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Shawn Feb 2020
How it happened I remember
Ten little fingers, ten little toes
Had been growing inside me
Nine months she had to grow

Late she was delivered
By a week and a day
Her great-grandmother’s death
Had opened up the way

Bittersweet were the tears
Softly, quietly they fell
Grandma’s words had kept me
Though unsure, I knew we’d be well

Back home my love is tested
My patience wearing thin
Yet four years after Big Sis
I made the same choice again

Ten more fingers, ten more toes
Did little to help what was broken
All my love and all my time
Is what I gave them as a token

Here now, they were a part of this
A whirlwind of pain and tears
Day in, day out I’m feeling trapped
Hopeful they’d never see my fear

Eventually, having had enough
I packed our bags and fled
Emotionless, conflicted feelings
Inside I already felt myself dead

Months…a year…time passed on
Two ladybugs grew and changed
My heart was cold and deadened
This was SO not the life I arranged

Anger replaced all other emotions
Closed to the world, I drifted away
The pills…a plan…it was all in front of me
It’d be better for them I would say

And in this place my grandma’s words
Sought and reached out to me
There was God in this she claimed
Though where He was I didn’t see

Just then by chance I reached out
To one whose eyes held truth and grace
Not sure what to make of this sudden move
I felt myself far outpaced

Hiding from love
Yet yearning for much more
This new bond had awakened in me
A new future for me to explore

Slowly and carefully we navigated
Finding significance in small gains
Eventually unveiling one another
And pushing through the pain

Twenty-fingers, twenty toes there were
Shy, unsure, and confused
Soon those feelings melted away
They were now confident and amused

Where the rocky shores of hearts once stood
Love’s water had cut a gorge
Roots established, a future ahead
An unconventional family tree was forged

And on one cold and introspective day
When the smell of rain awakened me
My grandmother’s words rang out again
“I told you one day you’d see.”

Chasing a dream flawed from the start
Was not what I was meant to do
Forcing fate, proving points
Doing what I thought I was supposed to do

In all that time what I failed to perceive
Was that it was not for me to choose it—
This family chose ME
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
before listening to all these podcasts...
where was i, having not listend to
some BBC4 radio?

have i had to become... this necessarily:
unscripted...
no mention of mily balakirev...
the moon starts to fade -
yet somehow retain its strict form...
as anything within the confines
of a vacuum...

where is the rust or anything akin
when you try to push opposing poles
of magnets... and later suppose:
oh, just the planets...
hindering a Holst composition...
barricaded by paper
anddoodles of a blunt pencil...

today i thought -
about time: i reread the only book
i would ever reread...
richard brautigan's troust fishing in
h'america...
the coalmine... and watermelon sugar...

whether or not invited:
life always happens beside me...
and: that's not a clerical error...

best choice of sedatives... come friday
night... i'm a... footnote presence...
to watch a movie in a cinema...
you'd probably require a bag of pop-corn...
poets and bureucrats...
the advent of cinema is...
me learning to use portions of:
the reconquista of braille in the realm
of stenography...

Tiro: how to encode sounds quicker
than by the current standard of
letters... stenography and...
what would never become a rigid rubric
of orthography...
or diacritical preference in
the "borrowed" tongue...

a mongol invasion sets you back... 200 years...
an ottoman invasion sets you back... 100 years...
russian influence sets you back...
300 years...
and your people's petty frivolity...
damaging for the ranks of romanians
and lithuanians... 400 years!

to be an island folk...
imagine... not being landlocked...
further exploring work...
while summoning avenues of:
the better part of friday...
and that culture... my... how it thrived...
like today...
i heard of a tobias in germany being
charged shooting strangers...
in 2 locations... then going back...
and executing himself and his mother...
some stabbing incident in a mosque
in regent's park...

me shopping for vegatables...
a niqab ninja... sorry... you can overstate
an "east european" accent if you want
with these words...
i have rubber ears...
"we" are to protect the people...
who are likely to cause us harm...
because no khaki is available...
or mustard brown...
how, can i, own, a memory...
of the 20th century... and the wars
in tow...

i can tilt a glass of cider and call it:
gods' ****! that i can do...
but i can't... somehow make myself
available... to this... frankenstein monster
of: well... wouldn't it be...
just oh so ******* nice... if we came to the feet
of the shadow of a tower of babel!

poland was always a problem among
the english:
we didn't ask you to start a war...
so why blame the ******* plumbers!

then again... what sort of "cuck"...
is invaded by both **** germany
and soviet russia? the sort of cuck that
learned to ha! "escape" with this mediocre
english... the stereotype follows...
all the polacks are plumbers...
just like all the englishmen are gays...
savvy?

because no cinnamon man would
allow the raj to wilt!
and we are... keeping the best of our
affronts!
because there's the north,
the west, the south... but the east
is a sentence of stressors..
that the east reminds everyone else:
"in europe" of the madmen...
as douglas murray said it best...
"microaggression" or no aggression...

i'm tired of the english gentleman...
as i'm tired of the ape...
the english ape...
perhaps i'm more inclined to think
in louis XIV terms of: heliocentric
sun casts no shadow...

move, elsewhere? oh i'm pretty sure
i have invested my time and effort
in a grievance that i want resolved...
but that i will not see it resolved...
all the better! i will not see no societal
betterment, either!
i like pickles... do you like pickles?
first i will go deaf before i will go blind...

i'm tired of being a past...
as i'm tired of never becoming a future...
and in the currency of presence:
the now... forever the fluctuation
gamble... with nothing of a waterfall
certainty...
i am... a cotton binding bundle...
among the scraps and irritation scoops
of rock...
baseline: a hark of a crow
when one expects an opera sung by...
******* mermaids!

in essex and i'm shopping next to...
a... perhaps i have not liberated myself from...
perhaps i'm still 8 years old and i'm leaving
snowman footprints on the concrete...
from the monolithic culture of...
the grand babel... that's being exercised in:
beta stages...

perhaps because everything is signatured:
made in china...
it really doesn't make a difference...
breed us... the sustainable mongrel!
i quiet expect myself to
hiding away in Kenya on a beach...
thinking about Ghanian timber being imported...

that this language is english...
i'm sorry... an englishman isn't using it...
doesn't that tow behind: usurping the natural
buoyancy of a boat?
called a duck... at least a duck doesn't sink...
then again:
perhaps i'm not supposed to peer into
these "surnames" of views...
what if integration was all wrong...
eh... madmen from the east...
as long as we get, but one,
egyptian artifact of a pharaoh!

please don't include me in this arithmetic...
no... don't...
oh yes... those... very sensible gays
we hear a lot about... "elsewhere"....
it's always a metaphorical ditto and elsewhere
and: foraging for sensible with the irish...
mother russian sent me...

why is it that...
bilingual is, but no longer is...
the newly frozen focus frame
of schizoid?
              don't mind me...
          after some time enough of the people's
sanity begs itself: the consort... approval...
and rating...
am i mollusk bound to a shell...
maybe whatever, probably not...
but... if i were to don the niqab...
i'd be all the more welcome! for the cocktail!
so why did...
england... pretend to care about Poland...
and state: war! against Germany...
why did you ******* even bothersome yourselves
to "care"?
wouldn't you like us to...
be... currently... spreschen deutsche?!
ich kennt ich würde!
i wouldn't mind... the ****** tongue disappearing...
i'd still be... using the remains of Latin...
given this phonetic encoding, is not...
phonecian... or... cuneiform...

i've come back to say... you really didn't require...
to save us...
perhaps having german as an envelope language...
we would have become
the second scandinavia... the south italy
of the baltic states... perhaps the baltic sea
was to become the new... mediterranean...
the new rome... outlier whittle bright scon...
and all those people and nations involved
in bringing the baltic sea ambitions into fruition...

oh believe me...
but i've invested over 20 years of my life
on these isles...
to have to return to: forevever not welcome...
with the history of less...
to stage war to defend a people...
that otherwise become: gutter-scouts...
while the niqab-ninja walks like a scared cow...
oh sure... if you're culturally confused...
don't run up to me asking for resolutions...
why would even defend poland when **** germany
and soviet russia invaded...
daydreaming your little: lawrence of arabia:
universal man... the god-riddled man valentines'!
have 'im!

i'm tired of the stereotypes...
the middle-men that we are...
not being the higher tier russian oligarch types..
you "not racist" peddlestool proximity...
but it's o.k. if it does have to include
the Polacks and the Irish...
*******... no go zone.
These days I guess I don't deserve to live
I felt disheartening
Hard to live; happily
Hurt and pain is all I could feel
Work ain't going fine
Life?; "not treating right"

Everyone telling me how bad I be
Trashing me
Battering
When parent blasphemy
Like I don't deserve to be
In this fa-mily
Friends don't wanna hang with me
On their Nike clique
Coz my dressing style is seeing
As lowlify thing
Girlfriend telling me
What a non-caring freak I be
For I'm just heartlessly being
Like a robot machine
People stare from afar
Trow me words of slap
Call me this and that
Coz of my fairy glare
Am I scaring them
With my hairy head
Eh! most of the thing they said
Doesn't ring a bell
In my nonemotional head

Maybe they're too blind to see
Maybe truly, I don't deserve to live
Where other people be
It's hard to love
When everybody talk
That I'm not worthy of
Love 'nd joy
Hatred piling up
Why am I been judged
For things I know nothing of
Why can't they just let me walk
Through this disheartening world
Picked thee from a vine
Name unknown to mine
Hanging on the air
To passersby bare
What plant are you? Tell!

Men on middle age
Girls looking teenage
Those men were standing
The girls were walking
Strangers on the road

Nineteenth November
From class just after
Fine day – sun was high
Filamer bye bye
Was about to climb

Overpass school zone
Traversed all alone
Trellis – on school side
Opposite – trike ride
And novelty store

Sat. class first time me
English MAT
Night – Ante Mily
Came from UAE
Twelfth Leaf memory.

-11/19/2011
(Dumarao)
*My Toladas Collection
My Poem No. 56

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