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Mateuš Conrad May 2022
the day's almost finished and i'm sitting with a glass
of a whiskey and pepsi: sharpshooter...
   what's a sharpshooter? three parts whiskey
one part pepsi... that's called a sharpshooter...
by that i mean: the alcohol will not creep up on me
esp. like they serve it in bars... three parts pepsi
one part whiskey... no: better the whiskey be apparent...

and i'm rereading my first encounter with
Charles Bukowski: i remember the first time i came
across him... i was having a psychotic meltdown
back in 2007... running up and down Glasgow in
the sun... i don't know what was more mad:
me or the weather in Glasgow... usually western
Scotland is bound to perpetual rain...
                 but it was sunny that day...
                   well... i don't know how many trips
i made between London, Edinburgh and Glasgow...
running aimlessly: most probably from my shadow,
whether it was that day or the other
i booked a hotel room... i ran out of it after about
5 minutes in panic mode... leaving everything
behind, except for my wallet which i had in my trousers,
but my passport? i don't know why i had
it on me... i only got it back from the Glasgow police
station after a year or so...
                      long story: bad memories...

but i remember that first encounter with Bukowski...
what matters most is how well you walk
through the fire
: in the bookshop i stood there in awe....
because the first poem i read was,
oddly enough insanity

    sometimes there's a crazy one in the street.
    he lifts his feet carefully as he walks.
    he ponders the mystery of his own ****...

    ...sometimes there's a crazy one walking in the street.
       he slips past with a black crowd on this shoulder

obviously i had to buy that book...
back then i was buying books like mad...
i bought that book and the Brothers Karamazov...
oddly enough: i have read it...
to be frank i'm starting to suspect that i'm
pretty well read - but that doesn't surprise me:
after all, reading saved my sanity...
as much as insanity was "fun" i wanted to return
to structures...

            it's not much fun compulsively thinking
about the "secret" meaning of car registration
plates... i'm serious: in my head it was THAT bad
at one point... my entire world view disintegrated
into... a large **** on a pile of spaghetti Bolognese
looks better...

          obviously i'm... sure... i'd recommend going
mad... lucky for me: i wasn't taking to any mental hospital...
maybe that's why i was so introverted for
most of my 20s... hell... i lost all my youth to psychosis...
not all my youth: the youth where you could have
all the ****** fun... but from what i heard:
most men haven't had that sort of luxury...
   what with the advent of social media and dating apps...

but that's the great thing about marijuana (skunk,
it's different in England, the marijuana is illegal
and it's usually spiced with some ****** chemicals)
                                                       psychosis...

at first: oh my god, the greatest drug... i stopped drinking...
i waited for the weekend to smoke...
   i'd sit and write Beatnik ******* poetry...
listen to music... when the stuff was good...
a minute turned into ten minutes...
   ten minutes turned into thirty minutes...
thirty minutes turned into two hours...
literally: time stopped... that's how i came up with
the antonym of Descartes' res cogitans...
   i smoked and i lost my ego...
                it was nowhere to be found...
ergo? res vanus... an empty thing...
              i think it takes a lot of thinking to finally
conquer thought per se...
              to able to merely sense without that cloudy
overlay of thought / narrative has its bonuses...
right now? i have a clog in my head...
before i could tell you something akin to:
i can hear myself think...
    "hear": i was so engrossed in something resembling
solipsism... thought came before the senses...
that's why i missed so many opportunities
with women...

            also: i remember this remark i made...
i remember saying: i can't hear silence...
         guess what's in my head?
                that exact remark... it's almost as if i have
lost my prior "sense" of a soul...
i think i'm soulless... i think my soul has already
left my body... which makes it easier
to coordinate the body... i have this great silence
in my head...

   a moment also came when my vision sharpened...
i started seeing more clearly...

another thing about going mad early on...
oh i did see psychiatrists... i was put on antipsychotic
medication... i used to weigh in 78kg at one point...
6ft2 and 78kg? i was a lean colt...
i put on... over the years... let's say i weighed in
at 120kg at one point...
                   i might have drank back then...
i'm still drinking... but: to think that this sort of medication
doesn't have a metabolic effect would be delusional...

but like i must have already mentioned:
that's the good thing about going mad early on in life,
or rather with madness itself:
you can't go mad twice...
         what's that famous saying?
those whom the gods want to destroy: first drive them
mad...

   about 6 psychiatrists tried to figure me out...
one ******* tried to implant in me the idea of regression:
he insinuated that i was abused as a child...
false memory implants... sadistic little Indian ******...
why do i bring ethnicity into the equation?
oh... reminded of a novel by Will Self...
no: not the quantitative theory of insanity...
   that other one... Dr. Mukti...

                            they couldn't figure me out
yet they still prescribed this ****** medication...
           the medication was making it worse...
                             alcohol? makes it better...
       well... because by the 5th and 6th nutty-professor
i was already well verse in Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard, Heidegger and by the 6th Kant!
why would i need to talk **** over?
   none of them could help me with:
    oh you know, herr doktor... i encountered
a choir in a church that descended, invisible...
then... while in a panic... running around in the church
a great wind descended and dispersed the choir...
well... **** me... if marijuana can give you that
sort of auditory hallucinations:
     i'll wait until i'm dementia prone...
    then i'll go to Amsterdam and jack-up my brain
with some mushrooms... maybe i'll see "things" better...

come to think of it... back in the day it was what
it was... i was in so much distress but internalized it so well
that: i was 12 shadows behind a flimsy veneer...
but i pulled through: right now i think i have:
esp. since my reclusion sort of gave me a spring-like-elasticity...
i jumped back into extroversion with a snap
of the fingers... i was never an extrovert-extrovert:
those annoying *****...
i've learned to be more measured...

  but i pulled through: and not thanks to anyone
except for me... and... necromancy...
which is not some magic... just reading the works
of the people already dead...
    
another saying: music soothes even the savage beast...
tell that to one of my Maine *****...
go on... play her some punk... she's doing a runner...
she is a savage beast... domesticated...
but still savage...
     only recently she scratched the face of a baby...
the baby was: the baby of my mother's manicurist /
pedicurist...
    why did she scratch the baby's face?
     my mother's manicurist / pedicurist brought her
friend along... who in turn brought her son along...
annoying little ****: i was fermenting upstairs in bed
with a massive hang-over... just heard the annoying little
****...
                  
      ADHD+... literally...
            he kept annoying my cat... kept touching her too
"offensively"... she hissed... she started spitting evil eyes...
but he kept on annoying her...
   my mother apparently told him to stop...
the boy's mother stopped being a mother at that point...
he ****** off somewhere to draw, i don't know...
******* circles in the air... when the baby approached...
bam! scratches on the face...
    mind you: no problems prior... babies and animals
mingle quiet well... they did... i was there some other
times... but... all it takes is one silly little **** of a boy
to **** of a cat for the cat to rebel... like a predator...
on something that's weaker: weakest...
     it's a ******* cat... a bonsai tiger...
        
           that's why i never understood man's fascination
with predators, animal predators...
seems like their life just might be interesting...
translate that to predators within men...
            eh... blue oyster cult... something sort of eerie
itch by itch by the end it just becomes disgusting...
no argument: when it comes to the behaviour of cats...
the cat was in the right...
      the cat was in the right... the baby was simply collateral
damage: isn't that the common phrase in modern
warfare? collateral damage?

while Tony Blaire et al. are the ADHD+ **** of a boy
walking away scot free...
            
well... i gave the mother mother's manicurist so many
CDs to copy after i introduced her to Wooden Shjips...
she obviously has a new manicurist...
her friend was supposedly into Viking looking blokes...
but... i've recently saw a brutally honest
video by a woman, she admits to:
having nothing to offer a man... except for ***...
she's a single mum... all the women in my vicinity
are single mothers...

       and she's right... i work... i cook... i clean...
i can iron a shirt... blah blah... if i'm going to be second
best after she panders to her Rugrats...
what am i left with?
   it so much simpler with prostitutes...
although... the one i'm currently seeing sort of crossed
the mark... i think she's fallen for me...
she keeps sending me Selfies while i keep sending her
pictures of trees... flowers... cats... sunrises
and sunsets...

if i were to be stuck with someone like a Denise Royle...
oh **** that... ****: THAT...
     because i would be just that...
a push-over a comb-over...
        recently i watched a movie starring Lara Flynn Boyle...
a film from back in 2002...
   recent pictures? either Jack Nicholson
is the Spartan 300... i don't know...
                    i'm going to grace: if i get to old age...
probably less stressed out...
         like this one ****** i saw today...
the petulant husband... chocolates for the children,
wine for the honey-dubby-dubby-gum-bear...
he might: just get a sniff of the wine...
otherwise! WHIP!
              back on overtime come tomorrow's
Bank Holiday! ha-chi! whimp 'em boy!

existentialism never got along with Darwinism...
for what? my genes?! what about my "soul"?!
i rather find that than pass on some biological fuss
of a glue... someone else will pass something else
on... it's not like the human species will go extinct
because i haven't capitulated to reproductive
"needs"... being a grandfather with grandchildren
or... an old man and death's darling: euthanasia...
always the latter...
god bless the Benelux alliance: reasonable people...
benevolent people... sensible creatures...

****... i knew this was going to happen once i got stuck
into defrosting... "defrosting":
i was trying to get some ice for a whiskey pepsi
sharpshooter refill... a block of ice... no ice cubes...
take out the ice cube container hack at the block
of ice with a knife... fiddly procedure...
take some ice... put the excess ice on the shelf...
hello cleaned ice-cube container...

            i have lost the plot... i digressed too much...
i take it from my English teacher...
a Thomas Bunce... Glaswegian... loved his jazz and his
poetry... he always digressed...
he never taught us... not grammar: only on a must...
once... maybe twice... what did he used to call Shakespeare?
Shaky? Shaken Pear?
   he always digressed... he just told stories...
he wasn't a teacher... you might as well have
lit a ******* fire in the classroom and we'd all huddle
and listen to him ramble...

i've lost it... the day is almost over and i'm sitting
here drinking a whiskey and listening to...
my new found "hobby"... i.e. gothic post punk alternative
darkwave music... rubric!

i've always tried to escape the dichotomy of
the Cure vs. Depeche Mode...

the soft moon... oh... that band is a banger...
2013 release: from the album the soft moon...
songs like: circles,
                     parallels, we are we,
                                            sewer sickness...

there's still so much good music "floating" about...
it's just... so much harder to find...
it wasn't... back in 2016 when the internet still had
some sanity about it...

rubric! where's my rubric?!

the downward path - more than i should
give my remains to broadway - dumpster baby
c z a r i n a - wonderland
morosinthe - nihilism
love of consolation - memory
man + machine & emke - room to cry
ill humans - dramatica
dechakhal - always die
              ciern - the emperor rx
     grey gallows - chains
                       locust revival - no funeral
               two one six - heat
                   the isolators - concentrate on us
                house of breath - make sense of it all
q-7 three times - t-3
                       into her final sleep - heressence...

**** me, now that i come to think of it...
every single shift i worked at Fulham's Craven Cottage
whenever i was placed in Bishop's Park
with a women... i wasn't working...
i was on a first date...
we talked about each other...
Jeminah was the best... even though she kept
talking about her failed relationships...
but we walked into the cemetery and inspect the dates
on graves... my god... she looked so ****
back before she stabbed herself in the back
with rumours about me...

while... in my full view... started swiping left?
right? which one is rejection?
in front of me, indicating: you have no chance
mate... i have these many options... loser...
any of the others make their own wine?
bake? make dogs affectionate enough to lick
your wounds till you bleed and not feel
the pain?
               just saying: ******* pie in the sky!
mash potatoes floating in the lake...

what was i going to write?
   ****... i almost forgot... the day is almost over...
18 minute past midnight... time for closure...
i'm sitting with a whiskey + pepsi sharpshooter...
listening to some underground music...
thinking about trimming my ***** hair
because i need to see Khedra... girl's feeling anxious...

oh... right... i woke up nice an early... 8am...
looked at my phone... ****... no ingress pass for West Ham
vs. Arsenal... what's up?
so i text the manager... where's my ingress pass?
i'm pretty sure that i've booked myself in for this event...

text back... you haven't booked in, mate...

oh crap... crap and no crap: to be honest...
if i haven't booked in... i can't be late...
but i swear i booked in for this match...
the original date was the 28th of May...
that date was moved because West Ham progressed
in the Europa League... so Tuesday was them vs.
Frankfurt... i thought that if i booked in for
the original date of the match-up for the derby
i'd be automatically booked in for today...

while i worked Oxford on the 28th...
   it's not like i "forgot": i just wasn't messaged...
about today... ****** ******* diary keeping...
on my behalf? hardly... i woke up ready to shine...
geared up to do the shift...
arbeit macht frei is my new number one motto...
Wembley shifts... ooh... a blessing...
sometimes going above 12 hours... or thereabouts...

can't you squeeze me in?
   just in case someone blows-out?
  
no... sorry mate... can't print your accreditation
on a whim...
  
   but i already texted him saying: i know what NO
means... fair enough...

****... a whole day to myself... what the hell am i going
to do?!
    i ask dearest... what's for dinner?!
roast beef... ugh... not that crap...
no no... i love roast beef... when it's done proper...
done medium rare in the middle...
but...

    i've mentioned this before...
this recipe... it's a Turkish recipe...
i never thought that beef could be so well coupled
with rosemary... eye-opening...
you'd think on lamb goes with rosemary...
no... beef works just as well... if not better...
i guess the use of rosemary is a way to get
rid of lamb stink... why oh why lamb is sacred
to the Nomads while... pork... the most...
scentless meat in town is given so much
critique: didn't "god" create pork?!
why would god despise anything he created?!
it's counter intuitive...
and i once thought that the Welsh were
sheep *******... no... the Arabs and Muslims
in general have that award covered...
ugly... stinking meat...
  sheep... IT... STINKS!

                        at least pork doesn't... LAMB: STINKS!
maybe that's why their cuisine requires so many
spices... they need to drown the stench of lamb...
pork on the other hand? pristine chops...

tried rosemary: made it worse...
but i like rosemary... as much as i like thyme...
thyme and chicken...
but you wouldn't expect beef to be coupled
with beef...

           this recipe though... oh you know...
some Turkish cook... REFIKA...
hammered beef:

400 gr beef fillet steak
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
200 gr kolot - mild cheddar is better
2 dried hot chilli peppers
1 tsp of Korean chilly flakes
1 teaspoon black peppercorns (whole)
1 teaspoon sea salt

i woke up and... gaining knowledge that i wasn't
going to do the West Ham shift...
there's much better things to do with a cut of beef
than merely butcher it a second time via
a roast... ugh... roast vegetables and roast
potatoes... such an European "thing"...

wait a tick... i haven't done my 60km+
       bicycles sessions in a while...
                        want to see the Houses of Parliament
on the 1st of May?!
****... why not... via the usual route... past Forest Gate...
past Stratford... down Regents Street...
past Trafalgar Sq.? back past the... it was hide tide...
the Thames is not a river! it's an overstretched lake!
what river has a tide-in and a tide-out?!
it's not a river... unless: all rivers are like this on
an island! the Thames doesn't have a flow!
it... bubbles... it's an irritated piece of water!
it's not a river!

on purpose... i shoved down those black intestines
with barley and bacon and onions for breakfast...
with some rye bread...
ironed some bed sheets, t-shirts and a shirt...
and my work trousers...

it's best to count within the confines of 0s...
after all... a person's wealth is not measured impirically...
British Empire bound...
can you translate 6 billion in... what would be
the weight of geld... back then?

i'm done with post punk alternative music....
i'm coming back to the altar of Germanic Crusader
songs... Palästinalied...
i hear the music... i turn to proud airs..
mein gott: ich auch haben ein gesichichte!

jetzt?! alles ist bergwerk!

i am yet to eat a more łakomą feast!
a more greedy feast!
  
LAMB STINKS... perfect match up between
the Muslims and the Velsh...
perfecto! plush! mush! plush! mhuah!
finger-licking good!

why? why my disapproval?!
some elder ****- spitting on "my" pavement...
i don't like that...
disrespect the road others have to walk on...
sure... perhaprs in Pakistan you have
******* donkeys to grind a road to apply
to your obedience... by the stammer
of a donkey's hoofs...
over here... du brauchen asphalt...
    you goat loving spitting camel jockey
of a ****-...
                                     what?!

tomorrow's tired... let's have it... right now!
you ******* nonces....
you ******* fading chocolate copper-necks...
pseudo-predators...

i woke up with this great feeling of cycling for 60+ kms...
i did...
i stopped like a Dervish taking a brake...
at a shop that sold...
Turkish bread... packaged from...
the AL-BAHIJ bakery... somewhere...
near Wembley...
       it's not Naan ******* curry type of Jaapati
type of ****...
wholesome...
      
   i tell you... 60km+ backwards and forwards...
a meal like this will make you greedy...
beef + rosemary...
there's actually a difference between
freshly ground black pepper and readily
available ground pepper...
crushed rosemary... another "case" to implode...

unser liebe fraue...
    von kalten bronnen...
    bescher uns armen landsknecht...
   eine warme sonnen!

die trommeln! die trommeln!
               lälarm! lälarm! lälarm!

           alles güt, ja? wenn ein ist deutsche...
nein?!
   dann ist: partei-zeit!
        gütfühlen!
       ficken du: Hessen-Schwäbisch:
   schweinefleischislamischliebhaber-seltsam...
like.... wie... du was?"

oh man... that Turkish hammered beef...
with the red onion Sumac salad...
with the Sumac... with the red chilly flakes...
with the rosemary... the garlic...
the sea salt... the fresh real, whole... peppercorns...
U-BOATS man! Zeppelins!
               olive oil... lemon juice... pomegranate molasses!

hmm... i stopped over between Forrest Gate and Ilford
at this Turkish supermarket...
it wasn't the usual take on Lavash bread...
but it wasn't a ***(p)at(t)i either...
    the bakery? Al-Bahij... NW10... Miverva Rd...
  
i'm greedy for this dish... i'm always greedy for this dish...
do 60+km on a bicycle: you too would be...
you too would relax listening to Germanic
war songs...
            because... there's nothing better to listen
to when you're that much pumped up...
         nichtsenglischgesprochen!
nichtsenglischgesprochen!
         zu vergessenheit wir märz mit herz!
mit spatzen zum die nur schar!
                               unser: hohl von diese gräber!
Marie Nov 2020
Im kalten Regen
stolpern Langzeiterinnerungen
durch schattenlose Gedanken

Und ich frage mich:
Bist du jetzt totherzig,
so wie der graue Grabesstein, der deinen Namen trägt,
oder verweilst du in gemütlichen Träumen
und wartest auf den ersten Sonnenstrahl
???

— The End —