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Mark Armstrong Mar 2018
Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised?
Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise?
Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise
Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties

To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke
Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke
Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims...
Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction

Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art
Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts
Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart?
To love and to cherish til your knees did part?

If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?

There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew
While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues
To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts
Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts

Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand
She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm
Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth
And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed

Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex
When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks
Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror
Love is for life until you dress it with liquor

If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?

We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong
The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on
That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company
Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris
persefona Feb 2015
brat i sestra

brat: cao

sestra: cao

brat: gde je tata?

sestra: u sobi.

brat: sta radi?

sestra: ma odkud znam, pusi.

brat pravi sendvice. pet sendvica. mleko i keks. malo cipsa sa strane.

brat ne zna nista. sestra zna po nesto.

brat se obraca psu: pa gde si ti bio ceo dan?jeli malisanu mali, milice jedna, jel si gladan? a sta si radio? hoces napolje? jao pa vidi te sapice, smrdo jedan.

ne izvodi psa.
brat jede. cuti.

brat ide na spavanje, vec je jako kasno. opranih zuba.

sestra vec spava. brat otvara vrata sestrine sobe naglo, namerno ili mozda slucajno ali ne i prvi put. gleda u mrak i osluskuje sestrino mumlanje i cangrizanje. cuti. zatvara vrata i odlazi u svoj mrak, prekoputa.

jutro je.
brat: cao

sestra: cao

brat: gde je tata?
AP Staunton Feb 2016
This poem is about a night out on the beer which almost went horribly
wrong



I put out my hand and touched the face of God,
. . .bit of a surprise, really, I was expecting my Hod.
Lying on the floor, thinking it was my bed,
Coated in *****, face down, arms spread.
I've ****** my trousers, shat my keks,
A natural reaction, to twenty three pints of Becks.
Stumbling through Cambridge, I can't find the Site,
I know it's around here, first left or third right. . .
Crashing through hedges, I've forgot how to walk,
I can't ask for directions, I'm unable to talk.
So, I'll go no further, here I'll sit tight,
Sneak back to the caravan, when dawn sheds her light.

I didn't feel the cold, the damp creeping through,
Best shirt, Purple Chino's and I'm missing a shoe.
It's my dancing outfit, for impressing and posing,
Ideal for the Nightclub, not alfresco dozing.
The temperature plummets, I'm giving it "Big Zeds"
Dreams of warm women and petal-strewn beds,
Breathing gets shorter, body starts to shut down,
I'm sweating buckets, beginning to drown.

Ronnie, the Night-watchman, knows I must be in trouble,
In an hour and a half, I'm due back on the shovel,
To keep the lads happy, with bricks and fresh Pug
And barrows of concrete, poured into trenches I dug.
Under an Elm Tree, thirty yards from the job,
Ronnie catches sight of this prone Northern yob.
He doesn't panic, just yet, he knows what to do,
He's seen it before, when a body turns blue.
Those First-Aid Classes, when he told us he was fishing. . .
Vital signs are checked, I'm in the Recovery Position.
Ron holds my nose, lifts my head off the floor,
. . .then he kissed me , in a way , that I'd never been kissed before.
If it wasn't for Rons Kiss of Life, I wouldn't be alive.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2019
ich würde, vielmehr: schreiben
etwas deutsche:
graswurzel, das ja!
the ******* need more you
ponce of a mongrel saxon!
better deutscheland grammar?
we had our "solistice"
time-out... welcome tomorrow...
no point leaving
a workaholic out for no
apparent reason: best bet?
"look busy"... ******* furlong's
worth of "short"...

jump that! y'ah ******* dwarf
bridge-gap brigade!
der hobbitenvolk ar kommen!
der hobbitenvolk ar kommen!
nicht die kirschemäntel... aber!
noch die "unerwartet":
zeppelinpumpernickelhoppla!
- why am i bound to the scotch
nationalists? oh... i lived among them
for over three years...
the celtic remants...
perhaps edinburgh would be
the new dublin...

christmas... it's such a german "ting"
like... that irish celtic tad woz
zee timez... C'U... C'U... no...
no L8ER...

but i managed! everything i served on
the plate and placed on a table...
the oven-cooked tatties...
the parsley snippets...
the carrots... the garlic...
the peppers... the red onions...

what the **** am i celebrating,
now? i'm pretty sure, that,
whatever it was... will fizzle out
come post-christmas hangover of a tomorrow...

and a buckling-load-of-****-of-europe...
the same islander "english" mentality...
euro-trash continent...
this... belly-button of the world
english mentality...
you wouldn't suspect it among
the welsh, the irish, the scotch...

perhaps the united kingdom can become...
the next yugoslavia under charles the III...
does he keep his name?
does he? London is long gone...
just as Danzig was long gone...
when Venice wrote the blueprints...
an ancient folklore of a city state...

******* just interrupted something...
no... it wasn't the Royal Ascot...
the horses, ran, ran and buckled...
broke some legs and not being able
to fall asleep standing: were put down...
the greengrocers of betting had their harvest...

we'll still have the top hats,
the champagne "socialism"... the CLASS...
oh you have to remember the CLASS / CASTE
pseudo-hindu "oops"...
england will still be...
what scotland and wales could be...
the less timid bits and pieces of...
what could probably hang in the air
as the new yugoslavia...

"problem" being... it's an island...
it's unlike iceland...
and it's quiet unlike new zealand or...
or... japan...
it's... when...
alt vati pommerschen...
flüsterte in der kinderwagen
auf sachsen, und sagte...

the ******* think you're going?
******* yew-tree quasi-nomad
of germania? you're an imitation
hebrew... or you're...
you're not a: bayerischverwandtschaft?

as yes, christmas only makes sense
now... drinking from the amber spring
of the baltic...
some scotch runes in: mash-up...
easy, easy...

i can use this, acquired, language...
but i know the ******* will have their Ascot...
die sächsischweg...
ants-in-their-pants...
and now "they" think they're settled...
post-colonial imperialism bound
to a nationalist revival...
so much for having no nostalgia...
akin to...

the battle of Tannenberg 1410 -
the date 680 by St. Wilfrid...
such a date... a northern crusade against
the last pagans of europe:
the lithuanians... **** me, i don't need
to paint... the lithuanians and the other
baltic folk... whatever the hell became of
the prussians: who weren't exactly treated
as germans by the teutonic collective...

oh i'll sing the carol songs...
i'll sing the crusader songs... hey! pronto!
i'll sing that... baby jesus doesn't really do it for me...
i'll go and visit Catalonia where
the name Jesus is diffused...
ends up a hey-zeus construct...
a H'ezeus etc.... and the party is over...

but i could celebrate christmas...
if it was in german...
i don't know why... perhaps it's riddling
a masochism remains with teasing
the whole: "wunderbar"?

better still... when europe is cited...
there's that black-hole europe...
there's that... cindarella of europe...
that "missing link"...
between what the balkans served up
in the 1990s... the collapse of the soviety union...
how the 2008 economic crash didn't really
affect this region...
von unter die eisenvorhang...

island people: shire folk...
hobbits... you know the sort...
very idiosyncratic...
one minute a russophobe...
next minute... exotica of the siberian ooh!
aah! i have lived on these isles for...
it's not worth stating:
a better part of my life...
but i have lived... among...
the scots, the irish...
i teased the welsh...
and in London? the tower of babel came...
come to think of it...
the english have sort of reacted like
vermin... you rarely see them...
perhaps in oxford...
of ****... pakistani **** gang there too...

my bet is... elizabeth is "dying":
no she's not... seen that ***** on roller-skates?
seen her pre-house-of-windsor
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha teeth,
chin... and... what the hell and other have
they almost made... insufferable
in it being: signatured? the teeth,
the chin... the eyes!

saxons... jews of the germans...
nomads of the north...
it's not like they ever moved with
a hope for adventure...
when a saxon moves...
he moves with a sense of investment...
he brings his reproductive tools with him...
no wonder there was a feud between
the germans and the "germans": the saxons...
this is... what could not possibly be...
the basic interpretation of england...
past the "chernobyl" of the norman invasion...
how celtic became saxon became
french... became... a ******* cocktail
cosmopolitan...
but the welsh still retained their:
Cymru...
there you go...
white cross on a black canvas...
pirates!
Wales and Cornwall...
dip into a ditto-esque whatever...

the remains of the saxons when the global
cocktail decided to send a postcard from
'ere minding the cockney shlang as:
the proper way to speak... Estonian...
eh?!

bewildered germans speaking...
i don't even know what i am speaking:
it's not much of an achievement if you're
speaking english...
you're bound to suffer from a variant of
flu or fluke or slang...
it's not exactly regarded as:
high esteem latin... or hebrew...

pauper Poland: "where i'm from"...
thank god it's omitted...
never in discussions...
by western "proletariats"...
cheap beer in Prague while... Warsaw?
sowwy... not enough bi-lingual
tour-guides and trout ******* mothers
from the caravan of Zappa...

and we will beg to differ...
i don't come from a people who would
celebrate being conquered by ancient rome
had to matter...
yet somehow i write in Latin encoding...
imagine if... Latin encoding was lost
akin to cuneiform...
but it wasn't...
i did, i truly did...
miss the glagolitic transition via
greek into cyrilic...

invader kin: these slavs these indo-europeans...
it ***** up the narrative of the origin seekers...
these modern, "protestant":
afro-europeans of the YEST...
i say: part of the gesticulation of jesting...

among the saxons who disavow their germanic
heritage... thinking they could somehow
replicate the polish-lithuanian commonwealth...
last time i heard...
just because the scotch speak english...
but keep their: wee part of the equation...
the welsh still speak their welsh...
pen dal i fyny uchel draig...

what's the difference betwen...
the medieval Lithuanian...
and the modern Welsh?
what doesn't allow this "union" to sink
into a second Yugoslavia?
h'american influences?
the... "commonwealth"?
at what point sharing a tongue is a plus...
when anyone can start reciting a Bruce Lee
film: kung fu action packed:
chop sui?

augusta III sasa and
marii józefy habsburżanki...
the house of ßaß...
saxons... again: the hebrew of the germanic people...
the nomads of the confederation...
they always... need... to... move!
and if you find them not moving...
they settle for pyramids...
and i mean: pyramids without Giza
reliefs of archeological "findings"...

but there's a massive gap...
between europe... that "bit" in the middle...
and russia...
russophobia is quiet funny...
i'd still prefer to speak german when
celebrating christmas...
after all... i did make a fickenumbringen
when it came to that alcoholic cake...
nein nein...
nicht ein königskuchen noch ein
stollen! keks... kegs...
a rumtopf!

oh i don't mind the natives...
who are the natives?
where the **** is alice?
parasites leeches... sächsischumgangssprache:
wo / wann sesshaft...
are the natives the welsh with their
retainer tongue kept intact like...
the scotch? the ire hell and fire 'reesh!
who does it take...
to speak to the natives of these isles?

just wondering...
because the saxons that remained...
and the saxons that left...
have a ******* in las vegas...
glory be to man to be the man
on the moon...
and all that...

i spent this christmas and...
i didn't buy anyone anything...
i just undermined myself...
when in england...
feel at home, during christmas...
talk some german,
some german outside of a saxon
influence of being the jew-german...
moving from place to place...
****: ja ja... ich "versammeln"...
nomadin / se-my'tine... deutsche "mischling"...

please excuse the saxons...
they are a... frivolous bunch of...
hobbit seeking elven folk...
the chinese crusade and medicinal ivory powder...
apparently: those ****-*****-base-*******-stinkers
will grow! they have size 11 feet and are...
5ft6 tall... walking on chicken nuggets then...
or stilts... or... that chinese harem of:
tied feet and toe "heels"...

oh i'm very much in england...
i can just soak myself in wild...
belligerent humour...
i've dropped any sense of irony...
it's ridicule on steroids...
but as long as there's an element of being
self-deprecating?

poland is the cindarella of europe:
hungary is worthwhile the better return of
being an: examplar reminder...
of how to deviate from socio-political norms...

black hole piece of europe...
then again: in between russia and the west...
there's some variation of an "interlude"...
which is neither west, nor east, nor central...

ensure you keep a **** in the orchestra...
so foul that it would make
a cat jump running...
giggling... turning on nazareth's
hair of a dog... being reminded:
there's a cow bell in it being towed...
and what choir spectacular didn't ever use
a castrato?

- because if i wanted to retain...
rhyme and a formality of this tongue...
how would i ever feel comfortable...
nothing of the spectacular...
the everyday myopia magic:
how umbrellas became mushrooms
in the fog grey forest of the urban
amnesia...
because i too tend to forget a Mozart...
when i find myself...
falling asleep to the sound of falling
rain on a tin roof...
violin begone! cello begone!
give me rain on a tin roof!

i'll be your Muhammad counting
the number of bones in a body...
truly and vividly so...
i can forget Mozart...
when i fall asleep...
while it's raining and...
the monotone gives me bliss...
the same note: on repeat...
on repeat.. on repeat...
nonetheless: it's still to be regarded
as a polyphony!
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2019
perhaps i'm just... tired from making christmas eve
preparations...
the mother is fresh from hospital having had
a hip replacement - and she's only just teasing
being 60... and this sort of thing waits for women...
coming to 70+ and in 15 years or so...
there's a high chance of a second replacement
and that's only one leg and socket...
but christmas eve has to be covered...
whether she's sitting at the table or whether she's
lying in bed...
return of the dutiful son... some son,
some duty... and by no means a return...
i can't remember my 20s...
fog of psychosis or... never quiet allowed
to get a neurological perspective outside of england...
when i had the dough to get an m.r.i. scan...
they sent me with my early-dementia riddled
grandfather for the results...
i said: so, doc, kind herr neurologist...
am i mentally ill?
the doc replies: anyone who says you're mentally
ill is mentally ill themselves...
21... 33... 12 years of some sort of brain damage
and i'm still... typing and minding typos
like a neurotic or some variant on the spectrum
of impulsive-compulsive disorder...
i still want to see the face that ****** saw...
when he gave me... what he said was going to be...
an LSD trip shortened... so much for my naiveness....
friendships... ties to growing up and school...
so much for reading any C Castaneda
for that matter...
christmas eve is coming and i'm doing everything
i can to find an hour of drinking and typing...
it's hardly enough to find the perfect lotus...
i have to lay down twelve dishes for the table
come christmas eve...
christmas day is half sorted...
there's the meat already baked...
and all i'll have to do is the *******...
wrapped in an envelope of skin which will
be filled with butter and fresh thyme...
the baked tatties will be just fine and
the honey glazed carrots and 'snips will also be:
just fine...
and when the 26th of december comes i'll
be... hopefully... left with...
so much anticipation... over a month's worth
of advertising... i haven't bought a single gift...
i offer my time...
grandma calls today and says how...
it's nice that her son (my uncle) is there...
i have missed 4 consequitive christmas celebrations
in england... 4 years and now i see the banality
of christmas... in a catholic nation it's...
slightly different would be a major *******
understatement...
i should question... but...
i have come to understand that...
whatever the truth might be...
esp. if its the coincidental unearthing of
the nag hammadi library, the dead sea scrolls...
the year is 1945 and the great bomb just drops...
and... the gospel of st. thomas is only cited by
psychiatrists akin to r. d. laing in the 1960s
about... make the male female...
make the female male... the innter the outer...
or just your casual invigoration of the transgender
zeitgeist... and medicine catches up to the psychological
whims... and...
i'd just like a cold ms. amber...
perhaps a london derby in football...
a robin on a fence in my garden...
a migrating flock of canadian geese in the sky...
and a frosty morning with a cold azure delight
of a sunny pristine sky...
no pompous summer with her sensual ****
of scents and colours and distractions...
and how: winter is never old...
never somber... lucky for me... winter is always
drunk and readying itself for a birth in death...
or some pseudo-mystical *******...
but i can use a plethora of psychiatric terms...
last time i checked...
i was tested for regression in one instance...
regression being: having false memories being
insinuated for you to believe in...
a ***** trick done by psychiatrists...
i still don't mind...
those 12 dishes will be served...
- a mackerel paste salad
- herrings:
(a) in cream with apples...
(b) classic... oil and ocet
(c) kashubian
- a crab, prawn and smoked salmon pate
(cream cheese and trout caviar, dill)
- oven baked salmon with veg trimmings
- beetroot borscht
- borscht "ears" - dumplings stuffed
with cabbage & 'shrooms... or just 'shrooms
- short-crust pierogi (oven baked dumplings)
filled with pickled cabbage, 'shrooms onions etc.
- a trad con. salad
(cubed... eggs, potatoes, leek, carrots,
celeriac, pickled cucumbers in brine,
etc.)
- racuchy
- an oven baked cheese cake
- a poppyseed roulade
- a keks (fruitcake... very much a...
loan of weihnachtsstollen)... i've been feeding
this ******* 3 tablespoons of ***
every 2 weeks for the past month or so...

how many is that? there needs to be twelve...
****... herrings count as x3...
leftover prawns...
so... a...
- prawn cocktail...

and of course a plate and utensils for that...
un-expected guest...
would i go to the christmas eve mass?
the "shepherds' mass"?
last time i went... i dragged a monkey with me...
250ml of ***** is a monkey...
and i had a swell time...
listening to the nuns pray for the alcoholics...
but not the workoholics...
and playing itchy eyelid and nerve tourettes
with an itchy face with some kid
in the aisle in front of me...
and... then walking out mid-mass
to **** on the church: to ensure... it would...
grow!
but... this is england...
i can't afford to go to a catholic mass...
and not stand out...
not that many catholics around these parts...

i have my twelve dishes+...
christmas day is going to be a doddle...
the roast potatoes have been perfected...
the meat is ready to be sliced
with sour dough bread...
there are no children,
no presents to open...
just enough time to survive this over-hyped
*******... enough time to wait for
the true celebrations,
and these ones... if not in the company
of two people nearing 60...
then... two people nearing 85+...
with easter, in a catholic midst...
walking to church with painted eggs...
to subscribe to this... advent of the castrato choir...
easter and spring...
a crucifixion... that we do indeed pay such
obsolete rigour to tradition:
even if we're not expected...
i guess justifies everyone else being
so hyped-up about the birth and death
of a demigod...

i just imagine: but what if i didn't do all this?
what's the alternative to:
r.i.p. marie fredriksson - god rest your soul:
you beau lass... 'spending my time'?
the t.v. zombie? the internet claustrophobiac?
what alternative?
are you a downton abbey up fan...
or a downton abbey down fan?
up? the sirs and the class distinctions
and what the **** it has to do with
a room's decorum?
or... the staff locum?

all i know is that i'm about 20 minutes away
from a 25mg / 250mg naproxen / 500ml
of ms. amber knock-out sweet dreams goliath
*******...
i'm already thinking about...
postcards from Geneva...

the falling asleep part i never mind...
the waking up part: oh god i do, i do...
and there's nothing worse than apathy:
but of course there is...
there's the truth... and having to have
some secular decency...
in attempting to carry the burden
of disbelief...
a natural consequence of an equilibrium...
to have to have experienced the truth
in some way:
you can only carry disbelief with you...
as you somehow try to cover
a poppy's seed's worth of diameter every
year to a nibble of that once
grand truth...
a disbelief... a negation of:
because if i were to believe in... whatever
i have to disbelieve in order to covert and
tactifully let everyone else a place ahead of me...
what's the alternative? will what then becomes
"the truth" / a truth?

to have truth in your mouth...
in your ears...
in your eyes...
and then... to have to stall...
to carry with you a disbelief...
without a plethora of agnostic doubt...
imagine being...
excused from the thrill of entertaining
the plethora of emotions bound to
agnostic doubt...
i miss those days...
when one could simply "wish away"
a thought...
or a thought would disappear of its own accord...

yes the grand-wise master of a grandmother:
she fell from a chair...
which she stood on...
when a cushion was still on it...
because... she really wanted to change
the curtains in the kitchen...
the epitaph would have run...
i lived my life... but i died:
because i really had to change those curtains
since christmas and ****...

i am burdened with disbelief not because...
i don't believe it...
a marijuana hallucination in central london,
located with me hiding in a church: elevated...
a ******* choir, an iPod check,
a great wind...
polite society would not allow me to...
do much more...
i can't doubt... that's my problem...
i have to... "negate"...
i can't negate outright...
logically... premises, presuppostions...
web of rhetorical angst... etc. -
and i can't believe it either... by believing this:
marijuana auditory hallucination...
what? it's already 12 years "late"...
and by belief: will it?
to what end? my own? its: "its"?!

"my prefered genger pronoun is: ITS"...
well hello... ITS...
yes, ITS because it's not it is...
or rather it's because my it's ITS is already
included: so... i-its t t t t t...
have its ****?
em... samuel beckett... watt...
**** up its... etc. -
and grammar is that grand ******* crescendo
moment when all the apes will fall from
Julian Tuwim's opera carousel -
and fall they will: and will immediately
stand-up straight... and figure out...
the blessings of the thumb...
thumbs' up up anyone's ***.

with a thumbs' up like that...
in anyone's ***... you're bound to see
a thumb's peek-a-boo in Beijing...
like: swap-prizes! this one isn't even surreal.

— The End —