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Bruce Adams Sep 2023
A text for five voices.

Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.

i. Blank copy

I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                    or glide past
                                                the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
                                                dit-dit-dit­-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
                                  as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
                sit there
                for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
                                                Print
  ­                                              I press
                                                        Cop­y
                                                        instead­.
The machine whirs
The light goes
                        across
And out comes this copy this
        Copy of
                nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
                                                This is a copy
                                                                ­of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
                                                             ­   something more
                                                            ­    something
                                                   ­                                imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
                                Carefully
                    ­                            on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
                                                         ­                           I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
                     Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
              I’m looking out of the window as I recall
              without much interest
              that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
                            Until the window is as blank as my copy of
                                                              ­                                           nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
              sit
                     down
                                   yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
                                                        ­Oh shut up I tell it
                                                        out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
                     and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
                     scrawled over in heavy black print
                     and ****** coloured columns
                                                                ­      and smelling
                                                        ­              Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
                                          (or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
       to me
              like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
       I ***** up
                     and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
              What difference could it possibly make
              whether I throw this piece of paper
                                                 which I will now have to print again
              in the black part of the bin for waste
              or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          Yeah.
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
              Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
Then out loud:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
                            a hypermarket
                            a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
       And I will go on holiday
       I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
       And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
                                                         ­      or a couple of hundred
                                                         ­      pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
                                   I don’t know
                                                 “Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
       Down with planes.
                                   And I’ll drive my car home and I will
                                   stop
                                   worrying
                                   about
                                   everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
                            now I have difficulty
                            telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
                     in rapid succession
                                          dit dit dit
                                                        rapid­ eye movement
                                                        ­radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
                                   but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
                                                         ­             I make notes on it.
                                                             ­         My copy of nothing.
                                                        ­              Without really realising
                                                       ­               I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
              disappear
                                int­o the paper
and it is clean again.



ii. Ringing sea

My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
                     having ***
                                          with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
                     Which belongs to me.
                                          It’s my face. I – own it.
                                                        It’s my- my- my-
                                                        And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
                                   His face
                                   His face
                                   His face       It’s him
                                                        It’s him
                                                        It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
                            a face I know intimately
                                                      ­         and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
                                                              ­        what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
                                                         ­      Dit / dit.
                                                            ­   Dit \ dit.
                                                            ­   Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
                                                          ­                   to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
                            and apply it
                                                 carefully
                                                       ­          sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
                                I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
                                without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
                                                        (onl­y mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
                                          I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
                                          the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
                                   a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
                     There are some flowers tied to a railing
                     somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
                                                        It­’s the not knowing.
                                                        ­The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
                                                        ­But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
                                                        No­w I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
                     beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
                                                 out of
                                                            my­ shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
                     howling now
                                          catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
                                          whether my husband will call me or
                                          text me when he lands
and I hurl
       my phone
              into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
                            is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
                                   not the geography
                                          not the conflicts
                                                 not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
                                                               invasion and,
                                                                ­             subsequently,
                                                                ­                                  explosion.
                    ­               We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
                                   between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
                                          and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
                            with brilliant, burning clarity
                                                        m­y phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
                                   I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
       I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
       is as wet
              as my bottom half
                            because the rain
                                          is torrential
                                                      ­  and I can still hear the phone ringing
                                                        b­ut I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
       his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
       and I can’t tell if I’m
              further out
              or if the tide’s further in
                            and the ringing grows louder
                            as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
                                                             ­         the stars rush by overhead.



iii. Acid rain

Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
       Purple
       or green
       I think.
                     One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
                                                            ­   or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
                                   going downhill at 100 miles an hour
                                   the wind blasting through me
                                   the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
                                   everything is turning together
                                   but I’m on a different
                                                       ­                 axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
       Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
       several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
                                                 I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
                                          it feels a bit surreal
                                                         ­      but the world stops spinning
                                                        ­       a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
                            I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
                            but I can’t find the right one
                            even though the fridge must be longer than
                            the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
       the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
       red tops and blue spreads
       and green and purple and green and purple
              and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
                            Missing
                      ­      presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
              (cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
                     so
                         until then
                     they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
       One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
       I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
       which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
                                                 filtered onto the trains and buses
                                                 and out from the sprawling car parks
                                                 to the motorway, and
                                                 onto connecting flights back into Europe
              but none of them will stay in Luton
                                                           ­                  Missing
                                                         ­                    presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
                                                           ­                         which is a *******
                                                 moves with the mundanity of machinery
                                                 like the big car factories by the airport
                                                 the lights on, the production lines rolling
                                                 but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
                                                          ­     excitedly
                                                       ­                      or dejectedly
                                                      ­         but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
                            dead and alive in the air;
                            one or the other on the ground.
                                                         ­      My teachers say I have an
                                                              ­ “odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
                            I look at the departure boards.
                            Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
                            A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
                                                           ­                  green and purple
                                                          ­                   green and purple
                                                          ­                                 Missing
                                                         ­                                  presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
       so they keep darting
                            this way and that
                                                 until my vision is painted over
                                                            ­                 green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
       This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
                                          but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
                            with charge
                                          across the green and purple grass
                                          scorched by a hundred thousand landings
                                          a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
                     glinting in the rain
                     surrounded by blinking amber
       there is my bike
       its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
                                                 pedalling down the runway
                                                 pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
       the acid rain eats away at my clothes
       and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
                     Lighter
                            and lighter until…
                                                 The wheels lift away from the ground
                                                          ­     and in the air I am dead and alive
                                                 and maybe nobody will
                                                                ­                           ever
                                                            ­                               see me
                                                                ­                           again.



iv. Burning sky

The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
                                                            ­                 What?
                     We’re not going very fast at all
                     But it feels like any minute
                                                 we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
                                          and I feel aware of being
                                          light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
       feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
       since we left Victoria but the fight
       we had there
                            in a bistro by the port we
       said things we
       said things that
                            we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
                                   the people kept talking about pirates.
                                   They kept warning us about pirates.
                                   You’re sailing where
                                                        the­y say
                                   You must be careful
                                                        t­hey say
                                   It’s notorious
                                                       ­ they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
       Real pirates.
                     Nasty pirates.
                     With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
                          I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
                          If we’d make national news.
                          Would it be David Cameron to announce,
                                                       ­        regrettably,
                                                    ­           we don’t negotiate with pirates,
                          or would it be someone less important?
                          Maybe just the foreign secretary.
                          What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
       disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
              oh
                                   I
                                                 Sorry
I’m crying.
                     I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
              everything
literally falls to pieces
                            My mug of coffee falls from my hand
                            shatters on the deck
                                                            ­and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
                            No, really.
                            That’s not a metaphor.
                                                       ­        There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
       There.
              ****.
                            **** **** ****.
What is that?
                                   Marc!
I call for Marc.
                                   Marc!
       There is fire in the sky.

–              Katherine.

       Fire in the sky.
       Fire in the
       Fire in

–              Katherine.

       Fire

–              Katherine.

       What
              Marc, what?

–              Are you awake?

       I think so.

–              You were calling out again.

       Calling

–              Calling out. You were shouting.

       What
       where
       What time is it?
                                   Where

–              Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
                They delayed again while you were sleeping.

       Dubai?

–              Katy I really think you should see a doctor.

       Don’t call me that.

–              Pardon?

       Katy.
       Don’t call me that.
                                          Like

–          ­                                       Like what?

       Everything’s okay.



       Everything’s not okay.

–               There’s
                 doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
                 well actually since before it even happened.

       You think I’ve been confused.

–              Not right.
                Not you.

       You’re **** right.

–              Forget it.

       Thank you.

–              Go back to sleep. ****.



–              Are you still seeing it?
                The plane? On fire.
                                   You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?

       Yes.

–              It’s affecting you?

       I’m
              just
                     unhappy,
       Marc.

–              That’s not just it though is it?

       What’s that supposed to mean?

–              Something about seeing that
                                                           ­   plane has scared you.

       We don’t know it was the plane.
       The one that –

–                            No. But, right place, right time.
              They said

       Maybe.

–              It’s still a coincidence.
                It’s not

                                   What

–                                   A sign.
                                     From god.
                                     Or
                                          whatever.

     ­                                     Whatever you think it means.



                            Katherine.

       The thing I don’t know, Marc
       is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
       or that it wasn’t.



       Imagine.
       Vanishing.
       Into thin air.

–              I know.

                            No, you don’t.
       Disappearing
                            into thin air
       Or falling
                            out of it.

–              Falling.

       You can’t imagine that.

–              I can.



–              I can, Katy.
                I ******* can
                                          Imagine.
       ­         Falling.
                Disappearing.
             ­   Into thin air.

                *******
                            i­nvisible.

                 I am
                           right
                          ­          ******* here,
                                                        K­atherine.

       I see you.
       I see you Marc.
       But you’re not
                            solid.

       I’m not
                            solid.
                          ­                              See?

                           ­                             It passes
                                                          ­     right through.

       Now you see me.
                                   Now yo–



v. 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
                                                        ­       I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
              and I’ve been asleep all day.
                                   I get dressed and grab my camera
                                   and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
       The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
              his daughter is four now
              he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
              and he’s moving, he says,
                                                 near me apparently
                                                 to Southend.
                                                       ­               “London Southend” he jokes
                                                                ­      with a roll of his eye
                                                             ­         and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
       the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
       strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
                                                      ­                but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
       They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
              I wonder what is lost between the
              Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
              and the English spoken by the translator.
                                                     ­          The space between words.
                                                          ­     The space between looking left
                                                            ­                               and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
       except for the British delegates
       including the man from Reuters who speculates
       that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
              I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
                                                            ­          as it falls
              and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
                                          the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
                                          and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                   or glide past
                                                        the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
                            dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
                            as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
                            from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
       I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
                            double,
                 ­           cut with water.
              not because I like it but
              because there’s something about scotch that feels
                                                           ­                         moneyed
              heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
              it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
              even though that’s a lie.
                                                        I’m just a man who takes pictures.
                                                       ­ And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
                                                          ­                   as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
                                          A news alert on my phone says a piece of
                                          plane wreckage
                                          washed up
                                                        on Réunion
                                                        i­n the Indian Ocean,
                                   east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
                                                            ­                 it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
                                          I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
                     endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
                                                 and I imagine
                                                         ­             swimming
                                           ­      in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
                                          maternal
       ­                                   spiritual
                    ­                      nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
                                                               ­              slept
                                                           ­           then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
                                                        don’­t tell anyone.
What
       I say
and she says
              I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
       just in case
                            she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
                                   no-one is looking at her
                                   but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
                                                         ­      yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
                                                 I see the photo I took this evening about
                                                 a dozen times
                                                 or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
                                   What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
                                                        and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
                            It was going from here to Beijing.
                            Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
                     that
                     time
                     precisely
                                   my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
                                                    ­    It looks like I’m going to Beijing.
Written 2016-2020.
anastasiad Dec 2016
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Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
beyond the whiskey
and the beer drank along the familiar
path, with memory stressed
as to no accomplished ego coupling,
drunk indeed,
but rehearsing the familiar path
that thought de-activates
and there's less of identifiers required.*

in terms of gambling,
in familial setting,
betted:

watford (21-20) home to newcastle
(5-2), QPR (6-5) against wolves (9-5 to win),
barnsley v. rochdale (draw at 11-5),
chesterfield v. millwall (to win, 11-8),
oldham v. bury (draw at 21-10),
port vale v. bratford (home-side 8-5),
coventry (13-10) away winning against southend (13-8),
plymouth (11-5) against bristol rovers (evs),
accrington (13-10) against exeter (13-8) too,
manfield (6-5) winning against luton (9-5),
portsmouth drawing with oxford united (21-10),
wycombe with leyton orient (11-5) too,
yeovil beating crawley (13-10),
dundee utd. losing to kilmarnock (11-5) -
scots wish me luck,
motherwell drawing with ross county (19-10),
brochin losing to aidrie (11-10),
montrose winning over clyde (9-5),
hamilton losing to edinburgh's hearts (6-5),
finally...
burnley overcoming derby (13-10).

if i got all nineteen right, i betted 2 quid
and won a million,
split it down the middle with my father,
bet for two quid, quid each, half a million each.
my father is a cautious gambler,
bets spare change to get pennies for a million
exchange, i only desire serious alcoholism,
i am a true scot between the two pulling
two pence apart to create copper wiring,
scots are the jews of the north, after all:
i don't gamble, i play chance,
the chances of me being prophetic about five
football scores will be a, a ref. to the guinness book
of records.

i aimed high today, feminism still hasn't the foggiest
of house husbands, lazy lions,
it's still thursday pay-cheque day for the women,
i can cook a killer korma (added late
grind cashews), and a serial killer kashmiri masala curry,
organic chemistry experiments 12h a week will do that to you,
you'll enjoy cookbooks more than chemistry textbooks,
too many esters i say, spices v. perfumes, your choice
the pakistani in my off-license looked amazed i was wearing
hindu perfumes after having cooked a meal he could
recognise that wasn't a concentrate of strawberries:
find a needle in a haystack, yes... find a berry in a haystack...
no.

i love hindi cuisine, much aroma that deviates from
what europeans claim to be aromatic:
pig sweat and oxen salivate a taste for synthetic
odours when an analysis of cardamon justifies aplenty
likewise: what opens necessary porous areas
of the skin as necessarily sweet
does not necessarily invoke a sweetness for the tongue
to match: fat cows better than anorexia voodoo
of *******-champagne girls i'd tell you.
topaz oreilly Jan 2013
Give a little bit of my Shangri La
back to me.
Lets recall the 99p Scotch best at JD Weatherspoons,
revisiting  Bradford by National Express
because we saw  "Bob Sue and Rita too" on Channel 4
and on a whim had to have
B&B; down Manning Lane.
Let's see tea shops show civic pride
serving a strong Bergamont.
No queue jumping,
spitting or cussing in the streets.
Lets not be afraid to care,
and go back to the early 1990s
on the cusp of the Premiership
to see  Notts County verses Luton Town.
Their six pointer
with an overturned milk float to presage the desperation
and long before the aerobic  internet entertained us.
Funded Public libraries
venturing openings on Sunday's
and thank Steg from
Scorpion records at High Wycombe,
grateful for all those post restantes.
Big Virge Dec 2019
It's HARD These Days To Fight ... " The Good fight " ... !!!
When So MANY Things Are Kept From ... "Sight" ... !!!!!
    
Laws Now Applied Are Well Defined ... !!!    
If You're Not of A ... " CERTAIN Type " ...    
You're Deemed To .... " INCITE  " .... !!!    
    
If You Speak Your Mind About Social Crimes ...    
UNLESS You're of The ... Government Type ...    
    
The Spread of Lies Is Now Disguised ...    
Behind People Just Like ... " Condoleeza Rice " ...    
    
It's No Surprise ...    
She's Got Her Slice of ...    
Uncle George's... " Apple Pie " ... !!!  
    
Many Have Died ...    
Both Black and White And Asians Alike ...    
In New Orleans And ... Overseas ...    
    
Where They Claim EVERY Night ...    
To FIGHT ... " The Good Fight " ... !!!!!!    
    
This REALLY DOESN'T Seem SO GOOD To Me ... !!!!!?!!!!!!    
    
But As I'm Black Who Cares About That ... !?!?!?!    
    
Double Standards Now Are OH SO Foul ...    
Like Fighting Wars In FOREIGN Towns ...    
While People AT HOME Are Left To Drown ... !!?!!    
    
New Orleans Will Wear THAT CROWN ...    
For Many Years While The Homeless FROWN ...    
    
Now Films Are Making ... " Political Sounds " ...    
    
Just Like ...  "The Road To Guantanomo" ... !!!!!!!!!!  
    
Now That's NO JOKE But What Do You Know  ... ?    
    
The Actors From The Film Had Just Flown Home ...    
From A German Awards Show And Were Greeted By POLICE ... !?!    
At Luton Airport And QUICKLY Placed In CUSTODY ... !!!      
    
They Were Then Held For TWO HOURS .... !!!?!!!    
Their Collars' Felt And Return ... SOURED ... !!!    
    
So Listen Up Folks Here Comes The Quote ... !!!  
    
"Are you going to make more Political Films ?" ...    
    
Was A Question Asked By One Whose Task ...    
Is To Stop Terrorists Who Are ... " Muslims " ... !!!    
    
A Representative of The Group ... " Reprieve " ...    
Whose Work Includes .... " Civil Liberties " ...    
Expressed OUTRAGE And DISBELIEF ... !!!    
She CLEARLY HASN'T Dealt With Many Police ... !!!!!    
    
They Fight ... " The Good Fight " ...    
Pretty Much ... How THEY LIKE ... !!!?!!!  
    
And May Well Try To Say My Rhymes ...    
Are DANGEROUS And Could ... " INCITE " ... ?!?  
    
Well Here's The Key It's ... POETRY ... !!!!!    
About The Ways They ... LIE And CHEAT ... !!!    
    
It's Funny To Me But Now CLEARLY ...    
Whether Film or Play You've Got To Watch The Things You Say ... !!!    
      
But It's Now Okay ...    
To Make Films About ... " Gays " ...    
    
COWBOY Gays ...    
" I say I say what like John Wayne ... !!! "  
    
FUNNY That ...  
Wasn't Always That Way ... !?!    
    
Now They Fight ... " The Good Fight " ... !!!  
Will Police Frisk THEM And Ask Questions ... ?!?!?    
    
"Sir, I think not !"    
    
"No, what's the problem ?    
I'm sure they'd find a use for those BIG TRUNCHEONS !!!    
Males who are gay, could be terrorist men ?"    
    
It's Now ... CLEAR To Me ...  
We've ... NEVER BEEN FREE ... !!!    
    
But Come Now PLEASE ... !!!    
NO Freedom To Speak ... !?!    
Or Talk About The Things We See ... !?!    
    
NOT Free To Protest Whatever Next ... !?!    
    
Now They Want To Give Pills That May Just **** ... !?!    
    
Apparently ... Pills Such As These ...    
Will Help Us Live On ... " TWO Hours Sleep " ... !!!    
    
Now That's CRAZY ... !!!  
There's Said To Be A NEED In Todays' Society ... ?!?    
    
Are They NOT Happy ...    
With ******* Speed And Ecstasy ... ??!??    
    
NO Freedom To Sleep ...    
They Want Walking ZOMBIES ... !!!    
    
Work Til' You DROP What's Going On ... !!! ? !!!    
    
NO Time For Your Kids ...    
NO Time To Conceive ...    
Conception May Become ...    
An ... " E Bay Bid " ... !!!!!    
    
"Internet ***** !!!    
Next Day Delivery !!!    
***** from a Hunk !!!    
Pregnancy Guaranteed !!!"  
    
Don't Know About You ... ?    
But That's NOT FOR ME ... !!!    
    
Can This Possibly Be Our DESTINY ... !?!    
    
My Light Sabre Technique NEEDS A New Regime ... !!!!!    
Where's OB1 Kenobi ... " Beam Me Up Scotty ! " ...  
    
That's ALL A Pipe Dream ...    
But REALITY BITES ... !!!!!!    
    
And It's HARD Nowadays ...    
To FIGHT ...    
    
....  " The Good Fight " ....
It really is hard to do it now folks !!!
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2018
/the bore of moral relativism stemming from the eden metaphor:

i am sure, a satanic lie, but perhaps
a godly one too...
    type on the problem of the three
doherty brothers,
   with the husband having committed
suicide...
  the remaining brothers,
   with the remains of natalia doherty
in one of the remaining alive brothers...
the "disappearence" of
    natalia doherty from luton,
later found in the garden of one of the brothers...
drunk, she started shouting abuse
at the future suicide...
                clearly the story:
           the man who committed suicide
did the ******,
           the brothers stepped in
                  and covered up the burial...
i'm working from first impressions...
                   the husband killed, but could not
stomach the deed, so he took his own life,
his brothers stepped in
                          and took care of the ***** work
of making a crass burial...
                     justice is but water
       between the blood of familial ties...
as it were, brothers in arms...
                  but justice was served,
somehow, perhaps not the burial rites,
   but the fact that a suicide took place...
a g. madonim painting replaces my
aztec calendar, now hanging on my wall...
             and he lay with her for several days,
the brothers did the ***** work,
disposed of the body...
                           in that, they buried her
face down...
                       as if to imitate:
                        the shut mouth that once
took to drunk obscenity...
                    always the most mundane face
behind the most belitteling deeds...
     even if 12 years later...
                   and they say:
actions speak louder than words,
    sometimes words have unparalleled
consequence to be mismatched by deed...
                    guilty?
  who is guilty in this matter,
          if the actual murderer committed suicide?
too much of a brotherly love
        to leave the matter blatantly staring
in the face...
                       and what of the woman
without a grave?
        how much longer does the memory
of a person remain intact without
a "proper" western burial?
                             coffin unto slugs,
rot of wood,
                         or the immediate enegry
release from the Ganges?
                                       an abandoned grave
or no grave at all?
             justice would have been
served, if the murderer was still alive...
              then, of course,
            the remaining doherty brothers
would be guilty...
           but what if the same doherty brothers
didn't whisper a noose on the man
who strangled his wife?
              as they might have added:
    you did the ugly bit, we did you a favour
doing the ***** bit...
                   what respect for the dead
is there in rearranging the body, face up?
               a second dagger, a certainty,
and the two old brothers, with one playing
deaf, the other playing liar...
                      apparently in a fit of rage:
hell knows no fury like a woman scorned,
     but what is that of man?
                 heaven knows not of a man
castrated by a woman's words?
                  in the immediate sense -
                    oh gerald gerald...
said the two elder brothers...
                                if gerald was still alive...
you could judge the elder brothers
as accomplinces...
                                 at first i thought: b'ah!
but at least she wasn't buried as gerald would
have intended: chopped up and disposed
in dustbins...
                      she remained intact in
the ground...
                          since the undertaker walked
scot free...
                  3 months for the liar, aged 73.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2021
superficial overtones...
the Kaiser bites the *****: turns it sour
from all that saliva-glue...
and the French want to rekindle
the glory days of Charlemagne
go down with Napoleon's
overstretched ambitions into
overstepping into Russia...

but at least i tend to my conversational
overtones...
i don't like superficiality of
this love yet to be tasted:
yet so yawn: ah so tender...
give me three proper glugs
of southern comfort on ice
after roughly 4 hours
coming back to havering-atte-bower
doing a lap of hyde park...

and i'll tell you how weird
is feels cycling into central Loon'don
when once upon a time i'd take
the bus... the tube...
and use up some of my legs
in the labyrinth of Bank station...

honestly? cycling through London...
i thought it was much bigger...
the tube enlarges what's made
available...
what is 20+ miles to and back...
the flat serendipity of London
that's almost like the joys of tulips
and the Benelux...
you can cycle for miles...
of note: from Aldgate toward Stratford...
from Stratford to Ilford...
from Ilford to Chadwell Heath:

demon speeding, no other...
i almost wish to own a horse by now...
but then the symbiosis associate
with four legs trotting two legs
lagging, hanging down on the sides
of a torso...

it's unlike heading toward Southend on Sea
or into the nitty-gritty: rolling hills
of Essex via Epping...
plus the thrill of cycling through traffic...
cycling with objects that might torpedo me
to a death...
the thrill of the roundabout...
it's such a cerebral fatty-hard-on
to peddle...

           after all... 29" wheels and i cause
a stampede... of flutes torturing
carl Orff's O fortune: on wheels...
but of no concern...
"they" didn't leave their abode with
a Yiddish...
like they left-off burger-burning
and burning bridges of etymology like
they did in: Hamburg...
did they...

Russian didn't leave many words
for original maneuvering /
    manoeuvring (too many vowels)...
god no god: but the words are available...
those vowel siamese twins
of AE & OE.... one can understand SH
coming together for a crown (Š): caron...
to hide the lesser "goik"...

                /məˈnuːvə/ vs.
[muh-noo-ver]:
hands down... the british linguists heave more
rock of letters than their
h'american counterparts...
if... linguistic reiterations are to be minded...

all these 'postrophes and 'urds
and almost cockney shortenings are
to come to any fruition...
all these Scotch accents with not diacritical
marks all that but not Gaelic...
fine fine clause...
so... why do the Velsh still retain their
Çymru?

to hell with "getting to know" these
natives: sometimes...
ask a rock to move with telekinesis as probe!
blow up Mars... grief a life until retirement in
a swamp you could retract to eat
with it: by a magic wand...
turn into a stew!

yes yes... i heard "correctly"...
  
/təˈmɑːtəʊ/ vs. [tuh-mey-toh, -mah-]
vs. well yeah... katakana:
            トマト
            ポタト

don't get me started on the grand: Toe & Camel...
tow-may-toe...
yes... i get the choke "joke"...

- yore! the burger buns are: burning...
i'm halfway reciting my bob dilly-dan-dan
adventures and i've lacklustre sensations
concerning old age...
i shun it... on the shores
of the Faroe Isles i cling to a mythological
possession of a pebble...

to fathom a a cloud like an
apparition of a swan...
i will detail the youth we shared,
together...
over something akin to a Loch Lomond...
Glasgow begged us to yawn...

no "toe" in a katakana to:
no... "toy"...
it's either a: t'oh (ト)...
or a t'eh (テ)...

and this is what laughter looks
like in ol' ***'
(unlike a spanish giggle
of a german saying yesyesyes
quickly):
                  ハ ハ
                         ア ハ ハ
                                               ハ
                                                    ハ
i expected much more from
the natives: that they might known
their own tongue and its
"shortcomings"...
i truly did...

given they govern a "diaspora"
that's so well connected
and it's sunny in England
but raining toads
in the Vermont of the U.S. of A.
love for acronyms falls short...
no?

Marble Arch looks aplenty weird
when you can fathom the entire stretch of miles
without there being anything implicit of
of "automation"...
of junction...
it's not like me a Beckett with a tail
for a bicycle...
i'd like to see Paris, again...
on a bicycle...
it must feed such a shortening of
a... lessened inquest of interest...

        of course... came the conquest of idea:
enough clones are the a plenty...
of Islam... but there will always be this bothersome one
that will "think" and think it's otherwise...
there's always one and one is
enough to balance out a plethora of equations...

to conquer England is to have a Miami smile concerning
this fickle... bothersome: and "weather"...
to conquer England is to have a
mosque erected in Bradford... Luton...
their cuisine is superior, don' you think?
oh, wait... they are the blue 'indus:
the last mother superior 'inds...

         in the zunge of the natiff...
i too would think "otherwise":
they did have an arsenal of spices
greater than the nuke arsenal of
either the soviets or the h'americans..
we will be glad to be educated concerning
the use of cumin, coriander...
black cardamom bombs of pseudo-whiskey...

toe-may-***!
        tow-m'ah... tease!
                    a clarity of the syllable junctions...
like giving birth to time...
like collapsing into atom
for the purpose of spacing &
coordinating...
like the time Albert Fish stuck needles
into his pelvis before
being electrocuted...

and this might have been an event
to equal the raising of
the Eiffel Tower...
but then again...
if it wasn't the Eiffel...
and there was Albert Fish...
i'd probably remember the *******
fish-wed-lock
rather than...
the congregations of moi-mort-dans-haler...

giggle: at most: through the congregation
of the most, left, available....
these walking add-on abortions...
thee ***-less truant plays of
"lost harem" sods....
my eager ****** lust....
           last >  tréma oh:
   parabolique glisser....

           non! ici, je m'eh tie(n)(s):     (où)
          nein... hier:
ist
Jim Wilson Apr 2020
The lamps go out over Europe; when will they burn again?
The New Deaths rise inexorably in Italy and Spain
We leave the office, turn off the lights; stand alone in the dark
Gaze out on Luton’s business zone rather than Saint James’s Park

Soon we’ll learn to spell “furlough”, to self-isolate (so formal!)
Did we sleepwalk into this – JG Ballard meets normal?
Netflix, Fuze and Teams and Zoom, set yourself new goals
Clap the frontline staff at eight, then stockpile toilet rolls

Yet the weather’s kind and spring is here; it feels there’s nothing to fear
Magnified, blown-up, eye-catching - a virus which sounds like a beer
Lockdown will get tiresome, it’ll feel like a phoney war
Masterchef still on the telly, quarantine starting to bore

London Calling reminds us “the wheat is growin' thin”
Blinded like Day of the Triffids by an unseen foe within
Excel’s pop-up wards unnerve, beds laid out in a queue
Sepia-tainted photos: 1918 Spanish flu

Then the figures start to rise - thousands now and more
And, though they’re other people (no black cross on my door),
A feeling of displacement, we’ll meet some sunny day
“We’re all in this together!” doesn’t sound so blasé

How long will England’s hedgerows remain beyond the pale?
How long the pubs stay silent? Denied our pint of ale
The chronicles of history await the final score
A time when over Europe those lamps are lit once more

END
what's in a name what's in a name
in the end
within a name there is no name
but a pre-noun and a pronoun
and          that glorious word THING
and boomerang not a boomerang
of I to It
           to I as It           and It a non-It
a spoke
              the spokes in a wheel...
a wheel is an Ezekiel
                     is my first learning of the name:
little Yash                 and jesz? i.e.
are you eating?    my words my silences
my atonement for say:
the miraculous spring afternoon
finding myself enjoying the act of reading:
regardless of what i'm reading:
or rather i am actually reading Frank Herbert's
Dune but i should be reading
al-Masudi's the meadows of gold
and currently that's a first edition
on amazon going for
£47.99
            so until i get a wife and a surrogate
daughter i can and will splash out
on books in the purchasing window
of £30 to £50 and since i'm not rich
enough of rich-autistic enough
or autistic enough
to be splashing on paintings
like that story of the founder of Barbie
no not Ruth Handler
before pornographic magazines
the Swiss invented the Susie Susan Sour-****
to gag men into
the predicaments they found themselves
in as world war ii bomber pilots
then came the infamous poster reel
from Shawshank Redemption and
boys those girls those flinging-mig-magic jazz
of ****
those lonely nights
and days
but mostly the nights
and on my 38th birthday i masturbated
like 3 times
because a day prior i was talking
to a friend outside of the Spurs' Coliseum
and we talked about being 38 and 72
and cancer of the prostate and how he got
it removed and now can't get an *******

i would have killed to venture into
the ear to eye osmosis
of being at the
Boris Brejcha at Arènes de Nîmes...
artist to artist
this is not me Matthew Arnold
a limp **** poet
crying to bed after seeing Liszt play
because music has changed
and there's no genius of music
but a genius of music-inclusion therapy...
"therapy" / therapy?

Friday came a little late: now that i'm imagining things,
writing on a chrome book
in my own room i remember days
when i used to drink a liter of whiskey
and write from 10pm to 5am
having given up smoking marijuana
at the age of 21 weighing in at 65kg
after an experience
with: what i'm guessing...
not Jesus and not Yashwa...
but rather: and i only learned of his name today:

dualism of monotheism: the little yahweh...
                       A

           E          Y         I                   𐤃

                                                   ∇
                  O       U

yad dah...
           YDDH...

                     turbulent lessons in how the consonants
are props and vowels drift in and out
to allow for Semites to transliterate nouns
Semites need to transliterate nouns
which cannot be said
of Matthew of Mateusz of Mateo
but Matthias says it's possible...

the angel: Metatron...

                        i'm seeing Mega:
like the movie Tron (updated like Dune updated)
and the soundtrack and something megalomaniac...
like the affairs of non-existence
of supposing within
pre-noun pronoun
preposition and proposition
are so why can't a pre-noun
exist before i learn the names of things
before i inject conjunctions and adverbs
big and small
i usher in a chemical laboratory of
Ar Na Cl He Fe
no Ar...

natrium chlorum
    helium            ois

                 ferrum...

terra ferrum: iron earth
                              in akimbo venturing for
broken bones and fixation on bones
206 of these...
and i overheard that Muhammad Ahmed
knew the exact number of bones
in the human body (does that include the teeth?)
32 teeth...
   that's 9 vowels and 23 consonants
in the Polish alphabet...
bad tooth England only has 26 letters
and boast all it can about Latin VQ
it does not have...

oh not bones then joints
i heard about the number 350 being cited...
although i sometimes wonder
about O and little o
of degrees and that's really thinking about
the 0 and to the power of
infinity is infinity oscillating in
a duality: even and especially if it's
a monotheism:
why then o why i wonder
at the predicament of Islam
because it is not out simple migration
but the excesses of Dubai must
be hitting the average muslim hard
if they be wanting to move with us
European paupers, no?
us drunken savages we are savages
and we returned to our pagan ways
just as i might have predicted why
Poland defended the pagan power
of Lithuania and why Christianity
never really spread to certain parts of Europe
but was kept in check by some
Russian Greek or Varangian...

i saw it in his eyes when his father
head-butted one of this soldiers
i'd bet i will put a bet on, everything i have...
on Usyk beating Fury...
the odds?

Fury 5/6 ahead of Usyk at 11/10
strange numbers...
i saw Bohun in his eyes
the cossack romantic figure in Sienkiewicz'
with Fire and with Sword...
yes saw it and this is the only sport
i'd bet on with a heart of a gamble
beyond the £1.00 threshold
unlike Bukowski betting on horses
i did similar antics
betting on scores in football...
but nothing major always stingy no greater
thrill than earning money
and saving money
and then spending it on kayaks or canoes
or books or compact disks or
£12 summer dresses and what not
however the trend is these days
last time i tried tapping into anything
relevant on the internet
but same old:

men, bears and £12 summer dresses
that are like the rule
pulled up in the forest on the sly
with no suspenders or tights
just the suntanned skin with no wintry
attaches of still ***** still
playing chess still not playing
backgammon still no chess
unless with a kid
and i loved how i saw the engineering
of AI in chess games
and how the kid was losing and
just because she's a girl doesn't mean
i'll let her win
or that i'd let her win no because
i didn't but i don 't mean playing
chess with a ****** partner
or watching t.v. with her
because no unless there might be physical
dimensions askew like how could
we possibly do it, physically speaking
i mean how could we when we couldn't
and that would be her licking
the eyepop pop-sickle sickly sweet
no teeth grandma ***
or me and her already wrinkled *****
slurping oysters
Bang Dan... Bang Dan... sounds Vietnamese...

why would: ah: authenticity...
38 outside the range
but in the range 21 - 35 have to complete
3 months of agricultural labour
to qualify as citizen of Australia...
i think that's rather nice...
i only submitted the form on a whim
but i received no automated response...
instead a Jamie Chirpseer
got in touch: apparently they have been calling

now i don't know but
last time i "measured"
that's only an 8h50 flight from Auckland
to Hawaii
so i'm thinking why set my foot behind
a door with a mother in law
watching scoop me up Jesus
t.v. and being all paranoid about my status
as ******* on the closed enclosure
of Kauai
but i sure as **** threw a decent birthday
party by the pool
well shared but this is claustrophobic writing
i.e. claustrophilic my ego
says there is a cursor and pre-
to nouns so i'm cleared: cleared by I'II"
however many that is:
1 foot 11 inches last time i checked...
ego-**** that is: the little horn on my head
that turned into a hovering 360 degree eye spin...

seeing those last words written days
ago, happily discarded
now upon return with a pop-sensibility of aging
no new music but there are some unavoidable
stresses in neu alles neu: billy and eddy's
Lunch not naked Lunch not naked
all food in attire:
me sitting in a tuxedo and sneakers
with a baker boy's cap: some unifying piece of attire
whether you're at White Hart Lane
or whether at the Boleyn -
                  unifying attire like some distinction
between the Tribes of London gone out
of the window with the babies in a circus of bathtubs
falling from the sky
because raining cats and frogs
had all the dogs drinking from puddles of beer
morphing into hyenas - crying over Benson Boone
singing all god is jesus
and no god of a muhammad
there is no transliteration of tongues and words on
tongues and words not on tongues
but abstracted thought and missing in crosswords
because like a dyslexic being good with numbers
because is such a terrible word right
now...
but good in manners of speech: or is that speach
like i want to bite into a peachy apple
                         like crossbreeding happens and you
could craft champagne from thin air
breed a german shepherd and a spaniel
or what was used to breed a dachshund
from a dobermann...

   the Q and the Mark i.e.

                     Mark              +                Q(uelle)

                    ­                        =

                      Matt            ­   &              Luke

i came across people interested in religion and
the mammoth goliath that is Christianity
of conversation
and a revamp from the year 1945 from Egypt
the Nag Hammadi library -
and all that invoked by the Church Mothers
maybe another Frank Zappa moment if i could
sing but instead i found my voice
my voice in giving SIA a briefing after having
worked with stewards on a bag cordon
at Wembley...

now how to find respite, next day the cycle
still not fixed so house bound
at least able to wash the bedsheets
and hang them in the garden of sunlight
to then dress the bed once more in all that air
and wool
like floating sheep and perhaps horses with
wings
and perhaps apes to
and perhaps men with four arms and no more
than two feet
and perhaps wheels and fire and the internet
and printing and copying
and all that towers and gardens from Tokyo
to Baghdad -
                               cascade of the human experience
ethics is apparently objective
well i could have sown the swearing ogre oath
i loath in **** me **** me oh **** me
jurisprudence is subjectivity par excellence...
so rarely do you have judgement by the peers
by the jury: jurisprudence -
instead English law and the barrister
and judge and triangles of politics -
i hardly speak in the court of law -
perhaps fellow human will allow
me to think before god:
perhaps i can think before god
if i can't speak in the court of law if i can't speak
in the court of man then perhaps
i will be able to think in the court of god:
at least there's hope with me writing this down...

yes, i put a weird bet on two nights ago...
Tyson Fury vs. Olek Usyk...
bets on, whatever the algebra of gambling
5/6 and 11/10 as a decimal:

      0.8333                  and 1.1111

ニ: 0.747747748
      ホ: 0.9213

if i were to see mathematics with letters,
notably division by the first number
and multiplication by the second numbers
(Ni                   **)

but at least no muddle with too many numbers
like too many notes in Mozart's
'seph II  Holy Roman Emperor (1765-1790)

    ヨーヨー                 (yoo yoo toy boy not
yo! or yo-yo                but no ideogram?

let me rummage...)

                         bandalore... idea: image at least
some     :)                  or some :'(

      maybe get a hummingbird tattoo on my neck
in devotion to the Aztex i.e.  Huītzilōpōchtli

pero āmo tēchentenderoa lo que tlen
tictoah en Nahautl                                 TLEN:
oxi         oz                       oxygen-c-c

                           TKANKA: tis            tss tis tss
Sue: Ssue...                   SS: Ś
                    i.e. tissue:
                                                       /ˈtɪʃ.uː/ /ˈtɪs.juː/

maybe a truly phonetic poem
or a truly transliterated biblical text
a snippet only a snippet because i have enough
of a day to live to spend another hour
or so in akimbo or on my knees
before the writing desk that's my bed
no no: but a short equip-me "poem"
a quirk like a sneeze to base my focus on tissue
and SS i.e. Ś
and other instances i could possibly see it in
in the English tongue...

all of a sudden working with Pakistanis, Bangladeshis
and the Sudanese is or can ever be
about a white English boy with some
post-colonial stresses and ancestry questions
about why the former Commonwealth
Empire imploded and no wonder
given the Civil War in Sudan
why then complain about the English i wonder
but i don't have that problem
given no one can really look sensibly accusing
the Polacks of imperialism and colonialism
base mention of Mongols and the Ukranians
while the Lithuanians dwarfed under Russian Stalinism
and what remnants of German blood
fused during the northern crusades
to give birth to a German fusions of
Estonians, Prussians, Latvians and the Fins
at least we know that the Prussian pagans steered
the gentle happy german soul
for some time or so the romanticism goes...

                  this is still writing under the influence
of Billie Eilish's LUNCH on repeat:
the glad days of my 20s spent never speed dating
not really singing sad songs of psychopathic love triangles
and later sycophantic bare minimum poetry
yuck cringe and are we of the first people
to be given a literacy adventure in proficiency?
so my little historical debrief:
well... it's all funny how i too came on a banana boat
with the rest of them
that astounding reflection of a Pakistani from Luton
born and bred with mosque like a seashell brought
along in the night of the crimson moon
the LESBIAN flag of ISLAM
i.e. the marriage of the girl moon and Venus...
because isn't that "star" with the crescent not Venus
unless that's Venus with a scimitar
and who was the woman of the origins of Islam
running between two hill tops with her son
looking for water?
Hajarah and concubine of Ibrahim?

              at the diner with Ismail having no dinner
but food for thought
in some absent heaven and in some absent hell
but rather in a limbo of grey objects
and a blistering itch of sunshine that
turns a hyperbolic white skin of the north
a golden serpent glee
and invokes spying for the Greeks or ancient
Romans in Lebanon
with: mind you: with all those Pale Orthodox Jews
might just fit in...
but wait: i digress... i've been looking for an ideogram
for a yo-yo... wasn't i?
a yahoo too: a yo-yo playing with a yahoo
when there was whey and rye and lasso and spey
and whatever way was in the where...

          ilocano: aj aj: moje kolano

         (exercise in pain onomatopoeia
         and possessive article: moje / mine
         noun: kolano / knee)

oh yes... and a rubric of the bets i made on the Tyson
Usyk match-up... tailors to the glove
a dash of Polansky on the ring...
left right tango with tango of men
so rough **** so not like ******* a woman
so unlike...

thus:

    no yo-yo: but axle:                        軸
my guess is as good as anyone's
with however many confines of
//     \ |               |||          /|/|/      \|\|\

to quiz up a T                 or an L
let alone an O because so rigid have to swim
to Yippon for the proper edible tongue

now to reveal the Gambler and how i will never be
able to write yet admire
a Hemingway and a Bukowski...

Usyk by technical decision (100/1)
stake... £0.10
Fury by technical decision (100/1)
stake £0.10
Usyk by disqualified opponent (100/1)
stake £0.10
Fury by disqualified opponent (100/1)
stake £0.10
Usyk by decision of technical decision (2/1)
stake £5.00
net return £10.00
Usyk by KO, TKO or DQ (5/1)
stake £5.00
return £0.00

any anyone who might read the newspapers
would tell you
the decision was crystal clear, scientific,
on the margins, within talk of inches and decimals
and... ooh... itchy...
115-112, 114-113 to Usyk
and 114-113 to Fury...

rematch? what is now to be disputed is by winning
through that bet i made: 5/1
or rather 5:1 but ratios would be any less if
using a colon?
                               enough bark to patch up a
cagey sneer and then return to kiss daylights: out
because now somewhat disputable
in the arena or the courtroom
better judgement watching sport
than those daytime zombie land drug-shows
of the courtroom melodrama soaps
and operatic demand for feeding the collective
consciousness split seconds per day
accumulating into binge potato peeling of skin
and intellect on the sofa...
even now: hardly a waste of good coffee
   and tobacco...                with the added "spice"
of BIMBER... beam-bear to spread out the letters
and transliterate: not to imply anything beside
the phonetic arrangement
of the letters as beam-bear: it's still the meaning
behind BIMBER the sweet 45% *****...

(q)uelle: yet there is hardly a similar problem
associated with Socrates...
given the accounts by Plato
Xenophon oh and let's not forget Aristophanes...
especially him
because he was hardly all luvvy-dabbling in
writing works of just fiction...
satire of the lowest man in the village as it were...
well:

who wouldn't have said:

     pleasure is not only unnecessary,
     but a positive evil

i too have had the pleasurable burden and agony
of being able to cite
maybe saying maybe not saying
either way experiencing:
i'd rather be mad than feel pleasure -
further still what of pleasure and happiness
as distinctly opposite or not:
re-imagines (i)
                         the recently digested divulging
on meanings
constricted to words like guilt
and shame...                   thus too:
happiness and guilt                           pleasure and shame.

— The End —