that you are ashamed of how
wrong you were supporting him,
and too prideful to admit
it.

But you certainly seem to think
that white America owes you or
the president some debt other
than our money and our
dwindling rights.

Because you think that you both
are superior.

That is called racism, Oprah.
Look it up sometime.
When are we going to return to sane civil discourse in this nation?

i don't owe anybody a ******* thing as far as guilt or explanations go.  My family, southern farmers, NEVER owned slaves.  The family worked the land.  So *******, Oprah.
Shelley Dec 2011
feigning performance
pleasing the convinced, clapping crowd
of duped deafs
F White Aug 2017
Rx
bone traitor.
Skin viper
Edge Stealer
Ridge maker
Health reflector.
Mirror- you liar!
Rogue on the scale...
Signs that my brain has duped me;
Floating oily in the
Basin
Phantom aches
Blood test lies
Powdery remedies pressed almond abandon all cows
Bean curd body snatching
**** the doctor to get a clue

Girl in pain this isn't me so-
Who the hell are you?
Copyright fhw 2017
K Balachandran Aug 2012
Are you, this body
         of five elements?
Are you the mind,
       five senses weaved?

Or are you one with
                    the one beyond?
the , eternal, infinite -
                   consciousness?


        Why keep me
at arm's length?
            Don't you know,
   like you,"I am that",

  There aren't two
           but just the one!
Don't be duped by
           this illusory construct!

When time gets ripe,
      cosmic wish, its dice casts,
              the game changes
comes  the big crunch!

           between 'big bang
and the final crunch'
                you fight your wars,
    momentary, who wins?

the play continues
           in cosmic time schedule,
  even Einstin couldn't-
                envisage the game as a whole!
"I am that"-("Tat twam asi" in Sanskrit) a "Mahavakya"( grand truth regarding the absolute )
which cryptically says the consciousness within each and the cosmic consciousness are not two, but one.
Odd Odyssey Poet Jul 2022
Do you feel nostalgia every time you walk into the room,
as the pillow talks of our make believe? Tender kisses,
biting desires and creases of time stuck in the sheets.

The echo drops of dripping walls, the yearning calls
of passionate eyes—burning embers of your red skin.
Blushing lips; a crushing weight of the burdens I try to shake.
One screams a name, or in turn whispers it's calm in the first hug
of embrace. The shape of bodies, outlined reminiscences on a bed.

Oh-the sense of appeal, peeling away an oozing flux of one's
*** appeal. Branching out into words--your'e barking up the wrong
tree. No harsher than the bark, but a bite to force you to leave.
Duped by the words lost in kisses; I meant to say lead.

To places of touch; a rush of the brushing eyes...you've swept me
by your night gown's sight. My love for you, inside the like of it's
silk fabric. Covering your face under the blankets, but the glow of
your skin—you could never mask it.

Strength lost in the weakness of love. Making two for the best
of one, as when the two flesh become one.

                                                   Now that's making love.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
It's the next best thing!
It's a scream!
It's got a screen!
and a million little buttons
that won't ever do a thing
to erase that feeling
that you're feeling.


why you are always waiting.


like the Rockie's or the Canyon.
like Columbus and the the great depression.
like Woodstock and world wars.
like the Illad and the Odyssey and The Beatles.


something more than
The consumer generation.
a definition through epic episodes.
a defining moment.


The revolution has been sponsored
by manufacturers and broadcasters
and warmongers and pundits
and people getting paid to tell you what you think.
and what do you think?
Why are we content with being incomplete?
unfinished and beat?


What the **** is so Comfy about that seat?


You are not generation X
or Y or Nothing or Nowhere.
or any of these false names they've created
to make us believe we are less than we are.
we've been duped.
the youth is not the future anymore.
It's firmly in the grip of the old and accomplished.
Your fate is their whim for a dollar.
Your life is fuel for the fires.
crass entertainment inspires your desires.


And well, **** that.
pull the wires from your brain
and we'll fight to regain.
what territory they've taken away.
Make decisions for ourselves today.
December 11th, 2011.  Part of a series of Status Updates.  Only now does it gain a proper title.
Mercurychyld Aug 2014
Demagogues of our society; daftly delivering
disarming delusions of decrepit delights.
Dealing in powder, rock and liquid death,
demurely doled out in droves to the
willing unconscious, dysfunctional deviants
of the land.

Blindly offering devotions, flaccid devotions
to plastic, white collar deities; giving new
definition to internal deformity, through
decelerated dejection.

Desperate and emotionally dismembered,
defrauded by quick, cheap decadence,
debauchery, and mental decay in many
deliriously delicious forms...pick a flavor,
name your poison!

Delegate your defect, as those with
doctoral degrees in defunct traditions
do deviously delineate their demented
designs...for our future.

DejaVu?
Perhaps, but in fact, it is we
who sniff, inject and drink up their drivel,
decidedly and dutifully depleted of
intellect by way of dubious data.

Duplicitous dullards...sanitize and
deodorize their fiendish lies...as we,
WE do nothing!

Not enough of us dumbfounded or
dumbstruck by their deceitful smiles.
Full of dread and deep dismay, by
the statutes of the day...I, for one,
will dream of better days, when we
shall defeat these diabolical demons.

But for now, down beaten, downtrodden;
we will continue to be denigrated for
the duration.
Clever dissection; dumb as they want you
to be,
disparity of all creativity...individuality...
and all of your rights...controversially.
Our disgruntled displeasure doomed...to
fall on dormant hearts...and we,
debilitated and daunted, lives dismantled,
are now forever haunted, by our freedoms
demise...by days we could question
their smiling lies.

Demagogues; Big Brother...such delinquents
dosing up the masses with a deluge of powder,
rock sedation and liquid elation...pick your flavor,
name your poison.

At the end of the day WE are ONE...duped,
defaced, defeated...and to continue on this
road, our final denouement will come
disturbingly disguised...as DEATH!



-by Mercurychyld
Copyrights
Inspired by a movie I once saw.
Justin Ball Feb 2012
They say the neon lights**
Don’t often burn that bright
Splintered from my urethra
Swollen in this hex
Devoured by the Eve
Brought to justice by the guilt
And when they said
That all I had to give
Wasn’t worth a fitful look
I’ve been duped by sedative
The artificial power
Has swollen in my head
Wrapped around an ice pick
Can be found my fleeting shell

As our defunct cohesion
Masticates my head
Disintegration will lay me to my bed.

That sweet nectar
Lingers on my tongue
An inebriated hour of reverie genuine
A claustrophobic detainment
Incarceration with power windows
As your effigy is left behind
These shiv grasped hands
Awaiting exertion, transpierce my eyes
Upon introspective re-inspections
Ichor transmogrifies
Necessitate me
Remain vacant here

As our defunct cohesion
Masticates my head
Disintegration will lay me to my bed.

— The End —