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Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)


On this 23rd day of December, 2013
Mikhail Kalashnikov is lying dead
In the coffin on the pyre
In Moscow the city of Russia
Away from Siberia his child hood home
Waiting to be buried by the people
His invention the Ak 47 and 74
Has not yet killed,
Good bye Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov
Son of Alexandra as you travel to land
Of the dead where a million of Rwandese in Africa
And million of the Vietnamese are now citizens
After having been shot dead by the AK47 and AK 74
You will not be lonely you glorious son of Russia,
You natural tinkering skills
Gave the world ubiquitous weapon
That has done wonders you looked on
Tell your gods where your poems you wrote are
The world is now free from your vice of the AK
Man can city now in peace and read your poetry
As the fettered politicians have no where
To get the weapons for mass peasant destruction,
Reveal to us the armoury in which you stuffed your poetry
as the gods of peace turn your guns into plowshare
Young Kalachnokov made an odd discovery,
Odd because no beneficiary it had ever since.
He complained over
the dust of amount it brought
into his purse
as a bridegroom who would be served
whine in pint by the in-laws
at wedding party.

The sound achievement  
brought him an ocean of reflections
when he saw how tense-eyed
became lads holding the AK-47,
When he saw that they crawled like snakes
(which move to bite),
Forcing their fellows’ lives away,
Forcing their fellows’ to become foes,
Forcing their fellows to flee abodes and gardens around,
The gardens he saw without care,
And bitterly old Kalachnokov regretted
he hadn’t made  a lawnmower.

Note :
1. Mikhail Kalachnokov was twenty years old when he made the fire weapon.
2. AK47 : A : Automatic ; K : Kalachnokov ; 47 : The year 1947  the automatic weapon was made by the man who gave it his name « Kalachnokov »
This text was penned on Monday. 23rd December 2013,   the day Mikhail Kalachnokov from Russia died.
L B Nov 2017
This poem comes from a dream.*

Sun—as February ordains it
roseate—early
twisted inordinate—in gray blanket
Snow has sifted to the pockets, wrinkles
the cuff of his woolen cap

An old hand rubs stubbled cheek
Snow flickers and falls again
in a dazzle

As he groans and stirs—
sparrows sing
As he struggles to sit—
sparrows sing
As he exhales into the chill
he considers the lilies of the field
Their luminous curling petals rise
steam or hope?
or just white smoke
wandering from the tiny fire
He sits a while to listen
to sparrows bickering in the bushes
then bursting into song

They have their audience

Across in a court of broken glass
and toppled stones
a room— still partially intact
Kindling gathered
Marta melts snow for tea
peeling potatoes in her lap
Stops to blow on hands
Marta’s heart—decent, visceral
like her hair—bun, kerchief
like her words—few in the failing
like the wounds of her smile

And Mikhail—harnessed
to the sounds of service
Orderly rhythm in ruin
hush    hush     hush
of a broom stroking cobbles
Mikhail—his hands wrapped in rags
old warrior  
now, restorer of places to live
Stops, removes his cap
squinting sunlight into the channels of his face
Then turns toward unsteady shuffling behind him

“You shouldn’t.”
Tears interrupt
reaching for the broom
“You shouldn’t do this for me.”

“No, no, Holy Father. It is little thing—
a little thing I do.”
A number of references from "The Sermon on the Mount," particularly, "Consider the lilies of the field..."  and that "a sparrow does not fall to the ground outside the Father's notice."

White smoke is a sign to the waiting world-- that a Pope has been chosen.

An article in *The Guardian* today about how there are groups that hate the present Pope for his renunciation of  tradition, wealth, pomp, and the "Vatican Courtiers".  Made me think of this poem from a dream.  Although not a practicing Catholic, I like the present Pope.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
i.

my writing is truly one thing, my life another - not
that's a statement clouded in excuses and guilt:
just the claustrophobic macabre -
and so it happens, that every few days i reach
the limit with wrestling the Minotaur -
the time comes when the liver k.o.s the brain
and the brain then starts punching the liver -
it usually stars in the afternoon, e.g. yesterday,
at 3 in the afternoon, a burrowed sense of guilt
comes over, cigarettes are rolled and chain-smoked...
a promise of not painting the front of
the house is the overpowering weight on the heart -
as is an ably bodied father: who, i might
as the source of my writing capacity: the silence -
but the day flows through... the excess nicotine
adds to the shakes, the detox period begins
with a big meal: chinese pork belly in five spice
and other additives, peppers, spring onions
until a thick goo sauce is cooked slowly to thicken...
served with 'it's called egg fly lice, you plick!'
(Uncle Benny, lethal weapon 4) -
the meal is ate as if a ****** ****** - this is
really the point of critically approaching the
concentrated detox - binge of television,
drinking orange squash and smoking -
playing some stupid video game between watching
an even worse movie - before the saga of
x files begins... at 5 a.m. with the most annoying
feline opera by the most annoying ginger cat
begins... the shades are drawn and the hours between
5 a.m. are spent in a quasi somatic state -
the pain in the brain is too strong to allow you
a kipper without the sedative being dragged from
the body: taking sleeping is avoided -
the blinds in the room don't have blackout plastic,
by 6 a.m. a t-shirt is rolled up and put against
the eyes, the eyes adjust to the light until 7 a.m.,
the body gets up and goes downstairs for more
orange squash, but this time breakfast is stomached,
yesterday's leftover rice, fresh eggs scrambled
and mixed with spring onion -
                                                     cigarette, and a daytime
news channel - Victoria Derbyshire -
the main topic of concerns? only 12% of Paraolympic
Rio tickets have been sold, a charity having raised
about £25,000 wants to sponsor Rio's children
to join in the fun... housing shortages in England,
Redbridge council buying social housing in
Canterbury (once a military base) - 7 people living
in one room (the Romanian standard is
14... you have to remember night shifts) -
oh i seen houses like that, i remember one Jew renting
out his house to 20 / 30 Poles before the Union
expanded... paid of his mortgage... no new reality
here for me... the major misdiagnosis of heart attacks
in women on the N.H.S.: a woman ate a curry,
thought it was only a heartburn... boom, two days
later drops in agony... in between the real
results of the detox... sitting...
not ******* out whiskey yellow ***** when there
are barely any toxins in the body... diarrhoea...
up to about 8 times on the toilet - more orange squash,
more cigarettes... then onto the piece the resistance...
the x files... which last up to about the twilight zone
hour of having reached the 24 hour mark of being
awake... one last **** and then shower, and
then doing the laundry (on a sunny day like this,
it would be a shame not to)...
                                                   at noon
tinned mackerel in sunflower oil... brown bread,
all the oil drank... but by the twilight zone hour
a realisation: ****! my headphones are broken!
i've been walking around these streets with those
very depressing sounds of vrroom vrroom...
i know how the old complain about the youth
and their headphones... yes, but you probably
grew with about 10 cars per hour passing your
house back in the day... and too the birds could
be beautiful, and the sound of children's games
and golden laughter... but all the other sounds...
so off to the shop for a very respectable £1.50 pair...
and then the moment when all the sights
on the streets are no longer synchronised with
what i'm hearing, my eyes sharpen and i dance
past the cars and people never bothering to press
the crossing lights on streets: ease the traffic,
ease the traffic... then into the supermarket and
the detox ends... i can go back to sleeping a decent
night... a bottle of Stella... the only thing sexier
on a hot summer's day on the street... good old,
good cold Stella Artois...
then up to another shop for two more beers and
tobacco...
                        after that? magic...
as the title suggests: on a park bench with Ernie -
something more grand than Beckett's waiting
for Godot
... i.e. something resembling a scene from
Patriarch's Ponds, an encounter with
Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz (editor of a highbrow
literary magazine, abbreviated MASSOLIT)
and a young poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov -
a few clues to the less knowledgeable parties:
Behemoth ***** and chess, a book that makes
sense of the world interrupted by Herr Woland's
wonderful delights (among many), such
as the notable pandemonium at Ivan Savelyevich
Varenukha's Variety Theatre -
yes very much akin to Hector B.'s:
symphonie fantastique: dream of a witches' sabbath.

ii.

sincerest apologies... the sedative hasn't been bought
yet, and a patient father's invoice for work
done on the construction must be written in tangible
English - in ref. to the uttermost sincerity -
Polski nadal w mej duszy dudni,
                            taki ogrom organów i
                                         bębnów twki -
           że strach pomyślec - czy to wir zamkniętej
historii ludu: czy poczatek gorszych prwad o świecie?
   bo co o zamkniętej historii (skrawku) ludu?
      to przeciez moj dziad'ek w Partii uslugi dawal!
      a kraj podziekowal - i co Prawda to Walesa
   na Florydzie z lwa w zlota rybke sie zamienil.
   (comp. diacritic
                                                       ­                                 pending)

iii.

as i knew, i should have finished this poem on
the principle of ensō - all in one piece -
thus i would have staged what happened on the bench
with Ernest -
                        but after walking to the supermarket
minding my own business and the jokes ensued
about how no one notices, how they know my name
as it's their mascot -
                                   after walking into a world
i found chaos; indeed if i wrote the poem on principle
of ensō, i would have included the phantasmagorical
details of something so simple you could almost cry at it...
the simplicity of it, the fluidity of almost 2 hours
spent in conversation... about what? i'm not telling,
and how was it spoken? i'm not telling either -
let's just they laughed at Ernest's bike, because
it was proper oldie...
                                     i mean, i won't mention the odd
details, but the essence? forget it man!
after writing my father's invoice, and how cut money
on the construction site, blame it Romanians but only
have themselves to blame with their model
of profiteering and that ****** fetish they have
Che's socialism of guerrilla warfare...
                            and the comments in the supermarket,
it just stuck with me about Ernie's bike,
nothing in comparison to the Tour de France's racers
doing up to 50kmh...
                                      it just made me happy to make
a clean bed... and prevent 36 hours awake threshold
glitches of abstraction: black strings and random
square objects popping out of nothing with me in a
variation of nervous startles... Ernest's bike?
an antique, a 1950s Raleigh...
- hard leather seat beneath that modern overcoat?
- yes; no one would even take it if i left it
  outside a shop, they'd probably sell it for parts.
- well, unless someone is smart enough to notice
  a vintage, and tries to restore it,
  buy the vintage green paint and cover the rusty bits.
oh **** it, i can't keep my own company to suit
being happy by saying: ooh, doesn't know a joke,
the happiest he felt after walking out with a stone heart
was making a bed... but to be honest?
psst... i haven't made it in over a month... last night i
was getting cold-heat shivers in the idea of it being *****
enough though i shower everyday... ok, every other day
sometimes, my socks have holes in them, and my
shoes are ripped.
but there's more to this... the bicycle is a pun
of a Heidegger maxim: man is born as many men...
but dies as a single man... imagine how many
influences are entombed in us, the education reformers
to begin with, motherhood tips, cot deaths...
but we die as individual men... so when Ernest said
about the bicycle being only worth spare parts,
i said what Heidegger meant: but i'd take the whole thing
as one.
- how many gears?
- three at the back, one at the front; you see this thing?
- the long tube beneath the seat?
- yeah, when charged it would power up the front
   and back lights.
- oh, i'm used to seeing that thingy-madgit that you'd
   press against the front tire and the principle would be
   the same.
- a dynamo.
- yeah, a dynamo, forgot the name of it.
it started so innocently, i just sat on the bench with my
earphones and two beers and started rolling a cigarette.
- may i invade the bench?
                                               (earphones out of the ears)
- sure.
                and we just sat there, i asking if he minded me
smoking.
- i used to, loved it, esp. after dinner, gave it up 15 years ago.
  then conversations about dogs, family,
                                         and children's games,
          i said
- i'm finding it hard to find people of my generation with
even friendly dynamic of the body: eye contact is gone!
- it's all the fidgeting on those ****** tablets and phones,
when we were kids we used to play marbles,
conkers, hopscotch, so many...
- and we used to draw a racing maze, fill bottle caps
with plasticine and flick them through the maze
(i can't remember if we threw dice to see how many
moves we could make).
  by the time we started talking about the dogs we liked,
and compared them to the dog walkers passing us
   we already forgot who died today: it was Gene Wilder...
the world is mourning him, and we sat there
and the best i could come up with was Richard Pryor.
- dumb animal luck...
- you know how i managed to train my dog to run
  around the park, but come back to me? i used a whistle
  to get the dog to come back and i'd give it a treat.
  until it got the hang of it, i sometimes wouldn't give it
  a treat... other times i would, the point being was
  to teach it both obedience when nothing was given
  and double obedience when something was.
- ever heard of Pavlov? he basically did the same thing,
  but your experiment had coordinates, it was three-dimensional,
  Pavlov's was just two-dimensional, instead of a whistle
  he used a bell... just to stimulate two senses
  as coordinated, the sound of a bell created saliva
  in the dog's mouth, poor dog received treats
  but in the end Pavlov put him in a car with closed
  windows in the middle of summer outside
  of Parliament square; obviously the dog died.
- German shepherd though... i had a friend, naturally
  obedient.
- could walk a German shepherd through Manhattan
  without a leash.
- exactly, not even half a metre away, and when the
  master stops, the dog stops.
(i started thinking, what a great way to invert theology,
in this way from dogs to gods.)
well... i guess there was more, but if i write more
about it, when i'll reflect upon this chance meeting of
complete strangers as more insightful than it
already was...
                         he managed to climb back on his bike
with a slight problem after his hip-replacement
operation... at 74 such things break... and he rode off
and i sat there trying to think about what the hell
i was thinking after watching the x files to find
something insightful...
                                        well, i got one thing,
i mentioned it before... i could never have believed
that adults created the most nightmarish version
of hide (negate) & seek (doubt) -
                   i thought it was just as bad as
  truth & dare with religion - with that motto:
          the Koran: this is the truth, and the only truth...
so truth or dare? i dare you to deny it!
                    can i just doubt it? you know, not be
a definite unbeliever, but an indefinite quasi-believer?
well doubt in the stated quasi-believer is wavering,
isn't it? the two of the most beautiful games of
innocence, morphed into these gargantuan abominations.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.i do expect you to become lost in this labyrinth - at least that's what i'd rather say - sleep-deprivation is for "some" reason to escape the mediocre of having catched the "8 hour wink"... or whatever the Minotaur wouldn't call it... because i wouldn't call it a "problem" of "gender-neutral pronouns" either... i would call it a "problem" of noun-acquisition-status of letters; notably in greek and hebrew.

friends of "the" family have been looking
for on fb,
****... the caron S (š) will not do!
i need to use two alphabets that...
did not nurture yiddish into existence!
cyrillic didn't accept hebrew...
it'll have to do...
it wouldn't be enough to simply write
my name in cyrillic...
and no... in hebrew no less!
since the vowels are hidden...
and inserting the proper hebrew vowel...
it still wouldn't matter that...
my surname is missing... the galician germanic
e(ch)lert or the e(sch)lert...
no... but how is one to insert
the right kind of vowel: all in hebrew niqab
harem of diacritical markers subscript...
when... you don't have...
enough letters as nouns as scientific
constants as the greeks... do...
i guess only η (eta) stands out as a sore thumb /
black sheep... but i am bound to be wrong,
in the meantime:
well it's hardly a letter-with-a-noun
inclined akin to alpha (α) -
otherwise all is well...
we use the prefix prime (the grammaton per se)...
and discard the suffix when constructing words...
ergo? a-lpha...
and so an so forth...
till be arrive at...
blasting your ears nearing deafness because:
beethoven's mrs. H is:
music so you have to shout over it!
loud! what?! loud music!
loud music what?! loud music
to shun the "pain"...
oh... see you in one of those classes
when you can write sign-language for the dead
when you've been allowed to write braille!
see you sputnik ****!
yeah, see you deaf in one year divine John!
but you get the promise that's:
not your everyday latin castrato sing-along...
those greeks sure have all the best
science... stabilizers... not a lot of songs
to sing along to... because their letters
are also noun-status: also have noun-status...
otherwise the ol' prefix use...
and the suffix recycling centre...
a word like: matter...
well...
   ματτερ - no... i will not use the greek word...
i'll state... mmm... hm!
mu implies m- and cutting off the -u...
alpha implies a- and cutting off the -lpha
tau implies t- and cutting off the -au...
epsilon implies e- and cutting off the -psilon
rho implies r- and cutting off the -**...
and so... we have the word matter...
and the recycled materials for...
some other words...

hebrews? hebrews do have... noun-status letters...
(א) aleph - what's vogue?
inserting the iota into the omicron that's
the marriage: φ (phi)...
or whether it's the turning of the iota in
the omicron to provide the opening of the door
θ (theta) to see: that light at the end of the tunnel
delta (Δ)... again... it's only aleph we're "investigating"...

the other letter in hebrew with a noun-status?
(ג) g'imel...
another is (ד) d'alet...
(ז) z'ayin...
(ל) l'amed...
(ס) s'amekh... most certainly (ע) a'yin...
(צ) t'sadi...

interlude: what is the distance
between (א) a'leph and (ע) a'yin?
a kametz...

now we can "debate" - noun-status letters...
the greeks are in the same sort of pickle
as the hebrews...
there can be a debate whether...
the greeks have more than:
alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, iota,
lambda, omicron, sigma, upsilon, omega
as noun-status letters...

why? because it becomes silly...
(ק) qof and (κ) kappa...
(ר) resh and rho (ρ)...
(שׁ) and... well... to be honest...
that's heading into cyrillic territory...
and the caron S (ш)...
given (ס) samekh and sigma (σ)...

this always happens to me when i come
across a hebrew...
even if he's old and riddled with dementia...
i see him with his polish bride
and i see a "romanian gypsy"...
the feeling is... strange...
this hebrew is like an old cousin of mine...
but it's always a touch of magic...

i am not good at solving crosswords...
(כ) 'xaf' and chi (χ) -
perhaps i have exagerrated the letter-as-noun
status on some of this greek and hebrew...
tightly-knit bed-fellows...
as the boasting resounds in the labyrinth
of the rise and fall of the roman empire...
and the barbarian attempts to have
settled the lands near the seven hills...
and revived the eagle...
spec-ta-cu-lar failures!

the germans should console themselves
with having a crow on their marching banners...
and polacks should...
satisfy themselves with the unicorn myth
of an all-white bald eagle... albino eagle...
and so the harry potter: minus ***** 'arry
can have their unicorns, swans,
honey-badgers, welsh dragon,
st. andrew's gryffindors... etc. -

name, a name... i need to... change it...
obviously...
no hebrew vowels will be used...
since... their use... is devoid of what's already
concrete usage of diacritical markers
in established letters...
if cyrillic and hebrew is to be used...
and not greek and hebrew:
because... well thank you for the new testament
riddle... let's move... away...
to "greater" / other... things....

i can't use a kametz alpha
a tzere epsilon
a chirek iota
a cholem omicron
or a shurek upsilon (omega)...
so all the vowels will have to by cyrillic...

my... latin, name?
mateusz konrad... let's drop the surname...
let's call it a game of:
ibn... or ben... matthew son of konrad...
and since i don't have a... confirmation name...
what name? i would have chosen: Isidore...
after the saint of seville...
or... Ignatius (of Loyola) -
the only fun part of going to a catholic school
was... learning about the counter-reformation
and writing an essay about it...
and their library was decently stacked...
so... plus plus...

this is but a simple exercise...
first the name in cyrillic...
there will not be a full name in hebrew...
which i'll probably lace with greek...
and it will still make all the more perfect
sense... should it be transliterated back
into anglo-ßaß...
yeah: why i don't have a girlfriend...
with these sort of interests?
i guess an hour with a *******
once a year is enough for me...
and for womankind in the hospice of omni...

just following the laziness
of the russian visa authorities are the embassy...
they didn't translate mateusz into matvei
or konrad into: Дракон...
мат-вей...

these are the sort of idiotic tier-1 level
кaцaпс... working in the russian embassy in Loon'don...

because i was never going to be the матвей
who'd **** an илoнa like the 300 deadly mongrel
saracren mameluks or the spartans... no...
i counter the 7 headed beast on her
with every ****** in that one night
i was making my final goodbyes...
but keeping the mikhail bulgakov novel...
through a repose in Warsaw and...
i finished what, "apparently" i wasn't supposed
to finish...

and she is one of those troubled girls...
every ****** partner that meant anything to her...
she will have a tattoo of that lover
on her body... i know my place on her body...
it's on the right shoulder-blade...
the tattoo is of a dragon...
i know because i've met girls like her...
elsewhere...

even as i was being driven home after taking
my mother for her rheumatoid arthritis check-up,
blood test, x-ray... and the pakistani cab-driver
was talking about all the precautions he needs
these days: video ahead of the bonet for insurance
policy... a camera looking in...
and audio recording on his smartwatch...
because what he said... didn't surprise me...
i once picked up a spanish girl - Tamara in a club...
and she decided to take me home
for a one night stand...
as we were approaching the house she was
sharing with three homosexuals
she decided to jump out of the cab...
and make a runner... i calmed the cabbie:
i'll pay for it...
we tried to later **** the hetreosexual way
with her calling me angel because
of my "erectile dysfunction" under the bed sheets
in that putrid smoke of cocoon ***...
like the birth of a rancid moth embryo and
choking from the heat of dust and alcohol
and... what i am alluding to is that some girls
do jump out of cabs to avoid paying the fair...
i knew what the pakistani cabbie was saying...
she owed him 40 quid...
he filed the whole thing to the police...
she accused him of ****** assault...
the story would have fit...
she run from the cab when he tried to sexually
assault her... but... he did have
that audio recording from his smartwatch...
in the end the girl was fined 700 quid...
which is nothing... compared to...
what's that called in h'america? a false accusation?
slander?
i know that girls jump out of cabs...
to avoid paying the fare...
i drove with one... who did just that...
i guess she was so used to this act that she
forgot i was sitting next to her...

- all the *****... but then all the chem-soup
post-psychiatric *******?
the ***** i can stand...
the pills are just tasmanian devilish when
it comes to catching the perfect
battery insomnia recharge...
and always meeting and respecting
the elder of the group darwinistic:
prat pact... a hebrew...
there always needs to be a yew
a *** in the equation...
no... not some english society
uncle tom worth of a high society rabbi...
i mean a jew that will support
west ham... because...
it's an irrational team...
it can fathom beating chelsea (A)...
but then... "forget" to win against...
for god's sake! Norwich (H)!

i know! i know! joseph conrad took his place!
here's my part anagram!
Mатвей Дракон...

the near non-existent diacritical presence
in the english language...
well... no "surprise surprise" if...
you're starting with
и (i) or rather (ı)...
and what's being the flock of salmon
up the river, being caught?
the j but not (ȷ)... imagine my... "surprise"
that the russians arrived at...
и and ı - in tow... ȷ and the й...
the breve...
parabolla or... my eyes only see
the microscopic details when someone
will simply slurr?

- borrowing from yesterday and...
in the early night of winter standing
in the garden with four potatoes
and something else...
looking up at the sky...
i am used to seeing unusual "things"
in the sky -
i'm not unusual when it comes
to having seen a u.f.o. - fluorescent
and squid like in colour -
but i'm also the sort of person that
would carry a few beers for such
spontaneous encounters -
rather running around like a raving
lunatic armed with a camera
filming the whole thing...
i have no proof: i hope my words are enough...
and if they're not?
well... if it can be seen with a naked eye -
i don't need to blink via a technological
feed and argue about: quality of the picture...

but even i wasn't ready for...
what i saw today...
those are roaming stars? aren't they?
and i really did forget to count how
many moved in the same direction
askew - one by one with equal distance
between them - before the distance between
extended - there must have been more than
10 - i'd say there were around 20!

is this always how things are -
when one contemplates the tetragrammaton?

part anagram? well because the russian
do have a version of the hebrew matisyahu...
but they do not have the german conrad
in their language...
probably as to why the germans do not
really have... a yuri or nikita in their language...
nikita after all sounds more feminine than
masculine - anyone could with hindsight
speak of mr. rocketman's lover of
the same same... as not some russian beau
example of the fairer ***...
but a comrade khrushchev...

- and why wouldn't i call those russians
that work in the russian embassy in Loon'don
кaцaпы? for one... they just type letter for letter:
a mateusz / a matthew is a мaтэусз...
for all "legal" purposes...
they already have the сз = ш...
bureucratic purposes...
and no wonder some are like:
how do you say that?
too many consonants some add...
and i really did think that all of us were
allowed to be fully literate...
that's not the case... blowing my own horn...

having a wet ***** over: because i like my given
names... perhaps that's why i didn't want
the confirmation option of being allowed
to change any of my given names: legally...
to one of my own chosing...
when i was 15 / 14 i didn't even known
or think about a name like Isidore...

when the german name became coupled
with a hebrew loan...
otherwise the russian with the first
being an anagram... drakon -
Mатвей Дракон - it's just a name -
it's my name - what's in a name is what's
precisely not in anonymous names
.666 handles and avatars on the internet...
i can own my face - and i can own my name...
because - i kind of like it...

again: on in russian can the west slavic
C be distinguished from the K... Ц -
and back into the cyst of the western lands...
Ç or what came with sigma's tail...
it's so... boring... to have less the different
sounding letters - given no diacritical markers -
and only the "exotica" of spelling -
all the metaphysics in the world combined
and concentrated in greenwich...
but no real orthography...
i could begin the day by bemoaning this poverty
of the english language...
oddly enough as both the outsider coming in...
the immigrant who became a citizen...
and as the insider coming out and coming in
again on that expatriate spectrum of
working from the thesaurus: IMMIGRANT...
for all the beauty of Macbeth...
i can have to ruse myself to bemoan
conventional english... the formal english...
the antithesis poetica...

but i do somewhat "know" why it's called
a tetragrammaton...
i wouldn't classify any of the letters that make it up
as noun-worthy letters...
the kametz (a) and the tzere (e) are nouns...
and letters... but you don't see them when
the hebrew doesn't exfoliate and is left
crude with "missing vowels" for the gentiles
to read...
saying that... calling ה (he) a noun is pushing it...
as is calling ו (vav) a noun...
or י (yod) - although...
the yod could be allowed a noun-status
as... an apostrophe... or a version of the caron -
but the remaining letters of the tetragrammaton...
are "syllables" in that they are consonants...
and when the tetragrammaton comes face
to face with noun-status letters of its own
universe: g (ג) gimel, d (ד) dalet, z (ז) zayin -
l (ל) lamed, s (ס) samekh, ц (צ) tsadi -
resh? shin? the gates are open to allow the question
in... but when...
there's also siamese Adams aleph (א) and Ayin (ע)
being and nothingness respectively...

what could Islam possibly offer me...
intellectually?
when i once asked a muslim what...

alif, lam, meem                                      meant...
he replied... only god knows...
so i thought... only god?
i must have been talking to one of those muslims
who have arabic overlords...
before they can catch a whiff of the almighty
blah'llah...
ا, لَـ, مَـ
again... greek only touches upon...
the initial - the medial and the final
version of sigma...
isolated you would see the capital sigma...
Σ - which could also be treated as the initial
letter - given that the σ looks more like a medial
form - although it's also initial -
whereby ς is the final form -
almost like the english: 's... apostrophe s -
which could be claimed to be an article of possession...
or the plural article when the apostrophe
disappears - or when the ς altogether disappears
when: the possession is plural:
a teachers' strike... e.g.

no not with a fatha - we have our own diacritical
markers... thank you...
but good question...
so... why is the meem written in an isolated
form in the word - yawm (day)...
but not in a final form?
but i do not write in a squiggly line in this digital
arena... perhaps my language looks simply
written... oh yes, the aesthetic of the arabic script
is always stressed...
but even the hebrews think like the greeks
and the latins... in a way...
nothing has to flow in one river-wry format...
there's no isolated letter... of a letter -
as there's no initial no median and no final
form of it... but there is a "question"
of the hiding of vowels...
for gentiles and muhammadians alike...

- perhaps some will call it the trans-community...
there was once a dead poets' society...
evidently with the rise of de-transitioning...
there's now a nag hammadi library society...
circa 1945 when this library was left unchecked
in the hands of: the children
with too many toys and too many sandpits...
probably that one neu-mecca of san francissco...
at least the dead sea scrolls:
that were unearthed at about the same time...
treated the hebrew far better than
the nag hammadi library treated its children...
and why the former power, the vatican,
didn't step in... to control these text...
as they flew out on a *****-nilly without
herr zensor... herr inquisitor...
i will never know...
the scouts of medicine left... black holes
of having advanced in the field of anaesthetics...
too many toys for the the children
with too many sandpits...

- because i would rather the fascination
with a language... than its immediate...
polyglot acquisition and use...
if i put my head to it... perhaps i could
speak the 7 languages my great-grandfather spoke
before jumping into the Niagara Falls
leaving a postcard sent...
but when i peer into the details...
i quiet like these two trenches of mine...
this english this canvas and my eye toward
the east and the south and semites...
just because english is a language without
diacritical markers...
a language filled with metaphysical dialectics:
but missing any mention of orthography...

a hebrew might hide a vowel...
and write only consonants on street signs
for a gentile to read...
but then the gentiles' languages morphed...
and a vowel became distinct...
there is A that begins the word: ah-men...
but there's also an A that is invoked with a tail
to point and identify a tree, an oak:
dąb...
so much for kametz being hidden...
if there's no 2nd tier "complexity" of kametz...
but there is one for the visible...
A - vowel - a vowel with a tail...
but without a name -
as all letters are - whether vowel or consonant...
in the litany and choir of the castratos
of ancient Rome...

pause with me...
what music are you listening to?
i'm listening to... years of denial - burning sun
(veyl channel) - 1,319 views...
i like to... find the better alleys of my entertainment...
as i can't hate kevin spacey...
not because of kevin spacey...
but because of lester burnham...
or more to the point...
why thomas newman reminds me of a...
reincarnation of Satie...
not a Chopin or a Liszt virtuoso of the piano...
not a when a hammer strikes
a line of 88 nails...
but when a butterfly chances the here and there,
on a shy-loot of a beauty of scarce sounds...
just the same of nostalgia for this era of
movies borrows me from out any new
suspence... as that sort of nostalgia creeping
into people born in the 1960s who truly
admire h'american movies from the 1950s...
even i am to blame when i feed
a nostalgia - more to the point for the technicolour
acryllic glow akin to...
richard quine's 1958 bell book and candle...
but of course scandinavian existential cinema
of a Bergman would be in black and white...
black and white photographs...
but if we're talking movies?
Undogmatic & Kernfeld - thought experiments...
Amanti d'oltretomba (1965)...

i will have to refine the greek to hebrew to greek
similarities...
an Ezra Pound can hide behind counting
matchsticks and reading into chinese ideograms...
when lo and behold! some japanese *******
comes up with a minimalism of the on'yomi...
or perhaps japanese is a language
that fuses elements of braille?
no point question the matter since
the mongols famously didn't come over to Japan
to add to the already Mandarin caste of
the kun'yomi...

but no... these greek letters are nouns...
even though π is equivalent to understanding
the wheel a posteriori: as a circle -
prior to there was only a wheel but no
knowledge of the dynamic of the radius,
or the diameter...
but it's still a prefix weak hardly a noun...
alpha and beta are nouns because they
denote something - prefix category shared -
but... the alpha and the beta male...
even gamma rays...
what's that? π-networks of coming back
to point (0, 0) in terms of:
no more than three powers of seperation between
you and some random from hugh yawn'khh?
my bad...
but η, μ, ν, ξ, π, ρ (ρ requires delta epsilon
and sigma to imply island of Rhodes)...
τ - but this is not China and tau is not Tao...
to tow is... to tow...
φ, χ, ψ... these could be names...
but ψ is like a crucifix for psychologists...
so these are... but at the same time:
are not names...
working from Latin, "borrowed"...
A (or aye)... B (queen bee)... C (i çee)...
D (dye or dry or d.i.y.)... E (eh? vowel catcher
arm no. 1 of the tetragrammaton)...
surd if the other arm... most notably in gujarati...
or not...
but this leftoever ancient Latin:
                                sing along! sing along!
a, be, cee, dee, e, ef, gee, h "hatch" / hay,
i, jay, kay, em, en, o, ***, que queue cue,
Ar, Tee, U, Vee, ekhs (x), why (y), zee or general Zod /
Zed... etc.
do i remember the "correct", french pedagogic
sequences of: letters of the alphabet?
i thought the whole "game" was about
the lexicon? and the lexicon within the lexicon
of the correct spelling?
are there 26 letters in the english alphabet?
there are! mein gott!
do i have to monkey-play-me-harmonica -
monkey-play-me-the-acordeon and tap to play
the drums... really? now?!
there were never going to be any alphabetical
sequence of events...
if i can remember that there are 26 letters:
the order of the pedagogues doesn't matter...
the lexicon matters... one's own vo(gue)-ca-bu-Larry...
short of Lawrence...
and shouldn't i give up my Lawrence Vogue...
i will certainly to remember to give
the "correct" order of what begins
with abc- and ends with -xyz...
this is the inbetween...
please see fit to spot a sparrow or a typo...

becuase if the british are to be proud of their past...
proud in the sense that it is...
fermenting and all this decline of the west "thing"...
of the people that has to "somehow" welcome
a revival... кaцaпы (plural of кaцaп)
is a racial slurr - designated for russians...
by those who had a pseudo-isarel interlude...
of what was known as the polish-lithuanian
commonwealth - of the last european pagans -
who didn't become the prussians
and made the bavarian spirit rigid
and militaristic...

i find this part of history... rather... infantile...
i have been taught a version of history
through the lense of infantalism...
perhaps science-fiction was the serious medium
of literature after all -
all of the past - if it is to be called a past -
is prescribed by zeitgeist -
my contemporaries' suggestion to be an infatile dream!
it must be a version of infantilism!
at least: that's my response in relation to:
the past having any aspect of being worth
celebrated...
me struck dumb being coerced by a...
genetic archieology of a past...
what some of the current people invest in...
mirror mirror: on no wall beside
mirror mirror: my face...
speculum speculum: well! there's always history
as etymology!
i don't like the word faciem...
where does visage come from?
oh... right...

quest to perfect the algorithms to escape
the everyday speculum was prime suspicion:
to speculate...
i guess any search engines requires:
etymological root...

mirror mirror: my void eating face...
my pulpit of vanity -
my valley of aeons...
my detail of the smirk the demonic glee...
of your most greyish glee...
of no concern for celebrated beauty...
or at best: no beauty to be exemplified
and stealing memory having invested
in the memory of cinema...
mirare mirare: comesse vacare visage meum...

now that's rather different...
isn't it? a history lesson with...
a stress for a post-scriptum in-and-out
"epilogues" (misnomer) and a return
from the trivia interlude back into the narrative...
only with an understudy of etymology...

who do i look like? some ******* ***
who would use such a ***** word as epistemology?
"epilogue" is a misnomer in the context when...
there was never a justifiable metaphor...
a misnomer is a metaphor:
for the **** by the ocean of the shore
in the vicinity to claim town status - Dover -
albino cliffs: more or less...
epistemology is a word most frequently used
by people... who read to people...
encyclopedic entries... cyclopes reading...
all that matters is the cwowd: which is the Velsh
variation of: that already numb-R lost trill
of tarantula bit anglo-ßaß...
which didn't require zeppelins or h'american
spaghetti accent westerns of draw and drule
and drawl...

such a minor racial slur when it comes
to the russians... soviets or red barons...
you must have never visited Moscow or St. Petersburg...
**** the right sort of ******-up russian girl...
and... if you're lucky!
she's take you to... the russian versailles!
Peterhof -
the racial slur stills remains...
a thank you matka rosiya...
satellite son over 'ere: the bellowing from Berlin
is like a sudden plague of hyenas attempting...
no... the foxes are imitating the hyenas...
which is which or rather: which is why?
a mutual agreement: reciprocated...
a great a great much decent ****...
for both of us...
the memory still feeds me...
oh no, it doesn't haunt me:
it feeds me... i could only find replicas
in brothels... i would never dare usurp
this catherine this tsarina of my memory...
i would never dare invest my personality in someone
else... she can be married her... 3rd time...
and this might be her 10th repentence...
of an 11th lover...
on this sinking ship: Potemkin i go as one -
reincarnation or no...
i still don't believe: this hindu myth of:
only a fixed number of people were every to be
born... and the rest are the harsh realities
of the base focuses of animals...
as we somehow drag these n.p.c. mysterions with
us... whether strangers or fathers or mothers...
are you not attached to your grandson:
dearest "catherine"?

such is the tyrany of the hindu polygamy
trans-temporal polytheism...
a diadem with a mouth for an eye...
and an eye for a mouth: or what better way
to salvage this grief of being only being 20 and 21
when having met and having to vow to
allow ourselves our each his and her seperate
lives...
at least some people call it:
the house of lords... and the house of commons...
on a much grander scale...
oh i'm pretty sure tsar (ras)Putin is much amused...

as i am now speaking with a borrowed tongue:
someone lent me a tongue -
i desired to speak with it -
imagine this complete lack of horror with regards
to being lent -
when reicarnation comes to the fore...
i agree: with "him": a most disagreeable
metaphor for... whatever it is the hindus truly believe
to be: the most humane form of
being allowed a human: self-consciousness
and a relationship to all those teenage
*****-dear-diary entries of... precursors
to the menapause and... the blue blood gremlins
of the big pharma pills-down...
the big pharma *******...

unless asked... always in uniform before your "majesty"...
as with any decent *******...
god forbid one of them thinks i'm jesus christ...
come back...
but never with these... grey-area maidens...
this "tool" will not be aroused
on the simple signature end contract promise
of: he made it to the finish line of a one-night stand!
where's the finish line of a one-night stand?
the next day? the *******, the *******...
her ******? at least the new generation
have the... cipher password for sexting...
or whatever has become of a good old fashioned
**** your brains out?
via you **** a plum sore tattoo into my pelvis
with your coccyx like a well balanced
african body of ivory beauty?!
you know the type... it looks like butter
in moonlight... like... what's the point of a niqab
in africa?! it's already... a warewolf has come
among the wolves...
and how i miss you, i esp. miss you when
i sit on my windowsill and listen to foxes
mating...
how those ******* squeal yank and bite nothing
but bone having omitted both the flesh
and the fur!
i miss you the most when i sit at night -
and listen to foxes mating;
after all... this is essex... this is england...
foxes at around 1am are my cognac...
beside ms. amber: and you know you'll also
be ******* her when i've had my fill...
but oooh... look at me: oooh...
gravy...
but i've watched! crows don't attempt fucky-fucky
tow-dollar sucky-sucky bangkokh style
during the die... all that is black that's worth
the crow is done in the night...
perverted pigeons during the day!
****-*******-me-into-a-voyeurism of their
greedy insect esque antics of coo coo...
then jump onto the rucksack of a female...
and all those beta-male pigeons... and that: huh?!
moment of bewilderement when he "thinks"
he has cooed like an alpha...
only the memory of you...
and all the prostitutes after you...
which always made imagining ******* you again
all that more simple; there was no кaкaшкa
with them to begin with.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
the female cat got the nick’s name: the ballerina... the male cat got the name: hulk. but you see, original marxism didn't mention religion, it had atheism on its knee spanking martin luther... this neo-marxsim is scary... and capitalism is not really helping me to ease my mind... capitalism believes in god the same way these neo-marxists believe in god (capitalism just believes he doesn't exist)... capitalism will have to stop selling atheism as a trendy gucci bag as a way into cool intellectualism... it will have to face up to the responsibility of creating theological marxism... *******... thanks for creating the greatest guilt trip of all... at least with original marxism there was the safety-net of atheism working in the subconscious of what defined the idea as ego... now you've just woken up a lobster frying in the wok!*

i sometimes get a glimpse of the sort of drunk that fits the
debacle of america in the 1930s,
the mean drunk, the sort of drunk requiring psychiatric treatment,
i see him once in a blue moon,
and he’s a nasty character,
but probably due to a writer’s block...
i fixed the DELL laptop after a year or so
of typing in the wrong password for the internet connection,
so i managed to creep less at night, where i drink
in ninja-mode avoiding conversation with anyone
and only making meow sounds once in a while,
conversation gets me drunk anyway, so i avoid it,
i talk to cats... which helps since they have powerful
senses orientating them in the world perfectly...
but a rather crap say about it... meow...
so there’s god, and he figured out...
as many “dumb” things as possible on foot, hoof and wing...
and one thing, resembling a monkey...
talking a lot...
it worked... compared to the animals our senses
are dimmed... candles compared to neon lights...
it’s great knowing you’re on top of the foodchain...
almost blind and deaf like an ostrich in a jellyfish
while all the animals are given simplicity,
and man complication...
in order to ode a shakespeare for a quote...
and a granny for a zimmer-frame.
i dare you to get the sinai humour in here,
i hope theology will one day become stand-up comedy...
otherwise... get the *****-driver and a jigsaw... we’ll
sort this out pronto!
i have seen the mean drunk, the abusive father drunk...
but then i also found zen...
the art of drinking & sobering up thanks to writing...
if i start talking now, and i’ve only started my 70cl bottle of whiskey,
i might be a rolling stones back-up singer
doing zen to a hotel room...
so i write:
it’s the medium you see: whiskey-colours in autumn,
fine shade of vintage brown, single malt...
a bit of impressionism with a sniff & and gargle like mouthwash...
let’s face it... there were once cyclopses
in poland in the communist era who distilled from denatured alcohol (denaturat)
via a slice of bread to get the ivory indigo off the optic palette...
cyclopses i tell ye... 9ft10 in scaling...
spoke of nothing but chanel no. 5 after drinking the cocktail,
70cl a night will get me heart-throbbing to 40 in the existential roulette,
and i’m fine with that...
god i’ll miss the arthritis postcard... wish you were here... in the grave.
the girl cat is doing the jaws impression with her tail, circling me,
dog’s don’t laugh at the machine-gun clipping sounds of writing,
cats are fascinated... that’s why they sleep a lot,
apart from that, the wish-you-were-here bit,
i picked a fight using cartesian methodology...
i know that marcus aurelius was a stoic success...
i know that mikhail gorbachev was also a stoic success...
the soviet union imploded and we have no terrorists from kazakhstan,
but you can’t stop cognitive nagging...
biting of lips and grinding the teeth...
i think this has to be defined as a second tier of what’s being defined...
if it all began with socrates attacking the sophists and
eloquent speech, no wonder we are not allowed to speak
eloquently, with cognitive dyslexia being rife with new recruits
in that famous statement: DIE IN YOUR CONFUSION...
i would like to admire the stoics in their: keeping up of appearances...
but the cognitive aspect of stoicism is only effective
within the rank of emperor... or 1st comrade...
it’s really ineffective on any other tier of the pyramid...
a bit like one-way streets of charity...
there’s this~90 year old granny who committed suicide
because of oxfam...
true story...
i want two inputs...
there are two great shops in edinbrugh, both on nicholson st.,
one’s an oxfam book store where i purchased a. camus’ the stranger
to use in a french literature course getting a 1st (talk about
luck in choice) - and giving an almost ancient copy of
emerson’s collected essays...
and of course the barnardo’s book shop
where i purchased the anatomy of madness for ~£30,
that’s how real charity works...
the charity is a mediator, there are two selfless people
in the background...
one gives a possession of his away, another selfless person
buys it not wanting the selfishness of a mint 1st edition...
not like those ******* adverts with actors
asking you to turn into a milked cow...
just money money money...
to pay for the actor’s teary eyes and the administration...
of the £3 you give that way, you pay about a 2/3 if not more
to the charity itself... the poor beggars get a squid and
a sand-castle: something for something.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
all this en masse... gravity toward...
"sanity" and sobriety...

well... it's the nicety of giving /
stating compliments...

if only there was less
fertile ground:
to make one's arguments for...

if the united kingdom
was more akin to... iceland...

             i drink...
  and that gives me hope
in my original venture:
h'america signed a plot
line division:
to abhor the liquid...

for it brought nothing but ill...
constipated abolitionists...
whiskey frankenstein's
monster's fire: bad... mantra...

in that:
the perverted persuasion
tactic of the... limited sober...
sane... the... cream / rather not:
the creep of the crop...
and this is... somehow...
the **** worthy of harvesting?

one ghost... limping...
dead loitering limb...
a foot... for that crazed
ballerina...
then a jargon of a hand
missing... ghost reading
of braille...
             as one does:
when one's elbow
arrives on the scene...
with... robert downey jr.
and tommy lee jones...

then again... ask...
what is... homogeneity...
to the... russians...
                    sweep-stake
the concept of mongol and orc...
somehow: the old east...
is the new south...
you have an imploded "problem"...
you allow it...
all the circus rights of a democratic
load and loot and allowance...

those... whitey...
masochistic chant-lords...
are no good to begin: governing:
anew...

i hear one more ref. to 1984...
i swear to god...
i'll start the **** book burning
fiasco...
              that's all that's ever recited
these days...
it's not the monolith of the bible
recitation...
it's 1984...
it's not even: homage to catalonia...
it's not even...
the stranger by albert camus...
it's this... fixation on:
this was necessarily true...
it had to be necessarily true:
since... we ensured that it be...
necessarily true!

         brave new world
and 1984: sometimes known as...
the works of prophet isaiah...
and malachi...
or some bogus first choice answers...

it's not like charles dickens...
the pickwick papers are to be cited...
no... ray bradbury's
          fahrenheit 451...
     or "we" by yevgeny zamyatin...
is no... one...
to cite... from...
the master and margarita...
mikhail bulgakov -
then again... again... again...
       he, of our own...
that was always right...
and we... of his own...
dumb enough... to have...
         walked... into his...
prediction... and... gloated at it...
when... walking into it...
**** y'ay: brovado!

          it's one scrutiny to...
blind time with all the omnipresence
of open space...
that there is a future:
you'll forgive me: there isn't one...
it's all... kiss and kick
a donkey with a whipping:
blind... then... fish one out...
for the royal ascot...
with an imaginary carrot...
the stick doesn't mind...
whether it be imaginary:
or detailed...

                  but as long as someone...
somewhere...
    is reading an alternative...
not some... thought-fulfilling gravity
of consorts and bitter bitten knees
with more than mere...
masochism of kneeling on pebbles...
there's the... kneeling...
and the exposed calf... and biting riddles
of... the demon with a name akin
to belzeebub! the one associated
with minding mosquitos!

     sayz who?

that these... people... are well verse...
they cite 1984 by george orwell...
like they might cite the *******
quran...
         because: hey presto!
something is real!
they adore... the past...
catching up to the present...
and the present being
devoid of a future...
who aren't the people...
already drunk from...
something in the past...
   coming true?!

      of fruit:
the U.B.D. the B.B.D.
and the S.B.D.
  i love those acronyms as much as i love...
that... affair with the acronym of...
the idea of USA... prior to...
   the louisiana purchase...
                     that little affair of
anglo-dutch proto-germanicus...
maine... new england...
all that fuzzy jazz and... smog...
and lost clue... for: dreamland of
lingering horror...

  so said the sober and "sane" people...
that sanity of the blah of the herd...
well... yeah...
h'america and probihition...
one of those... moon-milking
nation of narratives...
              how science-fiction was
always to eclipse the science itself.
Iraira Cedillo Mar 2014
21–40 of 11462 Poems
«1234»Viewsshow detailshide detailsSort by  
Faith
BY MICHAEL *******br>When I cannot believe,
The brown herds still move across green fields
Into the tufty hills, and I was born . . .
Teusaquillo, 1989
BY MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA
Flowering sietecueros trees:
How easily we married ourselves
to the idea of that bruised light . . .
Bright Pittsburgh Morning
BY MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA
This must happen just after I die: At sunrise
I bend over my grandparents' empty house in Hazelwood
and pull it out of the soft cindered earth by the Mon River. . . .
Hanukkah
BY HILDA MORLEY
This season for us, the Jews—
a season of candles,
                                      one more . . .
Winter Solstice
BY HILDA MORLEY
A cold night crosses
our path
                  The world appears . . .
And I in My Bed Again
BY HILDA MORLEY
Last night
                     tossed in
my bed . . .
alternate names for black boys
BY DANEZ SMITH
1.   smoke above the burning bush
2.   archnemesis of summer night
3.   first son of soil . . .
Listen
Attenuate the Loss and Find
BY ANNE WALDMAN
name appears
everywhere and in dream
body armor removed . . .
From “Citizen”
BY CLAUDIA RANKINE
/ 

You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. . . .
Listen
History Will Decide
BY ANNE WALDMAN
All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds a hot history. All writing is in fact cut-ups history will decide games heated and heated economic behavior. To rise up scene all sounds of Tahrir and inside supply side threatened. A long delineation. Longer than I would . . .
ICC Kenya Trials: Witness
BY SHAILJA PATEL
was it so I could
never say
across a courtroom . . .
Mosaic
BY TIM SEIBLES
A carpet of light, the
ocean alive < half a moon
muting the stars. . . .
sideshow
BY DANEZ SMITH
Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys
killing each other to pray for the ones who do it
with their own hands? . . .
The Last Son of China
BY **** PING
.......................    hello hello hello    ...    Weiwei    ...    where have you been?    ...    I see you in dreams    ...    bleeding    ...    in the darkness of the . . .
The Skin of Sleep
BY MYRA SKLAREW
The skin of sleep
is thin. It will not hold.
Its contents stumble out. . . .
What Could Have Happened
BY SHAILJA PATEL
Wa
gal
la . . .
Everybody Has a Heartache: A Blues
BY JOY HARJO
In the United terminal in Chicago at five on a Friday afternoon
The sky is breaking with rain and wind and all the flights
Are delayed forever. We will never get to where we are going . . .
Good Friday
BY MARIA MELENDEZ KELSON
Jesus, I want my sins back.
My prattle, pride, and private prices — 
climbing, clinching, clocking —  . . .
ICE Agents Storm My Porch
BY MARIA MELENDEZ KELSON
The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth
are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit.
“Open up!” they bellow,
hands quiet before my door
that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway.

You can’t do it, I squeak from inside.
You can’t make me feel at home here
in this time of siege for me . . .
Tablets
BY DUNYA MIKHAIL
1


She pressed her ear against the shell: . . .
«1234»
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Christos Voskrese!

For Tod

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.
loaf Jun 2018
if not for you, my life would be empty
my stars wouldnt shine, theyd fail to align
my limbs would give out and droop like spaghetti

if not for you, laughs would be sparce
my heart lodged in my throat, voice bleeting like a goat
sound would be as silent as a **** from my ****

if not for you, i wouldnt know love
my mind would be mindless, time is what binds us
despair's cold shackles im finally free of
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2020
...and that i own a bed.., but rather sleep on the floor... make-up an Ibiza from a Beirut... i rather **** the fathoming of a fizzle... to somehow compensate the tirade... this most unwelcome clue and loss... this gravity toward a... copper skin... and spit of biting totoises toying: limbo years... leftover... come... cushioning brief: fudge-packaged "thought"... this limbo-slant... as somewhat crude work-around... kiev a... "scheme"...

vielen dank zu gott! many thanks to god!

my greatest fear is that of homelessness...
who's to fear... to fear and "what"?

to be at home is some synoynmous
with something:
beside a being: and a home!

loitering in the quasi lane...
i'm about to travel across
europe with three rotten
teeth and i'm to suspect:
myself toying with some
variation of journalism...

       i see no end to the cold,
or war... the warm or
the shrapnel excavation
project...
when communism
was beast established
among the slavs
as your: yours one and truly...
antagonistic
warsaw pact whistling
and lobotomy...

even if i were the evil genius
of descartes...
i wouldn't be so...
fine detailed: ****...
      so... pristine... so...
otherwise... lobotomy blues...

exactly! what's scary is not
the laws being implemented...
but how... easily they are...
talk about climbing a tree...
talk about learning to ride
a bike... achieving a pass
with a bruised knee...

              a scrap: heaping...
lost teeth and... what of the jihad...
for the lost fraction of the ummah...
what of the jihad...
expected... in the chinese...

where is the ummah to be
summed to salvage...
and save the...
frolic over...
              the detail... in hair...
when hair is being shipped
away to "elsewhere"...
for ****-holes awaiting...
xinjiang... hair from...
would be... hibernating bear farts...

the jihad! the jihad!
i'm guessing the arab elites
are in on the "gimmick" with
the choke ***** men...
because... jihad only behaves
like a jihad on former
cursader territory...
south of france...
herr tao is somehow immune...

calls for being debility funny...
calls for...
bonfires of the turban of the sikhs...
orientating...
the house of gondor with
the house of rohan...

                 we'z needz 'air!
atypical confused jihadi saladin would-be...
we must all thank...
vielen dank zu gott!
                   but i still wait...
for the jihad to save the... project islam inc.
of the ummah...

sloth-riddles of the islamic project...
clearly they want to stamp on
the face of a man beaten down by...
a non-resurrected christianity...
too scared to face off with...
chinese atheism...

      *****-soldiers... where the ummah
where the... oh... wait...
the bangladeshi being paid
in "reperations" having
a chance to relieve themselves
with a game of cricket...
i'd sooner send... the locust
to abu dhabi than allow a foot
of mine to set...
on a worse idea beside the already
ailing reality of venice...

once upon a time...
was the fortune of settling on the basin
of the river...
all that oil must have shot those
arabs to the head...
the egyptians started screaming
at the camel-jockeys:
you never listened to the sand-*******...
did you?

all that black gold in one's pocket...
all that... yacht ambition...
all that and that...
all that frivolity... prized pride of
the... ahem... "ummah"...
looks like the chinese muslims are
forever and the will of the dubai classics...
fern fusions readied for...
the wigs!

       ****** readied they are...
some mongols would dear strap a horse
to their grave than excavate a hair plough
from...
eh... slaving prior to genocide...
it's like... they are... "allies"...
               it's a genocide mingling
with a joke... of slavery...
but the slaves did work that...
oh no... the germans didn't trust...
the hebrews with anything...
they performed genocide like a "failure"...
or rather a joke...
  
ask the serbs...
ask someone in rwanda...
you never perform a genocide...
by way of... imitating slavery...
by... stalling... by making people perform
menial tasks...
hello horror...
hello the sleeping ummah of islam...
to outright **** a people...
you wouldn't want them...
being teased...
a god teasing and his precursor for
having a 2000 year old wait
to establish: re- ishrael...

         the outliers of rome...
alaos pagan... converted to
the judeo-greco project of: three rotten teeth...

"toxic masculinity"... problem?
not enough of it is going around...
enough for it to be shared...
likewise...
my retreating toward...
japanese insinuation ****...
gravure idols...
   hell... absolute "toxic femininity"...
porcelain white girls...
all... lemon *******... peanuts dead...
while their... glob-trotting...
glutton sized up 66s...
   have forgotten the concept of:
insinuation ****...
foreplay...
all readied for...
extract ******* woman...
****... bred for... **** like a piston...
****** readied...
   blah "blah"...

       it doesn't translate... plain jane...
the sort of toxic you seek...
in man... revels in a deity lady madonna...
i **** myself over all second come...
blessings! blessings they calls them...
yeah... the best dates i've ever had...
concerning the "middle path"
of buddha is bound to the clarity
of a transation in a brothel...

so much for a justified jihad in xinjiang
to... save the people of the ummah...
pseudo malcom X consricpt... 0...
negation... not going to happen...
    japanese porcelein ****...
but they'll wait for the hyprocrisy...
they'll come for the arabs first...
when they finally engineer a man...
that will be better than all
the supposed doping advances of western man
allowed...
  
i'm starting to like *******
from the perspective of a japanese hard-on...
insinuation...
    i'm less the ****** and i'm more...
about to sniff a stinking dog's bowl
of processed meat of a ****'s oyster behalf...
i like that...
less *****... more hard-on...
     n'ah... i never did buy into the whole:
sorry loser ******* in amsterdam
cinema sessions...
    i liked... the tease of a tier...
more imaginative... more human...
than... a tease of a harem via a niqab...

so... no jihad come xinjiang?
should we suppose the mongols also invested
in a conversion and it wasn't the grand
imitation buddha kahn?
the wrath subsided: god was proven...
time for meditation...
    what's a jihad...
when you could entertain...
the... tsunami of the horde of...
the fall of angels.... fully-workable replica
metaphor...
what's the ****-poor islam "spread"
by comparison?
                
no real ummah then...
   unless...
that's diesel of a lamborghini burning
rubber on a tarmac in knightsbirdge
for a faking 'ard on...
    
  two days from now...
i'll be passing through germany...
        i'll be retiring 2 weeks to that land
of paradoxes that's my land of birth...
the aristocratic democracy brothel
of crown and... *******...
foreign hands foreign lands...
all the ready to retreat into their habsburg cul de sacs
of prior to: asserted powers...

no... there's just that...
"we" forgot a healthy ground for
doubt... the plethora of emotion...
the rollercoaster of it...
there's just now... the yoyo-denial cringe
lobotomy...
the best best cringe...
slav soviet communist...
Teddy! Teddy! sell 'em spleen
and iron grips!
no good Warsaw Tadeusz!
Beijin new bwest fwend!

            t-eee-sted...
                  new zealand: tee-st...
not station: tested... but...
t-eee-sted **** the rats and retards...
the philonthropes...
because...
   the noise made by bwah bwah...
  the misathrope...
it's like an accent from...
that last best reserved concept
of growing figs... otherwise a...
goof-ball and course for ralph...

now for the self-congratulatory letter
of championing the dodo project:
well thank **** for not solving this brain-drain
spaghetti puzzle and not exactly buying into
the d.n.a. project ugly pass...
with all that..... bewildering...
"consciousness" debate...
michael myers' "consciousness" debate...
one... 'em... those sudoku nuggets
of... "sober"?!

best resolved...
i drink alcohol to keep calm...
after i forgot to... take my ****** pills...
my... i came late to the party...
21 was illegal to smoke marijuana...
amitriptyline... 25mg...
how many times do i think
about a slaughterhouse?
i think of all the boys with:
chemical soup for brains aged
16 and under...
i was lucky...
they only got to me aged 21...
i was still allowed to retain
a labyrinth of wording(s) to shelter my anger with...
surprise? what surprise?

toxic masculinity = not enough james bonds
running amok for...
oh... weight... *****-whipping...
there's all that... i forgot what...
period drama this was all about...

drink drink drink...
i'll sooner kick my liver dead than...
allow society to sober my half-wit frankenstein
brain of theirs...
    i'll die with:
i don't scare myself with drowning...
i don't scare myself with falling...
flat into a pancake...
i shouldn't be afraid of homelessness...
but i am because...
this avenue of the freely available stars...
and those... made rebel...
that will answer to me...

                  the butterfly... waiting...
for the most pristine... prized... first...
insecurity of... h'america about to be exported...
and it's a... oh my! a zephyr...
tornado... one of those: flush 'em...
when you 'ave 'em...
sort of... scenarios...

hegel: improtune... the will of the thinking man...
thought is a butterfly...
it's hardly... a well-knitted-marx-beard-and-sweater
of consolidations...
  
honest to the god i don't believe in...
i'd shadow **** that crucifix if it
had a japanese gravure model hanging on it...
******* as insinuation...
they did catch me...
libido pressed...
aged 21...
they would have got to me aged 16 and prior...
with ****** and former brain:
the chemical soup...

          i want to smash **** up... then i remind
myself: wait... and giggle...
   the extract... mikhail popkov...
                 albert fish... fan boy for every:
groupie of history...
            is that... like... a somewhat missing:
oops?
        CHRISTINE CHUBBUCK...
               INCEL...
       wouldn't it be... just.. oh so strange...
to... drag a man into a prison cell...
and shoot them... obviously retaining leaving
them there to rot...
   andrei chikatilo...
                              the urban myth of cockroaches
being subjected to the guillotine...

sure... whizz vite boyz aged...
napoleon dynamite... jeffrey dahmer...
      16 is the right time to call brainz...
chem. soup...
bubbly...
me comez 21... me's perfecto...
   me no cain signature idiot primo...
                 i like me horror story...
i get to play the... plot line of
the anaesthetic...
                      
who is to be surprised by: who's who...
of anyone's who of...
the currency of... this... surf...
lost... a "somehow"...
a "somewhat"...
oh... this is... for... today?
                                this has to be...
the advent of the pontius pilate metaphor...
no... not me...
dies ist alles sie:
   scheiße!     es ist mich?
              verwesendtrauben....

kommen, sehen... der welt...
                           verstopfungselbst.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
an anatomy of a maxim, originally: the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world the world that
he didn't exist... perhaps, but what
was the conviction, what ontology lay
behind it, was it pre-existential (Cartesian)
or existential (Sartre's)? we're not
talking gambling with Pascal - we're not talking
games anymore - i'll explain later.
i have too many concrete references to throw
at you, where you'll make this whole affair
a scandalous one that i didn't invent myself,
but we're all refining our meanings,
in youth prescribing unknown to us
slang vocabulary to filter through the included
and the excluded, i always wondered where
slang originated, and to what purpose,
the Beat poets and novelists licked the topic
of slang with their addictions to subplot the
demands for a bubble-effect and a non-touch policy...
i was watching the Olympics today,
and i was watching the height of plagiarising Greek
in Pax Romanum, and it felt very civilised,
an equal contest, handshakes of the defeated,
they are after all games, we're not been equal,
let's celebrate Achilles and remember him
for no depressive isolating ******* when drinking
Dionysian epilepsy of refill, refill, so we remain drunk
and memory of him keep us drunk!
but no, oh no, modern men don't know what
to do heroes, or such memories that might
detach us from thinking ourselves likewise;
oh the slur of jealousy, so much angst, among ably
bodied and among the disabled, the disabled have
no sight of a plateau to look up to among the ably
bodied, they're rotten to the core -
and i know where premature dementia stems from...
i was watching the Olympics today, and it felt so
healthy, but then i watched the opening of another
sport... football... and i put on Salem's debut album
on the speaker, songs like sick, release the boar,
trapdoor, and i felt a reminder of the fall of
the western Empire, and when the Norse men
came against the Roman plagiarism of Greek culture
after the Trojan immigration to Italy after the defeat
at Troy, and Hector dying glorious by a glorious
hand of Achilles, and Achilles dying from luck
for the prototype of Tinder man of Paris, ***** licking
boot straps marching to fake debility...
oh, if you don't have a mobile phone, and never used
the Tinder application, you can see the super-charged
desperation of women, porcelain dolls pretending it
was always hard luck and too much eager ****...
they book the cheapest tickets to the Opera house
to see Bolshoi ballet, they even buy tickets that only
allows them to stand... after the second act there's no
sign of them... they disappear, no Tinder swipe
no Pokemon... better chances looking for either
in Auschwitz (as i heard has happened, Auschwitz,
well, thank god people go to fake mourning and a digital
theme park at the same time, at least the hens and stags
have Prague... they call us the forgotten Europeans...
maybe this is the precise intention of what i once
mentioned concerning the ONE LESSON IN TAO:
to aid the world, let the world forget you,
in order that you might forget the world.
seeing la corsaire we had anna nikulina as Medora,
mikhail lobukhin as Conrad, nina Kaptsova as Gulnare,
vitaly biktimirov as Birbanto (the *******),
denis medvedev as Lankendem and alexei loparevich
as Sāid Pasha... the major dances...
- pas d'esclaves by kristina kretova and igor tsvirko,
- danse des forbans by kristina karasoyova (soloist),
                                       anna antropova, anna balukova,
                                       evgeny golovin, denis savin
,
- pas de trois de odalisques by yanina parienko,
                                        xenia zhiganshina, elvina ibraimova
,
- le jardin animé............................................................­........
- grand pas de eventailles......................................................­.....
lonely girls at the opera, phones in the interludes, swiping
left, swiping right, a boy without a phone,
behind me two young women trying to strike conversation
about ballet exclusively, nothing human, just prepared for
the stage... what an awful talk, and talk, and talk...
no talk about excessive clapping... out-of-time clapping...
i'm truly living among barbarians... i might not be as rich
as these barbarians, but i wouldn't care to clap so much,
i guess the logic is: i payed so much money for this ticket
i better make my presence felt.
as i already said, i did take Ezra Pound on the commute,
i should have taken Kant... on the way back from central
London heading into the west i felt patronising
tourist eyes of misguided voyeurism, here one minute,
gone the next... only the devil sweats with shame in hell,
while everyone remains cool and in denial at being in one...
i was just standing on the tube, reading a book of poetry...
i turned into Niagara Falls... sweat on my back,
sweat on my front... while everyone else remained
surprisingly well hydrated, i looked like i just ran a marathon...
so after watching the Olympics i watched the dark ages emerges,
two strands of sport... god almighty and the barbarian's
religiousness of sports, so hellbent-anti-bohemian,
intimate secretes of Onan as a chant with that curled finger
jerking sideways movement... after watching a few days
of the Olympics, the empty seats, the few remaining lights
of this world... i got a cyst pool of ****** bound maggotry...
dad says to son: as my dad said unto me: 'ammer 'em in!
but now i know where premature depression comes from,
under communism we flourished with our imagination,
we played hide & seek into the night,
even when they imported Nintendo and comics we
were hardly moved... hardly the ones to be domesticated
and zoologically probed by anaemic paraphrasing -
we lived outdoors, we slept indoors, we used to eat
sunflower seeds, freshly baked bread, drink
cheap lemonade, go foraging for mushrooms -
idealism of some sort? but none of us were given
pharmacological attractions to treat - we were
given a childhood - even in England we managed to
play with Pokemon cards, to be puberty riddled geeks,
but then things changed... none of this new generation
of youth is given the same childhood chances,
in my youth few already experimented with ***,
teased us all that it was the highest achievement -
back then we still had people to look up to -
strange how i bypassed ****** pubescent development,
when the first boy masturbated he'd be *******
*****... i'd be ******* a sensation aged 8 or 7...
and said it felt good, i didn't involve a church doctrine
that life begun somewhere other than after the birth...
as it might be reasonable inspection that mere death,
sudden, et tu Brutus?, is like an *******,
the fetus later, then birth, the migraine of mourning,
the ***** training (getting used to angels),
the ****... takes us several years to record our
first memory, some might go back as far as being 4
years old... no further, whoever says they can remember
prior is mixing what's presented to them for distortion...
i can't distort my first name and my favourite footballer's
surname in the 1990s world cup (lothar matthäus),
or the satirical sketch show about Solidarity:
**** wałęsa (lew) was the lion, tadeusz mazowiecki (żółw)
the turtle, jacek kuroń (hipopotam) the hippo -
the memory of the "turtle" politician always made me fall asleep.
to be honest, the maxim sounds better not because the devil
denied he existed, but because God denied he existed,
once having proven he did, he denied it with such force
that his marriage to the chosen people became a brief
marriage to the elect / intellectual people... but then that
failed too... we're at the last stage... with Islam teaching
us the original intention of man having to relationship
with god... when Muslims teach us kung fu and judo and
yoga and stop trying to censor our vocabulary,
teach us mutual respect, a divorce from writing poetry
to solely embrace the Koran... when they finally realise
they have become more decadent than anyone would
have thought give their discovery of oil under the dunes...
the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world that
he doubted his own existence
; and all because he knew
that god denied his own, as became apparent in modern
politics, that the sole tactic politicians used to perpetuate
their authority was in the playground of using denial...
but it was never a playground... oddly enough
doubt and denial mingle like the Cartesian mind-body
duality - but when looking at children i know
that children do not understand doubt, too many games
to play to doubt them, hence the crippling uncoupling
from imagination later on, they're real, undoubted games,
hence the child's complete immersion in them:
whether Walt Disney lived and provided for the lost
children is none of my business.... children don't know
doubt, they have no knowledge of thought per se, thought
per se identified as ego... they know only one form of
lie: which is denial, intuitive lying... doubtful lying is
in good interest only a wavering, but nonetheless a straight line...
if ever doubtful lying ever persisted - even the Koran states
something about non-believers... it states nothing about
quasi-believers... the sort of: well... as long as that
martyr walks into a harem, where all the 72 virgins
are actually prostitutes, and he can stomach their piercing
eyes, then we'll think about giving him 72 authentic brides
to deflower.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
it would seem,
   a maine **** cat, male, is best appeased
by a shoelace...
     hardly a comparison
aligned to the master mikhail bulgakov...
this cat doesn't drink *****,
or play chess...
nor does it drink wine...
      it prefers sushi shrimps and
       sushi trout eyes...
and... shoelaces... for a game...
as i too might, imagining being infested
by a tapeworm...
shoelaces: but no shoes
   do women really keep cats for
replacement company therapy sessions?
i just keep cats as the last
resort format of a curiosity
learning curvature... they're just weird,
or rather, of all the petted animal,
so subtly idiosyncratic...
  i have too many nicknames for them...
the male? quarus? osama bind laden:
the terrorist... the aria king...
   bodzio when he's wanting
to cling to head-butting you as a greeting...
   pavarotti...
          he meows to the point of howling
come 4am...
   the female? veroniya?
       ss-obersturmbannführer,
witch,
            tyson fury when she's trying
to hide her "oopsie" of a ****'s worth...
jaws... since her tail is always upright...
like a shark's fin when she's strutting...
oh but animals have their character...
   less visible in dogs...
    give it enough time:
you're bound to spot it among / in cats...
even a cow was a character dynamic
proding suss... however subtle...
most people don't encompass a capacity
to encompass this sort of
                    gift.  

.and some would claim that there exists, a contradictory-"******" related to the psyche of suicides... it would appear the mere thought of suicide is a "disgruntled" variation of arousal, nay, the mere thought is more potent than a ****** arousal... it's less the ultimate taboo, but the ultimate fetish... why blame those, who have managed to satisfy this urge? my father never complained about suicides, he had a story, where his friend committed suicide, becausde his father was ******* his girlfriend, and he, simply, reached the threshold of what was acceptable, for his psyche to manifest a will inclined to entertain life, rather than that omniscient lover, death... i've come to realise that death, is... as ****** as whatever harlequin / de sade ******* allows, nay, more... how mere thinking can create an arousal, of goosebump testicles, imitating a ***** dynamic, without really achieving a hard-on, rather, a protruding tongue, silenced, which gives the hands momentum, to doodle, something, akin to this; suicide is forever going to be, the exacted limit of passing a free will judgement, however wrong... if the argument goes: humans are without free will, a suicide will always provide the antithesis; i've had a fwend (" ") once, who wanted to shame michael hutchence for his suicide... one brave ******* in all honesty... to experience that sort of a metaphysical ******, well... don't know what it would feel like... any science is contrary to the details, given that... all your "proof" is ascribed to the dead... but at least a philosophical mind-set provides, some groundwork, for imagining a counter-argument, and... the justification for the most "abhorrent" expression of free will... it feels good, to be left without the shackles of the free will argument, that excludes the act of suicide; that's the 1st step: if someone can't commit themselves to suicide, then... man has no free will... there's nothing quiet like engaging with a conscious choice, freed from conscience, whatever post mortem arguments come after, don't even matter... flimsy ******* sparrows, scheming and fluttering of wings! fly! fly! be free! be free!

                           tim pool:
being gay is not a choice,
being religious is,

except the whole
bureucratic fiasco
of the catholic church

the whole pro-life
and pro-baptism...

   i made it blatantly clear
that i didn't want
to be baptißed,
when i dissented from
having to be
confirmed...

mind you:
one great aspect of a catholic
school?
   uniforms...

yeah... i guess you don't
get to create a group
dynamic borrowed
from clothing,
there's no high-school "culture"
that later translates itself
into a resentment culture
that lends the high-school
years as blueprint,
for "extracurricular" activities
of: the motivational life
(aspect)...

i can't remember being
asked whether
i wanted to be baptißed
or not...
i do remember being
asked to be confirmed...
i declined...

so... i am an apostate,
but for that to have any
clingy-meaning,
you'd need catholic
bureucracy to imply
"something"...
nothing protestant:
*****-nilly on the side...

   an uncircumcised man
succumbs to the allure
of hebrew mysticism
and (g)nosticism...
   namely the qabbalah...

oh sure, sure,
i was going to side with
the younger devil
(islam) on matters
of my, "christianity"...
i was going straight
to the jews to find
reasonable answers...

      oh ****...
    i should have done that
protestant "thing"
of borrowing from
either buddhist or hindu...
****...
must have slipped my
'ed.

i still don't understand how h'american
adult life translates itself from
a resentment of the h'american high-school,
if it does not lend itself to
the critique associated with faith schools,
and uniforms...
                 at least in english,
catholic high-schools...
everyone was made uniform,
akin to joining the army...
an army of jesuits...
         h'american public schools,
and their non-uniform policies...
bad idea...
       we had about 3 non-uniform days
in school, we were allowed to not wear uniforms,
as long as we gave money to a charity cause...

i hate the notion of the genesis
of culture, being excavated from h'american
public schools, where uniforms were deemed:
non-complicit...

i liked the uniform,
it's the closest i ever came to my father's
stint in the ****** army...
           being the most handsome,
recruited for the "royal guard" equivalent...
i.e. the republican guard...
pretending soldier status...
shooting blanks, at state funerals in
a "bargain" of the salvo...

thank god i never attended a public
school, i liked my catholic school uniform...
i never dressed to impress...
i never made a cultural backdrop out
of it... there was never a piggy-bank's
worth of a twilight saga to bank on...
     thank god not all of h'america
left the shores of america...
  thank god some of it: stayed in its place;

what?!
  
      i live in england...
  why wouldn't i whistle the le marseillaise
alongside the british grenadiers' fife and drum,
rather than... oh god... god save the queen / king?
the most ****** national anthem in
world history...

  sorry, i can't...
                it's a ****** anthem...
              at least the russians and the scots have
the grounds for an anthem covered...
****... beside vaughan williams...
    elgar?! that's it?! no wonder.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2021
A Sequence of Poems for Holy Week

(Some of these were submitted in past years)

Holy Thursday 2017

On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb
From the belly of a beast, falling, falling
From the Empyrean and through the blue
Past mountaintops and misted valleys deep

And then into the planet’s earthen flanks
Its pulses to repudiate Creation
In vaporizing the structures of life
Into primeval molecules of dust

Because some bad men might be lurking there
On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb



Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”

-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night



6 April 2012, Good Friday

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.



7 April 2012, Holy Saturday

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.



Easter, 2014

Christos Voskrese!

For William Tod Mixson

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.
A poem is itself.
Poe Reimer Oct 2016
In some fields none deny,
Russian masters still loom high.
If popularity is the test
one artist stands above the rest.
The caps of the world, we reverently doff
to the great Mikhail Kalashnikov.
Mateuš Conrad May 2018
/and ******* could paint a *******, but subsequently talk **** in colloquial... about such "earthly" affairs as buying milk, while practicing it in French... America forever the cosmopolitan and the suburban, like at the grudging girth of the 20th passing of 100 khakin burdens catching bullets... without invitation, this writing can only claim to be an observation, of the colour of a strawberry, which is isn't red, but strawberry, frozen in ice... electric, a lemon thrown into a field ladder with wintry puff...

as if all rhymes in the world,
where but a ***-note,
an after school dictum
or St. Bartholemew's prayer
a Chilean short:
   of a mea culpa -
       ecce ****! ex luto!
   and if not only Pilate,
like god, washed his hands
clean of the affair,
saying:
             had i but
interest to will a talking
rose, i wouldn't have
the curiosity, to leave animate
things to a gambit of my own,
predilection
    (rarely do you spot
a tautology,
given that Wittgenstein bangs
on about it...
   namely, gambit
and predilection)...
hit the ******* brick 'all
like a sac o'
                  cream-mashed
wit' (th' - definite article
  veer into the fate of
ph'ought concerning
    th'ilosphy...
hardly a ******* whiff from
a chimpanze pushing out
translated (digested)
champagne sugar puffs)...
MIND THE ******* BRACKET,
EH?
         wiff dill...
and Mr. Pink smothered
in butter, rather than mummified
in Dover batter...
     mind you, I too wished to be
a Daltonist,
   imagining Dover's sulphuric cliffs...
whike dot Culd'playz
cancan doove dive into
reimagining Cockney 'ellas!
     apparently "god" in
the omni-schematic is immune
to the gambit man proposed...
    I grant the will concerning
inanimate things
in the vicinity...
then again:
    nothing is actually inanimate...
WRONG CATEGORISATION
genesis...
    ****...
can you even begin
meditating, when being
asked a question?
    Tao says:
   give a narrative,
receive a narrative,
keep the water flowing,
pseudo-Heraclitus...
ask a question akin to:
what is Tao?
          question =
the interrogative interim,
the void eats a thought...
there is never a definite
thought, that isn't an idea...
     splinters:
    glutton mouth of
nothing described as
     either form (definite)
      or formless (indefinite)...
can anyone please spare
us from those who
"think" and extend this
"thinking"
                 into narrative?
throw five marbles into
a dozen eggs and call
them electron drum & bass
incisions...
   never in the history of
man, has squabbles under:
hell...
spire of democracy...
a famous picture from
      the modern version of Yalta...
John Paul II, Ronald Reagan,
Mikhail Gorbachev...
   and a happy family too...
because bureucracy isn't
without autocratic accents
without an autocrat?
       pencil pushing and paper
folding seigls...
what Burroughs took from
Tzara and the top hat at
Cabaret Voltaire,
can only swallow the cut-up
with a Dresden Vonnegut passing
over a cigarette ash-swamp:
phonetic'ism:
    spell with only consonants
(H = surd attaché),
id est: s•chi•zoi•te•le•gra•phi•c...
       +              |               x
                       |
schnell schnell!
   das rubric!
            clock read awry, clock reads
straight...
    no star of David,  nor a *******...
can be less, before
the churning altar of time...
******* ancient Latin prepositions
and moderns...
   á non culpa m
(by no fault of my own)...
             can we move away from...
faaaaaaaaaaaaa...
    trapped in a colloquial
where people,
speak poetically,
    since Metaphor became Atlas...
and yet poets akin to
lepers!
                        ...CK.
    and a fern that grwe into
a frivolous chicken strut
by a royal: twirl surrounding
a passing wind near
the floor of a forest...
              would it ever
be a sin to claim taking a
picture of a shadow,
seconds prior to the dawn
of Hiroshima?
    paranoia of the nuclear powers...
apparently the itchy finger
calamity wen(t) to ****
w(h)en hit upon Nagasaki...
    oddly enough...
this can truly be an antithesis
of a Victoria "curiosity"
           akin to a slobbering
    Bradley Coop' 'itting
phe vest u'nd...
                              in the comment
section...
        apparently writing has
to resemble the comforts of
a colouring-in book
and be replica of
tourists-feeding-Trafalgar-Sq.-
pigeons-type-of-conversation...
­always the cul de sac
but never the labyrinth...
   always the cul de sac...
and never the labyrinth;
   didn't I mention that mathematical
tools, akin to ÷ etc.
    are plagued to
the custard Joe ****** brother
of grammatical tools, akin
to prepositions and conjunctions?
    hell, the Canadian pronoun
Pandora...
          might as well attempt in
depicting cognitive muscles
                at work, su doku gym
membership...
   which is a lesson in keeping
formation and blind spots...
         Alzheimer's killer proteins
digesting fat...
   a bit like what the Somalis
eat last, or rather what eats itself
last...
    minus
      the Omega Phren Genesis...
there are glimpses into
Alzheimer's...
     notably wearing my
grandfather's waistcoat...
reminding him to taste a bear
at 10 minutes to midnight...
    no wonder
we can claim to see
the Hollywood desert of original
script...
               exhausted imagination...
the famine of the north...
short on intellectual curiosity...
a shackles of inverted
famine...
   copula fungus...
   and what remains....
             of the laughing biceps.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2018
For William Tod Mixson

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”, much to the amusement of all).

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol
(Orthodox Easter follows the Julian calendar, and this year will fall on the 8th of April according to the Gregorian calendar.)
Ben Nov 2017
The grey clouds opened up for it.

Mikhail Morozov
Sat in a foetal position.
Pale eyes —
Empty spotlights
From which Oblivion stared.

Ri Seul-ki
Atop a podium, flung sparks.
"Flee not to your burrows,
Rabbits" —
But Oblivion took hold.

Christian Franklin
Rubbed his hands with glee.
God's fire and fury
Sprung from his fingertips.
Oblivion smiled.

Sofia Garcia
Smiled into her morning coffee.
She sighed, and typed
The very last word.
And that was when Oblivion struck.
Ryan O'Leary Oct 2018
Lest we forget, something
other than a poem should
be titled a Khashoggi, to
maintain Jamal's memory,
especially if one considers
why nobody ever fails to
recall Mikhail Kalashnikov.
Jamel Khashoggi RIP Istanbul
2nd October 2018 S.A. Consulate.
Hobbit those characters who lived
within the realm
of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
as far removed as
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
upon squelched cusp of progressivism,
now most likely
experience bitterness at the autocracy
of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Impossible mission to believe
amidst audacity, atrocity, egocentricity,
ferocity, mendacity, rapacity, et cetera
former KGB intelligence officer currently
serving as President of Russia
total mortal kombat of Ukraine did conceive
author of these words doth grieve
needless wanton death and destruction
analogous to volcano that lays waste
to innocent lives indiscriminately
spews forth horror as fiery lava
belches forth instantaneously
devastating explosions heave
leveling great swaths landscape
Gaia retching liquid rock
rendering utter wasteland
entombed survivors cannot leave.

The older generation
most likely experienced taste of democracy
(or the closest approximation thereof)
as I (am American baby boomer)
felt wowed by revolutionary changes,
when Ronald Reagan
occupied the White House.

Permafrost of the cold war thawed
when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
(a Russian: born 2 March 1931)
ranked as salutary Soviet statesman.

As eighth leader of Soviet Union,
he rang successful posts as follows:
General Secretary of Communist Party
Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991.

He headed country of sprawling Soviet state
from 1988 until 1991
Chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet
from 1988 to 1989,
Chairman of Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990,
and President of Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991.

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai
into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family knoll high
in his teens, operated combine harvesters
on collective farms as strapping guy.

He graduated from Moscow State University
in 1955 with a degree in law.

While at university, he joined Communist Party,
and soon became jaw
burr walk key i.e. very active mouthpiece per se.
In 1970, his near flawless
dossier a boon asper getting appointed
First Party Secretary drawing
salary of Stavropol Regional Committee,
First Secretary as “Chaw”

Bach ca qua Supreme Soviet in 1974,
and appointed as member of Politburo in 1979.

Within three years after death of Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev, following brief "interregna"
of Andropov and Chernenko, Gorbachev
elected general secretary chief
by Politburo in 1985.

Before reaching said post,
his bona fides occasioned bill leaf
As top dog name-dropped
in Western newspapers
as a likely next leader and reef
furred as barrier to manage
younger generation at top level.

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness")
and perestroika ("restructuring") and
his reorientation of Soviet
strategic aims contributed
to end Cold War.

Under a rustling brand
new program, the role
of Communist Party in governing
the state was removed demand
did via the constitution,
which inadvertently led to crisis-level
political instability fanned
surge of regional nationalist
and anti-communist activism
culminating in dissolution hand
of Soviet Union. Gorbachev
later expressed regret
for failure to save USSR, Mother land
though he insisted his policies not failures,
but rather vitally necessary reforms, miss man
aged, sabotaged and exploited by opportunists.

He was awarded the Otto Hahn
Peace Medal in 1989,
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990
and Harvey Prize in 1992, plus un-cease
sing honorary doctorates from various universities.

In September 2008, Gorbachev vis
a vis, and business oligarch Alexander Lebedev
announced formation of Independent
Democratic Party of Russia,
and in May 2009 Gorbachev
announced that launch meant
to be imminent.

This third attempt Gorbachev
sought to establish a political party, rent
asunder from disparate competitors started
Social Democratic Party of Russia in tent
toward legitimacy dated 2001,
and Union of Social Democrats
in 2007 voice of the people to vent.
Hobbit those characters who lived
within the realm
of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
as far removed as
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
upon squelched cusp of progressivism,
now most likely
experience bitterness at the autocracy
of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Permafrost of the cold war thawed
when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
(a Russian: born 2 March 1931)
ranked as salutary Soviet statesman.

As eighth leader of Soviet Union,
he rang successful posts as follows:
General Secretary of Communist Party
Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991.

He headed country of sprawling Soviet state
from 1988 until 1991
Chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet
from 1988 to 1989,
Chairman of Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990,
and President of Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991.

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai
into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family knoll high
in his teens, operated combine harvesters
on collective farms as strapping guy.

He graduated from Moscow State University
in 1955 with a degree in law.

While at university, he joined Communist Party,
and soon became jaw
burr walk key i.e. very active mouthpiece per se.

In 1970, his near flawless
dossier a boon asper getting appointed
First Party Secretary drawing
salary of Stavropol Regional Committee,
First Secretary as “Chaw”

Bach ca qua Supreme Soviet in 1974,
and appointed as member of Politburo in 1979.

Within three years after death of Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev, following brief "interregna"
of Andropov and Chernenko, Gorbachev
elected general secretary chief
by Politburo in 1985.

Before reaching said post,
his bona fides occasioned bill leaf
As top dog name-dropped
in Western newspapers
as a likely next leader and reef
furred as barrier to manage
younger generation at top level.

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness")
and perestroika ("restructuring") and
his reorientation of Soviet
strategic aims contributed
to end Cold War.

Under a rustling brand
new program, the role
of Communist Party in governing
the state was removed demand
did via the constitution,
which inadvertently led to crisis-level
political instability fanned
surge of regional nationalist
and anti-communist activism
culminating in dissolution hand
of Soviet Union. Gorbachev
later expressed regret
for failure to save USSR, Mother land
though he insisted his policies not failures,
but rather vitally necessary reforms, miss man
aged, sabotaged and exploited by opportunists.

He was awarded the Otto Hahn
Peace Medal in 1989,
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990
and Harvey Prize in 1992, plus un-cease
sing honorary doctorates from various universities.

In September 2008, Gorbachev vis
a vis, and business oligarch Alexander Lebedev
announced formation of Independent
Democratic Party of Russia,
and in May 2009 Gorbachev
announced that launch meant
to be imminent.

This third attempt Gorbachev
sought to establish a political party, rent
asunder from disparate competitors started
Social Democratic Party of Russia in tent
toward legitimacy dated 2001,
and Union of Social Democrats
in 2007 voice of the people to vent.
Qualyxian Quest Dec 2022
Having trouble sleeping
O  dark thirty
Cpl. David Markson
Patrick Air Force Base

Mrs. Dewey's class
A.E. Houseman
By profession a professor of Latin
Contraria Sunt Complementa

Volkswagen bug
Surf Ohio
The University of the South
**** voice, pretty face

All Walls Fall
Mr. Gregory Hines
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Homecoming gown magenta

                Say you, Say me
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
Stranger than a dream
So changing, can't be real
The past just vanishes
Stabs of memory return

Last night Fleetwood Mac
Cross country drive
Maybe 1980
Music makes me yearn

What then must we do?
The Buddha is awake
Compassion is not-two
Philosophy 101

Journey into Russia
Long ago White Nights
Mikhail Baryshnikov
La Florida in sun

           por favor: fun.

— The End —