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Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
. 'as for those poets, only the perverse follow them. do you not see that they go too far in every direction and say things, which they cannot do?' (ash-shu'ara / the poets 26:224-226).

call them what you like,
the Huguenots,
for all i care...

   you always side with
the "heretics"...
  
   given that, "said" heretics
retain some cultural value
relativism of other cultures,
namely in the form of
depiction -

    since why would, "the word"
be deemed holy,
    ****-naked,
                rather than donning
a bikini of "iconoclasm"...
         when words... are at
the meat-market of copyright -
what with © coca cola?

                 sunni islam would have
never allowed sufism...
  but Farsi does...
  and will continue...
since no Iranian will bow
before an Arab within the schematics
of history...

          Sunni Islam, it's Wahhabi sentimentality...
so why persist in signing
the Adhan?
   why not speak in a honing like
drone sentiment of plain speech?
i thought all music was banned?
the current Adhan is a form
of music... isn't it? BAN IT!

    you never side with these Sunni
muslims, exploiting Bangladeshi labor,
you side with the heretics of Iran...
these *******, i can at least respect...
  
      no fast cars, convenient ongoing
cultural insurrections -
   Sufism...
       Afghan women's poetry,
and all that much closer to Hindu mysticism...
    
yeah... "islamophobia":
but only against Sunni Islam...
   but Shia Islam?
   no problem...
   i could stomach these peoples
like i could stomach the in-between
of the Turkish variant -
no ideology - simply, pure, power throttle...

i could make a great Janissary -
with a Turkish barber...
         for a great trim of hair and beard...
i'd cast a shadow on some
obscure chocolatier of Brussels
who thinks himself a politician...

     but there are certain aspect of Islam
i am willing to tolerate...
   what happened to the son in law
of Muhammad, namely, Ali...
was raw ******* kicking...

               promises, promises...
no promises...
           Shia Islam, as an European,
i can tolerate, Turkish Islam, i can tolerate...
Turkey is incrementally shy
of being treated at the 2nd variant of Iran...
at least with Iran, we share a history
via the insurrection into the ancient
texts through Greece...

  come to think of it...
whenever i listen to
matta's song echo babylon...
i start feeding myself goosebumps,
reminding myself
of Cyrus... Nebuchadnezzar...
and the dim-wit that was
   Belshazzar...

always siding with the heretics...
if not on economic groundwork,
then at least motivating,
rather than monetizing an idea...

and the Shia muslims are...
    one way or another...
   unlike the gluttons of Dubai...
the barbie dolls of postage stamp
"proof" of progress,
in size, and worth...

   Sunni Islam would have
never allowed poetics to remain
a viable form of expression -
the Persian tradition that is,
far beyond the western concern
for a comment section...

         Shia Islam allows patronage
of the arts, notably poetry,
without concern for monetary
funding, it, at least, doesn't prohibit it...
given the pride of the Persians...
Sunnis and their continual quest
for finding water...
    sure... poetry is pointless within
such restrictions of
existential concerns...
    but... given the current, civilized
establishment?
   sky-scrapers in *******
sand dunes?

         the qu'ran should have
forbidden the architectural ambitions
equivalent to the tower of babel
being erected, in environments,
that could never sustain said projects...

    and who originally spewed the term
islamophobia?
Sunni Islam...
        i never liked this strand of belief...
i hate the Sunnis like
a Shia partisan...

p.s. it's called patriotism is America...
but nationalism in Europe...
    you sure that's not a synonym?
Europeans can't be patriotic,
and Americans are never nationalistic?

...

   well: how could i ever convert to islam,
i do enjoy the adhan from time to time,
"sorry", but i do...
  i can't help it:
if i'm a sucker for pop songs,
i'm also a sucker for the adhan...
   crusader songs, templar songs become
stuffy after a while...
and last time i checked:
     there were the northern crusades
against the baltic people:
notably prussians, lithuanians...
with that cushion of: mediating the
escalation of war by the polacks...
coming from the east:
  last time i checked the mongols
didn't reach leipzig...
               buffer zone people...
and what of the ottoman onsalught
of vienna 1529: the ****** winged hussars
won the charge...

so, coming back to heidegger... aphorism 26
ponderings IX... how am i to not be
the historical animal?
         perhaps in german, in germany
i might become a non-historical animal,
to begin: anew, but with a terrible
past to hide, to negate...
   i could do that: if i were a german,
speaking german, in germany...
but i'm in england:
            i might have some roots in
Silesia, but it's "hard" to not be a historical
animal, an "animal" with a sense of time,
i.e. a future a past a present...
esp. under the english conditions
of: the biological animal momentum narrative,
like a tsunami, like an earthquake...
ripples throughout...
              i can't move forward with
the english championing darwinism every
single ******* step of the way...
why can't they hide darwin like the polacks
hid copernicus...
given the motto: copernicus -
who moved the earth, and stopped the sun...
why wouldn't i escape into history
if the current biological reality is:
(a) a yawn... the cruel nature of per se?
   the courting of pigeons on a t.v. antenna...
pigeons get rejected all the time,
lesson learned, he bows and bows,
coos... expands his tail feathers upon
the bow then folds them... she flies away...
repeat...
    (b) i can't escape being a historical
animal in the way that what the current
facts are being repeated have encountered
a whiff of Chernobyll...
              history is inclided to answer reality...
biology? not so much... not from what i've
seen and heard...
             truly a schizophrenics disney dream:
to walk among the newly insane feeling
like the only sane among them...
beau-ti-ful!
                   well... given the current criteria
of being bilingual as being synonymous
with being a schizophrenic...
           magic!
                    
   now the crescendo...aphorism 24
ponderings X:

              the word designates, the word signifies,
the word says, the word is (heidegger)...

i found that you can only write
"philosophy" with a neat, fixed vocab. regime,
clarity of boundaries...
    quadratic events in vocab.:

i.e. the reflexive: yourself, himself, itself etc.
and the reflective: your, self....
                       his, self...
                                  it, and the self...
                    ergo? atheistic scissors,
  the two articles, indefinite and definite
                                 a / the "self"...

i'm not playing "identity politics",
when i say that only two peoples ever managed
to sack Moscau... the mongols and the polacks
with the help of lithuanians,
"identity politics" only happens in
post-colonial society, akin to the english,
i'll speak the english,
but i will not be a cucked indian of
the former raj: i will eat the fish & chips,
i will eat the sunday roast,
   i will eat the english breakfast with great
delight...
            but i will not do what these former
colonial masters expect of me:
integrate at the expense of making my
mutterzunge into hubris!
stubborness contra pride...
                hard to tell the difference...

and why do i like heidegger so much?
i'm not into the ad homine arguments...
my grandfather, was, a communist party member...
so?
       i like heidegger... because he appreciates
poetics, i like that poets can share the same
values as philosophers,
thanks to heidegger: we have been requested
back into the republic...
if plato and islam didn't like us, hanging around,
some offshoot german thinker / promenade
enthusiast like used enough to,
i suppose: ban the theatre puppeteers...

i am not playing identity politics...
biological reality is not enough...
but archeological reality?
       can you really advance to counter?
i was born near:
Krzemionki Opatowskie, a Neolithic and
early Bronze Age complex of flint mines
for the extraction of Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian)
banded flints...
  personally? i don't believe in
the African genesis conundrum...
i believe "my" people originated from
the Indian sub-continent,
as, associated with the complex:
Indo-European categorization of language;
i'm still to see an African phonetic
encoding system, beside the hieroglyphics...

i, was, born, there! i'm not a displaced
post-colonial debacle between former master
and former slave...
i have: roots... i'm not ******* up to the fish & chips
brigade with a friday night's worth of curry...
i cook my own curry,
and by god: it is the food of the gods...
i'll give the blue indians that counter...
but sure as **** not the worth of mead
or whiskey...

if they only tolerated themselves,
sure, learn the english language,
but know this much:
           english is the modern lingua franca...
it's the language of economics,
forget the natives, too ignorant to learn
either deutsche or française:
island-folk...
                what else, what other attitude?
even the russians are like:
that land of the weirdos? the idiosyncratics?
yes, we know that land...
the only "thing" that shelters the english
are the h'americans, the south africans,
the australians etc.,
  sure as **** the scots aren't sheltering them...
and, mind you?
   if the i.r.a. really wanted to plant
a bomb?
   a real bomb? they'd revert from speaking
any english to begin with... resorting
to revising their usage of gàidhlig:
ga-id-hlig... gaelic...
   like the welsh, stubborn people, proud people,
retaining their Çymraeg...
celt: said kelt...
the glaswegian football team?
       Çeltic... not: keltic...
  borrowed from the greek: sigma (ς: cedilla to ****)...
   wow! all the particulars in the english tongue!
guess it would take an ausländer to spot them!

U-21 european championships,
england versus romania:
                           a magnificent match...
the youngsters playing better football
than the oldies in their mid to late / early 30s...

i'm trying to tolerate Islam,
               it's not in my nature...
            hell... i enjoyed visiting a turkish barber
shop, i still have an unflinching opinion that,
the turks are the best barbers in the world...
but...

              this quote, is going to **** you:
same aphorism / pondering (24 / X) -


*** fight videos - count dankula...
you know what i'd love to do to these little
snarky *****?
the french revolution isn't enough...
n'ah, them hanging, is not enough....
ever heard of the butchers' hook?
                 it's also callled close-up fishing...
imitation hang-man...
   you insert a fishing hook...
and you let the sweeney todd ****** dangle...
on a hook, rather than a noose...
lords of salem come your way?
i'd rather the snarky teen hanging off
a fisherman's hook than dangle
like some lynched ******...
beside the suffocation,
i'd like them with a fisherman's hook entombed
in their hard palette...
         i don't want them hanging...
what am i? a sadist?
  i want them on the fisherman's hook!
when suffocating without a broken spine absorbed
by the neck isn't enough!
  fisherman's hook gallows is a
masterpiece... of suffering...
  most certain...
  when cheap comedy is being towed...
making fun of bums, or homeless people...
the current society is so welcome
to bypass all the "adventures" of Loki...
but akin to the lords of Salem...
burn!? such a limitated imagination!

ah... right... digressing...
        the reflexive / reflective quadratic...
language - only if speech  has acquired
the highest univocity of the word does it
become strong (enough) for the hidden
              play of its essential multivocity
(as withdrawn from all "logic"),
             of which poets and thinkers alone
are capable, in their own respective modes
and their own directions of sovreignty.

we do live in a time of a lost sense
of dialectic, since we do not live in a time
of etertaining dialogue,
perfectly sensible opinions,
that's all we have...

                       if one of these snarky *******
came up to me...
they'd get a chance to experience a rubric
of 4, knuckles...
what's 189 centimeters in empirical?
6ft2...      oh!
                   see where imagination takes you?
and here i was: thinking i was without it!
butcher's hangman...
oh, not so easy...
                  
                fame by no association to fame...
just the tears of parents who raised their children
to be nothing more than rugrats...
annoying gnat like bothersomes;
and nothing quiet special to be associated
with weimar berlin...
     just, these,
   h'american mall onlookers
with pwetty-guy-for-a-white-fly-mentality,
as borrowed from californian
1990s punk;

re-used ****** losers.

mad-hatter's fraction: 10/6....
      0.666...
      well: to the given extent:
1.666666(7)....
     1, 0, /6,
no number is divisible by 0,
every number, divisible by 1:
is the same number...
    mad hatter's 10/6...

   re-used ****** losers...
i like that phrase...
        7 for every 6, 7 for every 6...
until the 0. fraction comes
a 1.: exponential serf of 0...
0 being the multiplier...
          
         i really am growing a beard to less
don it, but rather to experience
a relief from patience...
war robots?
the first non n.p.c. game...
i like that, very much...
      and when i did:

you know my first experience of
love at first sight?
the younger sister of my then girlfriend...
****** up ****...

love at first sight is a terrible phenomenon...
i was nearing 18, she was barely 13...
i was dating her older sister...
but it was love at first sight,
the trouble with: love at first sight:
it doesn't lie...
it tries to lie...
          but it can't lie...

   paedophilia? a bit... untouched bodies
though... bodies of people who were
never supposed to touch...
i once said to a fwend:
well wouldn't it be ****** up if i touched
her?
   she's a muse, which doesn't translate
into vacating her as a busy body
worth of a touch, does it?
     if only my old friend samuel said
otherwise:
sylvester "contra" tweety:
my first girlfriend...
but her sister?
         i was nearing 18, she was about 13...
love at first sight...
untouched, cradled, unscathed...
and so she remained...
   until she did what every girl would
have done...thank god she remained
a figment of my imagination...
   rammstein: rosernrot...
    
           i have seen love at first...
such a load of ******* that it had to be
the younger sister of a girl i was dating...
and the **** that i had to be 18 and see
was just beginning her teenage transition...
the world unfair i grant
the most justifications... as being
the (just - unnecessary adjective) arbiter...

love at first sight becomes a forbidden love...
love at first sight was always a forbidden
love...
           and the sort of "love" that achieves
a perspctive of change that doesn't
translate into old age...
love at first sight is soon translated
into a love of affairs closely associated
with middle-age disenfranchised
state of affairs...
i.e. to love again...
            how else to feel relief from
having lost both one's inhibitions
               as well as one's ambitions?!
in the conundrum of the mortal
"question" of the continuum being
preserved?
a city old in trades,
in cultivation of the arts
based on industrious commerce
   of its citizens who boast
the world's oldest commercial fair

the city in which
Martin Luther and Melanchthon
led fierce disputes
with delegations of the Pope

where J. S. Bach found stimulus
and time to master
harmony and rhythm
close to perfection,
(and that was shocked listening
to Leibniz's monadologies),

the city of which
Goethe spoke with praise,
that saw Napoleon defeated
on the nearby battlefield
(and built a monument of quite
imposing ugliness one hundred years
after the fact),

this city suffered hard
from two world wars
followed by over forty years
of dreams gone sour of a new society,
until, most recently,
this city once again
became a catalyst of major change.

Yet those who kept their meetings
at St. Niklas' church
and by their stubborn protest
helped to reunite
a country separated by walls for generations -
those you don't see,
walking the streets of Leipzig now.

What strikes the eye
(besides the crumbling blackened ruins
of former glory,
and strip-mined land
just out of town)
is Wall Street's new frontier,
the bustling peddlers of new easy wealth
as they appear on every street downtown,
offering anything from oranges
to shoes and South Pacific cruises.

Ramshackled pre-fabs built on shabby parking lots
already stake the claims of big banks,
business and insurance companies
that promise earnings, safety and security
to eager though bewildered customers.

   "Pecunia non olet" says the poster
   of the postal savings bank,
   and shows a happy pig
   rooting in money.

Old stores, in order to survive,
have started selling
new and shiny goods
to happy new consumers,

only a few resist

and hesitate to walk a mile
for the melange of
fast food, cigarettes and *****
offered at makeshift stands
that seem have come
to symbolize the great new freedom

of the new Wild East.

          * *
Written upon visiting Leipzig one year after the Cold War Iron Curtain came down.
"Pecunia  non olet" (Latin proverb) = "Money doesn't smell!"
Wes Feb 2014
MEPHISTOPHELES [with a solemn gesture].
False word and shape compel
Mind and space by this spell!
Be here, be there as well!
[They stop in astonishment and stare at each other.]

ALTMAYER. Where am I? What a wonderland.
Robert C Howard Sep 2013
Beethoven once said of the cantor of Leipzig
“Not a stream but an ocean.”

Sebastian Bach wove sonic tapestries
and scoffed at notions of genius
“Anyone who pays the price can do it.”

Whether for Sunday’s choir or *****
or for a palace fete of state,
The fountains of his bounteous spring
embellished every age and station.

Yet he could crack a joke or two
in a cantata to coffee’s pleasures -
sipping from a sturdy cup
of nature's matchless brew.

Flutists, fiddlers, singers, organists,
children and masters alike,
have netted hearty sustenance
from the seas of his boundless vision.

But modesty forbade him boast
the importance of his station -
affixing to his noblest works,
a trio of humblest words,

“Soli Deo Gloria.”

December, 2007
Not so much a poem as a narrative tribute.  I'll work on this some more.
nick armbrister Jan 2018
simply a girl
imagine being called karin ulbricht
imagine being a student
imagine being unhappy
imagine demonstrating in leipzig
imagine it was early november 1989
imagine being arrested
imagine girls separated from boys
imagine being taken to the barracks
imagine that this was east germany
imagine it was the cold war
imagine that you were ******* terrified
imagine you were defiant
imagine you wanted to change things
imagine that you actually did
imagine that you were just a girl
imagine that you were the girl
imagine that you are her
imagine that you stood against the whole communist world
imagine that this was you
imagine that you helped knock the berlin wall down...
real events before the wall fell. respect...
Anthony McKee May 2013
A C H T U N G

  acht         neun         acht         sec­hs          vier          fünf           zwo
sechs          drei         eins          fünf        sieben          acht           null
   the         radio            spews             over          and          over         again
  void of      meaning.           or                 so                 they          want
   us to         think           as          the       concrete           wall
keeps       standing.        they         came           to        liberate us
which         they               did. of       thought of        speech
   of         word.             see             the        ashen         blocks sit
aren’t         they        pretty?           as         dark           red        blotches
stain          their           smooth       surfaces           like        lipstick on
wine       glasses.           an           old          fan          turns         slowly
    in a         dusty         room          just               south of
Leipzig.       men        dream of         hazy       Stalinist        façades
    as          she        brings a      cigarette to           her
rouged        lips. Belomorkanal.       the        rusted          olive        uniform
  pulls        tighter           as           she        draws in.        octaves
bellow        from           the       speakers. it is           time
    to         hear          from the     homeland.          how         sickles
gleam         for           the         Union          just like they
   did          for         Lenin. we         don’t           talk          about
   him         now         though.         sickles         don’t         gleam here
   like         they          ought to.          the          reels          revolve
unforgiving   to the cry           of a          winter’s
  night.         the           ruby          snow         glints            in         torchlight.
   the          night          goes on. it           has    to.
sieben        sechs          vier          zwo         neun           drei          sechs
  eins        sieben          null         sechs         acht           fünf          sieben

E N D   E
Joseph C Ogbonna Dec 2022
At Austerlitz I two nations vanquished;
making me historically distinguished.
At Marengo I had Austria subdued;
then I was to honour undoubtedly glued.
At the Pyramids, Mamluks kissed the sands;
then like a French Pharaoh I annexed their lands.
At Jena-Auerstadt, Prussia to her knees fell,
to avoid carnage, and possibly hell.
At Borodino, Kutuzov my boots licked,
as his Russian forces had their arses kicked.
At Ligny, Blucher like a coward fled,
as his smitten forces profusely bled.
At Toulon I first distinguished myself
for a career that would exalt oneself.
Rolica, Leipzig, Waterloo like curses came,
but history will forever my triumphs reclaim.
Napoleon Bonaparte's historic conquest of Europe and half of the globe.
Joseph C Ogbonna Feb 2023
In seventeen sixty nine a child was born
in Corsica, Genoa's former vassal state.
Prior to his birth, his land had been war-torn,
Paoli's resistance did his birth predate.

At school, his geometrical talent was inborn,
and he was tutored by none other than Laplace.
For his accent, his peers at school laughed him to scorn,
but fortune would elevate him from grass to grace.

With his much older heartthrob he tied the knot;
much to the chagrin of his own dear family.
For the heart of Josephine he relentlessly fought,
and at Chateau de Malmaison they lived happily.

Later he would choose a military career
that would take him beyond the Corsican frontier.
France's revolution saw to his glorious rise,
when at Toulon, he took royalists by surprise.

To Egypt he led a dual expedition
of a military and scientific mission.
To France he returned and sacked the directory,
taking charge of the affairs of state and treasury.

Europe did contend with him in seven coalitions;
at Austerlitz he subjugated two nations,
at Marengo, Austria on her bended knees fell,
at Jena-Auerstadt, Prussia to victory bade farewell.

At Borodino, Russia met her nemesis,
as her vanquished forces saw their paralysis.
At Ligny, Blucher like a beaten canine fled
with the terribly smitten forces he once led.

Portugal's sovereign lord to distant Brazil ran,
when like an invincible lord he came to his realm.
The emperor he feared, and made no military plan;
thus he paved the way for him to ascend his helm.

But despite his triumphs, his weakness was exposed.
At Rolica, his troops a major set back saw.
From Leipzig he did to Elba's island withdraw,
from whence in 1815 he returned unopposed.

Russia's wintry plains did his grand armee deplete,
making his troops vulnerable to a future defeat.
After the famous battles in which he gloried,
his great ambition at Waterloo was buried.
A poem about the life and times of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821.
Tyler Jun 2021
Watching Ridle Baku takes me back
To cobblestone streets
Strangers speaking in mysterious, angry accents
Asking, “bist du Amerikaner?”
Ja.
A few blocks separated us,
A chain and barbed wire fence
And MP’s wielding machine guns
But on Saturday’s my parents took me out to the market
And I wonder if we ever passed by each other
Two children in the same city
The city was yours, is yours.
I was just a tenant.
Standing in ancient shadows.
I never knew Arizona didn’t have castles
Until I left, and I missed them.
I got a Mainz 05 scarf when I was 18.
A year before I watched you play for them,
And score against Leipzig.
And the city cheered.
Your city cheered.
And all at once I realized how much I loved Mainz
And how badly I wanted to call Mainz home.
How badly I wanted the city I grew up in to feel like home.
Antony Glaser Mar 2022
Like a rattlesnake
she said I can take you
to the last days of the Weimar Republic
I can show you discordance
or a decided lack of joy, (Mangel an Freude)
like a lizard's unoriginal tongue
her message conveyed doubt

Some teasers
What comes down faster a pound of feathers or lead
and can you tell the wood from the trees

Are you art worthy
Can I unlearn you
fortune unrenewed
just like a night in Leipzig
TJ Struska May 2020
If were lucky, it's all a terrible time.
Tattered goldfish smearing the bowl.
Its more a failed distraction,
An instinct driven drama,
It's like fish swimming in anxious sleep,
It's lame excuses and narcotic visions,
All these trippy hours.
Chopin lurking in shadow.
It's the all organic experience,
I brought nothing but light off the levee,
The stink of Reynolds Aluminum,
Copper and mud.
A thousand noxious cars passing the window,
I don't mean to meddle,
Like a drunk hag hanging on your sleeve-
But where the hell is Shambhala?
It's such a drag doing penance in a bathrobe,
I hear Pharisees and jailers are there,
Doing straight time in Purgatory,
Tinkling like a million bad dreams.
It's rusty bells in little black cups.
Sorry about the clock tower,
It warbles electric.
It's use to substandard time.
I'll perch a Screwtape Letter.
It's obtuse when hungover.
Baal and Beelzebub boogied for the coast.
It's a pestilence of petunia,
A trip to the triage,
The same lame reaction.
Assuage with me to the vat of ammonia,
Its a train leading to Leipzig,
It's Brahms Nocturnal Dream In A Minor,
It's a mansion on the moon,
An olfactory schism of the senses,
Stealing time in half-hour segments,
A volatile mixture metered for meltdown.
Eponymous splotch of illustrious nails,
Railed to the cross one by one
Pilate washed at the sink,
He was clocking in overtime.
I've assembled mirrors to my hobnail boots,
It sluices the sunlight
Gets the light dancing every which way.
Its like being at the circus,
It. So captivating.
What hour is it?
I come awake to a tomahawk tapping.
I'm historically hysterical,
An unknown tangent.
The factory affiliate controls the production.
He measures the sunshine in fabulous droplets.
Let's grab the Metro for a ride through the ghetto,
While you draw designs on lovers faces.
Counting backward from zero to one.
I wrote this poem this week. This is truly my style. I pray someone reads this

— The End —