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Hayley Neininger Nov 2013
I know I am not really lying on the beach
Eyes facing up towards the sky
Where I really am is in Vienna
In a small classroom filled with fourth graders
Sitting in a circle in a room
That was decorated in glow in the dark stars
And a fake camp fire next to a cardboard cutout of a wolf
I remember learning about the Oregon Trail
And how cowboys would campout underneath stars
Guns close by so other dangerous creators wouldn’t be
And looking at the fake stars in that room
I was in another world, a realer world
Where the cosmos didn’t make stars
Bullets did
Silver bullets meant to hit werewolves
Who were so compelled to howl at the moon
They forwent the odds of being gunned down
And so easily they could be when the moon
Lit perfectly their silhouette  
Naked in plain view
All the stars were silver bullets
One that never met their target and flew
Past the wolfs and up into the black sky
Where they pierced the world’s barrio
The bullet holes became not stars
But un-mendable scars
From men who wanting to mutilate
The sky’s beauty with weapons
There to remind me
When the lights turned on in that classroom
The glowing little stars melted into the white popcorn ceiling
And as we, the fourth graders, disconnected our circle on the floor
The reality of the origin of stars I had just come to know
Never left me and the stars I see at night now
Are not as real as the ones I saw that day.
DieingEmbers Feb 2013
She offered me a nightcap

but I forwent

the pyjamas
I love building bridges just to watch them burn,
Until no trace is left.
And what was there is just a figment.
An apparition of the past that I forwent,
But you admire because We - I am no more.
Your image reflected upon the river is restless.
You. Removed, carried by the current.
Are no more.
layne williams Feb 2013
I live a life of words unspoken,
a flaw this day and age;
  in a time that spits words
   like useless slurs said in anger,
    actual thought forwent.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2023
Kaiser Clown

borrowed shoe:
stolen foot.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

auf die frei zungen ich kennt -
   (of the three tongues i know) -
ich kennt zwei
    und kennen eine:
    (i know two and know of one):

auf die frei: ich lieben dieser
                        äußerst
(of the three: i love this utmost)...
                      
    in my youth i spent a good deal of time
watching Disney's Robin "fox" Hood
cartoon in German, somehow it rubbed off
on me...

      i was never born with anything even remotely
resembling the love of the English language...
can there be a love akin to the Anglophile
that excludes the love of the language?
i love everything English except for the language...

each day i'm slowly planning my escape
into womb of the mother of the isles that
was first spoken in Saxony...
         tired Bavarians? tired Pomeranians?
but the Saxons were a landlocked people
who gave them the courage and adventurous
spirits to claim the seas with more than
oars and steer the winds with
sails?

      English didn't come to me as some
poor Romanian kid listening to current pop music
or back then, early 1990s... movies from Hollywood...
i didn't want to speak gimmicks...
i was ****** into the deep-end of speaking this
tongue by starting off a mute...
even with the influences of cartoon network
none left a too great impression on my ears
as the German version of the Disney cartoon
of Robin Hood...

   even after watching the English version many years
later... i can still hear the German dubbing
and i can't escape it...

auf die frei zungen ich spre(s)chen es
mit ein konkurs auf substantive...
(of the three tongues i speak it
with a bankruptcy of nouns)...

        at least i have made progress with predispositions
and conjunctions:
i am better coordinated...
but how... how can one be an Anglophile
without a love of the language?
i can adore the way the English care for
the countryside... how traffic is managed...
how taxes are collected how foreign cultures
can slowly integrate and everyone can feel
somehow, seemingly at home:
even if the natives do not for a while...
but without a love for the language
i cannot be a true Anglophile...

                the beauty of Shakespeare disintegrates
when a simple German neo-folk is played to me...

   in der zwölften stund (sage vom untersberg)

- in der zwölften stunde -
at the twelfth hour
- wenn die raben fliegen um den berg -
when the ravens fly around the mountain
- tun sie lautstark kunde -
they loudly proclaim
- von des kaiser macht und tagewerk -
the emperor's power and legacy
- solang der kaiser schlafet -
as long as the emperor sleeps
- tief drunt' im dunklen bergensschloß -
deep down there in the dark mountain *****
- solang fliegen auch die raben -
the ravens will fly
- hoch über seinem marmelschloss -
high above this castle of marble...

   no words in English, and their meaning make much
for... however simple they might be in German:
the simple fact that... they're spoken in German!
das: sie sind gesprochen im Alt...
    
it is only natural that i sought out the origins of
the English tongue in German,
as much as i am not interested in the etymology
of designated word:
i could never be this youth exposed to too much
English culture wishing to sing pop songs
or utter single line pin-pointers from
films: ehrilch mein schatz,
   ich tun nicht ein pflege
   (frankly my dear,
    i don't give a **** / care)
    or... ich wille wieder (i will be back)...

so the indentations of learning English in a later
developmental stage of language acquisiton
didn't rub off on me: as it does on people
with accents of their mother tongue
who never lose it... and merely culturally appropriate
English as a spoken tongue of culture
and not a "cultured" tongue...
native tongue: a shape-shifting accent
of an educated "class"...
    even today! West Ham was playing Everton,
Toffees... ******* Scousers... Liverpool dwelling folk...
two younglings asked me to speak to one
of the managers who took their banner away
expressing disgruntlement with
how the football club was being managed...
huh?! am i still in England...
i have an easier time understanding Scots
than i have understanding anyone from
Manchester or Liverpool!
i can't understand them!
maybe that's why the Scots are like the Irish:
they come from a proud literary history...
oh... i spoke to an Irishman today at
the football game... woke up at 3am to come
to the game... i understood him perfectly...
i can understand a Scot and an Irishman...
i wouldn't be able to tell you an Irishman
from a North Irishman...
but i could tell you decipherable English
of the Scot and the Irishman from
an undecipherable, local, "polyglot"
mishandling of the English language with
such local accents and idioms as that of
Liverpool or Manchester...
can't understand the *******: even if i tried...

obviously i can't relate to a love of Russian...
as they might say in Poland:
better 6 years of **** rule: by fire...
than the subsequent how many decades it was
under the rule of the Soviet rule: by ice...
a slow burn of war is more demoralising
than a quick stretch of spandex and all hell
and all fury and all hearts united
than this scuttling of rats and shadow-bullets
shot from shadow-pistols!

of course i would naturally side with the Germanic
side of my upbringing:
i have no itch for rekindling any Russian brainwashing!
and i know that the Germanic side of "things"
has become a breeding ground for feral creature-oids
that resemble as best cuckoldry and at worst
the shadiest parts of the ***-scenes in Amsterdam...
but... bone-headed Russians and their
pride... that Russian pride... it's one of those intoxication
liquid i want to drink any of!

hmm...
   perhaps because i know English as a utility,
there's nothing romantic in it for me:
i buy bread with it, i ask: i used to ask for directions
in it, i ask someone in that conventional
formal way how they are and hope for the less *******
that most Americans reply with: how all is dandy
and it's all Texan blue above and not
the grey of the island skyline...

i did think for a moment: i should haven taken a step
further and attached myself to Swedish...
or Norwegian...
but then that's what a German would do...
as an Anglo-Slav it was only natural for me to succumb
to the allure of German...
the natural dynamo...
i fall on German and the German falls on Swedish...
or Danish...
**** knows who the Scandinavians fall on for
inspiration... the Finns?!
after all: the Finns are somewhat Scandinavian:
more Inuit people than...
        
one is a tongue one learned: or, was rather thrown
into learning...
but it's unlike a learning from it being passed on...
no one passed English down to me...
i'm a first generation immigrant...
i learned the tongue in the same time
as my parents learned it...
unlike all those 2nd generation immigrants
who were born in this land
and learned this tongue outside the dynamic
of their parents learning the language:
the only difference being...
i kept the mother tongue, the native, intact...
by refusing my parents' claim that:
if i only spoke English at home,
the English i acquired from being schooled
in the English educational system...
if i forwent me speaking my native tongue
to them: their English would somehow improve...
that they would, somehow, miraculously not have
a foreign accent!
as a child i picked up three majors things...
Catholicism wouldn't take me... i might have been
baptised without my consent...
but i had all the necessary obligations to
give or not give my consent when it came to confirmation:
i haven't been confirmed... i head too many
Gnostic Heresy texts as a teenager...
their idea that somehow i would mistreat my native tongue
in order for them to gain something for it...
like most Pakistani 2nd generation children...
perhaps, maybe... a few slip through the netting...
who still pride themselves on knowing Urdu...
most? with their loss of the mother tongue pick up
their own idiosyncratic accents within the confines
of English: they are literally children robbed
of bilingualism by their parents...

i mastered it and by mastering it found it with
shortcomings that only the tongue i was born
with could expose...

today this alpha looking male sat next to me on the train
and spread his legs... smiling... listening to music...
**** me mate... how much spreading do you need to do?
what i found:
poetry, best read when commuting...
i'm building up a complimentary package for a friend
of mine... she sent me macadamia nut shells
and dried pineapple and honey and...
a feather... i said to her: i will not send you anything
before i compliment a feather you sent me with a feather
of my own... i went cycling two days prior
and: imagine my luck! some magpie... ELSTER...
was either shedding her feathers or was in a fight...
i picked up about half a dozen ELSTERGEFIEDER...
magpie feathers...
on the train... you're better off reading a book
of poems than a newspaper...
the optics are much more clarifying...
none of the claustrophobia and oczopląs
               of a tightly-knitted (printed) column or opinion
paragraph... spread out text...
  poetry books as an alternative to reading newspapers
in transit... that's how i imagine "it"...
once upon a time newspapers were tightly knitted
beyond the scope of the printed paragraph:
it would require the solitudes of Sundays
to sit in calm and quiet and read them...
these days: that tabloid press with headers
and exploding wordings for the newly acquired
people of literacy: the addition of pictures...

nothing new, therefore nothing old...
mein herzenskummer ist was giBt
                   der Sonnenaufgang seine
      rinnsal auf schüchtern farben...
und! unt!
        der Sonnenuntergang seine
    busen-auf-verkörperung:
                auf: das nie vergeht!

                   how easily the displaced spiders...
turn to new architecture of the spider web
should their former and no sooner
than sooner: distraught with the havoc
of a man's quill of fingers having to differentiate
walking into a spider-web confusing it
with: are my eye-lashes camel's now?!

some shifts at work are terrible,
esp. when working with two females...
everything is wrong...
even telling after-work jokes is wrong...
talk of fish fingers... loads of ketchup...
that's wrong too...
top it all of this one is joking about the other
and the other is lesbian
and she has a new girlfriend
and fish-fingers: well... i am a man and i never
equated the smell of ****** with fish...
i know that tadpoles and ****...
but never fish... fish fingers... *******...
ketchup? i joked: that time of the month?
no laughter... no laughter...
if women are joking about their horrid ****
i better not be asked to, ******* joke!

better working with mute men on zombie mode...
i'm already a year behind having my social medial
stalked... sure... they can stalk me when they
figure out my middle name and some Slovak
diacritical markers... not until then...
just because i look silly when ice-skating
and everyone has seen the video doesn't
mean i'll give up my internet presence so easily: so...
i have a project aligning myself to German
so close to my heart i can find it forgiving...
to desire in the heart-of-hearts
to: **** this tongue enough to speak it when drinking!
because i find that Wilhelm was sort of right...
about how Germany was no empire
expect something on the continent
that gobbled up a part of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
because the Germans were an established people
and there was no sailing spirit in them...
after all: one might be inclined to think they
wanted to upkeep the romantic, familial orientation
of Christianity...
but the powers, the colonial powers at be...
whether the French the English or the Spanish...
who does, Christianity belong to, these days?
one might have asked the same question
before Christianity spread to the Nord Lands...
prior to its prior occupation with the Syrians
and North Africans and the Greeks...
Romans as a side joke?
who are the current mass of Christianity if not
the former colonies of the English
the Spanish and the French?
i know of Christians in South America from
the cross being dumped by the Spaniards with
vain hope... vain hope of the French in Africa...
and the English in Africa... and North America...

at least the Germans didn't... spread this...
Christianity might be allocated to about 12 individuals
within the confines of a single generation...
beyond that? money-grabbing money-laundering:
a religion with only the sole focus on LOGOS
while reading up on Zhuangzi you have several
other, dutiful terms to meditate on...
i might have been smitten by Hindu thinking before
being doubly smitten by Taoist dialogues...
one still remains a categorical imperative...
outside the realm of dialogue:
the best way you can help the world is
to help the world forget you and you in turn forget
the world...
obviously i'm doing X and counter-X...
i'm writing... by extension of writing i "want"...
or is that: "i" want to be remembered...
but thinking is no telekinesis nor is speaking
any telepathy...
             i speak... like today... i get this oddity of looks...
first she asks me: oh what should i reply
to my friend... just been to a Hen-do...
strippers? oh sure... there were strippers...
first time married? no... second... so what's the ******* point
of a hen-do? cluck x2 laid eggs x4?!
  
so her friend sends me a photograph of her newly bought
dress... laces... or whatever the ******* call
a would-be reimagined-curtain...
i tell her: she could pull it off... if she was a size 0...
the lace could really add dimension and curves to
a thin body...
to hide the skeleton...
but you know what would work for her?
a meringue dress...
you know the type? a one piece...
cut just above the ***** line...
simple: smoothed over... no patterns...
all the way from the cleavage to the feet...
so then she shows me her wedding dress...
it cost her £130 while her friend paid over £2000...
exactly what i was describing...
she just sent an AWW and tried to deflate the question,
or simply avoid it...
yeah... she looks like a flayed torso...
because... SHE's fat...

           eat all you want and as much (perhaps)
but at least burn it off...
if there's no work in the fields:
then there's no work in the fields...
but there's enough rubber burning on the bicycle
to escape the monotone drudgery of
urban living... as i found today,
upon Hook Lane cycling up to Chigwell Row...
there's no need to eat excessively...
no comfort in all that fat without
a leather chair or enough warm clothing...

treating people as these existential morons:
conceptualizing the non-existence of free-will is one thing,
another: to debrief them: life is without agency...
a choice-less Darwinism where
jelly-fish are somehow automated: sprouts:
well... no other life could or would ever be!
people without free-will is one thing:
the shackles of the dynamic of choice...
one choice sets you free, subsequent choice shackles
and inescapable binary of freedom-no-freedom...
science governing the flip of a coin...
but... people, robbed of any sort of agency?!
of self-authority over themselves:
so, so easily mangled and mishandled leaving
their fate unto... no fate: double sure...
unto others?!
i watched a few horror movies in my lifetime...
none seem as horrifying as this +mundaneness
of the horrible leftover: forgotten...

i must have a Germanic attitude toward these matters...
i was born into the living spirit of the ****** tongue,
the membrane in situ staging the conflict
of Rome vs. Greece...
or Germany vs. Russia...
i see no end to it...
i was born from the Germans trying to burn out
the Jews from "my" lands
while the Russians trying to subdue the flames
all the while...
i was still borne from a history that required
a solitary antagonist...
less so an protagonist of solitude...
either way: i was going to slither my way through...
like water like serpents...
wie wasser wie schlangen...

mein herz bricht aus hungrig flammen
als ich stürzen blind Samson's
already toppled temple
            
i know i that i will not write the sort of beauty
that's poetry that's everything that's
Zbigniew Herbert's
Godly Claudius
the Game of Mr. Cogito
Mr. Cogito observes his face in the Mirror
the Seventh Angel
   (my favourite of the angels listed?
Dedrael - the apologist and cabalist)
   to name but a few of the poems...

it brings such relief that i can't bring such
beauty into this world: perhaps if my mind was
not muddled by the utility of English
and my romance with German -
perhaps but only perhaps:
i don't even know why i started to write poetry:
maybe it was my lowest ebb
psychotic running on steam and pretend
legs between Edinburgh, Glasgow,
London, Dover, Athens, Belgrade,
Katowice...
                    walking into a bookshop buying
a copy of Rumi's verses...
buying Dostoyevsky's the Brothers Karamazov
and, just by chance... Bukowski...
what was so supposedly special and hiding
within the poetry of this man?
absolutely nothing: i was mad enough
to try it then and to keep at it:
not really knowing why...
  
compared to Zbigniew Herbert i write trash:
perhaps i read too much fiction,
even autobiographical prose: prose in general:
i don't know how to shut up the ten mouths
on the tips of my fingers but
i know how i can seem menacing
on a shift at work... hood pulled over my head
leather gloves squeezing each knuckle
asked by the atypical extroverted woman
whether something is wrong...
pulling my hood up, smiling, yet still being
compared to the grim reaper...
jokes aside: someone is counting the time...

a welcome break from Knausgaard...
this little safe-haven of poetry read in transit...
finally! something that's not mine
and not in English!

that's the terrible difference between men and women...
going to the Fulham shift i was sitting
behind three women... i'm guessing two were
newly arrived brides of war from Ukraine
who also picked up a Thai-surprise bride...
birds sound chirpier and more pleasant to talk
to... sitting behind them reading my little poetry
book... with a magpie's feather for a bookmark...
the women talked... about?
photographs... filters... instagram models...
plastic surgeries of people wanting to look
like their photographs...
impossible dreams! dreams of women...
and some womanized-men...
on my way back... same book same bookmark
and a young man sat down next to me...
put on some decent music i could
make out through the headphones...
angled his horizon to look over my shoulder
as to why i was reading a book with so much
open space and so little words...
not any fiction, not some constipated prose
of imaginary conversations...
and i could feel his leg pressing against mine...

perhaps i am not gay but i can't imagine
being friends with a woman...
i truly can't... there's either *** for me: with women...
or there is friendship with men...
with each man i meet i can achieve this
transcendent: otherwise unpackaged will
of subduing and seduction that only a woman
can provide me... but a conversation with a woman
is painful: at least for the majority of times:
there might be a special place for a woman
who might not necessarily:
but is probably older than me and shares
the same sentiments as me...
probably lives far away and thinks that hand-writing
is like exposing herself all naked...
will go out of her way to send me a feather of a bird
from over 3000miles away...

while i will send her a necklace with a single amber
stone on it... or i will send her a crab's pincer with a hole
drilled in it and ask her to buy some leather-string
to have herself a second necklace...

at work Stephanie the supervisor had to make it adamant
for me alone to know that i would be her Alpha...
whatever the hell that meant...
Alpha... well yeah... because i do try to ensure that
everyone is treated fairly...
the Asians boys of Bangladesh and Pakistan caved it...
this work or this cold of England
finally bit them...
     it's an unrewarding work if you don't have
an escape plan, like i do...
i'm always flying to other pursuits outside of this
work... customer service... being polite to people
that might not be polite to you or simply ignore you...
but even my standards i thought they were
taking it too far...
but i made a pact with them...
they took out a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured
out shots... if there's going to be a snitch among
us... it will be the man who does drink...
so when asked if i'd like a shot i replied: why not!
the weather calls for it... whiskey to warm up!
mixer? oh no no... straight!
plus... you can't mix Jack Daniels with Fanta, can you?
a few new colts were bullied into peer pressure
of silence, asked if they wanted a drink: said no...
me? i had a drink... i'm not snitching...
well i did when Stephanie was coming round
when i just said: nothing about the drinking...
but if there are 7 of us standing in one place...
but i'm the only one giving any customer service
by giving directions and good-evenings while
they're just standing talking to each other,
having a good time? apparently some people still
can't internalise being drunk for their own
self-amusement, drinking is somehow: getting together...
clearly these boys haven't been alone
and drank a litre of whiskey each and every single
night for months on end...

what really bugged me is when they took out a spliff
and smoked it between the four of them...
even as the customers were coming to see
Tottenham beat Fulham 1 - nil...
oh for ****'s sake... it's one thing having a cheeky sip of
whiskey on a cold day to warm up...
but to also smoke marijuana on a shift?
in full view and easily scented air of winter
before customers?
these guys don't want this ****** job...
thank god none of them are either bus drivers
or train drivers or plumbers for that matter!
maybe doctors who forgot to take out a pair of
scissors from a patient's body when
the patient is getting stitched up?

the worst i ever did was drink the night before
and sobered up on my way to work...
ah... not to mention that one time this
girl tried to scout her paranoia from prior relationships
with abusive alcoholic boyfriends onto me:
a man she just met... pampered with an array
of chemicals whether that be a cologne or this alcohol
containing face spray...
who i later tried to sooth by bringing her my homemade
weisserwein... cloudy... like any weisserbier...
chirpsin'... 3 way conversation conspiracies...
until the lie stood on dwarf's legs rather than stilts...
and to think: no i wasn't thinking seriously about
getting into a relationship with her...
she tried to get me fired for "apparently" drinking
on the job! a person she just me...
neurotic ******* *****... it's good that i showed her
what she would never, ever... get...

the difference between men and women...
the shift finished... prior to finishing we already knew
that there was some major ****-up on the tube...
the signals went down...
no Circle line, no Hammersmith & city services...
no services on the District line
from East Ham to Earls Court...
ergo? you'd think there might be a northbound
service to Edgware Rd. from Putney Bridge...
nope... Earls Court is a 4 x 4 junction...
sure... there was the southbound service
from Putney Bridge to Wimbledon...
and whatever service that's a station after
Earls court toward Richmond and Ealing Broadway...
as i'm guessing from Upminster to East Ham
and from one station after Earls Court
to Edgware Rd....
this girl was supposed to come with me
to Stepney Bridge from either Romford or Chadwell
Heath for the shift...
i was 15 minutes late because i felt like getting some
tea and an almond croissant...
she was? an hour late...
by the end of the shift when the transport invonvenience
was building up we went for our debrief
and she was all irritated in the eyes
when she wanted to get an Uber to Hammersmith
or whether it was she thought about going
without telling me: where that would cost her £50+
quid...
                  so when i told her...
i'm not going down the Putney High Street rail connection
because: (a) look at the ******* congestion
of the crowd and (b) i don't need to go to *******
Waterloo because that's ******* south of the river...

mmm hmm mmm... what, should we do?
i told you... i'm either walking or getting the bus 220
to Hammersmith...
debriefing over: she stayed behind for banter
and all the things that hinder an extrovert,
esp. a female extrovert... un-decisive, fatalist,
everything just ******* happens by some whisper
from astrology...
    Aquarius said to Libra that the waters were
about to spill... i ****** off from the stadium
like a hart... shook hands with the managers
thank you goodnight... as i was walking out
toward Hammersmith some young stewards were
shuffling really quickly it all looked very much like
they might be scratching vinyl...
i asked... you heading to Hammersmith?
yes yes... see! that's i like to see!
male to male camaraderie...
we have this unconscious motif of: from *****
you came to ***** you shall return...
it's a bit senseless to go to war these days...
less senseless when you're trying to get from
point A to point B...
there was about 40 of us running for the bus...
amongst us? 1 woman...
***** AHOY!
   obviously i left this girl behind...
her other option was asking one of the managers
to giver her a lift... ******* free-loader...
by the time the manager would have clocked out
all the other parties i would have wasted an hour...
just to get a lift... and then what?
stranded with her? even though we weren't going
to the same point B?
   i left with the *****-mentality... happy too:
because i could read my poetry book in the prized
possession of solitude... and no solitude...
because given the hour... something freakish was
bound to happen on the train or tube...
and it did... some proper English boys talking about
not wanting to take a nightcap in Romford heading
all the way to Shenfield joked when this guy started running
down the train carriage...
and those SKANKS so drunk who were blocking
the doors: subsequently delaying us
subsequently not catching their train blah blah...

well... just as today happened: talking so freely to men,
boys, young men, first point of "concern" / conversation?
establishing "taboos" or habits...
you smoke? you drink? first time you got drunk...
when did you start smoking marijuana first?
and then a natural progression into...
so... what music do you like... just... so naturally?
with women? even with Francesca,
this butcher boy of a lesbian...
it's a cul de sac sort of conversation...
she only talks about herself,
even today i received a text from her...
i broke up with Natalie... broke up i.e. she met her
on Tinder... she stayed round her house
for three nights... Natalie made her lunch for
work one time... cooked dinner another time...
4 days and nights they dated... already broke up...
there you go... Tinder-dating-shoplifting hearts...
window-shopping romances...

free market capitalism? sure... but not when
capitalism overstretches its influence
and we're worse off than the despairing existentialist:
PHILOSOPHERS of the 19th... the precurosor
fabric... i'd say the 20th century existentialist
philosophers had it easier...
but anyone in the 21st century, thinking, even remotely:
would be hard pressed not to express something
of substance bugging all of us:
no great war, no great upheaval,
proxy wars, the Thespian dictatorship over all
the other arts (with the exception of pop music, perhaps)
and the journalistic juggernaut of the quickened
availability of almost anything and nothing...
the free market of capitalism having invested
in creating this... Frankenstein in pieces...
this IKEA ******* LEGO model of a Frankenstein:
but at least Frankenstein bothered to construct
the entire monster rather than creating this
shattered Pandora's box... left in pieces and in
some realisation of a Copernican West...
in a Copernican East... Copernican "west"?
there's a "west" without a setting sun?!
up in outer space?
                         capitalism all fine and dandy:
but not outside the realm of a couple worrying about
how many kettle and toasters sets they will
have to buy during the year or even the wardrobe
needs revisions, or whether it might be worthwile
to change the wallpaper in the living room,
or what movie to watch on a date night at the cinema...
all of that is gone when the free market made
us profile ourselves... with some of us being pushed
so far as to fake cubist like pictures of ourselves
and subsequently implement plastic surgery to
double-fake ourselves...

the shrapnel-shelving-of-self...
it's like people are a library with no alphabetical order:
free market on psychology, morphed beyond
any concern for dreams: if there were any
as the luxury of the Freudian rich...
this... what happened to historiology in the modern
sense as stressed by Heidegger?
a study of history of the people by the people
or at least by individuals... morphed into this grotesque
pop psychology: archeological mapping back
to the primordial Pharisee of Ape and Aping...
farce: Darwin's Curtain of History...
   will we ever remember the beauties and horrors
of centuries from the 16th to the 19th?
no... everything of said years is nil: null...
because the ape's origins quickly morphed into
the man hunched over a microwave adamant in his
belief that... the carbon footprint of producing
a kilogram of chicken meat somehow, somehow would
"save the planet" than producing a kilogram
of tomatoes... given that a kilogram of tomatoes would
only yield a fraction of the necessary calories
than a kilogram of meat... and still the growing
of one kilogram of chicken would cost the planet
less than growing a kilogram of tomatoes...
who needs tomatoes in winter?!
eat, your, ******* root vegetables! carrots boyo! carrots!
but chickens don't need solar energy, nor suntans,
nor greenhouses... chickens cluck just as much
in winter as in summer... and eggs are a year round
product... plus you only need a barn in winter
to keep chicken!
tomatoes rot... chickens? they grow old and die...
until they grow old they still produce eggs...
and when they die? you eat them...
you can't exactly call a chicken rotten if it isn't already
days X already dead, can you?
it might not be as fresh... but...
ugh... no wonder

Zbigniew Herbert: from mythology (of Rome) -

   in the end only the superstitious
neurasthenics carried in their pocket a little figurine
made from salt, resembling the god of irony;
since then there wasn't a greater god.

then the barbarians came, they too greatly prized
the idol of irony.
           they pounded it with their heels and sprinkled
it into their dishes.

no clay-monster of the Levant can intimidate
me now!
not armed with these words:
let us witness the great divorce of man from woman!
let us watch!
pray... let us be brothers and friends and
secretly wishing we were lovers:
in the thinning air... let us talk about the strange
glow above the Thames hanging over Kew Gardens
as if: as i said to him:
as if the sunset still claiming an eye
in the night...
      what woman? what woman could i share
this romantic conversation with?
my interaction with women is so blatant so cold
so forced to claim the male in me and the woman
in her that it's only ******...
oh sure... i was going to the brothel...
but i was coming home already late...
i had two pairs of socks on, drawers, trousers...
a tank-top a shirt gloves and a thick coat...
by the time i would get out of all those layers
and have a quick shower...
half an hour i would have paid for would have become
nothing more than 15 minutes...
not enough time to get a hard-on
of being in the mood...
i already had more than ***...
a conversation... and no woman has yet to actually
provide me with one...
perhaps we are not in the trenches...
but men have always managed without women...
for as long as time knows...

a shift prior... at West Ham... ******* guy with a bald
head and a face as endearing as a plump baby
we great with a handshake that turns into
a thumb against thumb contest and a hug
tells me that i should come and find him at Cavern Cottage
and he'll sort me out with some free food...
hey presto i go and find him
i get a free steak and ale pie...
i know it's a one off...
    we already get discounts for burgers from the burger
van... but it's nice to give a reminder when
being invited...

     we do our rounds in the park...
among the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshi who at first
thought i was British when asked:
oh no... i'm not British... an Anglo-Slav at best...
from that lineage of Anglo-Saxons...
the Saxons who came among post-Rome rule
Britain and mingled or not mingled
with the local Celtic and Welsh and Britton populace...
i'm the second wave that didn't make it
because the British Empire collapsed
and the eastern Europeans were not too dearly minded
in the history of the British Empire...
but they know that i'm from Poland
so when asked: where are you from? there...
and "there"... but i've been living here since i was
7 so there's no "born and bred" argumentation
with me and those in your ethnic stratum
concerning any anti-Pakistani villification
of those in the "upper-castes"... blah blah...
they know... while the three of us walked around
this 40 year old Yugoslav woman
who escaped the Yugoslavian collapse of
circa 1992... starts talking as i switch her around
so she can have a walk with us to warm up her legs
from standing stiff still...
where are you from? oh... here...
i'm not going to tell her what i told the boys...
not after she deflects my attraction to her
by paying more attention to the Pakistani boy
of 20... i'm closer to her age...
but... then she does this sick thing of asking
me to hold her empty cups of tea that
have an unused teabag in it and some dried milk...
oh... right? i'm going to be your waiting boy?

******* testing women... this woman is past her prime...
i know it she thinks she can "test" my patience
by me being her ******* pet-shop-boy?!
fine! fine...
the more and more i talk to women
the more i find them diametrically opposed
to any sort of psychologically asexual universalism of:
ecce ****...
                 women have: and will have to...
sexualize everything from Aristotle to Zeno...
there was once a maybe female version of Aristotle if
only the: give me the drill... i need a bigger hole to see through:
these eyes aren't large enough...
if only there wasn't an oppressive patriarchy...
the oppressive "patriarchy" of autistic geniuses?!
oh... that one... the sort of men cowering
from female sexuality?
  wow! how oppressive!
                    magnificently oppressive!
we all should be so magnificently oppressed by the man
who discovered the wheel by meditating
the O(micron) - what came first?
the wheel or the omega, or was it the sun?
if Prometheus brought down fire... by teaching man
that scratching flint against flint could illuminate
the cave and give man a second womb of poison-fire...
before the forests turned to ash...
before Pompeii's negative of a whiplash of history...

i tried loving women... i loved them for:
the many months i would rather not use
the fingers of both my hands for...
    absolutely un-relate-able creatures...
what *** beside that of female would whisper in
man's heart to leave their minds without
reason to stage the Trojan War
                        or bring architecture to kneel:
like Xerxes: but the madness of Xerxes was rather
beautiful wanting to lash the Aegean into submission
rather than that little Pharaoh ***** who might
have said: best to chisel down a rock face
and glue together sand with egg-whites and spit
into bricks and polish up a craggy mountain:
lest we forget: from a lineage of a people
that once said: let us "reinterpret" the mountains!
pyramids...
                at least the South American tribes invented
the pyramid as an altar... not a tomb...
but we're no smarter than they were dumber:
the myopic-vision strategy of the vantage point
of: what came prior... with hindsight...
but hindsight only works in reverse...
the unmistakeably irreversible past
within the confines of the motto: the terrible
has already happened!
  
                       and some variation of the historically
terrible isn't already happening,
on some microscopic level?
                           not if / not yet?!
                                             hardly...

poetry is air and not the prose of water...
i am stranded between wanting to breathe air
and at the same time more in need to drink water:
no wonder i cannot rest with merely breathing air...
if only i were to breathe air and leave my efforts
with so much nuance as to allow others to breathe
the same air... alas i am like that saying of Heraclitus...
i'll pour you a glass of water
i have prior to drank... leave it for you to drink a day
later: it will not be the same water that i have drank...
i wish i could write like these words might be air...
but it's... aqua post scriptum et plus aqua
post scriptum ad fluenta...

                    verschließen dein augen:
    sehen wieder... immer wieder:
                               bis: es gibt
                             nicht freude:
noch aufschub träumen...
                              kalt silber-rasierer
                                 schneiden auf
mondklären... nacht als auch wirklichkeitstoff.
I wish I could wake up
In a display case

No wood but my
Limbs
Nothing wet but my
Paint
Flawless
Smooth Razor-******

No searching
For caverns
To plunder
No caves to protect
From thieves
Gone asunder

I wish my canvas was blank
Androgynous beauty
A creation of
Choice

But I think I used to have a voice

Characters danced in my esophagus
And played my cords
Like a
Cello

They shouted on a
Page
And longed for the
Stage

But struggled against
My front
Teeth

After years of neglect,
Too cruel to forget
And too torturous again
To repeat

They forwent their "adieus"
But muttered "**** yous"
As they went to turn tricks
Down the street

— The End —