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I was told in secondary school
"Keep moving your goalposts"
At college, my goalposts moved too much.
So I gave my goalpost my sister's ADD medication.
My goalposts stopped moving altogether.
As I dressed in black for my goalpost's funeral, I thought to myself:
"have I won yet?"
you do not know me
i stand aloof
the sea of life swirls round me
i do not speak
i wish to speak its true
but all thoughts flow inward
absorbed and stored
i do not know the form
to flow them out again

from time to time i am struck
by a random object
an accusation
a missile aimed in passion
an idea
a plea
they are all as one to me
i am what i am
without intention
i stand mute
and deflect what i cannot hold
and yet
i have untold power
why?

because i stand
and do not bend
do not judge
do not wonder
do not mock
and am not swayed by prayers
i love only the sun which warms
and the rain which cleanses
tears do not move me
it is easier this way
i like the wind
music is pleasant
quiet is peaceful
life is good
sky
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2023
that depiction of  a scene in Marie-Antoinette...
between
Louis-Stanislas, Comte de Provence -
brother to Louis XVI...
    who would become Louis XVIII
and his wife...
        Princess Maria Giuseppina of Savoy...
where she nagging him to provide
her with a child to stop pestering him
from doing... whatever it was that he was
doing... him remarking...
get your ugly face out of my moon light!

whether it is true via a fictional depiction:
never mind that!
i can trace back to the scene where
both of them are lying in bed
and he's trying to get a *******:
god, that face, there is nothing worse
than an ugly smile on a woman
and i have seen some ugly smiles on women:
beautiful women with ugly smiles...
ugly women with very beautiful
smiles, the paradox...

so he's jerking off while she interrupts
him implying: a man beating a dead horse...
checks under the cover:
well... a dead mouse...
woman's violence thus worded...
subtle, cunning, satanic -
grown-women and the supposed forever-infantile
state of man's mind:
to hunt, to explore to merely exist
by the sustenance of thought alone...
well... she did arrive from Savoy:
which i finally found out was part of Italy
with a Frida Kahlo monobrow and
a 9am moustache shadow beneath her nose...
***-fluff... well... no wonder:
i don't expect Elizabeth I of England
was much to look at...
    perhaps if Picasso hid her in his cubistic
monstrosities of fake-geometry handling...

in which direction?
only last Sunday... what a shift!
i was escorting about 8 police officers
to these two disgruntled women...
woman and daughter...
apparently these two "gangsters" were
threatening them... threatened them with knives...
with balaclava gang-members coming
to the ice-rink to "sort them out"...
something was fishy...
the daughter looked alright...
almost perfect physiognomy...
but the mother's ears... wonky...
i'd be more proud to have the ears of a rugby
player than those ears...
myopic... sickly looking...

me and the police officers managed to find them
bring them down for questioning /
give incident reports...

prior to these two gangsters, "gangsters"
came up to me asking: 'are you the security guard?'
yup... they started chatting to me
before the two women launched at me
with criteria unheard of...
i'm final on this point...
women to me are semi-solipsistic...
they don't even know it...
they don't know it when they wear a mask
of pretending but as quick as honestly
comes unapologetic and demands
impartial equilibration of getting to know
the situation: the mask... sort of... slips...
a lying woman is hardly an architect...
there's only the initial shock of a lie that
she figures will pass-on and through
and will be believed when she makes
a sloppy second stab on any given matter
in the vicinity of the original (lie)...

      this duo should have been ashamed!
truly! a mother and daughter double act
is the worst kind... a father could never persuade
a son to follow suit... but a mother can always
(seemingly) persuade her daughter to replicate
terrible behaviour...

in this instance? the "gangsters"...
when the police officers were questioning the women
i went up back to the ice rink to pick them out...
they were sitting in the polar opposite location
to the women...
"gangsters"...
      as i extended my index finger and asked
them to come with me downstairs
(tugging at an invisible fish-line)
i told them they were not in trouble...
the worst that might happen to them was...
they might get a free police escort home...
a free ride home...
names? Freddie and Georgie...

      turns out these "gangsters" were two
13 year old boys... 13 they said: they looked more
like 8... then again... at least one came from
a single-mother household and had
two older brothers and a younger sister...
under-nourished kid... i looked 13 when i was
8 looking at them...

the women were questioned giving fictional
statements: most probably...
i just sat down with Freddie and Georgie
and talked... this, that... and the other...
Georgie was named Georgie because he was
born on St. George's Day...
Freddie? that's short for Fredrick...
my "supervisor" interrupted me:
no! no one calls their children Fredrick...
it's Freddie...
then Freddie jumped in: i'm sometimes called
Frederico! hey presto!
that's not Friedrich... it's Frederick in Spanish...

huh? what's this? English language trying
to attempt the diminutive form of endearment
by shortening a person's name?
Fredrick becomes Freddie...
Edith becomes Edie...
Matthew becomes Matt
Peter becomes Pete
Samuel becomes Sam
Alexander becomes Alex?!
that's not a diminutive form... nor is it some
variation of endearment that diminutive form
exacts...

zdrobnienie...
        and if this supposed "diminutive" exists
in English... English is too rigid in its form of words...
attache of suffixes -less and -ness and -lessness...
as if something is missing rather than merely shrunk...

in ****** it's thoroughly apparent among nouns,
not merely in given names of people...
e.g. it's not simply Matthew becomes Matt...
i.e. where's the door, door prior...
to wipe my shoes on, i.e. the doormat?
it's ugly! it's horribly self-assured in faking
the diminutive approach...

spread across all, ALL nouns...
sun: słońce
little sun: słoneczko
river: rzeka
little river: rzeczka...

oh! ah ha ha! today i heard the car manufacturer
correct its pronunciation of a letter...
the Czech manufacturer SKODA
actually bothered to stress the Jan Huss'
demand for caron (crown) atop the S...
i actually heard SHKODA...
            crown in Czech... a rugby goalpost
in English... one arm of the Tetragrammaton...
otherwise a: H = Z in ******...
  ŠKODA = szkoda (pity) = oh well...
  oh well = pity... oh well ≠ oops...

and what has English to give "us" when it comes
to the diminutive form? ugliness...
ugliness of names...
Frankie, this lesbian coworker of mine
who, oddly enough has a child... a daughter:
so she wasn't a lesbian all along...
but now she's a butch lesbian...
muscular, i asked her how long it took her to
get a six-pack... 3 months...
she's looking for a gym-rat buddy...
she was thinking of me...
a mohawk haircut... not terribly attractive...
but... what, a, gorgeous, smile!
my "supervisor" giggled about gay-conversion
therapy with her...
Frankie = Francesca... now... correct me if i'm wrong...
Francesca sounds ace of spades ****...
Frankie... gender-neutral is...
like the rest of a gender-neutral world-view...
thing thing thing thing thing thing thing nothing
nothing thing thing thing thing thing thing
anemia
thing thing thing thing anemic thing(s): nothing
thing cube *** asexuality thing thing thing
black thing thing thing thing white thing thing
thing, thing thing thing, nothing, thinking thing
thinking nothing (god); thing thing thing -
but that's English for you... other European
languages have the masculine and the feminine
form... you couldn't get away with transgenderism
in any other language: except for English...
the grammar allows for this phenomenon to take
place! thing thing thing thing...
i know that the French would agree with me...
the Moon is male... the Sun is female...
in English there's a forced-vagueness associated
with gendering "things"... nouns...
loosely, borrowing from Latin:
Luna is a girl's name... alias of the Moon...
and Sol is a boy's name... alias of the Sun...

    the words themselves have a trickle of hope
for gendering objects according to ***...
the Moon in the English instance is a male...
even though he was given a female name prior
and the Sun is a female even though she was
given a male name prior, prior id est in Latin...

i don't think it's enough to simply speak a language:
a parrot can speak a language of human "concerns"
if the precursor of women talking all giddy to an AI
chat bot in the form of SIRI is anything to go by
the engineers must have thought of a parrot...
Hello Polly... Polly wants a *******...
that's how the advent of "intelligence" probably
emerged: simulation of the marriage of
a parrot and an echo...

        it's not enough to speak a language...
there's more to language than simply speaking it:
there's also the aspect of: knowing it...
digging trenches... i don't want to require of myself
to know the grammatical-categorical beside
the clarifying distinctions of what a noun is:
what a verb is... adverb... but then i gloss over
and forget the categorisation of words...
i know what a locksmith knows:
I = key
      O = keyhole
        Φ = I + O = i put a key into a keyhole
i turn the key:
                  I + / + O = Θ
upon turning the key the door U opens:
  Ψ! whether that's Poseidon's trident
or whether that's what psychologists
of today spew: the non-existence of god
and the self: "self" riddled by some
variation of Damocleses' sword...
      authority of thought within the confines
of: ought-i?!

      i walk through... i doubt i will have any serious
readers in this language...
it will take me... at least a bout of gangrene
of blue mingling with green and gold
to arrive at my resting plateau of hope that's
Paris... my love for Paris...
my love of being a stupid 18 year old...
  
wouldn't you believe: i think it was forever a
stupid affair to translate Finnegans Wake into
any language beside the original:
which is literally not so much original as:
originally muddled... since how many languages
are borrowed?

i sat with the "gangsters" until the end: beginning
of their ordeal... i too was given the police-taxi
back home once upon a time...
but then again that time i was given a free-ride
home... some clever ****** thought it was absolutely
necessary that i get alcohol poisoning
in a Seven King's nightclub by the roundabout...
with the floor... sickly sweet covered by carpets...
warm ***** and orange juice... ugh...
i stepped off the bus and collapsed
onto the pavement... i was woken up by
a helpless bystander and a police-officer...
subsequently taken home in a cage...

shameless women... mother & daughter...
but here i was, the "security guard"... trying to explain
to the boys: i know its not fair...
i know... i know... the women will be believed first...
Sally Challen - walked free after killing her
"abusive" husband with a hammer-blow
to the head... i wish Richard (Challen)
was bitten by a hammerhead shark...
  i truly do...
        at least the shark would have been hungry...
**** knows what Sally's inferno of thinking
conjured up prior... it's hardly decent to believe
women... these days... i'd rather play a poker
face gambit on the truthfulness of children...
at least with children there's no ****** inference
bias up to... well... that "bias" ends once they
(the girls) enter a medieval plump *** distinction...
14... maybe 13...
          
      confirmed though...
  once the boys were sent home this other woman
approached me and my "supervisor" and mentioned
an ongoing scenario with the "inbreds"...
a female ******* ring? hmm... maybe...
      Freddie! i know it's unfair... i know...
ladies first... i know she has chicken-nugget looking
ears... she looks like she was born from
a lust of her uncle for her mother and yet
her daughter is some random quickie-fix
while she banked on pure luck... i know, i know...
i'll sit this one out with you...

Frankie in the meantime was planning a date with her
new found ****-loves-**** relationship...
her girlfriend from... near Oxford(?)
was supposed to come down to see the ice hockey match...
already booked a room in the hotel...
but then apparently the girlfriend's car started leaking oil...
so Frankie was left walking alone to an alone-hotel-room
while the gay-conversion jokes rained...
butch *****: but a smile that could melt
any ****-disciple...
              i said my bye-byes and pretended to go home,
early...
did i? nope..

i decided to test my limp-biscuit "problem"...
i went to the brothel...
who was available? only one... the girl with the first
letter: L... not Linda...
i asked for her description: the blonde one...
ah... that one... the one that thinks she ultra-SPAZ
SPACE-X "special"... i'm spezial *** too!
the one into body augmentation...
first her **** wouldn't fit... too small...
prior to the first: 0... i.e. her lips weren't purse enough...
pout not enough bloom of a baboon's ***...
fine fine...

oh i hate pretending to be a Catholic priest
in a brothel... do i have a rubber ear or something?
are these confessions?!
i must be a Catholic priest of sorts: of imitation....
do you know a Catholic "priest"
that doesn't ask for a confession from a *******
after she performs oral *** on him...
and subsequently spews all that "life is crap"
*******?
      last time i heard Catholic priests were ferocious
anti-*** pro-*** with the choir boys...
one **** in one ear one **** out the other...
there are at least three avenues of the "tested"
woman... the vaginal approach...
the **** and the oral... hey presto! your *******
"trinity"... i'm not going to stop *******:
what i didn't receive in my glorified youth
i will not spare in my old age...
beat the child who discovered self-pleasuring
aged 8... before the production of *****
with what he said: "that funny sensation":
not, NOT: feeling... sensation... the tingling
of the choir of Eunuchs...
before the production of ***** arrived...
to squirt...

i write in English... i might have English readers...
me? i'm waiting for French translators...
i don't care one iota over a fabric of fractions
of I/O = an iota over a omicron:
joke in Latin: what's an Ψ without an iota?
an Upsilon or an Omega?
watch the curvatures...
and the sinking ship of a ship that was
never supposed to sail... Ω + I = bow down...
exfoliate: psychology:
logic of soul & the non-existence of god
or soul...
Enlightenment? Renaissance or:
Re-convalescence?
                oh... right... right... this be the first?
the times of the first illness of
post-colonial capitalistic restructuring having
defeated the "ancient" enemy of the communist
harpie-up: rouse-down...
    
solo-project "detail-lost detail-friendly"
advertisements... must be a island-dwelling folk
"thing"... hence the persistent writing of English history:
the Norman invasion: must be celebrated!
the Anglo-Saxon lineage must be celebrated!
via pity, pillage, **** and... unwanted women!
i don't want to mingle with these native women!
i'm here like a kindred hope of:
sending a postcard from Hawaii...
thinking about a beauty from Grenoble...
while at the same time having a burning effigy
of a girl from St. Petersburg...
but rather succumbing to the magnet of a pair
of eyes from the Carpathian region of Moldova...

me? i just landed the prize of writing within the confines
of the Medieval version of the Lingua Franca...
English is the language of commerce...
i know it tries to: in vain... to be this insomnia tongue
of the former British Empire...
spoken "elsewhere": everywhere...
but no... pockets of resistance...
Kashmir... teach those sieving through
poppy-mud the artefacts of Braille in Arabic
concerning the region having giving
Alexander the Great the grand limp **** of
a sword with a sheaf of Afghanistan...
how those men must have loved those women...
terribly not surprised that i don't love
those in my vicinity...

                expandable in times of war...
now? expandable in times of peace...
                if not turning one's bright cheeks for
some **** slapping: turning into a quasi-celibate monster
listening to prostitutes telling me of their woes...
thanking me for listening to them...
with L: her ******* done, her lips done...
next? her liposuction belly and arms...
not the effort of exercise in sight...
the quickie monstrosity...
then her teeth: i showed her my clearly aligned teeth
like the stampede of the Polish-Lithuanian
hussars before the siege of Vienna...
      smile: clearly aligned constellation of stars...

two women in the past have revealed dreams about
me they had that came true:
Ilona - she actually sketched it...
and showed it to me...
i was standing in a Judas' pose with my back turned
before her kneeling: arms outstretched
as if to be crucified...
long hair... naked upper body...
holding a sword in my right hand:
that's before the Russian invasion
    of Ukraine... before i wandered into the forest
and found my Cossack shashka...

another dream: displaying photographs of girls
before Danielle... apparently i was happy...
that last email i received from Danielle was
almost 7 years ago...
i think i'll send her a reply...
          
          it might be almost a decade apart...
compliment? hardly...
          but i guess that's how we always were:
why oh why Disney took the reins on
the imagination of youngsters and not
something from Studio Ghibli...
  America is decadent: pederastic...
America was a borrowed civilisation:
hence? its short-lived stature of a status of
faking civilisation: via: "culture"...
its culture is parasitic...
          America has no civilisational focus...
its an extension of Europe...
in times when Europe doesn't appreciate
"said" extensions...
China is a civilisation...
Russia and India are civilisations...
America is a culture...
it's not a civilisation...
              
          America is a culture-state
whereas China is a civilisation-state...
power-hungry-mongrels... god help us if they become
fiendish pseudo-Mongols!
America would require for Europe to
disappear: and for that to be the case:
it must... Europe must burden itself
with an ethnic anemia for America
for "become" a civilisation...
      
              whatever the "Jew" failed to employ
in his exile in Europe will not:
doubly will not achieve in North America...
Marcus Garvey or H. P. Lovecraft bedbug-love-buddies
aligned...
              struck by the wave of heightened:
wow! the Arabs joked about Moses and the 40
years in the desert... no wonder the camel-jockeys
never left... waiting for dragons of myth
to turn into dinosaur sludge post-locomotive
crescendo of wealth!

      my ***** your ***** anyone's AI bore...
that's globalism: the free-market free-world
enterprise... except for:
what's outside the realm of orbits...
in the vacuum: in the unknown:
clearly now known:
there are foundations: there are restrictions...
there are forests worth of the impaled that
suffered worse fates than the "supposed"
ultimatums of gods unto men with those
that were crucified... please! spare me!

boo! who?! boo! who?!
i might write in English...
but i'm not English...
i'm not exactly happy about an English speaking
audience... i'm waiting for the translators...
i'll be dead before my wishes come
true...and all the better... given
the climate of the currency of these times:
i.e. wasting each and each other's time...
while solidifying an abstraction
of prisoner enactment of "safe" space!
bah!

oh woo woo... quote me a sea that didn't woo
a river into its basin of:
the challenge of horizon:
how does the water of the sea disparage itself
from the water of the river:
and: with those floating cauliflowers of
clouds... allow for the reign of rain
to come and give man of the land
the beauty of spring and the harvest of summer
and of autumn... and the melancholy of
the darkened nights of winter
where the libido is so frail?
Harry Roberts Aug 2018
The Sun Shining Fully We're Dust-Death-Dreadfully,

Sigh It Fitfully The Bully Spitefully,

Switched On The GoalPost I'm ****** Rightfully,

Righteously ******* Up I Flee Frightfully.


Butterfly Baby Still Stuck In The Womb,

Cocoon Can't Break Out Off (.) Life Caught Me To Soon,

Sense Clicks Off (.) Before You Hit Noon,

Chaos In Threads So It's Tangled The Loom.


Words Scream From Paper The Letters Spell Doom,

Written On Walls But You're Stuck In The Room.
Harry Roberts - The Room © 08/08/18
Kurt Philip Behm Feb 2021
To what extent
is reality persuadable

Are the fence posts in concrete,
the commas unknown

Are the laws of existence
as such, redefinable

The axioms fluid
—truth more than is shown

(Dreamsleep: February, 2021)
Eryri Jan 2019
Friends with Star Wars figures
And friends with football stickers.
Friends with bikes,
Friends with footballs;
The road was Wembley,
The neighbours' van our goalpost,
No one seemed to care
That their cars were being trashed
By wayward shots and way-off volleys
Or their lawns were being wrecked
By 10 year olds with football studs
Crossing themselves à la Maradona
Before vital penalties.
Happy days indeed,
Playing Block,
Headers and Volleys,
Sixty Seconds,
Laughing, smiling, laughing.
But that same estate,
Thirty years hence,
Is clogged with cars,
No room for makeshift crossbars
To help nurture future soccer stars!
Lawns are tarmacked drives.
Children forced into sedentary lives
Not by social media or XBox Live
But by lack of playing spaces.
So, no more cycle races,
Or street-football with undone laces,
Just kids with nowhere to play
And no power with which to sway
Those ignorant adults who simply say
"Kids today, eh? Too lazy to play".
The race

Yes, yes I see it coming around the corner
we see the goalpost and the run becomes
a slow walk, those in electric wheelchairs
pretend the battery is flat this is a race
no one wants to win, but the wheelchair
bound are pushed forward by the crowd
those who have not seen the goalpost.
this isn't fair I have always been a loser
why should I be the first to the finishing line?
As a boy I won a bronze medal, was proud
of my feat, this time I don't want a medal
let me rest and see the almond tree flower.
Zane Feb 2021
often i am plagued with sudden perspective shifts into realisations of my poor behaviour
in this change I drearily daydream of a sudden departure from all those who surround me
off on a personal journey of self betterment
a transformation into a far more admirable human
far and away from the impulsivity and naïvete of my current existence
for i have always felt subtle change shocks none.

how precisely this metamorphosis occurs I haven't yet learnt
yet the final goalpost is clear
I return to collective awe from my friends
the weight of my poor eating habits gone
the doubt that choked me replaced with confidence and self assurance
and a burning heart ready to set the world on fire with its unapologetic love.

but as I rub my eyes and awaken from this vision
comes the bleak fact of where I am.
the starting point I always have knelt at, ready to bolt out of the gates
sans the knowledge of how to arrive at the end
perhaps this time I'll shed my gung-** nature first
and i will choose to carefully walk to my destination.
Sue Collins Aug 2019
Love is that heartbeat that quickens to a roar and then slows to a comfortable, affordable compromise.
Hate is burning white and pure with vengeful conceit and the will to smash something to smithereens.

Religion is the need to belong, the desire to ignore mortality, the comfort in community and its restrictions.
Atheism is that cold sweat in the night, the reclusive hideout, the dark vision of humanity cruising toward its end.

Noise is what we crave as proof of our existence. Music, chatter, drilling, birds,  the couple screaming next door.
Silence has no echo. It makes us feel small. We turn inward and feed on ourselves. A remedy or a curse.

Freedom is a welcome mirage, a nod to our participation in an already stacked deck of cards. But we persist.
Suppression from within or without is the human condition writ large. Players on the stage, if I may be so bold.

Life comes cheap, handed to us without our permission. Moving from one goalpost to the next, suffering and exalted.
Death is a conception beyond our perception. It is an unsparing one-way trip without a backward glance or a goodbye.

Good and bad. Black and white. Who’s to say? It’s a poet’s decision.
Take the trip, pratfalls and all. Passion is the driver for all ordained passengers.
Throw the goalpost across the ******* moon
You'll never live to see the day
When what you know is true
Like all you scattered many thoughts
But only one came through
No one knows what you want, not even you
You're so afraid to choose you'd wish nobody would
And everybody would just play along
Easy going in the easy world
For people like you
Well what do you know
What we show you
You don't want to see
What we say to you
You pretend you never heard
Life is a race against yourself
And you came third
Then you went to sleep in a simple utopia
And you never dreamt again
We laugh about monkey jobs but try to hire a chimp as a cashier and he'll ******* up
Eryri Oct 2019
I'm coming to terms with my age:
Memories are the captives of Time,
Nostalgia is but a hazy, rose tinted wallow of the mind,
And no matter how tightly shut my eyes,
I'm never really back on my childhood street,
With the ever-present puddle,
The goalpost van,
My friends and our stupid siblings.
No, those times are lost to time.
But lost is fine,
They're out there, somewhere,
Unanchored and adrift,
And I can live with that...now.
They ordered velocity at the top of the list,
Pure speed the most high of achievements.
She was young, a famed prodigy
But her talents were no longer relevant
When her limbs lengthened
And her skin began to lose definition
For who wants anyone ordinary?
If only you can race to the goalpost,
swing your flag, and keep running
Quick, quick, because time
And other’s disappointment
Is chasing at your feet.
But when that day finally comes
Where you can no longer continue

At that break-neck speed,
And people cease
To acknowledge your feats,
Will there be anything left
In you to keep striving?
Or have you burned out too quickly?
Ryan O'Leary Dec 2020
.                         H


There is a goalpost in the English
    alphabet which has historically
posed a great challenge to the Irish.

Try as they will, but they can never
actually succeed in the conversion,
  even from the turty tree yard line.

— The End —