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ExulSolus Apr 2015
(Male  Female Plain-Both)

A message that's always in my head,
Maybe it'll reach somebody, who knows?
Certainly I've always been this way,
A patched up, insane Matryoshka!


A package sung from a headache,
Time may pass but the hands are still at 4!
Don't tell anyone but the world,
Will turn upside down!


Ah, I feel torn apart,
Throw out all the memories too!
Ah, how I want to know,
To the deepest part...


Uhm, well if you please,
Dance more and more!
Kalinka? Malinka?
Just play the chord!
What am I supposed to do,
With such feelings?
Can't you tell me? Just a lil bit?

Loud and clear, 524!
Freud? Keloid?
Just hit the key!
All, everything's to be laughed at!
Hurry and dance with all your foolishness!

Clap your hands, it's not really childish!
And listen, to this chaotic fully-crazed tune.
I certainly don't care either way,
The warmth of this world is melting away!

After school, you
  and me,  rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Or perhaps you'd like a hopping adventure?
With a crooked smile,
1! 2! 1! 2!

Ah, I'm falling~!
Catch every part of me!
Ah, with both of your hands,
Catch me for me...


Uhm, well... listen a little,
It's something important!
Kalinka? Malinka?
Just pinch my cheek!
It's just that I can't control myself anymore!
Should we do more fantastic things?
Pain, pleasure, hurt but don't cry!
Parade? Marade?
Just clap some more!
Wait, you say?
Wait, wait, wait,
Before we fuse to just one...

After school you  and me,  rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Rendezvous?
Or perhaps you'd like a hopping adventure?
With a crooked stare,
1! 2! 1! 2!

Hey~ hey~

Down with a cold?
Hey~ hey~
Show me your song!
Hey~ hey~
See how even today...
I'm still a patched up, insane Matryoshka!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~­~~~~~~~~~~
Hey, hey, hey!
If you'd please,
Dance more and more!
Kalinka? Malinka?
Just play that chord!
What am I supposed to do,
With such feelings?
Can't you tell me? Just a lil bit?


Loud and clear, 524!
Freud? Keloid?
Just hit the key!
All, everything's to be laughed at!
Hurry, go and dance no more!

'Smooch' 'smooch' Kiss! This moment is ours alone!
'Smooch' 'smooch' *Kiss! We don't care about them, not at all!
Thanks to Matryoshka soraru and lon! and to all the other people, Peace!
P.S. Matryoshkas are also known as Russian Nesting Dolls
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
only today i came across what interested Heidegger
after writing being and time, a selection
of essays, revealing that he came to be interested
in language - not knowing this, by mere study
of the introduction some things became apparent -
being quiet democratic in my reading it's a shame
i don't have the academic leisurely pace of becoming
a Heidegger specialist - it's the almost damnable
pulling-apart having to cite many influences and not
focusing on one, but since i don't have academic
leisure, the summary in the introduction
by jeffrey powell (editor) of the book heidegger
and language
will just have to do: apropos this
being an antidote to those bemoaning that we only
write about reading books, carefully choreographic
our lives for mints and espressos and ammoniac
(inhalants in a boxing ring nearing a knock-out) -
hide pretty bird, hide, hide pretty pretty bird
first your song inside a cage, then the cage inside
the heart, and thus the song with the cage,
silenced inside the cage, raging mad inside the heart.
well, the antidote is that i already have some ideas,
and reading the essays contained in this book would
put me off what i was intending to write about,
so, in summary, read the major work, then read introductions
of critical books from those studying the subject,
invent an original approach from that, and elsewhere.
before i venture into the whole affair of having to
reread certain passages from the introduction as to
guide me in this Bermuda Delta i what to do a little
sidewinder interlude:
in chemistry there are two major bonds (for the purpose
of what i'm intending, let us just assume that
we're only talking about π and σ bonds) -
and while psychology dehumanises man to strict
theories without clear proofs to a universal standard,
i want to do what will come later regarding Heidegger's
take on language, for me there's no clear philosophical
vocabulary to be used - i'm not into orthodoxy and
rigidity which says

                piquant sun strokes against
                the bargains of spring's last
                hope for a kept bazaar
                to bloom to then deflower
                petals from trees fall to earth
                like glasses, the tree stands
                as a reflection of shattered glass
                the petals remain the tree intact
                worn at the Royal Ascot
                or in a woman's hair.

obviously something like this is a poem - what i mean,
however, concerning what's identifiable as philosophy is
to me the following:  
                                        blah = monotone x algebraic
                                                    for­ non-differential
                                                    purposes, just filling up
                                                    the page

            blah blah blah blah blah blah subjectivity blah blah blah blah blah blah essentially blah blah blah blah blah blah in-itself blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah thing-external v. thing-internalised blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah metaphysics blah etc.
                      
                          and so on and so forth, a fixation on using a certain vocabulary to be equivalent or justification to be "apparently" talking philosophy... yet still no gain from the words of grammatical categorisation... for me? too many propositions, the basis of what the academic environment deems to be "pure" verbiage, or none (akin Wittgenstein) - that famous quote about a lion and having tea on Tuesday... or as Buddha would say: said so to shatter thus the fear of ketamine thoughtlessness;

but that's beside the point, i want to return to
how any chemist might treat psychology as a science,
keep it up to date, given that psychology likes
to shove its nose in everyday activities for a strict
expression of equivalent rubric that mathematics already
possesses and shoves into a child's brain to make
the child become accustomed to symbol encoding;
so π and σ bonds, let's say between two carbons atoms...
but in psychology we don't have the luxury of
many alternative examples...
me and language: to write in terms of optics,
to encode images rather than sounds,
language as optometry rather than a hearing-aid...
so what "elements" do we have in psychology,
essentially what defines consciousness, its sub-plot
and its unfamiliar territory - the using the dusty
Freudian units, we know the concept of the superman
(superman was a bad bad boy) from Nietzsche
evolved into the super mm hmm, and we know
there are two other units, mm hmm and the id /
it or that? it is for me, that is for scalpel for the analyst,
the prober, unlucky for the person who took to
objectifying himself, but better than being objectified -
still, remember i'm working with language in terms
of optics rather than phonetics - enough organic chemistry
diagrams and you will see that the bonding between
mm hmm, the super mm hmm and the gemini id
(one the patient, the second the analyst) trapped inside
an electron cloud of bio-electric processes is rigid and
stable due to the opposite of π and σ,
i chose the optic route using the bonds δ and ψ -
symbolically δ is the mathematical term for sum -
summation, the total of - currently i have no clue about
the significance of ψ just yet, but ψ is a symbol of
psychology like caduceus is the symbol of medicine;
a brief expansion on the natures of the bonds,
quack-science δ bonds being all alike meaning uniform
meaning holding every aspect uniformly, meaning
that a δ bond is of the same nature between mm hmm
and super mm hmm in a petri dish within the
solvent of the conscious sub-plot, likewise other variations
δ bonds are uniform bonds, i.e. ensuring one detail
is related to the other, and so to others.
ψ bonds, not much expansion here as promising detail,
asthma the highest research of breath, and all
major theoretical squeezing through the Suez -
depending on the measure of breaths, we can depend
on the internal things - but never so much Pamplona encierro
cleaning-up to do theorising an affirmative sound
like mm hmm, or other affirmative synonyms -
if it were can *****, it would be mince rather than
a clean dissection - mince meat, should mm hmm be
not an *****, let alone a body. so many attachments
to mm hmm these days, it should be attached to zoological
studies than activities of breathing: theory as a cage,
one after the over, eventually not even cages but
the caged animal turning into matryoshka doll -
Kant doesn't venture into the dynamic of his thing-in-itself
represented by the matryoshka as ad continuum -
maybe he does, but to me here merely pinpoints it,
coins the phrase noumenon and ensures the thing
is opened, god or nothing is put in it, the thing is
closed, locked and the key to unlocking it is thrown
away and never found (i'll mention a short process of
his argument some other time, most notably his
three impossibilities concerning proving the existence
of god: ontological, physico-theological and cosmological).
yes, i know, when reading these ****** books
i have to paint the arguments, i need to simplify
them, a poet reading a philosophy has to paint
the words - the best poetic technique applicable to
understanding philosophical books is imagery,
not as a technique of for the purpose of writing my own,
but as a way to paint what was written by some boffin -
precursor to understanding the three impossibilities
of proof, i find it strange that such proof is necessary,
what would you do with it? prove it once on
paper, or in your head, show it to everyone and then
slowly everyone is able, then the so called "man in
the sky" - it seems strange that scientific positivism
of the Enlightenment supposed such a proof, the proof
is more implausible than the existence - Bertrand...
just smoke your pipe and sit in the easy-chair talking
******* with Wittgenstein... more on that later.
i promised quotes from the above mentioned book
(heidegger and language)...

           das wort kommt zur sprache,
             das seyn bring sich zum wort.


working from phenomenology, to later reject it,
thus precipitating the school of deconstruction-ism,
and with Heidegger we do get to atomic elements
from words, from compounds, thank god there are
no sub-atomic ventures with language, quiet impossible
to de-construct language beyond this point,
let's face it, if you go as far as:
'as preparatory for raising the question of being...
language is one of three constituent moments in
the analysis of the being of the da in dasein (being there)'
furthered by equal atom bombardment replacing
the un-compounded sein (verb, be) with seyn (conjunction /
noun, being) - this is modern physics to my understanding,
i'm not particularly interested what he's saying,
i'm interested in painting what he's saying -
i'll spare you the details of what philosophical systematisation
is actually involved in: restricted vocabulary -
a certain limit is allowed, rigid meanings are involved,
rigidity of drilling in of non-deviation, philosophical
systems are not dishonest in that they are consistent with
a limited vocabulary - i will spare you the torture of
seeing one ball being juggled - the shrapnel of the English
language makes it even more distracting to understand,
as with the above, another e.g.?
'every saying of beyng is held in words and meanings
which are understandable in the view of everyday
references of beings, and are exclusively thought in
that view, but which as expressions of beyng,
are misunderstood...' of course i could be cherry picking
Heidegger like a Jehovah's witness cherry picking
the bible, but i'm not interested in what he's saying,
merely painting you the picture, to scale then:

books                      -              celestial objects
chapters                 -               cycles of celestial objects
paragraphs            -               prime features of
                                                 celestial objects
                                                 (e.g. Jupiter's red eye,
                                                  Saturn's ring,
                                                  Earth's oceans
                                                  and continents)
sentences                 -              
words                       -
syllables                   -
letters                        -             atoms / elements  
                                           ah, it was going oh so well,
i think i started too big, and went into too small,
which made visualising sentences and words and syllables
hard to compare what could fit between
Australia and and atoms of RuXe - by chance ruxe is
an actual word, no as stated ruthenium and xenon,
although that too, ruxir (ruxo, ruxin, ruxido) in Galician
meaning to roar.
Deep in the alcove
Of my being
I find an image
Within an image
Rediscovering myself
A facsimile
Adding only strength

Small
And still sure
That is my endeavor

I look within
For amity and strength
For conversations
With only me
As an audience
I find myself and
Smile…

I am the Matryoshka
Wooden beauty in the outside
Subtlety and charm
Moisten my core
On the inside.
shanika yrs May 2016
The lake was frozen,
the world was white
trembling me set my step out
walking on the frozen lake
my steps broke ice

----------_-----  _ --

I held me, barely found the balance
let my nested man to walk
His nested man as he fails
walked as so on...
I came to the city
was in other side of lake
when I was a kid
Matryoshka dolls I used to play with
made me walk on thin ice
let inner man walk - deeper you live ..
Gigi Tiji Oct 2014
The tone is a human,
a human is a being,
and a being,
is a tone.
The tone is a being.

When one human sings,
they create a tone.
A tone that carries
all tones within.

When two humans sing,
they create two tones.
Two tones that carry
all tones within.

They are making love,
They are making a harmony,
and the harmony
is a child.

The union of two,
the child carries all
the vibrations of one,
and all of the other.

Every harmony carries
all harmonies within.

The child is one,
The child is twice one,
The child is half of each,
and infinitely more than none.

The harmony is a child,
and the child sings.

The child is human,
and the human grows.

When a human sings
they create a tone.
This tone carries
all tones within.

The tone is a being.

The being is one,
The being is twice one,
The being is half of each,
and infinitely more than none.

Each being carries all beings within.

When the being sings,
it creates a tone,
this tone carries
all tones within.
Each tone sounded
carries all tones within itself.
As the fundamental tone vibrates,
so do the proportional overtones it creates.

An entire string vibrates.
Within that length,
1/2 the string vibrates,
1/3 vibrates,
1/4, 1/5, etc...
Divided into infinity.

(You can find the harmonics on a guitar string in these fractions.)

This is the shared source of all living beings.
This is the harmonic series.
This is birth and death.
This is one single tone.
This is you and me.
This is Om.

Birth, crescendo, diminuendo, death.

This is breath.
A Mareship Jan 2015
When she was young
(she's still young, painfully young)
I asked her if she needed help
with her dance shoes.

No, no, I thought.
She can do it herself.


And now,
three months after her boyfriend got hold of my number,
I wonder
if I ever thought
that she was older than she was.

She's kicking,
this little girl
inside this little girl -

(matryoshka,
matryoshka,
a limoges pram
for the matryoshka...!)
Redshift Mar 2013
i would cry a lot
right now
if i had any tears
left
after these
two years.
you ****** me dry
but you haven't stopped there
you want the empty shell,
too.
i hope that she'll
keep a smile
on your
gravestone face
put some sort of light
back into your
chopping-block
eyes
i hope that shell of me
will keep you warm
on the freezing nights
you are alone
that you have inflicted
upon yourself
i hope this hollow girl
that used to be
your daughter
will make you happy
finally
i might just have lost it once and for all.
mike dm Jan 2016
this is the first day that
my grandma
didn't
get to live
since a really long time ago

what can i possibly say?

i want to curl up inside my own fist right now
like one of your old matryoshka dolls
that i used to play with
and put you inside me so i can make it all better

i wanna recall all the thoughts
that once were yours
i want to know you why didn't i get to know you better

i stayed away im sorry im strange i get sad a lot but i loved you still

she had once
been
a person
but
now
she isn't and
i can't stop shouting these rips from my eyes
dm micklow
Jasmine Marie Jun 2015
When I fell back into the cramped nook of your shelf,
you didn't even acknowledge me amidst the other knickers and gnats vying for your attention.
You overlooked the viscous hatred glazing my bronze porcelain.

And after you spit-shined me in an attempt to erase the set-in stain
that so starkly contrasted all of the work that you had put into the cocoa complexion nurtured in the heated vacuum of your built-in incubator,
you showed me off to your friends,

your little nesting doll that had shrunk down to its true form,
so cute and abridged that you could fit its summation in your pocket,
doomed to eternally room with your dusty love shields and dingy photocopies of past mistakes.
Oriada Dajko Aug 2017
In your world,inside your country,
in your town,inside your house,
in your family...
... strangers came around.
Even inside you...
Language was never found.
On my nightstand a matryoshka looks at me,
Bright red and drawings all over it.
"You are just like me", she says,
And I understand what she means.

Underneath my skin there are layers of me
Different versions of the same girl
One beneath each
Some only see the surface,
The easiest part to see,
When I'm all I'm expected to be.

It takes a lot to see what's underneath myself,
To take each part and carefully observe.
Layer after layer taken away,
Leaving me wide open,
To try and self-repair.
Sometimes people forget
That it's so much harder to put something messy back together again.

But I promise there are more layers of me to see
I'm not just a woman,
I won't do what's expected from me
I won't surrender to the invisible fight of my gender.
Not all girls are the same,
We all have our own layers.

At the deep of the doll,
The center of me,
There is my core, all of which is me.
No more layers, no more lies
No more façade or stereotypes.

I'm just a girl, a russian doll.
Richard Yeans Apr 2019
"Billie Jean is not my lover."
But she tells me differently
In private.
Now, however, there's a baby
Carrying her impulsive libido
Inside of it.

A matryoshka of folly
Long nights of Texas ***** and blow
Multiple partners, that's fine, just tell me!
But please let your other suitors know
That you aren't the only one
Carrying their load.

My heart sunk, believe me,
When I drove over to your house.
And it pained me to see
Your face, for the first time,
Unable to make an expression.

One, two, three vicodin
Four, five, six at a time
Seven concluded your session.

I found you wandering the eerily-still
Streets,
Even though it was a beautiful afternoon.
I love you so much, but please...
Don't die.  I'm not in the mood.
Trevor Gates Oct 2013
The world is a Bersinski painting
The rain is a Plath poem
The night is a Fellini film
The day is a Bach cello Suite
Our love is a winter fable
Cold, warm and passing.

The stars are drips of milk
The wind is God breathing
The sky is a floating mirror
The grass is mother earth’s hair
Her ***** is the earth
Shapely, comely and nurturing

French roast coffee is the turning of pages
A scandalous book in a leather bound cover

The Snow outside is the harp strings strumming
Flaking specs falling lightly and patiently

The city is a never-ending waltz
The *** lives are directed by Bertolucci
The homeless vagrants are saints in rags
The People walking are sinners
Each a sphere within a sphere
A world within a world

The theaters are abandoned rib cages
The poets are Russian matryoshka dolls
The painters are lost children
The eyes are broken, stained glass
Your arms and body are home to me
Cradle me, soothe me and touch

Those words won’t do it this time
Sometimes the silence is what I need

And you with me, away from it all
Joseph S C Pope Mar 2013
I

          Aspiring to reach the solar rabbit hole eclipse
                  --climbing up the well,
                                            the photon test tube
                                      sodden and crusted on the outside
                  by angsty
                                adults
       snorting obsession
             through The Manhattan Project straw.

                    The pirate boy wanted to be named
                           Skip--so determined Alice named him,
                                    Skippy, conqueror of blueberry mucus
                 --he reminded her of sidewalks
                         she found far in the misty woods
--no one walked
                      the unexpected like                                           him.

          Each placement of a pore: a bat cave
                                                       a depressed skull
                                                       a hollow exploit
                                                       a lame *** joke
                                                       a mildew plop

Almost certainly this cadaver matryoshka doll
would be human by the time
the two runaways
were born again                               Hallelujah! The dish breaker is crowning again
                                                           back to the galleons, rotting awkward candles.

               "Leave what is human                                       in
                                                                                            inhumane
                                                                                            places." the well speaks.
          Skippy tears the corners of his lips
          to his ears. Alice turns her temple to the sharpest part
                                                                            of the monumental
                                                                     test tube
                                and cracks her childhood back to the bottom
                                                                               --back to Euphoria. light poles open
                                                                                  up faces and throw their lights to the ground.
Both of the thrift store
lovers continue to climb--ripping off purchases
                   to the beggar's tin cup.

II*

   Severed hearts beat without metaphor
          as the empty vessels that hold them.
Spines sing of freedom like centipedes
                      facing fan blades.                                Pirate boys mock the smoker's language
                                                                      of mutiny.

Devalued skin,
                                        ***** armor
casted,          
                          lowered,
   teased, by the cadence
            of tumbling blood.  Marking territories other brother's can smell

                  Obediently, we see what
       gods are doing to them. They're paying
for drawing the different suits of God
   on the cave wall.            Hit jobs--vacuum spoils,
                     sucker punch postage stamps
              --revenge from a peaceful creator
  forcing the two to climb/climb/climb
           back to a speck
                   where dandelions grow
      from the revolution fetus and graphite,
& tongues, & lips, & nerves, & veins &
wolf spiders pour down/red matter clusterfucks.
Rain patters on the window
hurricane winds whistle round about
my mind.
I hear the rain, amazed that the sun's rays
still fall to earth, warming and nurturing

Cocooned in a throw, I look at the room
I've lain in for three days in a pain of my making.
I've become a cliche, the madwoman in the attic
lamenting lost love, lost life.
Cruelty knows no bounds, yet it binds.

Rhythmically the rain batters at the panes.
I don't want praise, I like my malaise
I feel real when I feel pain
I lie slain on the floor, amidst the wreckage
of a marriage.

I've died over and over these last three days
I want to get up and comfort you
To tell you that your life will go on
Mine had to end. I'm sorry you found me
on the floor, tablets strewn everywhere.

Baby steps now my love
you knew I was broken,
there's only so many matryoshka dolls in the original
I'm still here my love, it's just better that
you don't see me, but I can watch over you.

Your heart is broken, filling with rain and tears
my heart and soul was broken when the ink was dry
on the paper declaring us over.
When I get up from the floor, I want you to listen to the rain and
know it's me, my ghost knocking at your door.
© JLB
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
there's that, or the nimble skeleton of a feline
bonsai... and what they do to
   add to the already apparent roughage
they intake by grooming themselves...
luckily... i could never claim to have had such
a nimble spine, or a tail...
   but then all of darwinism is a bit like:
news flash! it happened yesterday...
   and that's really a party pooper...
               i have to chase a universe like a crap
does perpendicular tango...
        it's correct, sure thing, but having this
"awe" response summoned for your to appreciate
either human history, or theories about
the universe...
                   it just gets annoying after a while:
all the terrorists do it... skip to god as a constant
and it all begins to feel realistic...

because what the vogue is in the west
    and it's "we're gods", but then run mile-marathons
for cancer charities, doesn't really work out
to keep up our iron armour...
   people really do shut up when they hit
the gag of weakness... it'stops being a case of
alice and fairies and some wonderland...
very quickly they turn their once idealistic blah
into mute buttons...
   there is an example coming: but like *michel de montaigne

noted... was it him, was it someone else?
    call it the all-encompassing negativity
(alias list does include depression): well...
it has all the jokes... meaning there's
two type of humour...
   depression (a) lethargic depression...
            no energy... major trait includes sarcasm...
and that's mainly english...
   and depression (b) manic depression...
meaning you have all the energy,
and all the cheap chokes, akin to Wobin Williams...
  oh please, there's enough zoology within
psychiatry to last you for a year given
the array of nouns... i'm not a professional
so i tend to use psychiatric terms as
    a matryoshka doll... well: a metaphor-in-itself...
there's always something hiding in
psychiatric terms...
       very little in philosophical terms, most
add up, or claim to know the way to infinity,
or ad deus... or something like that...
why be positive? and what's merely vacant?
       negativity is the source of humour...
luckily it's a shop of curiosities that has only metal
and rope in it... no porcelain...
but it's only because i've been watching this
sweet shop analogy of my own construct...
    as you do, but can't really do with a television
watching several football matches at once...
    so what would make the perfect backdrop?
obviously tourniquet by m. m. (solve the acronym,
it's a bit obvious)...
  and that's in between watching
                         dottiejames videos
and hannah witton...
              as you do... well... first thing's first...
can anyone spot a doppelgänger in there somewhere?
     well, apart from the obvious:
    he said nice things, agitated the educated jewish
class of scribes... and the greek were bewildered
by a suspension of physical laws, and had to
paint a pretty picture, so that their philosophers could
investigate and explain the reason
    melchior, caspar and balthazar came too, curious...
how did the greek summon the need for a pretty picture?
well... that's one sure way to rob a people of a religion
and translate the old stuff as: NEW! NEW!
   but that isn't the doppelgänger i'm wondering
about... what the hell is keira knightley doing in Brighton?
  well, d'uh... if dottiejames ins't
   keira knightley then i don't know who keira is...
and such a quirk... it's great seeing
   long periods of acting, without a theatrical stage
or a Spilberg with a camera lens...
   no no, i like it, but let's go back to points d. (a) and d. (b) -
the ancients called it black bile...
     i get drunk and experience the goods in it -
lethargic type = sarcasm... let's say: blackadder goes forth...
i ain't the manic clown type having a host
of impressions bound up like a yarn ball played
with the cat-like-ego... teasing and at the same
time exhausting...
      hannah witton gets through to the point though...
it's about ******* ***...
   nothing new to me... happened back in 2007
in a St. Petersburg bathroom... a ***** Pollack
   had a russian girlfriend who was going through
a ******* cycle... and he was pleading her to
allow ***... and begging... this is way before the internet
took off... what with the hannah witton video...
now i feel like ****, because, apparently: everyone does it!
but they're just not talking about it.
     so forget being the Columbus these days...
   there's no first, unless you have a Nobel prize...
and there ain't no last, unless you are lying
beneath an epitaph...
       there's just a... plateau (that word should sound
hollow... and it really does...
             pla-toe)
                                      but it happened to me
back in 2007... three days and nights ***-starved
she finally gave... but only in the bathroom...
sure... and only with a ******... no problem...
no watch the science... apparently it eases the cramps...
   me get foolish about blood and corn-flakes?
well... i remember lying on a post-operating
table getting stitches done to my right shoulder-blade...
how old was i when i went under the scalpel
to get that Chernobyl tattoo removed?
    wait... let me count... 1997 or 1998?
    1986... either 11 or 12... a hosptial in Cieszyn am Olza...
2 weeks spent in that place... great fun
with some of the peeps (ha ha, peeps) my age...
the smell of hospitals is worse than the scent in
graveyards... even in autumn... it's green...
      it's so hostile to the nostrils....
hospitals just have that smell about them...
the sooner to go to one for surgery, say, like me,
aged 11 or 12... it's worse than frying a human leg
on the bbq... not that i have: but the hospital
imprint is just so...
        so i was lying on getting my stitches done,
and out pops a bit of flesh into the corner of my eye...
deep red or purple but certainly not anything
in the extreme of lilac... and while the stiches get done
it's just lying there: a menacing little ****...
     the body of christ... well: i wouldn't eat that:
i don't care what metaphor you could use to eat either
with delight other than the delight birds eat bread:
to stuff themselves for much longer than their
usual diet allows...
   so a phallus coming out of a less than appetising ****?
well: it isn't exactly oral ***...
   and she says: most men wouldn't do this...
well: it's not like i knew that was i did would actually
be helpfull... it's a bit like my "naiveness"
  given that i don't know how i could ever contract
h.i.v., no one told me... and thankfully: i don't need
to know that.
the fact is: upon hearing that: so many people do
it but don't talk about it: that's not exactly a solidarity
statement... i didn't need to hear that...
numbers and all quotes relating to the "objective"
reality **** me off... it's a bit like drinking diluted whiskey
after first drinking the real stuff...
   well that's great! but don't bring the whole opera
with you! or maybe that's because i'm writing about
these things and she's feeding an easy pick of the experience
that ****** me off?
           i gave you enough details...
these videos aren't that hard to find... given it's you-tube...
  so that me... with no access to the deep / dark web
******* around with the canvas... trying to
salvage something that might have once looked like Soho...
   well... for a "Soho" experience... god bless
the Dutch... you can walk into a history of
something resembling 18th and 19th century...
   just for a while... a Puerto Rican *****
  and a black kid that does errands for her, brining
her customers beer...
     what's that vogue phrase: hello?! hello! red pill! red pill!
Seen plenty of far off faces
removed from themselves,
layer after insipid layer of the "free world"
just trying to fit inside itself.
Matryoshka dolls
painted in the fashion of a Mona Lisa.

My darlin,
deep down are you smiling?
If I touched you would paint chips curl upward
like arms made of wet paint
I am peeling back with no friction.
Something certain to be there
but cannot be touched
something I feel so sure to be in want of.
If  only I knew what it was.

I am eight keys
of a singular octave,
in a stairway of pianos stretching from here
to the sun.
Much like the visible spectrum
clamoring to amount
to all there is.
So much of the world, ourselves included, fumbling in the dark,
unseen
but never untouched.
JT Jul 2016
I found religion at the bottom of a cereal box
and ended up saving it in my pocket for awhile, spending my sundays
beside spiritual cannibals speaking of the Supergalactic
and eating on the good word while waiting for the Hand of god
or so-called Miracles; only recently have I discovered
the sacrosanctity of the seed, the egg, the space between matryoshka dolls,
the amoeba before it splits or the amoeba afterwards, baby teeth
and graduates, letters stuffed in pen tips in hands of poets
kneeling with the armless, contrapposto women waiting
inside blocks of marble and boiling pots of Hellenic brass worshiping
in the house of the hesitant spring crawling from the earth’s core
on stolen time;

I say a heretic’s “Amen” to the parting of lips,
the movement of breath, all werewolves on the half-moon and
the moon before the harvest, bless the ant hills full of false gods
that band together in the symphony of the subatomic and glory be
to the Truth! the only truth, that just as all things die in the end, so too
are all things born at the beginning, a fact lost on all those preaching
sacred scriptures in the dead language
of the Impossibly Huge.
two old poems i mashed together. maybe one day i'll edit this properly :O
Julianna Eisner Mar 2014
Wading in a muddy riverbed,
panning for broken pieces of
pretty blue bottles that
glint in the
sun's rays like
azurite

Upstream,
without warning,
a deafening cry
  
                          of impending cathexes

The river surges

gasp...

rushes,
tosses,
thrashes me

                          in mysterium tremendum flow
                          and a flurry of foaming crests

I bathe in effervescence and
glide through
torrential sentiment,
submerged in
cosmic love

...sigh

Crawling from this eddy transcendence,
trembling
precariously up the shoreline
to rest in his arms of
fiery brilliance
gasp....
              ....
                   ....sigh

to set him ablaze with
Divine oxygen that
beads from my
velvet lips like
dew drops, and
coo giggling whispers in his
ear of
soft, tender
reflections,
as he feeds to me
crackling embers that
surge to my
heart centre with
volcanic intensity

Reciting a story
sui generis
nested like Matryoshka,
the ever-unfolding opus,
tangled in sheets of
layers
         upon
                 layers
of papyrus,
scribed
         and
              scribing

Oh, to wake in such a dreamscape.

                *sigh
"...return, on a higher level of organization, to the early magic of thought, gesture, word, image, emotion, fantasy, as they become united again with what in ordinary nonmagical experience they only reflect, recollect, represent or symbolize...a mourning of lost original oneness and a celebration of oneness regained."

- Hans Loewald
Justin Aptaker Jun 2019
the stars are lying
between layers of ether and projected purpose
burdened with grandiose plans to toy with the dust bunnies that blow
everywhere like tumbleweeds
in a western flick just before final showdown
the outcome depends on an angry Matryoshka doll of endless ecosystems

remember that perfect silence fell on our history like a shadow, guillotine-sharp
cutting out any tongue that would retell the fable of Hiroshima
reborn, She was immaculately misconceived as the unwanted child of a firefly
and a street sweeper
while in correlation a pin crashed to the floor of a factory somewhere
in the boondocks of Babylon

i mention this in riddles, not to mislead, but hoping to preserve my own
slimy muscle tucked safely in its bacteria-laden skull, where it burns white and blue
to taste, and somehow amoeba all things sensual into itself
sweet water, salt and iron

for no reason i riddle on alone
as plain discourse will not prove to be any more terrible for me in a day
my tongue, the unstable centerpiece of all things volatile
will prove to be its own undoing, not needing a blade to mute it
its white glow will one day implode to expand in an instant of recklessness
which vaporizes tongue before skull
to at once spray my organic-wet thoughts through every quantum nook of the known universe
and parallel, to finally satisfy my undiscerning palate with the rich, heavy taste
of every decomposing delicacy that truth grows in

the gods are afraid
of what we might become if we could lay hold of their winged heels
or learn to outrun their surest arrows and fastest dogs
if we were to stop dangling mouth-first by their ******* threads
as if our very existence was the carrot

the ascendant, sun of morning reduced to earth
he looks up with such longing, where his trusty dog still sits and stays
not returning his gaze, but having every appearance of doing so
the black paper sky splashed with white ink, folded in half, and unfolded again
we stare on and on
and project all of our unconscious into something meaningless
and create our story

a freudian chuckle rumbles in every thunderclap, while we lie
on riverbeds like cold sofas, pondering our lives and our futures, while we feed
every kind of fish and scavenger--a mock eucharist which moves molecules
as above so below to the universal singularity
in the redundant shape of a figure eight

self-emaciation, a violent circumcision that cleanses like soap
discarding the fat which no machine needs for survival
like Howard Hughes i scrub until every bone is bare and bloodstained
empty, i step into the holy of holies afraid that i must die again
forgetting everything, i begin to slide
Written by Justin Aptaker ca. 2006
CH Gorrie Nov 2013
Her novels were full of everything you:
passive hopes; a burned Matryoshka doll
(Gorbachev); two fist-holes in a wall --
here's an epilogue: indelible, true.
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
it was bound to happen, after all my fascination with
the complications he was writing about
became incubated in a hibernation for some time,
but i already said, once before, you get the zest,
you get this unending hunger like a vampire
should you come across philosophy last, esp. after
being unable to blossom in chemistry's affairs
to a suitable self-satisfying level of expertise,
then all those migrating electron diagrams in organic
chemistry give you enough to read philosophy without
cringing or finding it too difficult - counter reading
it with major literary works and you're part of
the circus frenzy; so yesterday's afternoon and
apart from all he mentioned to a dichotomy rather
than a dialectic about empiricism and transcendental
idealism - the expansive topic of regression...
i just had to spot regressive bookmarks, or
bookmarks of regression that people unearth as if
from the dead; such is the nature of these bookmarks,
people do resurrect them, in as least number of
examples as possible:
a. i've met a Greek who was still bemoaning
    that Istanbul is still "actually" Constantinople
    (the local turk has stopped selling
     black market cigarettes in his shop
     imported from eastern europe, so now i'm
     resorted to smoking the portable shēsha pipe,
     that lovely creamy extra-thick smoke
     of pure jasmine, which cigarette smoke
     anorexic and blueish-grey can't compete with),
b. actually i don't have an example at this point
     because i digressed about not being able to
     buy cheap cigarettes, but there are plenty others...
oh! right, the atypical American example
with the constitution and gun laws and how
it is rarely argued that the government is turning
bonkers and someone might get a thrill from a second
"French" revolution, or some other horrific affair.
c. ah forget about it.
so within his abstracts, from one per se to another,
a simpler Kantian conceptualisation is
a Matryoshka doll, he purposively defined things
as in-themselves, and to him a noumenon (thing-in-itself)
was far better understood than a phenomenon,
because phenomena i'm guessing he too thought
were discriminatory, unfair, bewildering,
for example: why did the Beatles matter? it's bewildering,
you can't juggle such a question on your own
terms, you can't play the Rubik cube with such a question,
fair enough if you want to play the clarinet,
but it's like that, best epitomised in the film Amadeus
where Antonio Salieri bemoans the phenomenon that
Mozart is... the sophisma figurae dicta (sophism
figures out statements) to no advantage - for example
the liberté, égalité, fraternité all men are born equal
*******, i.e. can i run a 100 metres in under 10 seconds?
NO! of course Antonio is persuasive, in that he himself
is persuaded to talk, because he cannot fathom
the phenomenon that Mozart is, and he isn't - as such
phenomena are hard to grasp, you can't put in anything
into them other than envy, respect, jealousy, joy
or whatever you wish akin to the central character of
Steppenwolf who wants to walk with the giants,
thinking the giants are waiting for him... are they?
the noumenon is oddly enough more fathomable,
it doesn't necessarily attract, it neither necessarily repel,
in its abstract formulation it can never be a phenomenon
at best it can be a sub-phenomenon, it can work below
the surface of things, but there will never be any
glitter or princely yawns surrounding it.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2020
drinking warm whiskey... isn't so bad...
it could be much worse:
it could be warm *****:
     not cold enough to reach a gomme syrop
consistency...
life's so tragic... sometimes...
       a warm ***** is like a warm beer...

what am i supposed to say?
i'm just tired of wanting to be in love...
i'm tired of hating...
   i'm tired of being angry...
i'm tired of being preditable and also:
slithering in pickling juices...
i am tired of love because...
               when it was "love"...
it wasn't dog eyes and a leash...
         or: never mind the solipsism of cats
when they still desire to mark your
forehead when sniffing it...
or come up and greet you:
with a "bodzio"... a head-****...

    so much of my cognitive capacity
became a wasteland from having
both woman and love on a peddlestool
of the ideal...
                   it's terrible waking up...
but that "terrible" sometimes becomes
as... exhilarating as taking a cold shower...
or watching a flock of sparrows chirp...

and the ***: cocoon ***... under bed-sheets...
all my one-night stands happened this way...
under the bed-sheets...
i'm happy to give a comparative literature of:
well... at least in the brothel we did it
under dimmed lights...
****-naked on the sheets...
having showered first
and downed a slacker of ms. amber:
oh you know it's bad...
that i have to call whiskey a very personal
investment narrative...
it's not whiskey... it's... ms. amber...

i should have been drinking long ago...
come shoulder to shoulder with
both my paternal and maternal grandfathers...
cocoon ***...
and if you don't think a man can be "*****"...
at the brothel?
  there's the concept of: creaming-up...
if the oyster isn't salivating enough...
yes... "****"... cocoon *** with a sawdust ****...
sanding paper **** more like...
oh the agony: but to my liking...
yeah bud: stick your lesser want of limbs
into a meat-grinder:
is that penetrating enough?
      who would forever suppose...
it's a kangaroo pouch of safety...
the nadir of lucifer's birth:
     free-falling: head first... but not through
a ****... not some floral pattern...

     cesarean... cesarean... are we going to give
births to kaisers or dull-eyed: deer...
i very much like to imagine a band
of mad-laughter hyenas...

               coal-burning black eyes...
      i am tired of giving up my thinking to any
and all ideals of love...
i could have invested my (th)ought i
into... conjuring up an electric bulb...
        a frankestein...
                i became so tired of love...
i had to come across a brothel:
to steal kisses from prostitutes
     and attempt a theft of the halo of st. augustine...
mummify letters in books...

which i have done...
        but love is such a never-dog...
                    one relationship that involved as cooking
together: beside the already necessary
prerequisite of *******-for-free...
her period, the ******, and cooing her
to do it in the bathtub with the water running...

or this: moment when enough ms. amber
is in me... and i turn to...
         the chants of the templars:
            crucem sanctem...
                   dum pater familias...
          da pacem domine...

that clarity of a transaction...
              the growling dog overwhise
teased with food already presented to him
in a bowl...
          count of fingers...
                    
     i'm tired of love... of all of my body...
this nail blunt head from being hammered
too often...
           it escapes me:
why should my libido be compensated
when it requires: exhaustion...
to find the most fanciful thought:
only when the libido is exhausted:
   and if i have to do it myself: so be it...

but of so many people worried:
i am indeed... "worried"... when will it...
subside... die off...
this quills': marquis de sade:
leverage of: to read books using only
one hand...
                        if the acne is so prolonged
to make me...
belzeebub's favourite ***** of:
what precedes ****** / anti-wrinkle creams...
one maggot 'ere... another...

it is simply exhausting to love:
as one is expected to love via fiction...
and it is too costly to love:
poetically... anything but language...
esp. acquired language:
a language learned... most certainly
not passed from a grandmother to a mother
to a son...
some could claim to call these words:
in vitro...
         and on that matter...
which part of me is experimentally "dead":
the mind... or the body?
i am not... a native of these parts...
a native...           a native...

this is the part of the year when
winter is crucified... and reborn as spring! no?
all ******* rose buds and sparrows chirping!
who can love... so... ideally...
idle though: to make the burdens
of the most... boorish matters needing:
stressed concerns for "detail"...

  am i one of the last ones that still
bought a *****-mag when
the free **** was available online...
                     twitch... i'm an old ****:
in a 34 year old body... because:
keeping up... became synonymous with
being distracted...
                  cam-girl... etc. etc.
            "soz": but there just isn't any bragging
to be minded...
or a:        h'american striptease... d'uh: tease...
the carnival of the wriggling maggot
came to invoke
kissing the eyelids... gently teasing
the tip of the nose with a bite...
                             this body... or that body...
an a sculptor...
   in the brothel i was only robbed... once:
well... "robbed"...
this coke-head distrated me with:
do you want to use this *****...
          the proprietors' henchman...
a little turk by the time: i presume to be:
Osman came up with a bundle of stolen cards
and asked me: which one is yours?

that's a pretty good effort...
        i must have been up to no good...
once we stopped ******* because: she started
seeing downton abbey in an epileptic flicker...
yes: and me ******* her wasn't,
exactly... a ******* chocolate fondant...
          
it seems so... pristine when...
two bodies are allowed to touch...
without all that extra baggage...
that is desired to... "beside" the otherwise...
readily available carnality of the act...

e-girl vidoes: teases...
                                    what can be the best
compliment... one could possibly give to...
byzantine culture / the "modern" greek?
   ah... Αγνή Παρθένε... the singing...
                          
   mulier... no... not a woman or wife...
             hardly a property right...
something to boast and concern oneself for
the rattling of feathers of peacocks...
     mulier... the french playright...
ugh... molière - yes, him!
            molière donning a mullet! yes...
and not one of those charles II wigs...
from one wig alone...
               you could have made...
oh... roughly... an orchestra's demand
for violin and cello bows...

              pissy-pant french of 14 year old
past: one direction fandom...
                            for every male fan of tool...
a declared ownership of a *****...
better still... a screwdriver...
    that would be something...

                                or when stand-up comedy
was communist enough to entertain:
a cabaret form... an **** oddity (bottom)...
can't enough not tire of
stand-up solipsism...
the stand-up solo project of...
back-and-forth with an audience of canned
laughter?
cabaret... doesn't have to be switz
ja herr doktor voltaire...
         but some sort of ping-pong...
a game of squash...
i do not know... of a single concept of
sport... where there's only one...
concept-riddle of engagement...
can comedy... or rather... should comedy
have "evolved" beyond the cabaret...
famously: in theatre-land...
stones in his pockets...
two bodies on stage...
  with a plethora of...
how the sequence went...
   BRONSON...
bronson "vs." or rather:
"nursie" vs. "mr. petersson"...

          two names: Conleth Hill and
             Sean Campion... oh look... capital! letters!
yes: of note... circa 2001...
and that's when...
   this... stand-up... hard-on "comedy"
of stand-ups...
no... no cabaret format...
internal-monologues extending into...
an octopus attempting cliff-skimming:
climbing... failing miserably...
   if it's such a "comedy"...
    where's heidegger's hammer?
last time i heard: even by ol' martin's standards:
you'd require two people to talk
about philosophy as a "side-project"
when hammering in nails...
how can one person tell a joke?
oh but they can...
on special occassion(s)...
         the joke is better translate via a dialogue...
rather than a monologue...
last time i heard...
  
comedy doesn't require these stand-up
geniuses...
imagine... ******* is actually...
a *** act...
taking a **** is actually a...
        get together meal for three...
and that's the loaf... equally spread...
for the devil's dozen...
   ******* will satisfy any champagne socialist
get-together...
      
   i have to become bored of love...
the sort of love that would never come with:
the impetus of darwinism's ideologues...
for: now that i have become a father...
           i'm less and less: a ***** satyr!
               wish me 70+ age and being freed
by dementia to curse like a cobbler
and a seafaring man...

              that overbearing: no room for impromptu:
when solo...
otherwise... no otherwise...
just that strict: regime of... an expectation
for and with: canned laughter...
all that's missing are two tin cans
and a placenta of stiched-up tongues...

... for all the movie buffs...
it's not enough to blunt your eyes on movies...
actors: and their subsequent roles
in 3D... why did up stand-up...
the grand mass-orchestrator of giggles be
allowed to cue the audience...
like any minor dictator might: from
argentina or romania?

                 back toward the ***...
yes... stealing kisses from prostitutes...
this was never going to be one about Wordsworth's
"celibacy"... which you would be expected
to partake in... just having bit into
the forbidden fruit of ****** with your sister...
or so... they might say...

daffodils and that "doris" of the...
will the word ****... somehow prevent
you from seeing ****** ****...
or ******* ****?
then at least there's the hope...
to make minors of ettiquete standards
of the: proper social contract approach:
with civility... or therefore: none...

i am finding a rare occassion for:
an as to why, i would ever do anything to begin
with... grow a beard (1)
grow a beard to stop myself shaving (2)
grow a beard to hide my double-chin (3)...
grow a beard because
growing my hair long became boring (4)...
grow a beard because i wanted
to scratch my ***** on my face rather than
scratch them on my "eden region" (5)...
the other reasons congregate under
the status of... rubric and tally...

(6) to grow a beard is better than growing
the hair long...
no chance of becoming bald...
long hair attracts too much female attention...
last time i heard a woman who grew a beard
became a circus-act...
a beard is the safest territory to mind...
when there's a woman that...
somehow needs to compensate!

         all of a sudden: i have forgotten *****
envy... when i came across
beard envy...
   i am... very much so...
envious of mel gibsons beard...
in general: but esp. so in the role...
of prof. murray... with him donning
a cravate and a top-hat to boot:
the epitome of what all men of the world
could have wished for:
the victorian gentlemen...
fiercer still: an autodidact...
a dog without a leash... eh?

     i pity the tattoo of ethnicity:
given that: i would be english...
an ukranian would be scottish...
or a lithuanian... the tattoo of ethnicty or a past...
that i would be the ******...
and there was this tide of cossacks...
i would be... the ******...
           and there would be some
ingenius pict equivalent...
            in my abode...
                      
    i am tired of love...
the most attired love of idealism...
as i am tired of hate:
and anger...
i am tired of both of these latter:
when there's no boxing match interlude
to match-up with...
i'm tired of love as i am tired
of retribution and of justice...
i am tired of gambling...
what right is there fore me:
to steal from the blind?
           i am tired from: expectations...
i am tired of ideals...
i am tired of hate because:
if i wasn't i'd still find it...
egregious to spot the minor offences
of citing the prefixing n-...
                                        as... nothing short
of an "oops" of b-               and -igger!

i'm tired of being: a civil monkey...
if i'm tired of love...
if i'm tired of hate...
i can never tire of language...
but if i become:
zoologically kept: inept...
                      ha ha! ha ha! ha! ha!
i: dodo: tire: and Tod:
of: ******: improm:     p'tooh!
         savvy or the sinking ship?!

                       RATZ!

better a concern for prostitutes:
seeing that... there's no...
jackie ol' myth to be cooked from my "affairs"...
i thought about:
how about... now was the best time...
to not **** prostitutes...
i stole kisses...
an exercise in making videos...
bring back blockbusters!
             bring back blockbusters!
**** the content creators of youtube!
give, me, back, my, *******, jukebox!
give, me, back, my... thesaurus algorithm!
give, me, back, my, *******, jukebox!
give, me, back, my... thesaurus algorithm!

           once upon a time: dubbed:
paupers... the homeless...
prostitutes... now... eh... one sly loss of calling
these... the... leeches of: welcome tomorrow!
so the price of... being...
astounded... that's it?!
                the magnified statement
of karma-phobia...
there has to be a concept akin to:
karma-phobia when islamophobia is already
too bogus to touch...
there has to be: karma-phobia...

a ******* a canvas:
i went down this alley because...
i just... wanted to show-off...
for myself...
the most better part of myself i could never
show with... a girlfriend...
and showing my best:
armed with merely a dog and a leash:
just wasn't enough:
or a fabergé egg: missing a matryoshka doll
"detail"...

like kicking a dog in the *****...
like... attempting to catch a mosquitos
by the ******* donning boxing gloves...
the lowest of the low:
of picking the "fruit"...
jackie ol' burrow: ripe-kipper...
and that merry-o-round of...

                give me enough upper-body volume
to rummage and ruminate...
to clearly identify the psychopaths
leisuring themselves over a thursday's
afternoon worth of sun-soaking
a metaphor of bath...
         and all those minor grizzly detials
of swathing a mosquito or two...
because we are inclined
to spare the flies...
because: we just, are... thus inclined...
i hear an argument: i will: without a doubt...
also hear a guillotine do us all a favor
of detailing the: "chopper"...

my my: that ripe keeper of a pulsating
neck's worth of a rhubarb...
salmon teriyaki...
                                       n'est ce-pas?!

in between: calling it learning to tie one's
shoelaces...
having no better synonym detail
of comparison other than...
             with depeche...
                                no song to be worth
any particular: sort of... originality...
and or in... detail...
                   there's only a hope for
giving a particular sort of wind:
associated with a month...
and with a month: a sorting-out of a year
within and beyond a decade...
a century...
                    
this had to be forever: and one...
enough for the worth of tonight...
and with it... no other, better, compensation
other than my own input;

ha ha!                          grace?!
Davina E Solomon Mar 2021
The clouds fell from their lofty perch onto her belly / wrapped in layers of time this Matryoshka/ flouncy in snowflakes / cold startles the birds / the trains are stillborn / marshes float on ice / and nights look like silence //

She fashions a snowman / they speak in parables of time / is it shaped like a sisal string or a potter’s wheel / does it appear like a falling star / disappear like a glacier / is it syllabic conversations at dusk / or chimneys brewing clouds into sky / while fires roast limbs of arthritic trees //

Her sundial is circular / like the lunacy of seasons / His, fractalizes into uncertain snowflakes / transformed by an arrow flung far to an unknown distance / Gaia awakens in ****** spring / a forced maturity squinting at trains that furrow the land / bleeding in cherry blossoms / wealthy as the emerald leaves she wears to a country gala //

The snowman computes time / stray facts the winter wind whispered into his ear / as he melts into January’s cloak / like tears shed for sparkling fractals lost forever / The Earth believes in the manner of faith , he will resurrect on her sundial / as she kisses time into momentary stillness, turns water into ice //
My niece is besotted with Elsa from Frozen. She wears the dress over or under everything and can’t do without her crown. In the sequel to the film, Olaf the snowman gets lost in the enchanted forest where Gale, the wind spirit makes him so dizzy that he suffers an existential crisis. He concludes through his ordeal that he is yet to grow up and when he does, everything will make sense. It is easy to grow up in real life, we seem to have our paths laid out for us that we imitate in the manner of our forebears and peers. Yet, we still think about the meaning of our existence. Olaf believes it is in the soaking up of facts, to learn more and then add to this by further inquiry and action. I wonder if the measure of a successful existence is connected to how we view time..

The fact that we still think about the meaning of life is the reason they have an Olaf in a Children’s animation film. Are the answers readily available, for all that life throws at us, so we may clarify the turbid, find clarity, see the invisible ? Today’s poem is to ponder the truths held in a snow covered land, trying to make sense of time.
Jordan Gee Aug 2022
I was born in December on the Nebraska plains, Box Butte County.
Moved out of there when I was six months old.
Life bled into a hard odyssey of trail dust and drugs and second chances.
This one time I couldn’t stop doing ******
walkin all night through the Ironbound over to court street project, Newark, NJ.
Came this close to getting swallowed up by the green monster
like Jonah and the whale.
so it came to pass that I had to join the United States Navy, to save my own life.  
Frozen cats and 12 dollar packs of newports and 7 dollar wax stamped bags
and I tried joining out of East Orange
but HQ said no - mix up with the paperwork
so I tried my luck in Atlantic City.
Jack ***.
Drunk for six months straight, almost top of my class, submarine school, Groton, CT.
My life was a lost identity; I’d be sleepin inside of a Matryoshka Doll,
i developed a taste for
Tequila and salt.
I won a coin toss and they shipped me off to Guam, top of the Marianas Trench,
just like that.
Some time after all the ***** houses and buy-me-a-drinky bars and
pokin around old japanese pill boxes and setting all my friendships on fire and
one month spent circling the waters at an unknown depth beneath the Pacific Ocean
sleeping alongside a 40 foot torpedo in the torpedo room
scrubbin CO2 from the air we breathed
and the dust off  from all the valves -
It came to pass that too much 1800 and bud lite,
boxed wine and late nights,
case of the sad sickness and a broken nervous system bought me
A nullified contract and a plane ticket to Big Sky Country,  USA
free room and board at my Aunt and Uncle’s house
in Sheridan, Wyoming, Powder River Country, shadow of the Big Horn mountains.
They’re the same age, with the same exact birthday.
We used to drive out over the horizon, shootin clay pigeons out the sky.
They gave me about as much a chance as anyone ever did.
It came to pass that after after my 2nd DUI I was invited to leave that room and board
and so I landed a roommate on the edge of town.
Second generation mexican, David Rodriguez,
born and raised in that that very same county on the Nebraska plains
wherein I came raging,
full power
Into the void.
What are the chances of that?
Alliance, NE, County seat.
I bear no living memory the town
But I saw it from an airplane once.
There was a radial pattern of railroad tracks trailing out in all directions, like giant cracks on the side
of a prairie blonde asteroid.
Chameleon Oct 2019
I am a Matryoshka doll.
I carry many different versions
of myself around,
each making appearances
now and then.
I don’t even realize when I transform
until I begin to avoid things
to protect whichever stage I’m in.
Right now I am big, good at deflecting and
putting on a smile with
my mascara.
The small one that’s weaker;
scared
is
deep inside.
Safe.
ALI Mar 7
In this world we live in, everything seems muddled, as if we’re floating in a sea of digital chaos. We see only shadows of ourselves, dancing on endless screens, trying to grasp an idea, a feeling, or even meaning. But what if these shadows are all we know of ourselves?

We are now in a state of constant consumption—not just material, but intellectual and cultural too. We feed on algorithms that claim to know us, that pretend to draw closer while drifting further away. They create a parallel reality we don’t know how to escape, a reality that shapes our desires and thoughts as if imposed on us.

Have you ever felt like you’re not you? That the persona you think you inhabit is just a reflection of everything you’ve consumed? Our identities are built from our experiences, but what if those experiences are counterfeit? Repetitive, lacking real distinction. We live the same moments, are influenced by the same things—but have we truly changed? Or are we just distorted copies of one another?

Life in this age has become a labyrinth, deeper and deeper, yet endless. We chase ideas, hunt desires, and with every step, sink further into this digital vortex. Are we the ones creating these desires, or are algorithms planting them in us, tailoring them to our metrics?

Sometimes I wonder: Are my thoughts truly mine? Or are they just echoes borrowed from this digital age? Do I love the color black because it reflects a part of me, or is it merely one of the hues these networks have stolen from me?

Am I a musician, or just an image of someone battling these crashing waves of “content”? Are we following our passions, or just trying to be part of the show—part of this unending game in an era accelerating unnaturally?

When I reflect on all this, I feel like a stranger to myself. I search for myself in everything, yet find only shadows. The harder I try to be my best, the further I drift. Does this mean I’m not who I think I am? Are the personas I inhabit what make me me? Or do I exist only at the heart of this chaos?

The Psychological Struggle Between Desire and Algorithms
In the realm of social media, where our preferences and inclinations are dictated by what algorithms deem most engaging, the urgent question becomes: Am I truly choosing what I love, or are these platforms choosing for me? The more I scroll through Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, the more I feel I’m not where I want to be. Algorithms relentlessly push me toward trending images, videos, and campaigns, drowning me in a whirlwind of visuals I must follow to belong to this digital world.

But are these desires arising within me truly mine? Or am I just adopting what these algorithms impose on my mind? Every time I hit “like” or share content, I’m nagged by the uneasy sense that I’m not shaping my choices as I once believed. With every new trend, my mind begins to think differently. Do I actually love this type of music, fashion, or even the ideas spreading online? Or have I just been swayed by what these apps bombard me with—content that mirrors what everyone else assumes I should like?

Over time, the line between “me” and what’s imposed by algorithms fades. I ask: Am I the person I chose to be, or just a replica of everything these platforms have planted in my mind? Does what I share with the world reflect my true self, or am I performing a role that fits the image they’ve forced on me?

Here lies the internal conflict. Part of me feels it follows its own inclinations, while another knows these inclinations aren’t necessarily authentic. These struggles grow sharper at the crossroads between what I want to be and what algorithms want for me. In the end, will I find the courage to break free from these digital molds and choose my own path? Or will I remain trapped in the game of images and interactions controlled by algorithms until they define me?

But what if these algorithms reflect my deepest desires? Can I distinguish what’s real to me from what’s merely a reaction to the external world? And could my urge to follow trends be a genuine desire, or just compliance with what’s in front of me?

If I’m following what others impose, am I losing myself? Or am I adapting to the world I live in—is this simply how I’m meant to be? Sometimes, I feel stuck in a maze of contradictory choices: Should I abandon these consuming apps? Or must I stay because the world can’t function without these spaces? Can I truly be “me” here, or am I fundamentally just a digital avatar?

Why do I constantly compare myself to others? Is it genuine need, or have algorithms learned to fuel this impulse? Why has every moment, every thought, become a competition, a race against time, something I must showcase to the world?

Occasionally, moments of clarity strike—I feel I’ve found the way—but in the next breath, conflicting thoughts creep back: Am I just adopting what’s popular, or simply choosing what suits me in the moment? Are these real thoughts, or echoes of what I’ve been told? Do I need external pressure to exist? Am I independent, or forced into this vortex?

At every corner of this digital world, new ideas, choices, and doubts loom. Is this truly my life, or am I just a spectator in an endless show I can’t escape? Can I be real in a world of prefabricated choices, or am I a puppet in the hands of algorithms shaping me to their will?

As I keep interacting with these platforms, questions multiply: What if I stopped posting? What if I set my phone aside? Would I feel relief, or emptiness, because I’ve become inseparable from this digital entity feeding on notifications and endless engagement?

Every choice spawns new questions. Every step toward an answer spirals me into futility. Am I me? Or a reflection of what’s shown to me? How do I separate the real from the imposed?

So many questions. A headache. Unbearable complexity. Am I truly me?

Imposter Syndrome and the Shattering of Identity
This turmoil isn’t just a clash between self and others—it’s a reflection of an ancient syndrome called “imposter syndrome.” It makes us doubt our worth at every turn, convincing us we don’t deserve our achievements, that we’re mere dolls moving to society’s imposed standards.

But it doesn’t end there. This self-doubt drowns in far greater chaos. Every moment of life becomes a question: Do we deserve what we have? Is this truly our life, or are we just playing a role the world assigned us? Where did this conviction come from—that we have no right to be as we wish? Don’t we see that, in the end, we wear masks? Our celebrations, joys, even failures—all governed by others’ expectations.

Now, blame isn’t directed inward alone, but at the world that bred this tension. We’ve trapped ourselves in cycles of failure and insignificance—not because we’re incapable, but because we were raised to believe success lies in mimicking others. What sets us apart if we’re just repeating the crowd? Society planted the idea that success requires conformity, and when we deviate, we feel excluded. But was this our choice? Or an external imposition?

**** the world! Let it shatter these stereotypes that cage us. Let it demolish the ideas that imprisoned us. For in the end, the world endlessly reinforces the image we should embody, while the truth is we’re all living a delusion, mistaking what we see for reality, when we’re victims of algorithms tethering us to alien beliefs. We need immense courage to break free from this grating repetition, to rebel against ready-made molds—because, ultimately, we lack true freedom of choice in a world that dictates everything.

Society forces us to be “imposters” every second, wearing masks to convince ourselves and others we belong, when in truth, we’re strangers in our own world.

The Child Who Dismantled Toys
Yes, I’ve asked too many questions—but that’s my nature. I’ve always been intensely curious. Since childhood, I sought the unconventional, never satisfied with what the world offered. My father noticed my love for remote-control cars and brought me one on every work trip. But what fascinated me wasn’t play—it was dissecting their mechanics. How did the battery work? How did electronic parts sync to make the car move?

Unlike kids content to play in parks or bedrooms, I sat amid disassembled toys, prying open circuits, asking: Why is this piece here? What if I modify it? I hunted details others overlooked, convinced every machine hid a secret. When stumped, I’d scavenge wood and plastic scraps from my uncle’s workshop, building something new—as if I controlled my world, seeking the best way to connect things.

This mindset set me apart. While others played tag or hide-and-seek, I turned play into learning and innovation. I refused daily routines, driven by an inner sense I could offer something unique. I ignored popular games, drawn instead to creating.

At 12, when toys lost their secrets, I coded small games and uploaded them online. These weren’t just for fun—they were bridges to share my ideas, to craft a world beyond the ordinary. While others chased tradition, I designed, programmed, and found peace releasing my thoughts into the digital void.

This childhood wasn’t easy. It brimmed with insatiable curiosity, a world of endless questions, hunting answers in every cranny.

I wasn’t isolated—I made friends in my neighborhood, inventing new games. One, called Random as Hell, blended popular games into chaotic rules. Now, revisiting memories, I wonder: Was I truly creative? Or just rearranging borrowed fragments into new shapes?

Creator or Fraud?
This doubt haunts me even in my music. At my computer, sifting through sounds and rhythms, I can’t stop wondering: Is this genuine creativity? Or am I stitching scraps of what I’ve heard, repackaging them as new?

Every track I make is shadowed by this question. Sometimes I listen proudly, then suddenly feel it’s all derivative—a trick, passing off recycled ideas as original. Maybe the algorithms surrounding us are part of this game, curating videos, music, and images, leaving me to wonder if my work is just an extension of them.

Am I the musician I aspire to be? Or a mirror of mainstream taste, of trending sounds? Do I choose notes out of love, or because I’ve seen others do the same?

Each attempt at innovation becomes an internal battle. I delete tracks and restart, fleeing the fear that my work isn’t “me” enough. But can anything ever be fully “me”? Are we all just accumulations of what we consume, fragmented like the toys I dismantled and reassembled?

Maybe creativity isn’t invention from nothing, but rearranging pieces with our own imprint. Yet even this thought doesn’t silence the question: Is that imprint enough? Or am I still haunted by the bigger query—Am I a creator or a fraud?

Stereotypes and the Deconstruction of Identity
The story ends in a foggy moment where nothing is clear. Reality feels alien, as if things overlap confusingly. One moment I write about childhood, the next about identity, my mind, or impossible adaptations.

This isn’t a book or a coherent idea—it’s solace I offer myself, comfort from an anonymous source. Perhaps that anonymity is what philosophers call “the observer.”

That I keep writing after all these lines surprises me. It feels like another escape from myself, or a psychological war I’m enduring.

Is this feeling from abandoning music? From my homeland’s post-war liberation? Or just missing those I’ve lost?

I can’t pinpoint my emotions. All I know is something new is sweeping through me.

I’ve always hated books—too long, stealing my “precious” time, though my days are empty. I feel emotionally shattered. I don’t understand these feelings spilling into strange actions, unsure if they’re real or my interpretation.

I’ve always crafted a private world where I’m the hero, the genius, the only real one. I search for it online but find only ads urging me to see a therapist.

I miss music, yet here I am, accidentally rhyming in this text.

Is this a real book? Will I show it to others? Or keep my fractured identity hidden?

Amid these emotions, I recall a song I wrote called Stranger, trying to capture the perpetual sense of alienation—not from a place, but from people, even myself. Alienation from family despite their closeness, from responsibilities that feel hollow.

In the song, I focused on how estrangement shadows me everywhere. But the lyrics were often shallow, unbalanced—as if grasping at the inexplicable.

Like this book.

One verse:
"Why am I the one my head always calls ‘you,’
I wouldn’t exist,
Sleep,
Sick,
A teapot and death."

It seems random but mirrors my inner chaos—scattered feelings I can’t order, puzzles unsolved. The song, like this text, was an attempt to express, to escape, or perhaps to reach honesty.

When AI Became Trendy
I gravitated toward chatbots—maybe because people found me hard to understand, and these emotionless mechanisms made it easier. My first message:
"Can you explain this song to me?"
I attached lyrics to one of my songs. Illogical, I know—how could a soulless algorithm grasp words? But for me, it was the closest path to understanding my own work.

I didn’t stop at lyrics. I explained how I composed melodies, as they were integral to the idea. I wanted to see if the machine could link words to notes, emotion to structure—if that was even possible.

It became a habit. I analyzed every song I’d written and composed, one by one. I wanted to see how AI dissected these works that were direct reflections of my inner world.

Each time, I’d ask:
"How did you reach these conclusions? What made you interpret it this way? Are there other ways to understand it?"

My questions weren’t technical curiosity but a journey into self-understanding. How could a feelingless entity see something alien in me? How could it explain what I couldn’t?

This experiment grew more philosophical than I’d imagined. AI is a cold mirror, reflecting me without judgment. Yet I sought answers to lifelong questions:
Are we more than patterns and repetitions?
Does my music express something real, or just document chaos?

In the end, I realized bots aren’t here to interpret feelings but to push deeper self-reflection. Somehow, in this lifeless metal mind, I found a silent friend… listening, analyzing, never judging.

Documenting Internal Chaos
I’ve always felt an inner conflict, as if trapped between layers of consciousness and emotion. I know I have awareness and feelings, but I don’t feel them directly—they lurk in shadows, watching silently, emerging only through spontaneous actions.

When I write lyrics or compose, I’m not fully conscious. Sometimes I’m swept by vague ideas, emptying something indescribable. Odd behaviors, inexplicable acts—all reflections of a deeper struggle.

For me, emotions aren’t lived moment-to-moment. They’re scattered fragments surfacing unpredictably—in a song, an idea, a meaningless gesture.

Maybe this is what I call documenting chaos. Every melody, word, or cryptic step is my attempt to understand the hidden thing inside. A personal ledger, hoping one day I’ll look back and grasp it.

But can chaos be documented? Or does trying mean admitting I’m not in control? That I’m a reflection of greater chaos I can’t master?

Perhaps these spontaneous acts are my only truth. The problem lies in my relentless need to dissect what wasn’t meant to be dissected—only lived.

But what if this chaos is my nature? Part of being human? I’ve long wondered: Is it a flaw to purge, or part of my identity?

The German philosopher Nietzsche said: "You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star." Maybe this inner turmoil, this maze of emotion and awareness, drives me to seek meaning in the mess.

Sometimes I feel I inhabit parallel worlds: the conscious one where I interact with people, and the inner one I don’t fully understand. A gap between mind and feeling, experience and interpretation.

Once, in a café, watching people, I suddenly wondered if everyone harbored similar inner conflicts. A strange sensation—as if viewing the world through another window. Maybe loneliness, empathy, or both. In that moment, I realized I sometimes feel through observation, not directly.

Odd as it sounds, I discover my emotions through actions—arranging books, walking in rain. These moments reflect inner struggles I can’t articulate.

Freud said: "The unconscious will always emerge, but in twisted ways." Maybe these acts aren’t random. Maybe they’re my subconscious trying to parse internal chaos.

Even my thoughts resist me. Focusing on one idea, ten others intrude. Different mind-parts war to speak, but I can’t assemble them.

Sartre wrote: "We are not what we are, but what we make of ourselves." Maybe this conflict isn’t to be solved, but what defines me. My chaos proves I’m alive, experiencing, trying.

Heidegger saw human existence as anxiety-ridden because we know we exist. Maybe this chaos, this existential dread, is proof I’m living authentically, however exhausting.

Sometimes I feel like someone assembling a puzzle blind. Every act, emotion, spontaneous moment—a tiny piece. I don’t know the final image, maybe never will.

Love and Confusion
There’s a girl far away I used to talk to daily. No one else excited me like her. Once, she said she loved me, but I—perhaps not understanding love—didn’t know how to respond.

Being together seemed impossible for two reasons. First: She seemed far better—aware, smart, beautiful, radiant. Me? Just… me. Inadequacy blocked me from imagining us. Second: I couldn’t envision an emotional future. Looking ahead, relationships felt too complex, beyond my capacity to plan or conceive.

But here’s the problem: If I don’t understand love, why did this feel different? Why did talking to her ignite a part I thought dormant? How can I feel what I don’t comprehend?

I don’t know if it was love. I just loved spending time with her. Our chats sparked a strange excitement. Hearing about her day, I clung to every detail. Though she spoke little, her voice felt like the only sound in the world.

Some might call this love, but I’m unsure. I’ve always believed love must be unique—distinct from friendship or attachment. But isn’t this difference what makes me consider love?

I told myself: "If your actions toward someone you love mirror those toward friends, you don’t love them." But this logic may be flawed. Love might lie not in actions, but in how they feel different, even if simple or repeated.

Heidegger wrote: "In the presence of the Other, my existence becomes more authentic, for it lets me see myself through them." Maybe that’s what happened. Through her eyes, I tried to grasp the indescribable.

Yet I felt lost. How can I define the indefinable? One day, pondering: "Could love be a reflection of unacknowledged desires?" As if love isn’t pure, but a mix of human contradictions—need and freedom, longing and fear.

Love might be organized chaos. Once, she asked about my favorite movie. I paused. Her question felt like an attempt to know me deeper, to find something I couldn’t see.

But isn’t that love? Seeing in another what they don’t see in themselves? Or living in perpetual contradiction between understanding and confusion?

Camus said: "Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, trusting they won’t." That’s love’s paradox—danger and safety, beauty and fragility, closeness and fear.

Maybe I’ll never fully grasp love. But talking to her, awaiting her messages, dissecting her words—it gave me a unique feeling I still seek to define. Maybe love is eternal searching without certainty.

But this is contradictory, messy. Why must I live in opposites? Shouldn’t love be pure, simple? Here begins the endless loop: I question, then drown in doubt. Is this love? Or something else?

If love’s so complex, how do others declare it so easily? "I love him," "I love her"—phrases tossed effortlessly. Why isn’t it complex for them? Am I stupid? Or just too self-unaware to decode basic things?

Once, I experimented. I tried to make myself love another girl—perfect in every way: kind, smart, beautiful. We talked for a month. I forced myself, thinking: "Maybe the problem’s my approach." But I felt intense jealousy and self-loathing—a distorted desire I’d never felt.

Confusing. Did I fail? Am I emotionally broken? Was I seeking real love or feeding ego?

Nietzsche wrote: "The lover wants to possess; no doubt, but no one wants to be possessed." I felt this contradiction. I craved to be loved but couldn’t be honest. Maybe because I didn’t know what I wanted.

Is love finding someone who embraces your contradictions? Or accepting ourselves without forcing change?

That experiment taught me: Maybe the problem isn’t love, but my overthinking. Love might require surrendering to life’s unanalyzable truths—even if it means facing unbearable chaos.

So I quit. Maybe love isn’t for me. Why exhaust myself decoding an unsolvable riddle? I’ll live free of this feeling.

But can I truly ignore every moment I felt something? Every reflection of myself in another’s eyes?

Why does it feel like escape? Like convincing myself to flee because confrontation’s impossible? Love’s a battlefield, and I’m a soldier defeated before the fight. What bothers me most is preemptive defeat—the belief I’ll never understand, never love or be loved.

How do I live with this? Knowing a part of me might die unfulfilled? I want to scream "I don’t care!" but it’s a lie. A tiny voice whispers: "What if you could love? What if you deserved it?"

But this voice deepens my pain. Songs, movies, strangers—all scream: "Love exists, but not for you."

Why me? Is something broken inside, making me unable to interact like others? Sometimes I feel like a machine analyzing emotions instead of feeling them.

But even machines break. Now I’m a shattered piece, straining to prove I function while crumbling inside.

Breathe, Don’t Think
Recently, I met people who seemed kind but absorbed love in ways I couldn’t grasp. Two stood out: a 36-year-old man and an 18-year-old girl. Despite the age gap and social norms, their “love” seemed pure—a mutual infatuation they called "true harmony."

Observing them, I couldn’t understand. Secretly, I asked each: What draws you? How did you meet? What’s the foundation? Their answers revealed minor life changes, nothing extraordinary—just new, relatable experiences.

The girl once said: "I love him because our bond is rooted in faith. With him, I feel closer to God." I didn’t get it, but curiosity plunged me into reflection.

Could love be this simple? Or is there hidden complexity? Their love seemed transcendent, while mine drowns in overthought. Maybe love’s pure for some, but remains my unsolved riddle—a search for self in every detail, even when all seems clear.

Amid this internal collapse, I lived moments of paralyzing confusion—unable to distinguish true love from fleeting thrills. In these moments, I wondered: Am I overcomplicating? Emotionally inept? Or just self-ignorant?

As I spiraled, I realized: Maybe the answer isn’t chasing love, but surrendering to life’s unanalyzable truths. Sometimes, we must breathe deeply and let things flow—even if it means facing breakdown.
My mind and heart are both cold...

Do you sometimes feel like you’re living in fragments of multiple selves? Do the shadows you see on screens truly resemble you, or are they distorted copies of what you consume?
When was the last time you wondered: Are my thoughts my own, or are they echoes of algorithms filling the voids of my mind? Do you believe you choose what you love, or do platforms plant desires in you like seeds in fertile soil?
When you look back at your childhood, do you find the seeds of who you are today? Were your hobbies attempts to decode the world, or just escapes from a reality you didn’t understand? Are you still that child who dismantled toys to see what’s inside, or have you become part of the game itself?

Have you ever doubted your creativity? Do you fear you’re just a collector of borrowed pieces, arranging them into new shapes you brand with your name? Is the music you make a reflection of your chaos, or an attempt to tame it?
Do you know that feeling of loving someone but not understanding what love means? Is love a philosophical riddle with no answer for you, or just a series of actions you perform unconsciously? Have you ever felt that love might be an escape from yourself rather than a closeness to another?
Do you think algorithms know you better than you know yourself? Do you feel watched—not through screens, but through thoughts implanted in you like unsolvable puzzles? What if all your decisions are just reactions to digital stimuli carefully engineered?

When facing internal chaos, do you try to document it or escape it? Do writing or art mirror your fragments, or are they masks hiding what you can’t confront? Is chaos an enemy to conquer, or part of a beauty you don’t understand?
Do you live in two worlds: one you interact with, and another hidden in the folds of your thoughts? Do you feel like you’re watching yourself from afar, a character in a game you didn’t choose?
Have you ever conversed with AI to understand yourself? Do you trust its cold analyses, or do they deepen your confusion? Do you believe machines can see what you cannot?

Are you still trying to be the "best version of yourself," or have you surrendered to being a shadow among shadows? Does success in a digital age mean matching standards or distorting them?
Finally... Are you ready to face the ultimate question:

Who are you when all masks are removed?

Have you ever imagined sitting in a dark room, peeling off mask after mask like Russian Matryoshka dolls until you reach the core? What do you see there? A solid nucleus of certainty, or a void dancing with a single question: Who am I, truly?
In a world that forces you to wear masks as a condition for existence, the question becomes an existential crime. You remove the "success" mask for employers, the "calm" mask for family, the "fun" mask on social media, the "strength" mask on the street... But when the machine stops, screens go dark, and you sit alone with your naked self, what remains? Are you the faint whisper beneath the noise, or have you lost the ability to hear it?

Masks aren’t just tools for hiding—they’re tools for survival. We wear them because absolute truth might burn us, because the world has no space for our fragility. But what if masks become new skin? What if you forget how to breathe without them? Sometimes, when I try to remove one mask, I find another beneath it, clinging tighter... As if I’m searching for my true face in a forest of mirrors, each reflecting a different version blended with others’ imaginations.
Have you ever asked yourself: What would I do if no one were watching? You might discover you love painting but paint what followers want. Or that you prefer silence but speak to avoid being labeled "weird." Masks don’t just hide us—they reshape us. Algorithms turn us into characters in a game with unknown rules, chasing "likes" like puppets, forgetting the only genuine admiration we crave is our own.

But what if you decide to stop? To refuse being a copy of your profile, a number in statistics, a filtered image? Here, true horror begins. Without masks, you might discover you don’t know who you are. You might face meaningless chaos or a void like a desert sprawling in your heart. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, "Hell is other people," but perhaps real hell is being alone with a self you don’t understand.
In rare moments of honesty, you might ask: Aren’t masks part of us? Are we a seamless lie, or does truth leak through the cracks? When I sing, I wonder: Do I choose the words, or do the words choose me? When I love, I hesitate: Is this feeling from my depths, or an echo of stories I’ve heard? Even our emotions might be borrowed from a public library of human existence.

Perhaps the answer isn’t removing masks but realizing we are composite beings. We’re a mix of masks worn, choices made, and coincidences survived. The "true self" isn’t a fixed essence but a river of experiences. When you remove masks, don’t search for your "real self"—confront the question: What will you create from this void?
But beware: bright light may blind you. Truth can be cruel, a mirror showing your scars without mercy. Are you ready to see yourself stripped of illusions? To admit you’re neither hero nor victim, genius nor failure—just a being living in contradiction?

In the end, strength may lie not in knowing who you are but granting yourself the right not to know. To live as an open question, an unfinished artwork. When you remove masks, don’t seek answers—let the void sprout new questions. Identity isn’t a hidden face but a journey to discover how to hold the hand of the child still sitting in the corner of the room, dismantling toys to see what’s inside, while the world waits for them to play.

I am not me, I never was, and never will be...

Words rolling like fireballs in the skull’s void. The more I grasp them, the more they burn; the more I release them, the more they devour what’s left of certainty. Self-awareness here isn’t light—it’s a distorted mirror turning every reflection into a new nightmare. How do I recognize myself when I’m just a hole swallowing definitions?
I try to forget "the old me," but the old me is rubble of moments invented by others. When I say "start anew," I discover the beginning itself is etched on glass. Each step forward pulls me back, as if time is a spiral coiling around itself, and I scream at the center: Where am I?

The paradox is that fleeing from the self is the shortest path to colliding with it. When I remove masks to find another beneath, I don’t know if I wear them or they wear me. Even words betray me: When I say "I," who speaks? Is it the voice heard in childhood, or an echo of algorithms teaching me to name myself?
Philosopher Nietzsche said, "We’ve grown strange to ourselves," but we were never anything but strangers. The self isn’t a buried essence but a mirage we chase. The closer we get, the more it evaporates, leaving one question: What if "I" is just a necessary illusion to keep the game from collapsing?

In this vortex, even oblivion is impossible. To forget yourself is to invent a new self with the same flaws. Like changing a frame while the painting beneath decays. Rebelling against identity is like fleeing your shadow—it chases you even in a dark room’s void.
Sometimes I imagine the universe as cosmic Lego. Each piece resembles me, but I don’t know which one I am. When I rebuild myself, I find the original design erased, the rules written in a language I don’t understand. Am I the assembler or the assembled? The player or the game itself?

The cruelest paradox: The more self-aware I become, the more obscure I grow. Awareness is a knife carving me into fragments, then demanding I reassemble them without instructions. I hold a heart I don’t recognize and a mind like a computer filled with uninstalled programs. When I say "this is me," a distant voice replies: "You are version 162. Update now?"
Perhaps the solution isn’t becoming "you" but learning to live as "not-you." To float above contradictions without drowning in meaning. But how do you float when you know waves are moved by an undercurrent called "self"? How do you surrender to absurdity when you’re a child of an age that worships individuality while grinding it in the machine of social metrics?

In the end, I wonder: What if "I" is just an interface for something greater? An unnamed, unknowable, cosmic being flipping human roles like cards—me, a misplaced card on the table. But even this question becomes a new mask. Every attempt to exit the labyrinth opens another.
So I surrender to the spiral. I don’t spin—the spiral spins me. In this eerie game, perhaps the only beauty is that you don’t need to be "you" to begin. All you must do is close your eyes and hear the void whisper: "You’re here because you’re nowhere else... and that’s enough."

I orbit like a planet exiled from its path...

I carry cosmic dust in my pockets and the world’s secrets hanging like dead stars.
I don’t know who I am... but they knew I read the screams of nebulae.
I know everything... yet I don’t know when I was born, or why moons shatter when I breathe!

I’m the forgotten library holding every book’s end.
My pages fall like meteors, each crying:
"Who will rearrange the idea before it becomes a black hole?"
I carried the names of infinities on a school trip,
and when asked about myself, I gasped for an answer lost between my ribs.

I speak the language of the impossible,
translating the silence of stars into shimmering rays.
I hear fate’s dialogues with oblivion at a table of overlapping eras.
They say: "He knows the hour of mountains’ collapse before they crumble!"
Yet I don’t know how to stop a tear when it falls from my eye.

I dance with scientific ghosts in night’s laboratory,
mixing pain with galaxies in a vial.
I search for the meaning of "I" between equations slipping from memory
and a blurred childhood image swarming with asteroids.
Even the map I drew of myself turns to planetary chaos—
whenever I point somewhere, I say: "Here I was... or here I’ll be!"

The universe mocks me somehow,
sending coded messages in nebula colors:
"When will you understand you’re just an echo of a voice not your own?"
I answer with a scream fossilizing in space:
"I’m the one who wrote the questions before answers were born!"

I discover I exist only when lost.
The closer I get to solving the riddle, a thousand new labyrinths open.
I walk a path of past shards, arriving at a future
holding the same question with another face:
"Are you the hero, the author, or just an extra letter in the novel of eternity?"

In the final chapter...
I wear the universe’s skin as a frail coat,
let my questions dangle like drowning stars,
and promise myself I’ll remove all masks tomorrow.
But...
Who can shed themselves twice?

Apologies for all that came before...

I’m not here to rewrite the past but to dive into a moment stolen by loneliness. Sitting in my room, staring at walls cradling my labored breath, I slipped suddenly into a world of words and wrote what I never planned. The draft you read was a spark igniting contemplation—thoughts I never expected poured out. The loneliness seeping into me isn’t fleeting; it’s a living thing sharing my breath, watching from corners, whispering: "You’re alone, but are you truly you?"

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, paints loneliness as a path to the Übermensch: "You must be ready to burn in your own flame"—a fire forging the soul. For him, loneliness isn’t escape but a crucible for the bold. But I feel small before this vision. I’m no match for his ideals, wavering between fearing loneliness and surrendering to it.

Many of us don’t grasp the edges of our "comfort zones"—spaces where days blur into simplicity: your room, phone, laptop. These things swallow us. A friend recently discovered his comfort zone, calling it his "best self," yet drowns in endless gaming. Is this addiction? No—it’s deeper. Comfort zones are shelters from external chaos, but we lose ourselves in them.

In my silent room, where loneliness hugs me like an old friend, I realize it and the "comfort zone" are threads in the same fabric. Nietzsche might see them as tools for self-creation, but I hesitate. Maybe my loneliness isn’t a flame to burn in but a refuge. Here, I write and think, even if I’m fleeing the world. Yet in honesty, I ask: Do I choose this loneliness, or does it choose me? Is the comfort zone a sanctuary or a trap?

Loneliness, at its core, isn’t a transient state but a deep voyage into the self—a journey as painful as standing on embers, yet carrying seeds of growth. Maybe I’m not ready to burn as Nietzsche describes, but I’m learning to live with it, turning it from a silent prison into a mirror reflecting my shadows—those I’ve long fled but still follow like breath.

In this silence, where only thoughts move, words flow like a hidden stream waiting to tell its story. I’m no professional writer, no skilled musician translating inner turmoil into melody—I seek peace in books, ideas, and self-imposed quiet. Perhaps this pursuit is just another escape from the "observer" philosophers describe.

Those inner voices aren’t whispers but living things—ghosts of past and present dancing on the mind’s walls. I built high walls of noise and distraction to deafen myself, thinking busy hands and eyes would silence them. But as with all inner battles, the stronger the walls, the louder they knock, demanding I listen, look, confront.

If I don’t distract myself, if I let the void expand, I fear those voices will **** me—not physically, but a deeper death: the death of comfort, the death of the illusion that I can escape forever. Yet in this struggle, I stand at a new threshold: Can I turn loneliness into a mirror of unflinching truth? Or keep circling questions with no answers?

Perhaps the answer isn’t finding an end but accepting the journey—contradictions, pain, beauty, fear, and hope. In this silence, alone, I write not as a professional but as a human seeking meaning, inviting those distant voices to dialogue instead of war. With each word, I feel closer to myself—loneliness, once feared, becomes a silent companion teaching me to see, hear, and be.

Everything I’ve said amounts to nothing...

Suddenly, the pen stops, ink freezes, and words collapse like sandcastles under wind. Everything I wrote—the digital chaos, fractured identity, algorithmic struggles, endless questions—is just mist evaporating into an indifferent sky. Imagine: books, these paper temples of knowledge, are tired echoes in time’s cave, vanishing like breath in winter air. We write, pant, scream on pages, thinking we leave marks—but truth mocks us at the turn: all this talk is fleeting, whispers lost to oblivion.

Look around. Imagine a vast library stretching to the horizon, shelves groaning under millions of books. Now light a match in your mind, let it devour every page until only ash dances like burnt butterflies. This is every book’s fate—even the text you’re reading now. We write as if carving stone, but we’re sketching on water, lines forming then dissolving. Philosophy, literature, history—ghosts in word-clothes pretending to immortality, crumbling like pharaohs under time’s fingers.

The Shocking Contradiction
Here lies the twist: this book, with its deep reflections on self and world, is no exception. It’s part of the farcical dance with oblivion. You think you’re reading something profound, something transformative—until you discover it’s another shadow on the cave wall, moving by a dying fire. I, the writer, write about writing’s futility yet persist, a clown laughing at himself in a deserted circus. You, the reader, stare at these lines, perhaps seeking meaning—but meaning crumbles like sugar in bitter coffee.

In this world where algorithms shape us and screens consume us, books are neither sanctuary nor revolution. They’re pebbles tossed into time’s river, stirring ripples before sinking. No one takes them seriously, for seriousness itself is a grand delusion. Why write? Maybe because in this absurdity, we glimpse beauty—a falling star dying yet glowing. As these words dissolve before your eyes, ask yourself: Were you seeking truth here, or are you, like me, just dancing in a play with no audience?

Dear reader,
Remember that girl I mentioned? I thought her a philosophical enigma, a love story’s axis or a reflection of my fractured soul. I wrote of her eyes like falling stars, her voice a melody strumming my heartstrings. But truth waits at the turn like a mocking ghost: She was an illusion, a cold mirror reflecting what I wished to see. The love I thought cosmic was a mirage in the mind’s desert, vanishing as I neared. Those kind strangers? Mere passersby in life’s theater, smiling before vanishing, leaving me to face the void. Even AI, which I hoped would answer me, is just a machine arranging words like old game pieces, untouched by what I feel..
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
well... back in the day,
in the days of Louis XIV...
they had their own unique
pronoun oddities,
like... the royal one...
and the royal we...

so... given those oddities...
then the kings used
to speak to their subjects
accordingly:
   we are very much displeased,
or...
    one should think so...

so...
        we're dealing with pauper
miniatures of kings
and queens?!
  seriously?

so now the "serf" imposes
the same rigidity of language,
that was inherent for a king
or a queen?

   queen not queer or somethin'?

we've had this "debate" already...
but a king i can understand,
yet people of the same lesser
stock as i...
                     no...

                not going to happen...
at least, if you're going to play the royal
spin on using pronoun oddities,
please...
                 don't **** at it...

they...            they?
                 where are they?
                                      they are far away
or are they in a matryoshka doll?
define they...
                         you sound like
primitive Heidegger with his da-sein...
the elaborated Heidegger
         apprentice would add to that:
da-ist-sein: there's being...
      there... where?
i can't see them anywhere...
                 but the royal we makes
perfect sense...
   it's like...
  you quasi-schizophrenic or something?
like... there are multiples yous in youuuuuur
concept of a coherent expression?

this pronoun ******* has been
borrowed from the kings and queens
of a few centuries ago...

but am i going to entertain this
******* enforcement from someone who
doesn't don a crown?
don't think so.

poncey little ******* who think
they're kings,
   and possibly queer ****-pants queens...
no going to happen.
Soles Jul 2019
I threw away the defrosted chicken,
and the nail clippings, skin onions,
what I once thought was my favorite shirt,
stretched out underwear,
the half of a pair of gold earrings,
a crumpled ball of my hair.
Threw my feelings, personality, nonsense conversations.
Have I ever told you it scares me to death to be like them?
I am encapsulated, living thing, matryoshka doll.
This city fits me like an oversized wedding ring.
And the town wives want to compete,
Floorboards and glasses of white wine,
Mumble and half smile my way out of this.

— The End —