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Arke Sep 2018
Ich denke dein,
wenn mir der Sonne schimmer
Vom Meere strahlt;

Ich denke dein,
wenn sich des Mondes Flimmer
In Quellen malt.

Ich sehe dich,
wenn auf dem fernen Wege

Der Staub sich hebt,
In tiefer Nacht,
wenn auf dem schmalen Stege

Der Wandrer bebt.
Ich höre dich,
wenn dort mit dumpfem Rauschen

Die Welle steigt.
Im stillen Haine geh' ich oft zu lauschen,
Wenn alles schweigt.

Ich bin bei dir,
du seist auch noch so ferne,

Du bist mir nah!
Die Sonne sinkt,
bald leuchten mir die Sterne.

O wärst du da!

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


*English Translation:

I Think of You

I think of you,
when I see the sun’s shimmer
Gleaming from the sea.

I think of you,
when the moon’s glimmer
Is reflected in the springs.

I see you,
when on the distant road

The dust rises,
In deep night,
when on the narrow bridge

The traveler trembles.
I hear you,
when with a dull roar
The wave surges.

In the quiet grove I often go to listen
When all is silent.

I am with you,
however far away you may be,
You are next to me!

The sun is setting,
soon the stars will shine upon me.

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Literatim Dec 2016
Wenn wallende Wolken
Wie Wattebauschen
Den Himmel berauschen,
Die Sterblichen lauschen
Dem Klang der ewig unendlichen
Freiheit.
Translation:

When swirling clouds
Befuddle the sky
Like cotton-wool *****,
Mortals hear eternal and infinite
Freedom ring.

This poem entered my head while watching the clouds one day and I wanted to share it.(:
Since the rhyme scheme and rhythm only work in German, I decided to post it in its original form.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2021
Z
i sometimes purposively cycle the 20 odd miles
into central London from (circa) Havering-atte-Bower
to simply sit outside a Starbucks by St. Paul's:
drink my black coffee, smoke two cigarettes...
obviously drink the black coffee with an addition
of 50ml of some cheap-*** whiskey and...
experience, what i can best describe as a:
wilderness of people...
i honestly have no other way of phrasing it...
it's a wilderness of people:
comparatively if i were to walk into a forest
or a graveyard: same ****, different cover...
or do as i did today: sit still on a busy
pedestrian clogged street... it's all the same to me...
it just so happened that i was eavesdropping
today: doing some... lauschen:
which is not exactly listening...
i was trying to filter out what this gorgeous...
i'd put her in her 40s... ginger...
American accent was blasting into the telephone...
i actually couldn't make out if she
was talking to someone or merely recording
herself some notes...
while buying coffee i asked for a pen...
took several more napkins than necessary
and started scribbling some half-baked thoughts...
the best ideas came to me while walking:
once... then they came through
sitting on a windowsill and fermenting my brain:
Brian...
now... i need speed... i need traffic...
i need: unconscious spatial coordination...
i need involvement with things that might ****
me...
i need at least 25mph with no exoskeleton...
i need American Head Charge blasting into my ears...
no... i could never be a novelist:
impossible...
i work from the principle of: ensо̄ (macron o?
a bit like omega is to omicron
sort of teasing upsilon: pull: pool etc.)
hell... it is a concept, principle: since there's
no katakana for it...
just the ideogram 円,...
i will have to leave the full ideogram on some
other platform since...
never mind: i'll just leave a p.s.
at the end of this stampede of words...
but ensō goes much further...
it attaches itself to some unfamiliar territory:
i.e. when TAO met MU...
you can write MU in both katakana
and i'm pretty sure there's an ideogram
for it too...
as you can write TAO in katakana:
but i'm pretty sure there's an ideogram
for it too...

backwards & forwards... east meets west...
west meets east...
Alexander went east...
the Persian empire went west...
Genghis Khan went west...
Communism went east...
no wonder that even George Orwell cited
this relationship of Eurasian...
even now... the Russians are in bed
with the Chinese...
not that the outliers of Asia: the Japanese are
somehow clued in...
who's going to get crushed in the dynamic?
who was crushed in the dynamic of Germany
growing an ego-phallus attempting to
**** a Russian-venus-flytrap?
i guess someone from the sort of: moi...
ahem... "persuasion"...
of course the south eastern Asians will feel the brunt
of the tripping... the "collateral" as they like
to call it...
and what's happening now in Europe & elsewhere
if not the GREAT CULL?!
i can play the wolf in sheep clothing for
a while... but even i know that:
the mask is slipping... it's all gooey and not
properly glued to the smiley face...
it's no conspiracy "theory" it's just...
common sense...

oh look (ensо̄ jazz... a googlewhack;
oh that's why... ensō)

i couldn't be a novelist: or for that matter
a painter:
i need to insert something:
but at the same time return to myself,
i.e. get the hell out...
if i had to labour days upon days
that would turn to weeks...
to months... to years...
i think i'd forget what my original
intentions were...
but to write something: antithetical to lyricism:
i will never write
audl lang syne... not that Shakespeare ever
would or could write something
that could be sung! Shakespeare never wrote anything
for people to sing come New Years Eve...
he wrote material for recitation:
sure... there's a genius in that:
writing for... f-f-*******: Thespians...
i imagine an actor growing his own turnips:
not that i'm any better:
i spew words...
but i don't spew recitations...

if it's "b'ah... bad original": well... at least it's
original... i abhor lyricism...
to many rhymes...
i suppose if you want to sing you have
to rhyme... although...
i don't think that auld lang syne is a lyricism
with that much rhyme...
most associated with modern music...
it's: narrative lyricism: which implies...
there's no lyricism to sort of begin with...

ich sehen mein geist:
verdunkelt nach ein nachtgerinnen...

if i start something: i finish something...
i couldn't be an artist from the perspective
of: "coming back to it"...
i couldn't be a novelist either...
for that matter... from what i heard...
i can't be a poo'et either:
first come, first served...
i think of language like i think of food...

well... it was more than "fun" to cycle into central
London and have a coffee overshadowed by
St. Paul's cathedral...
black... plenty of sugar... 50ml of cheap whiskey...
well i know you can't buy whiskey
in a Starbucks...
i bought that along the way...
and i just sat there:
some would say that wearing sunglasses
is a bit like donning the niqab...
although with the niqab:
i purposively stare at those "ninjas"...
some even return a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look
like: well i can't see you poking your tongue out at
me, so... what's the point?

once upon a time in Hackney i was walking
out from my ex's house with her younger brother
& their dog... cookies?! ah!
Nachos! while my "future" in-laws were
having a fight... she was dropping plates
i guess... because i left a newly bought
guitar at their home when i first arrived
on the shores of psychosis: London-Edinburgh:
to-&-fro...
i bought this acoustic splendour...
a Martin & Co. D-X1E...
  i was still paying it off... me & my ex broke up:
well... the story of my life...
all the women in my life broke up with me...
so i'm guessing my supposed "future in-law"
did some "D.I.Y." on her:
that's before i could even give her a name...
&... i'm either a very truthful person...
which is why i only sleep rather than dream...
hence... the great presence of the "YAWN"...
he told me a story & i brushed it off...
he said... guitars tend to break up when
left outdoors... maybe it wasn't him...
maybe she did it...
i was tripping on psychosis...
so... no excuses for me.... plenty of ****** lies
to tell from the opposing party...
i think my heart also ached...
i think: but since i think is therefore i doubt...
probably not...
problem being: i bought the ******* "missing piece"
of a shipwreck on loan...
so... i had to pay off a tampered with
guitar... CUZ... just... BE-CAUSE...
cheap-***... mother-*******... lies!
now i think i'm just gullible...
it has reached a fever-pitch sensation of arrogance
where i think i could get away with ******:
why? all the ****** lies i've been told:
it seems i'm investing in something
grandiose... sinister...
it has to be: a thrill of the antithesis of gravity...
or something...

right there! i saw it! i was walking out with
my ex's younger brother & that HMV mut
when a woman in a niqab
rolling a buggy pulled her niqab off
& what i saw: i saw... a grotesque "feature":
i don't think it was a face...
it was an Arabian nightmare... something:
Cradle of Filth sing about...
maybe i wasn't prepared for such an act...
it was hardly "defiance"...
perhaps she had the honour-acid-in-your-face
squirt... squirt sort of treatment:
easier to hide under a niqab...

there's a currency of delusion that only reigsters
to media outlets...
nothing is really reported:
but everything is curated...
the media is like an art-gallery...
it requires either curators or... editors...
if she unveiled herself like she did
& i saw the face of the cenobite pin-head:
i'd be like... well thank, ****... for that...
now i know what the hammer's for!

well... my supposed future father in-law ended
up with a stint in some psychiatric ward...
so i'm guessing: he ****** around with my:
yet to be paid in full ownership of:
let's call her Layla...
guilt riddled, started calling me Jesus...
any other ******* day of the week i'd be this
Hey-Zeus... but not back then...
i visited him, brought him a bible &:
since he was, is: dyslexic it was hardly the point
of lifting his spirits up with some
Tolstoy...

well you can write the idea of mu phonetically:
it doesn't have to be an idea: #
it can be merely a compound sound: ム...
which is neither vowel or consonant:
it's a consonant-vowel:
it can't be a "vowel-consonant": even though
i know it sounds better...

when translated to my native-toong...
mu... for him...
or: je-mu: again... for him...
jej: her's...
jego: his'             hisses...
  his...
mu: for him...
            i'm bewildered by lack
of a female counterpart equivalent:
plenty of h'americana to be borrowed cunted-up
cluster ***** of "memetics":
come again?
isn't CECI N'EST PAS UNE PIPE
a memetic "typo"?
well... if they told me that Polacks shared the same
grammar as the Fwench:
TO NIE JEST: this is not...
FAJKA... it's Fwench! it's western Slavic...
maybe i'd learn it "better": or at least invested in enough
nouns to better coordinate myself with...
but it's not like i was allowed to learn
English then German...
which would have follow suite...
so now i'm all "bitter" et, und... "sad" still...
boggled down in Loon'don & not Pari(s)...
*******: P'ah-rrrrrrrrrr-E!
or... P'ah-rrrrrrrrr-é... same ****... different cover...

i'm already arriving at: shrapnel avenue...
like the the Mongol sacking of Baghdad...
the skulls "just seem" to be piling onto each other
without end of a horizon of the pyramid in
sight...
it's monstrous... it has all the ingenuity of
a hyped-up Hippocrasic oath:
but... it's seems a terrible prospect to: breed...
unless you're locust prone...

you sit at layout of a cafe that extends to
an outside.... you smile to yourself
seeing a nuclear family walk past...
you smile: to yourself...
thank god i will not the good-father:
supposed: where, while i'll be "good"...
but i'll also be blamed...
thank god i will not be blamed...
esp. if... i were born into a lineage of carpenters...
& suddenly the trade of carpentry went:
bust...
i write this & rightly so...
i hear.. the crying of the girl who lost
my virginity to...
how i suckled at her ******* she came to visit me
in Edinburgh...
i too know: the pertinent Q.: what if?!
perhaps she didn't have the face
of Ava Lauren: but she had the ******* to
proove otherwise...

so i sat in this cafe beside St. Paul's...
once or twice minding the wind...
as you do... some H'american beau ginger having her
"impersonating a dialogue"... ahem...
"conversation" over the phone...
chez la reve - daniel licht...
   almost as good as christopher young's:
something to think abut...

it's what i lullaby myself to sleep with...
well... that & a liter of whiskey...
be-be-because this simply doesn't have an anchor!
suppose it won't sink:
bit i'll die: a ******* captain!

well... one might imagine the... "almost"? really?
the universal claim for "common sense"...
come again?
i thought common sense, in practice or in theory...
is rather...  unilaterally-biased to take
into consideration the buffer cushioning
of "collateral":
again! those who espouse so much of Darwinism's
superiority...
are, the, people... last: to arrive at its mechanisations...
the English were the people safeguarded
by their island status...
sorry? now what... "now"... ahem "what"?
come to think of it...
i don't want to live among any other people beside the English...
call them Welsh ccall then Scots... Anglo-Saxons
call them: gimps with their socks on...
common sense? savvy?
i had a thought cycling through traffic...
i love all the assured interactions with
strangers... after all: it's true what they say...
you look best with your family...
when you get a chance to cut yourself out
from a shared picture: that was taken...

common sense is one thing...
but... nothing ingenious about this proposal...
look away...
what about... the genius of English culture
that could perhaps culminate in...
COMMON COURTESY?!
last time i heard Italian were irresponsible when
utilising the concept of traffic...
in England?!
the cyclist is a buffer zone-in...
can't people entertain COMMON COURTESY
while having their higher alliance
to the allignment of a both: "higher" & "power"?

https://allpoetry.com/poem/16172654-Z-by-Matthew-Conrad-adult#share

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