Giovanni the Pizza Guy (Pronounce "a" as "uh")



Giovanni,you make a de savory tomato

and de thicka white creamy alfredo

you are a de pizza guy, amor'e

Si', I make a de homemade paste

she's a richer for you taste

and that's a part of my story.

I make a de pizza pie

I make a it to please

you wanna de pepperoni

or you wanna de plain cheese ?

I am a you waiter I take a you order

when you food-she a comes

she make a you mouth water

I make a de perfect pizza

in me you should a trust

you wanna de thicka or de thinna crispy crust?

I can make a spagetti or make a zucchini

butta for you , I make a linguine

I can make a de sauce red

I can make a it white

after you taste-you wanna more bite

I make a de spagetti -she's a made a with love

I cook a real slow you order ahead ;

or you take a to go.

I putta de stuff on de top

I give a you wine or a some pop

Uno momento, will you please

I must a cut a de cheese

I am a you pizza guy to make a you pizza pie

Why must a you stay a at home

when a you can a dine a in a Rome ?

I save a you a table

I tell a you a fable

I fill a you pants

I make a you dance

I make a de sauce thick

I make a de sauce thin

I make a you laugh

I make a you grin !

Si', Please a come a back ; see a Giovanni again!

CHOW FOR NOW, BELLISIMA !

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
I have to admit my weakness,
my inability to control my carnal urges.

I have reached again into the depths
of my cupboard where I have vowed
to never enter with a hungry stomach.

And so the temptation of linguine
and innocent tiny shells
crowded into my head
instead of heavenly angel hair.

I have faith that only you
can absolve me of my sins
and twenty pounds, more or less,
a 10% tithe to my Semolina God.

Then there is the matter of the cheese.
Forgive me, please.

She wore a knee-length skirt. I like them a tad shorter but for some reason this didn’t bug me. Her smile was bright and cheery. Her hair looked soft and came down to the top of her back. She was beautiful and her teeth were white and seemed to pop out of her mouth. I liked her a lot.
We decided we wanted Italian. I told her about Acario’s, a good-quality place up the street, and she said that it sounded fantastic. I opened the door for her and we drove away in my car. It wasn’t the nicest one on the market but it went fast. When we got out on the highway I pushed the accelerator to the floor and weaved between traffic. Some girls get nervous when I do this but she seemed to enjoy it. She looked over at me and grinned with those bright teeth. I don’t remember much except those teeth until we got there. I opened the door for her again and held the small of her back as we walked to the door.
There was some native Italians singing in the corner as we sat down. There was very electric light, only candles and occasional flicker as the kitchen doors swung open and shut. The waiter seemed a natural at his job. Sharp clothes, slicked back hair, good smile that didn’t seem full of contempt. He greeted us in Italian but quickly reverted back to a more common tongue when we began asking about their specials. She ordered Rigatoni a la pesto. I ordered Linguine a la Bolognese. We shared a semi-expensive Merlot that the waiter recommended. It was all very good but neither of us ate much. All I could focus on were her teeth. Their movement up and down when she talked. How badly it felt to see them go when she plucked a single piece of pasta into her mouth. We stayed for two hours. I paid the bill and left a generous tip. The waiter seemed grateful but I suspect he gathered this was our first date.
I did not want the evening to end so I asked her if she wanted to go someplace else. She suggested a park about a fifteen-to-twenty minute drive away. We both got into the car and I sped down the highway, looking over when I could to see the white gems she kept tucked behind her lips flare open as I revved the engine.
When we arrived she took my hand and led me to a lake a small ways away. We walked around the lake for a while until we found a bench. It was old and wooden. It had seen many people’s ***** and absorbed the sounds of children calling to their mothers, old women throwing seeds to the birds, and even the sounds of young lovers hungrily snarled in each other’s faces. She sat down quickly and smiled, looking at the quiet waters first and then into my eyes. Her eyes seemed full of life but I could not help to be drawn slightly lower, to the confines of her red rim.
I leaned in for a kiss but she didn’t lean back at first. I opened my eyes and saw her grinning, her teeth seeming to say, “you don’t think I’m that easy do you?”
“No”, I said in my mind, “no you’re not that easy. You know I want you. You know why I like you. Why I desire you. Fine. I’ll earn it. I’ll make you want it. Just come here. Come here once and I’ll win you over.”
I leaned in all the way and got my lips on hers. She didn’t kiss back. She wanted to see me try. She wanted me to impress her. I did everything I could. I moved my lips up and down. I ran my tongue on hers. I touched her teeth for the first time. It lit a fire in me. I fought harder than I ever had. I tried things I didn’t know could be tried. It felt like hours and I think it might’ve been hours but that one kiss was what did it.
When we separated she was still smirking. It was different this time though. She was satisfied, not disappointed. Approving, not taunting. She agreed. She was going to give me a shot.
We finished out the evening. I dropped her off at her house around 4 in the morning. We barely talked the rest of the night. We didn’t hold-hands. We didn’t kiss. I don’t even remember what we did for all that time, but it was wonderful. It was enough for me just to know those white, gleaming, wonderful teeth were mine.
That date led to another, the one after that to another one, that one to a fourth and so on and so forth. Weeks turned to months. Months to years. It was years and years and years it seemed to me. I couldn’t remember the days of the week, the hour, the month, the year. It was all about the next time I got to see those teeth. Until, one day, in the blink of an eye, it was the last time I got to see them again. The last time, the very time they warped to fangs and breathed fire like a dragon upon a now useless play-thing.

omar loved his guitar.
he took it to pubs, clubs and parks.
he took it on trains, buses, to bathrooms.
he went to bed with it.

omar loved his guitar so much
that he cut a hole in it
so they could make love.
it hurt like hell, but
it was worth it.

three months later, omar
and his guitar, who was called
Vera,
had made love two-hundred and
thirty six times, and a
viscous mess lingered
inside her.

one day the mess
became sentient and it
slid itself out of
Vera's whole and onto
the carpet.
omar came home that day to find it
soaking up the linguine in his pantry.

within days it had doubled in size.
within weeks it had grown soft, wet arms
and legs
and fingernails.
after three weeks its form was fully recognisable:
a guitar, with arms, legs and a head, and
a thin sheet of human skin, stretched over
it.

on it's forehead were the six tuning pegs.
and strings were stretched from its forehead
to its crotch.

one time one of the strings snapped and omar
had to replace it with
one of Vera's.
it had a mouth.
when it was old enough
omar made love to it too.

like a "sickness" in the stomach *** 7am
    after only going to bed at 2(am) -
       and not from any considerable mention /
allusion to a "lack of sleep";
     in that "sickness" is more or less
    akin to a metaphor of a centipede wriggling
about on a hamster wheel /
   a rollercoaster of sorts...

   tough-chew of a fiddling with imitation
   walking...
             prized pins in the feet that have
turned to custard-hardening numbness...
immediately a towing of verbiage
seems more apparent than ever...
   perhaps an interlude of

   'and here's one i prepared earlier'...
          
//

  besides: no one really wants to write something
maxim esque every other sentence:
feeding a readership of
exasperation and sighs - from what i've
heard writing maxims and / or aphorisms
can be a rather tedious undertaking -
for all the times that: when should be forgotten /
'suppose i dreamt it?'
              - and any other offer than can
come with: working out a best lived towards
the amnesiac astral domain...

it just came out of a deep need for perhaps
conversation - then again i am too tired -
             a tiredness that probably sounds better
if i push for some eloquence and
technicality - a miasma is too strong a word -
i'm trying to focus on ancient "things" -
   a chimera variation of a turtle -
               a talking sequoia (but an oak would
do just as well)
                                        and a jellyfish...
  from centuries old... lethargy...
                            with this living:
                                        a tryst a harangue
a search for catharsis -
                                 if need be for a mystery:
loitering on the promise of -
                                    by the gallows on
                                         a Sunday -
                                            in a year were all
such days could be: literally read as being borrowed
from the benevolence of
that                                monstrous UV bulb;
and her copperskinned serpent
                          monstrosities of trickle a tease
of skin's to sizzle: undertones of
                 thrashing water against a window
in the ear reach(ing) a pitch higher...                
                                                                                    //

towing too much space: nudging forward
a shy rubric - an omni- litany (by any other
prefix, squalor)
            between a noun like shy
    and an adjective shyness - formality:
a word genus out of identifying it as such -
a technicality of teaching / learning
                                this (a) language...

- but it dawns on me that i have perhaps
eroded too much of origin and thought
and perhaps even an originality via
the cameo cinema of memory (fickle creature),
but it also dawns on me that
perhaps 10 years apart (circa

                                          ) is enough "time" /
the same sort of space that would allow
a rereading of a work that's
             either Herr Watt (ha    ah      ha)
or a Thin Geon  
                           Anne's Wake -
                    for what use to i have for any
more of that democratic endeavour -
   if only to reprise upon: from the catacombs,
the labyrinth, the ancient library,
the depth of sea upon sea of paragraph-congesting
a drawing-up a coming up for air
akin to (verbatim)

- ****, Nick & the Naggies / Glugg &
    the 3 riddles - Chuff etc. -

   in the house of breathings lies the word,
all fairness. the walls are of rubinen and the glittergates
of elfinbone. the roof hereof is of massicious
jasper and a canopy of Tyrian awning rises and
still descends to it. a grape cluster of lights
hangs therebeneath and al the house is filled
with the breathings of her fairness,
  the fairness of fondance and the fairness of milk
and rhubarb and the fairness of roasted
meats and uniomargrits and the fairness of
promise with catatonia and avowals...

that from out of nowhere and for reason
other than: in order to write proper  & "proper":
tossing and fidgeting the little oystertongue
like imitation(?) i.e. forget conversational
standards of languid, lingo, linguine -
in a frock of half down and in a tuxedo of
half up
                for none of this could possibly
make it into: it's a Thursday morning
   by now all the newspapers have,
                               have been printed...
                  perhaps i'll tender a pause to imply:
pounce-stealthily-hidden in
                                                         wait:
  trainspotting & *****-tickling itch-not-itchy...

now that would be a-happening of sorts:
beside all the bog-****-sodden autobiographical
miasma and fog...
beside all the fog-coup-nudging shadow
with elbow and prayer to a nuke-UV-bulb...
a heart a sparrow a ribcage:
                when farting into the wind
when throwing a stick against a tree
in a forest -
                        when the unbelievably
corrupt sense of self is content, pure,
             by pure i'm only aiming at:
                           uninterrupted -
                           or... without a conjunction
like                                            and...

                that's before: that's a before veering
toward:                          image - begin, again:
a chandelier made from champagne flutes...
       on a side:
i can stomach divulging and bulging in
                                   shackles and monkey's
cackling imitation giggles -
some existential angst (although not something
grandiose as a 20th century sort
or "European" / 19th century precursor)
  
       on the periphery of some "now" (a variation
of when, what if - how, what?)
       such that it is a beautiful lie:
this life...
              and my newly  found estimation
of revising esteem for: not wriggling
in worm-food and silly-ink:
a medium of tedium of being taken
seriously (even if as a "reverse psychology"
reversal of joke)
    
       a puncture a wound that "word-thing"
compilation of:
       well beside something as interesting
as: it's an essay by a lucy ives and
                 it's an essay but for me it's more
a shortcut a footnote parade for my own:

   would it ever (at all) be better
to cure an itch by a pinch
   or in(deed) by a scratch...
             gravestones and heads of matches:
possibly very itchy specimens
it's not hard to imagine
******* on a pebble: no, not imagining
it to be a toffee (landrynek)
              
but honest to god and all that's
Port & Geese (Frugal, Portent - i forgot
the attached -al in s.p.e.l.l.i.n.g)
                 i have nothing equivalent to:
beba babe caco (clot)...
in my own in nomine patris
            since: what is much dissimilar
besides... "******": baba implies
               old woman / peasant woman /
         or woman as harangue (of sorts)...
even though babka =
                        a sort of cake (elevated
sponge, elevation = more bite to it)...
   then comes the suffixation of
the diminutive (adjective)
                             to the word...
babeczka, babusia... babcia
                                              (grandmother):
no language policing here or alt.
   wizardry / frothing at the "salad" i.e.
         concretely (in conc.) a D. Pignatari ref.

but for me: unless not congested (at least
like so) then latin is: loophole it see-through
it's almost flimsy it's barely visual:
why-because-it's-so-******-pragmatic
& why-because-it's-so-utensil-where-none-required
& economically sound
& sieve & water & thirst &
it's hardly an M like Ⰿ
                     or Ⱄ as S
                                let alone an I (pronoun)
i.e. not vowel(,) which is a syllable compound
of Ⱑ   (let alone Я) -
                          perhaps via some distinction
between vowel and pronoun
                    and aye i.e. yes...
             i̊ must say if the pronoun is so bothersome
and more: cut the head elsewhere
sınce ıt's there by no real dıstınctıon
when compared to              får
                          when compared to fát...
                    unless that dıstınctıon be made:
also elsewhere - ȷust like so (Jettıson Bothersome
& Blues)
unless: bothersome camouflage like
a broccoli in a sea of cauliflower akin to
ınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınının
nnnnnnnnnnnnnınnnnnnn­nnnnnnnnn
when "oops" and Bob's your uncle
   i.e. ınınınınınınınınınıninınınınınınının

...never mind - i've been here before
but for the sake of convention (ctrl-c-ctrl-p)
     as clear as day:  
                                  i̊ might add...
       because it would not (otherwise)
  in any other way not suit me -
              thrice up ¡¡¡           thrice down !!!      

all in all: a leisure of an exercise in...
                              terms of waiting for such
pennies of a wording to drool off
a muse's heavenly gob.

Everyone looks pretty when I take off my glasses.
I blink, rub twin bruises from my nose, eyes
narrowed like the tip of a Dali paintbrush: melting liquid

color on a pregnant canvas. I let pigment run
into faces: heads lumpier than hand-rolled *****
of clay, black mouths rippling like asphalt

puddles, bodies quivering like overcooked
linguine: blurred, as if viewing them without
prescription has stripped and censored

their naked bodies. Sightless, I see
with my ears: watch the tone of their voices, taste
the words that unfurl from the breath

on their tongues. I see with my skin, feel
the atmospheres that slow-boil under their own.
I see from the depth of my stomach: absorb

the energies that hit my belly-button: third eye.
And when I've seen, I replace my glasses

                                                        ­                  blink.

Sight eclipses my vision: stubborn
lines and harsh contrasts framed
in unforgiving black boxes. I think maybe

I'd rather brave the world blind –
nose bare, eyes squinted, and belly grumbling
– if only so I could see with clarity.

Big And What Else Is In America

I’ve seen big people in little places
all over the U.S.  I have seen people
break little laws and end up in
the headlines.  I’ve watched old folks
do young things.  Fat do thin stuff.
You have never asked me why
I see such things.  You have sat
in your soft chair thinking it was hard.

Leaders do little things and end up
on the TV.  Cokes look like Pepsis
to no one.  Spaghetti is really linguine.
Bosses beg to want anyone to know
they do everything.  Words become
less syllabic the more you say them.
I have seen yellow look awful
light brownish.  I saw a pineapple

that seemed like a stone.  The President
became a wanton chief.  Casual oinks
became loud moos.  One time, not long
ago, I viewed my wife as a lady who
wanted all my money, had it, and did
nothing except wait and wait until
all my relatives died, and then, spent
it on purses at a mall nearby the estate.

Daniel Gallik
danielmichaelgallik@gmail.com
www.dangallik.com

i mean, that **** is weirder than the scots deep-frying chocolate bars (mars, mianly, even though i think snikers would taste better), or slices of pizza; yeah, and they say: euro-trash... how much more ****** can you get?! i don't even want to know what the irish culinary fetish is; it's enough knowing that the thai like deep-frying locust.

i never understood it, this english "thing",
there is probably no nation in the world that has
a compulsion to mix two carbohydrate heavyweights...
heavyweights?
         pasta... bread... rice...
                 crisps...
          so i was reading the yesterday's newspaper
and this recipe was included in the magazine:
      pasta with beans and pesto...
sounds good enough...
but i read into the recipe...
          400 grams of linguine,
                       300 grams green beans,
        200 millitres basil pesto
                    freshly grated parmesan...
and then it hit me:             *1 large potato cut into
                     1 centimetre cubes...
    but now i'd be asking americans to: not bother
getting a passport...
      in school i watched the english lodge crisps
         into sandwitches...
     this is the most oddball of all current nations...
who the **** combines two heavyweight carbohydrates?
they even have this standard of lodging chips
    into buns...
               like my father once noticed on the building
site, this black guy, stuffing a banana peanut-butter
            and some bacon into a sandwitch...
              fair enough if you lodge a plantain into
the mix... but a banana?
              about as weird as the english
                     using crisps + bread... or pasta + potato.
having a glimpse at this pratice,
seems more fascinating, than, say, spotting a yeti.

as a snowball rolling down
the mountain. Every man had
a hand in its making. Every man
packed more on till it grew large

as a boulder. It barely moves from
its weight. Once this snowball was a little
meatball on my plate. And every man
the tomato sauce till I was lost in

indigestion. I was tossed as the linguine
in a polka-dot bikini. I stuffed my face into
every man's line as spaghetti wrapped
around a fork, so entwined and cut short.

in all honesty: i think that what Rick Rubin did to Johnny Cash could beat... even if an Elvis could be resurrected... there's no need...

what day is it today? i'm guessing it's a Tuesday...
it feels like a Tuesday....
i "ought" to feel like a Wednesday...
oh... wait... that's tomorrow...
only a minute from now...
it has been several days since i'm living alone
in a house with two cats...
i feed them without any regularity...
the raw turkey meat is cut up lying
in a bowl on the table...
the fridge is humming: it's full of food i will
never get through...
i tried to eat today: that's the thing about
living alone: you might mind the hygiene:
but in terms of eating one decent meal...
i forced myself to make some broccoli soup...
i forced myself to eat it...
with a decent amount of cheddar cheese...
and three slices of toasted sourdough
sunflower bread: no butter...
tomorrow i'm dreaming up...
i have some mushrooms that will go to waste...
i'm thinking creamy sauce pasta:
creamy mushroom pasta...
i was thinking risotto...
i have a spare stuffed capsicum in a tomato sauce...
i ate some figs with sour cream while
drinking some yerba mate green tea...
two glasses of full-cat... fat... milk
and two bitesize brownies...
but... eating when living alone is such a...
boring chore...
i don't want to eat alone: i rather starve myself...
drinking mr. whiskers & ms. amber isn't
a problem: oddly enough...
just the eating part:
no one ever shat themselves from not eating...
i'll drink the electrolytes to make sure
i have enough salts...
i saved the strawberries...
made a decent pulp juice for the gelato i will finish
off tomorrow...
i will not perform any house chores...
i have an excess of spring-onions:
i will use them instead of onions...
i also have too many lemons...
more ******* gelato...
   - and beside the crippling fear that comes with
noon and sunlight...
England's September: Indian Summer...
i ought to be doing something procreative...
crippled with a funny sort of fear
i fasted while turning into a couch potato...
managed to watch a film: FILTH...
i begged for the night to come...
listening to Teutonic songs... and other
medieval assortments...
watching THE LIGHTHOUSE really ****** me up...
it's like... the one movie BERGMAN didn't
make... it's such a pristine movie...
it's every movie i have ever seen
and more! the black & white canvas is esp.
convincing about the existential bleakness of life...
and around me... sure... life... happens...
people have children...
people take dogs for daily walks...
i sometimes wish i owned an aquarium
rather than a television set...
- but will not lemon juice cause the milk
to curdle?! will i be making cheesy lemon ice-cream?!
i need to look this detail up...
i'll need to water the garden...
i'll put off the house chores for a day or two...
i want the chores to make sense so i'll wait for
the dust to gather...
two spiders decided to make themselves known
in the kitchen... beside mosquitos i find
it almost impossible to **** insects...
even flies... of course i gag when seeing maggots...
in return i tend to give them a bleach bath...
which is not unlike
sprinkling salt on snails...
as my former girlfriend used to do in her youth:
funny... that...
i once came across two boys who would
smear lipstick on frogs and... subsequently set them
alight...
mosquitos i can ****...
maggots i can drown in a bleach soup
while i clean the dustbin...
- so the world around me happens...
people have invested themselves...
i ignite a candle... two...
scented... and think about those nights i spent
walking around in the graveyard to get
a proper kick out of myself...
- from time to time smoking a cigarette imbues
you with a hallucinatory aftertaste of:
something decently cooked... notably something
beef related... or mushrooms...
i'm dreaming of this... creamy mushroom sauce
i'll gobble down with linguine...
pretend to play the violin: imagine Waterloo Bridge...
but all i'm doing is fiddling with my
beard...so many people have move beyond:
have had their life...
while i'm still: as one ******* mentioned
while crying her eyes out
when i kissed her eyelids...
in her own words: you're still... the same...
i am? can you tell me... who i am?
i found around 70 units of Euros that
i will exchange for pounds...
and will cough up the dough
for an hour's worth of affection...
- for two days solid i was having these cold sweats...
falling in love with lying on
the floor... the floor was all i wanted to love...
it wasn't a bed... it wasn't cushions...
it was... something of an... asterisk: crucifix...
so much for life spent imitating
an indigestion of a boa constrictor...
i'll pretend to manage:
it's important for me to eat something
solo...
bad mushrooms...
as you usually get with spaghetti
in a creamy sauce:
i'm skidding further than i'm *******...
have we really: become...
all there is?
left? for the future...
at least the Africans have made up
more hustle with Christianity...
i can't buy into it...
for whatever is made available...
- the day makes me nervous...
i'm sad therefore i ******* to excess...
once the day ends...
the night begins...
it starts to rain...
             ancient tongues are spoken...
only today in the parking-lot
a... most blossoming of a woman in her...
oh... i suppose her... late 30s...
was pretending to be bothered about something
resembling a shopping-trolley...
i never had luck with women...
i had more target practice with prostitutes
and... that's just fine...
while Islam looks so... tremendously
brain-frozen... it has to look toward conquest
while its rotten core of Saudi Arabia
is a... sigh... the Dubai a city build on
sand surrounded by sea-water:
no river...
i need to think about making
that lemon gelato... i don't want to see
the milk curdle... i will not be making
a lemon-cheese gelato!
  - such are the modern times...
i sometimes envision... a people...
a freely giving world fit for exploration
and undeniable uncertainty...
not this...
     sorry... what is this?
             every single modern critique leaves me
melancholic...
every concern these moderns have leaves me
asking: when! since when"
has a slack of intelligence been
so rewarded that it must be:
critiqued: acknowledged...
at least the Soviets meant something...
this modernity: this sickness...
this... atomised... man...
i am: an atomised man...
                
          i conjure up a sense of belonging
that's dislocated from what once
belonged as: concern for lineage:
i write in English: i think in English...
i'm... half-born: integrated...
second-born... while i watch people like
my father with a bad english accent...
yet... wholly competent...
i have people still curious where
i'm from... on the subtle level...
in Essex: isn't the London metropolitan
clearly said: enough...

this land... England... is... here...
but i'm not...

in an older tongue: beside this cosmopolitan
Ing-Leash...
the world is known: it can no longer satisfy
a measure of... what could ever possibly be
"inquired": suspended in a wait...
in... a longing...
we have arrived and... we are not happy
to have arrived at this time...
oh: but the comforts are all there...
but i would give up...
all the pressures of the currency
of the now had certainty for...

for...
             give me! the expectancy of sorrow!
give me a life most brief!
not this... extension of life that becomes...
life abounding in the ownership of
things...

cages... cages.... nothing but cages...
give me the impossibility of the moon!
give me the myth of the moon back!
give, me, my... feet back!
i want to return to "something"
rotten: rotting... pure...
revised: amnesia riddled...
let me experience the same-old
the same-old anew... but no...
lucky loser pool of the bureaucratic
hive mind(s)...

conquest of space
but not the conquest of time...
the sea by some: "mediocre" man...
stretch any man...
count them... convert in order to
converse with them...
the pillow was acquired by...
replicating the idea of a cloud...

of this "life"... i want more!
i want to scream in the night!
i want to howl with the creatures
that make mans' hearts shiver...

liv venter: død parat...

it has rained so many times in the night...
the rain has... conquered the night:
so many times..
it has rained so many times in the night...
in the night... in the night...
true hearts were: spawned...
it has rained so many times in
the night...

Squeezed onto the deck at the back
of a crowded Hammersmith pub,
our wobbling table overlooking the river
barely has enough room for two,
let alone the steak, linguine,
and our bottle of red.

We both take a drink, pausing to watch
a pair of scullers glide down the Thames,
the ripples created by their oars
sparkling in the late evening sun, leaving us
silently jealous of their synchronicity,
their movement so effortless.

I'd arrived early to make sure of a place
and you, with faux fluster, were fashionably late.
You're a writer, a poet, published by Parthian!
Me? A programmer, far more prosaic.
And now with Dutch courage
I said I could do with some inspiration,
but even then the line felt weak.

It could never happen;
there was no connection -
no assonance, consonance, or wild alliteration.
We knew if we rhymed it would be forced and contrived;
we left as separate stanzas
texting with heads fogged by wine.

Years later I bought one of your slim volumes,
curious to see whether a poet might write
about bad dates and nights on the river,
looking for myself between convoluted lines.
Now that I write poems and do my own alliteration
I believe I have finally found inspiration,
so perhaps we did connect after all -
just with a subtler rhyme.

(churn .0
charged
q1.O - a 502 bypass)

following yesterday's ****** of an internet experience,
someone who staged being appreciative of my work
began to divulge his own innermost secrets,
two failed marriages, Vietnam...
ambitions for changing society....
childhood misery... so i replied... i tried to make
it out as empathetically as i could on some points...
and as sympathetically as i could on others...
empathy? childhood misery...
being uprooted from my homeland...
forced into learning a new language at the age of
eight with no prior knowledge:
thank god i was equipped with some flare
for the universal language of mathematics...
come to think of it, mathematics saved me...
no some crazy-*** algebra... although give me
a quadratic equation and i'll all teeth in...
so i disclosed my own "stuff"...
i'm only 35... this guy must be nearing his 70s...
he turns around and blasts at me:
only i can tell you my miseries!
you can't tell me yours! thank god he only blocked
me rather than report me...
i've archived the exchange...
once i was "instructed" that one should start reading
philosophy when one becomes older...
what's the use of that?!
when someone nearing 70 does the leftist manoeuvre
of having no discussion?!
he can stage his little tirade and block
while i'm left scratching my head...
so when do i get a chance to reply?
a 70 year old man... i was expecting more...
i'm glad of the two of us: someone matches
their age... tired old ***...
he can do his little snippet of grotesque
******* all he wants... i hate internet drama:
i avoid it at all costs: i'm yet to record a video
of myself or push out some audio:
i think i won't bother... it might attract the wrong
sort of crowd: the sort of crowd that think
reading is boring / a chore...
is this a variation of gate-keeping?
no... it's just a filtering process for the readership...
it was supposed to be this great escape come
Friday night...
well... the true escape only came today...
i finished studying up on my NVQ preliminaries...
almost finished the English section,
one section left... i'll do that tomorrow...
fill in the first module for the NVQ...
today i sat down to the mathematics section...
GCSE statistics, mode, median... mean... range...
but i swear to God, not at GCSE level did we
ever touch upon the: estimating the mean
of a frequency group...

e.g. the sequence already rearranged
to find the median:
   11, 15, 17, 20, 20, 28, 32, 39, 46
to find the interval?
   range: 46 - 11 = 35 ÷ 3 = 12 ergo...

groups   freq.   mid-point    f x m-p
11-22        5           16.5             82.5
23-34        2           28.5             57
35-46        2           40.5             81

Σ(freq) = 9
Σ(fxm-p) = 220.5
      estimated mean of a freq. group is therefore:
25...

i don't remember doing this sort of statistics
at GCSE level, it has taken an NVQ qualification
to look at this...

mind you, my mathematics was a bit rusty...
but i'd rather spend a Saturday evening doing this
than... said above example...
dealing with people i don't want in my life...
who know perfectly well that they're not
compatible with it: too boot...

- **** me... it was such a joy learning about
compound interest too...
FV = P(1 + I)ᵀ

i.e. / e.g.

X invests £3,500, the interest is at 3.5% p.a.
for 6 years, the future value of investment
is therefore:

FV = 3500 (1 + 0.035)⁶
      = £4690.33

the interest?
   I = FV - P
   £4690.33 - £3500 = £1190.33...

i also forgot about the rules of BIDMAS...
brackets first, integers, i.e. 2⁶...
then the division / multiplication
(left to right)... then at the end... the addition /
subtraction...

e.g. 15 ÷ 3 + 3² + (10 + 6³) - (2³ - 2²)
  exactly... even i thought i knew...
it's so welcoming to refresh the simplest of maths,
esp. when you've been hiding in an ivory
tower of writing...
                       5 + 9 + 226 - 4 = 236...

as someone in my mid-30s... i can truly attest:
there's no point seeking wisdom among
one's elders... they're just tired old gits...
perhaps not all, perhaps some Socrates might arise
once more, but they're just like the rest of us,
if not worse...

they behave in the same incredulous ways
as might be expected of any other generation,
esp. the Millennials: yeah, thanks for down-beating "us":
here's this, for not giving us enough slack...
like these "elders" were the ones who fought
in either of the two great wars...
***** please... all they know are proxy wars
and "collateral damage"...
the next time i'll be looking up to an elder
gentleman, he better not mind me drinking a beer
& smoking a cigarette while sitting on
a bench with me... chances are...
he might disappear for a while & come back
with a vintage Rayleigh bicycle!
so we'll talk about Rayleigh bicycles...
bicycles in general... how his son works long hours,
how his grandson has trouble speaking...
thereby i'd comfort him: wait a while...
he'll come through with his speech...
the rest of them can follow suite with the rest
of the generations...

if i could have only posted a rebuttal...
one way traffic system of conversation?
mein gott: i would have never guessed!

such a splendid Saturday night:
no need to go clubbing, pick up low-self-esteem girls...
well... nothing usual there...
i sort of missed out on the whole hook-up
culture... i spent most of the time in a brothel...
once every half a decade:
when a cat irritated me by insinuating she
was ready to be: geared-up when she was
being groomed... i had to fight the whole
******* foundation... scratch a few bricks
with my fingertips before i finally lay my hands
on a naked body of a woman...
that it happens so rarely: i'm all the more thankful for it!
too much... is numbing...
too little, quiet the opposite... prolonging...
invirogating... ****... invigorating...

oh but the fun really began when working out
the schematics of a die (a pair of dice)...
i never knew that the opposite faces added up
to 7... 6 & 1, 3 & 4, 5 & 2...
optical mathematics... just like me riding a bicycle
minding traffic: unconscious spatial coordination,
but in this version: more concentrated...
                 3

1                            5
       2                             6

                  4

that's a cube, by the way... i have left out
the lines of enclosure...

or the following schematic, reg. 3D objects...
within the confines of algebra, standardised by X
to denote space & count...

plan, front, side... in this instance, variations of front?

       X                      X                    X
X X X               X X X             X    X
X X X X            X X X            X X X X

lego blocks... Danish bricks... something or other...

for my meagre efforts, for everything that doesn't
associate itself with the genius of algebra,
or conjuring up... a E = MC²...
after all... even if i did...
there would be an Oppenheimer with his
reflection from the Bhagavad Gita...

well **** me, at least it's a welcome break from
"solving" a sudoku...
eh... it's almost like looking for a median...
it's as "complicated" as linguine doesn't
represent spaghetti... savvy?

what a Saturday night! but i was rewarded,
for my meagre efforts...
storm Arwen brought... accents of snow...
oh those ballerinas, pirouetting...
how i missed them, not enough of them
for the sleeping corpus to even mention them,
not enough snow for snowmen,
for snowballs... not enough for any proof of snow:
you must have been awake from midnight of
the 27th of November through to the 3am of
28th of November to notice these ballerinas...

you must have also acknowledged:
the night sky is more beautiful since the return advent
of the moon, i don't blame him for ******* off
to the southern hemisphere: looking for winter months...
i welcome his return...
finally the night sky makes sense:
since his return...
all the future worlds of unexplored constellations...
the nights have become... eye-piercing gladness bound,
chained even!

finally the cold is here, what i'm most comfortable in,
to reflect the skin i imbue...
winter is the most alive season for me...
almost anyone can share
the taste for summer... esp. at the "riddle"
of the equator...
oh the northern splendours,
how i adore this cold... if i could i could spend each
night in the forest sieving through
the last, fallen, autumnal leaves...
for scouting for a height of scent invested it...
sweetness of decay, come winter...
freshened by the absence of insects...

also, recently... i've been talking to this girl...
i'm 35... she's 50...
rarely can i compliment a woman for...
finding new music i might like...
it happened once...
i was 21 she was 18... she introduced me to...
in extremo & Дельфин...
i tried introducing her to GONG...
& King Crimson...
                             well... "**** happens"...
but this girl, introduced me to...
HALOCRAFT... Greek instrumental band...
i never felt so... kissed by a warming of a tide...
i think i introduced her to something of my own...
she probably heard of the bands already,
girl for now, woman already...
beside that: a dream to be had...
i can't remember when a woman would influence my
listening diet... music used to be such a private affair...
how would i break away from listening to too much medieval
music...
i sort of suggested... your suggestion
is almost synonymous with hammock's: kenotic...
no, not boards of canada... or 65 days of static...
that's too post-rock...
or even:
godspeed you! black emperor: F# A# ∞...

i guess my "consolation" comes without regrets...
i can't look up to my elders,
i don't have any contemporaries...
the best bit of advice i ever learned
was from Alexander Dumas:
they best advice anyone can give anyone is...
to not give any advice to begin with...
i practice this rigorously...

i can't look up to older people like prior generations
might have...
lechery riddle old ****-wits...
time moves with me...
there's nothing to look up to!
two failed marriages... this that & the other...
i'm glad to have not failed in marriage...
it didn't take me two ******* takes
to realise my failures...
i learned it the first time prior to engaging
in a single one!

perhaps that's why the old sod blocked me...
he failed twice,
i am: highly unlikely to fail just once...
maybe he was afraid of... himself...
mostly people fear others... not because
they can see themselves in others...
rather: they are finally able to see
themselves: in themselves...

                  don't you think?
whatever you might be "thinking"...
i might thinking of "thinking"... to begin with,
this sorry-***-tale of 8 winds
& a sqaured number of sorrows...

            i can't remember the first time, the last time,
when a woman's recommendation of her music
taste appealed to me: appeased me...
such a rare event... it must be celebrated!

storm Arwen came, i can't cycle around my vicinity,
no matter... she brought with her
an accent of snow...
winter is here: the night sky is reclaimed by
both moon & constellations...

alles gut: reicht
dies alle gut: ist genug...      
    
       dies ende:
                               anschließend somit weit!

before i might launch into an armchair of a paragraph...
no... nothing of the sort...
r.em.'s song: nightswimming... i have my own
version of ulterior events: nightcycling...

i'm not much of a lyricist...
nightcycling: such nights are all but forgotten...
how i miss the traffic
how i don't miss the traffic...
how my face isn't in need of being washed
since there's so little sandpaper debris on it...
there was never going to be a photograph...
the moon was perhaps almost always
a glass-is-half-empty: most certainly a frozen
biscuit: a pretend-tooth that's
glazed with a shy colour: a hue of diluted
sepia / wheat... yellowish as bone allows...
or antiques...

          nightcycling... hardly years from now...
or even days... it makes so much sense to be alone
that it doesn't even bother me
to sometimes wish i wasn't
when i know: that if i wasn't...
i'd be pulled toward wishing i was...
i don't want to feel that sadness:
that claustrophobic energy of having to
chain myself to... at best all the *** at worst
all that... anaemic conversation about:
how we might be the best, better: couple...

a sensation like no other...
perhaps if one were to kiss bone...
or perhaps like biting off
the ends of chicken bones
to get at the marrow
once all the meat and sinew has
been munched off: almost
slurped... most certainly
bitten: subsequently gnashed...
- eating frozen blueberries...
                 till the tongue turns
blue till the tongue is numbed
till the teeth start to itch (which
is of course impossible)...
but words make it possibly... eh... maybe...

it was raining throughout the day
and... i had to wait for the night
before i cycled...
in between...
   i made... raspberry... ice cream...
the classical way, using egg yolks because
i have no fear of salmonella...
at worst: i'd get my intestines cleaned
out with some diarrhoea...

such a simple recipe...
2 cups of double cream...
1/4 cup of milk
1/2 a cup of sugar...
heated up...
5 egg yolks beaten... 1 cup of the mixture
mixed with the beaten egg yolks
at 165°F... then all together...
12oz of raspberries blitzed up...
sieved through so the seeds would
not agitate... 1/4 cup of sugar
and some vanilla extract...
mixed together... with the cream
chilled in the fridge for 2 hours...
then into an ice-cream machine to churn for...
roughly 40 minutes...

later... two small brownie slices
and this... "ambrosia"...
if it rains... might as well make some ice-cream...

- i don't want to fall in love... ever again...
it's not that i'm hung-up on an ex...
come to think of it: i'm hung-up on myself...
what a lot of love wasted on someone
so rotten...
i wish i was myself the time i fell in love:
tender, young, naive...
then again: perhaps not...
i don't want to be a father
i don't want to have this responsibility
hanging over me like Damocles' sword...
cut the curtain... and the violin strings...
i don't want to be weak: dependent on someone:
i don't want to share my autonomy...
i'm growing tired of the idea of love...
i like to keep it very... formal...
perhaps no one is gesticulating or pushing airs
of 'yes sir'
         'no sir'... perhaps i'm not gagging to be
a well tailored waiter...
i'd shoot those lazy-***** who order shopping
on that metaphor of kangaroo...
bucket-list to-do:
don't ever place an order: go to the shop yourself...
******* pickled brains...
break each limb into pieces:
throw the torso into the pool... hope that it might
swim...

the wind blows from the south...
i stand in a cricket field on top of Havering-atte-Bower
and look at the great span of horizon...
there's Kent... there's ol' Thames...
my eyes are eating the distance apart...
to nowhere...

- well... if you put it like that...
scribbling: i was cycling at 30kmh...
suppose i was cycling quicker...
the metric units inflate the achievement...
while imperial units... deflate it...
it's only 18mph...
the metric system loves zeros:
0000000000000000000000000000000000
the imperial system: quirky...
loves decimals of Pi...

what a lazy night...
what a lazy of writing...
nightcycling...
something must have happened...
so few girls on the town partying...
did something happen?
did their income source dry up
or something?
i've had eyes of women clamour onto me
like they might...
give me ******* while simultaneously
circumcising me...
or pecking at my liver...
that's why... at the Turkish barbers...
it's almost like going to a brothel...
but when getting my bush-whack of a beard
trimmed... i close my eye while
the barber does miracles with a blade
tendering my neck...
eyes wide open... when ******* is performed...
since... well... that "hole" has teeth...
it might be pretend-oyster in the act...
but it's also a mouth that bites...
salivates... breaks up large chunks into small
chunks...

love... yes... at the brothel...
i like that sort of love...
i'm happy to not end up being an old man
who still has presumptions about:
the nobility of swans...
it didn't require either Darwin or Copernicus
to find out... the birds...
you will never see crows
gagging for it... you'll never find crows
asking for voyeurs like pigeons gag...
the crows do their funny... morbid b.d.s.m.
at night... no one's ever looking...
the pigeons? in full sight!

why i get a full glare of... pigeon courting...
i'm seeing... niqab clad ravens take:
"second purpose"...
not to mention... a... widow and widower swan...
my... how... they coupled...
never mind Rod Liddle...
i don't like the way he writes:
but god... i love how he speaks...
i don't very much like how i think:
that i perhaps think: at all...

my libido suffers from strobe-light
insomnia i dare call: quasi-epilepsy...
my dreams: i have shrapnel...
these buildings seem rigid enough:
it'll do... i don't need to make a broth
out of... bones... no skin... no meat...
i feel a crippling nausea-sickness
whenever dropped into a place like
Warsaw... or somewhere far beyond
the home counties...
like Cheltenham...

               it's oh so... monochromatic...
so... missing arrogant Muslims:
London: loon-bin...
this be, Islamabad... if only Polacks
had the same arrogance...
what an obnoxious lot we could have
become...
ask the Romanians?
the Turkish prostitutes... or the barbers?!

England belongs to the English...
thank you for keeping me: tightly knitted to a tuck...
friar...
you'll have to move aside...
while i make some space for my...
gluttonous... thought...
for several years i stopped seeing skin
colours... i stopped seeing ethnicity...
oh... grand reveal!
some equilibrium antics bringing
pronoun "concerns"...

                    ah ha... a world so tame...
i just want to **** on it...
i'm lazily itching toward "something"...
  look here... see an angst-riddled
existential paragraph...
if the natives can't bring some authority
to the table while the minorities run:
******* rampant...
it's like... living in slow-motion
of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
being carved up... dissolved..
like the crown of Poland wasn't ever
a ******* of foreign rulers...
because... lineage didn't matter...
a  Duke of Orléans: could be the king of Poland
but not the king of France...
because... ******* of kings...
Poland... was readily giving it her sway of...
"favour"... alas... the fate of keeping
lineage... inbreeding... weakened genes...
pizza antics in... ******* Woking of all places...
silly Andy... willing Andy buckled on
the ginger gal...

nzuri argan oil... supposedly it works miracles
than any... other... recipe for keeping
one's hair looking: prim... intact...
wind-relieved...
better than any hair-gel...
a well oiled crop of hair is better suited
to... daily troubles than...
applying some stiffening agent...
hair like... deep-fried linguine... ugh...

that i believe advertisers more than
journalists...
a Warsaw fountain... someone abandoned
a dog in there... the poor thing was
running round and round...
me and ol' Joseph...
testing me? my mother takes centre stage
when his memory sparks...
a pain akin to a cut excites...
a spontaneity...
but a pain that cuts towards
a numbing...

like Tolstoy said: every family is ****** up...
it's almost insensible to curate
the formality of strangers with
all the baggage being... towed...
sinking... me... drowning...
but making raspberry ice-cream..
while it was raining outside...
hanging the washing on the lines:
i was expecting a silenced orchestra: timid
of sparrows...

to hell with the constellation of stars...
just watch what the birds are doing...
last time i heard... cats do not require
leashes...
i wish i could have the sort of audacity
of hands i have with cats:
translated into how women are
treated...
at the brothel... at the brothel...
open a bottle of bourbon: i'm there! sober!
strictly oops in-and-out-of-"it"...

this is not even my land...
one which i might wish to defend...
who are these pseudo-post-Soviets...
the originals i could have cited as borrowing
from pan-Slavism...
although mistook took place
concerning... the disintegration of
Yugoslavia...
if the Germanic people knew how to dispose
of the Hebrews...
the southern Slavs knew how to dispose
of the remnants of Muslims...
ugly affair...

time by now has to escape its own clutches with
a... debilitating: yawn...
pass the pawn... crux... lineage!
pawn... broker...
bishop... tilt! tally the rooks...
shoot the horses dead-centre
before they have a chance to retire from
the races...

that i have a fetish for recycling..
that there's a **** to tow...
that there's a **** to tow...
there's some crippling Gehenna
of corn: baking...
snippet: clue...
   whatever happened to the incredibly
sensibly native people...

like ha'hum?