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bleh Dec 2014
'i've only ever really read one poem. i, i have to admit.*  
You know, that, that one poem that everyone’s read, whatsit,
Howl by Ginsberg, 'best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-madness,-starving-hyste­rical-naked,' , yeah, that one;'
'It's just, I identify with it so strongly.' she says,
'That poem is soo me.'
It's funny how commentary on a generation 60 odd years ago come across as timeless insights..
how we learn that true spirit of rebellion and counterculture three generations ago,
  as it is taught to us by two generation ago countercounterculture academics.
but I guess, inevitably
                                         we
                                                  return,
  to those half drowned pontifications inevitably decried into transcendental truth by the onward spilling ratchet of cultural recognition;
  that sense of universal oneness generated by the unwashed ramblings of beat-generation hipsters dense innuendo in run on sentences running, running from their upper-lower-middle-class New York homes and their privilege of true vacant meaninglessness and despair,
   to those nervous tucked in shirted clean shaven scholars swooning over the same seme drugged, melancholic bearded men profussing the deepest of opaque truths only found up the furthest reaches of their own *****.
  As we push through to our lectures, the mosaic in motion of blazer wearing mac-users and mac-pac wearing blazers,
  As we hysterically interpret the formatting conditions for our reports, which could hang in the balance of whether the dreams we once had will ever be actualised,
  As we felt lost and found and found and lost at those park benches under the stars, where occasional strangers strolled by offering sessions and life-stories,
  As we paid exorbitantly to get out of our parents homes, and into tin-can flats with broken windows, absentee landlords and cracked paint only held together by all the moss, (the empowerment that is wage slavery,) for in our youth, poverty is not an ever-present pejorative, but the rite of passage to show that we are alive,
  As rituals of manhood are defined by two things and two things only; how much insomnia one can accumulate to meet insane and inane deadlines, and how much one can illuminate the walls in ***** from all the beers, spirits, cheap wines and questionable home-brews,
  As the government dismantles the human-rights commission, and we nervously attend the rallies initiated by the radicals, and the man on the megaphone calls on the crowd to chant and we can only mumble and laugh nervously at ourselves,
  And when the next speaker runs onto stage feeling the need to plead to this already nervous, placid mass that this is in-fact a PEACEFUL PROTEST, and that we are all true patriots and they insist everyone start singing the national anthem and we all look down and we again mumble, or pretend somehow not to hear them,
  and when, in this biggest independent rally around a unified cause our generation's ever seen, we have never felt so alone ,
  and isolated,  
                                  we
                                             remember,
                                                                    those earlier days,
  When we'd bleach our hair; we'd poison ourselves white, in the vain mystic hope that this was just the transition period to the time when we'd get true colour into our lives,
  Remember our wonder at the Eurocentric Asiatic television representations of the Abrahamic faiths, given transubstantiated holy revival by the medium of Saturday morning digital pastel pasture; when we were children staring excited and wide eyed into the Metatrons Fire of Sinai 'Random Almighty Mega Damage'; as Dante and the seraph class Tyrant-infused-Michael inevitably made battle with YHWH, -in the one True End,- as we grinded within the monolithic emerald obsidian halls, Mystical wonderment spilling forth from our reddened hollow eyes, at the beautiful unlimited expansive world contained within our console/consoling digital unit discs; conformally mapped and etched into the convex hull of our minds,
  Where we were gods, doing battle with every possible creature in morphospace, filleted into overpriced cards and cartridges, for which our strategies meant so much to us though none of us really understood the game,
  When we could quote verbatim every piece of dialogue in GTA2, and get concerned glances from our parents as we conjured veiled imagery of bukake-ladled innuendo which we didn't really understand until six or seven years later,
  When sexuality was a special secret club our elders and the kids in the years above came across so wise for being a member of, rather than an anti-turing test; a farcical ritual where everyone tries their best to imitate the hyper-reality of MTV while hiding the nervous feelings that this whole thing was really meant for someone other than us,
  When creating a whole new lexicon for our self-hood (be it artistic, ******, political or philosophical) felt like existential emancipation; a transcendental rebellion against the normalising identities and semantics of old, rather than an impenetrable circle-**** taxonomy,
  When one day we'd unveil a new term in some text, and it would completely change our outlook on every corner of our lives,
  Or, the next day, when we'd give up and just sit back on rolling banks, and look out at a veil of stars,
  Or the next day, when we'd wonder desperate and painfully, which of the last two was the real pursuit and which was wasted time? (Or was it this day, the day spent building an illusory dialectic between them?)
  Remember when we were in kindergarden, and you had to pass through the kitchen, -the adults zone,- to get to the toilet, and you'd feel both shame and wonderment listening in of the snippets of conversation muttered by these titanic figures; discussing abstruse issues from the newspaper in foreign yet noble tongues?
  Remember when we were teens, and every form-checking observation and question from these same adults was so painstakingly pedantically banal and asinine, that one could only respond with monosyllabic grunts and silent hysterics?
  And remember as 'young adults', when we'd inevitably entered this same dull Aristotelian world of forms, how we'd ask the same adults for advice on filling these paperworks, at once still asemic gibberish, and at once the fine-print that contained and predicted our lives?
  Remember when our dreams for the future were not bounded by the economy of our grade point averages and just how much debt we were willing to incur
                                …
I've seen the best minds of my generation climb into pre-packaged little boxes; and pay through the teeth for the privilege of doing so.  
  Akin to a 'Howl' they call it? Our cry for selfhood? What a scream.
It's not even a cry. Barely a whimper.
More of a zombified groan, completely aware our intrepid Journey of Self is just a pricey guided tour. (Tv Ad's static commodified existential emancipatory platitudes; 'your place in the world' / 'well it's my place and it's my time' urgh.)
And so we march asleep; all lame all blind.
  Trudging through the mind-fields; arguing, unravelling the semantic distinctions between the empty boundaries and the boundaries of emptiness.
  Transcribed down for essay deadlines,  /  assessing our lives trajectory as dead lines,
Becoming increasingly aware,
  We are not the living beings, the dasein, the Übermenschen being actualised; we are the machinery through which the institutions, the factories, the markets and education facilities actualise themselves.
  (While the only acceptable language we can breathe in opposition to these ratcheting pedagogical machines is the lexicon they provide us..
  ('oh, you hate systemic neoliberal alienation; the deestablishment of ontological anthropocentrism? Tell me more about the esoteric uselessness of academic culture.') bluh.)

But

       the more we follow those phantom images we built of ourselves,
the more we become aware they are but sirens; hypnotic dreamlike figures luring us to our doom,
  and as this awareness dawns; and the cognitive dissonances and schizophrenia grows,
       We


                                just try to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Can we really claim the arrogance of having a better path?
The conceit that there's a better cliff we should be guiding ourselves to to top ourselves off?
I don't know,
I reaally
really
just don't know.
..i think i started out with a theme here, but it mostly devolved into venting.
      i finished another year of university recently. i'm not really sure to what extent higher education's given me perspective on life, and what extent it's simply annihilated what little i had.
   from my experiences of student culture, i feel our generation views itself as abandoned by the world, but to good for it anyway. We aren't the bohemians or beatniks or hippies or punks; our drinking and drugging ourselves to death isn't a counter-cultural high-minded rebellion. It's more a prideful self destructive egotism, a self derisive narcissism.   or something. i dunno.
  whether it's from cowardice or a more genuine scepticism, i certainly have no idea what i am (or ought to be) doing in/with/about this world.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
take money out of the equation, and sack all the waiters and return to tribalism, the former statement of non-intellectual socialism, the sort of inherent: in us there is a togetherness, no more service from strangers in the hierarchy of enriching a piece of metal or a wavy rectangle of paper with “necessary” symbolism of authority of the status quo... but that’s not going to happen... the pickpocket picts are no more... the normalising normans glared at the hastings pinnacle and integrated with the saxon women... the saracens became surnames in poland... actually that last one is very true... a branch of my family has the surname saracen.*

so i’m reading this article
and i’m hardly debasing myself,
it’s not that i’m referring
to sartre’s negation of certain things
whether animate and essential or
inanimate and existential... in that formula:
i deny therefore i am... because i can’t deny my existence...
and 2000 years down the line i’ll be pitchfork
argument in an atheist’s mouth anyway (nothing is certain in the realm of cognition, hence the cartesian invocation of doubt),
it's not like i'm referring to inappropriate pronoun usage...
so **** a doodle do... twang the strings on the mandolin...
i’m referring to this classical reference of the shy literary figure
unable to spark conversation with strangers...
god, i really love strangers, and talking to them!
why? there is no personal history, there’s no past,
there are no reference points... it’s just the moment and nothing else,
the perfect anonymity project...
not the matrix philosophy (easily invoked because
it has a flimsy plot-line and loads of images...
just what the doctor ordered for the english speaking masses
with a very naked orthography - i.e. if it’s on the internet
it’s not “real life...” as is this computer i’m using
it’s not even here!)
of using the deep web to join the rats and etc.;
i love talking to strangers, i can forget myself
and enter the realm of discretion about how within randomisation
of eggshell, yoke and cockroach there’s also the randomisation
of the interactants to balance out the need for a theological unit, god...
it’s great... it’s like... it’s like... life.
defining the genre of biography proper? never backtrack...
always sidetrack... i can’t be bothered living a life with cocktail parties
and romps and romantic comedies to look forward to
once all the animalism becomes domesticated and a
gym-session complaints column in a newspaper.
duang fu Jul 2019
the red is far too deafening -
shut palms around my ears
and yet the world is on screaming fire.
my finger joints crack in my eardrums
while the sunflowers roll in the mud.
firecracker red; fire engine red
took a nap in a sack,
the sun never goes away.

if i may i would turn to pray
to a man up in city hall
where the crowds prey,

i'm asking for a bellyache from hunger,
a shadow to leave my body -
not quite the youthful sunshine
with flaming ash in the air.

please be quiet - you're neither
the hysterical patient, nor
one who needs the normalising
medicine - you would not wish.
it is growing on me, much like
a generous parasite.
the world is much too loud tonight

written 8 july 2019, 10.22pm
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
right now i have a mind-frame worth of a Janissary, so don't **** with me!

i have what you fear... an, idea,
is that not, the case?

            there few men that
delve in fear of idea,
                 new york is no odessa....

americans deserve the swine and
swivel - and the stench
of the immortality of nations....

if your beloved be Baghdad,
mine is l'vov...
as is your precious Constantinople....

byzantine...
                        unto my wish
sultan Mahmet....
the roma the bulgar...
the serb abnd croat...
                  i have you heel...
                    i have too by blinding
a deserving alliance...
a father's unsaid words...
                  most welcome the
undeserved,
                      a revealing scapegoat
of a a master,
                     what futile labour
of the 72 ****** awaiting whip & tail...
                                    
            no crimea the tartan tongue
worth speak,
and no *battle of tannenberg
,
    wert sprechen...
                     united europe?
brexit unison?
                            apparently there's
no unison concern for a hasting's 1066...
you, ******* idiots!
                          learn a  bit of history
of your neighbours,
before you juxtapose your own,
upon the others! *******,
english, brats!
                      i hate the english for being
so ******* isle abiding,
they think they're icelandic but can
hardly compete...
               they have so much history
outside of europe that they're confused
about being european,
in than europeans have a history...
                 and they are dislodged from it...
the irish know more about england
than the english known about england.
n'ah, you know what, **** it,
   i'ld rather be a turkish white-boy slave
in the ottoman empire
than normalise the nag hammadi library
of keeping the narrative of:
it's safe to say, the madness of trans-gender
adolph ****** is pinching the revival
button...
        no... i'm not signing up to faking
the 2.0 of the next crucifix...
                               count me out...
i'm done...
                            first you flirt with
normalising schizophrenia,
before you "flirt" with "normalising"
the transgender,
    then you tell me where "la la land" is,
then you let me torture peter pan,
and then we torture alice in wonderland,
simply because you ******* normalised
a madness that requires institutionalisation,
the sane are deemed mad,
the mad are deemed sane...
                         you pushed the wrong
buttons, for far too long...
**** it, i'm pushing the
                        apostasy button...
looks like even though i drink, excessively,
islam will welcome me...
why? BECAUSE I'M NOT AS ******
UP AS YOU ALREADY ARE!
Kacie May 2021
Even in lock down
I see young girls as  pray
Through the eyes of social media
Are you to blame?
Sexilising my body
Until I am an nothing but an object
“Don't go on instagram then” they say
“But I've done nothing wrong.”

Our girls and women
Our daughters and our mothers
Anxious to walk on our paths to education or work.
6 out of 10 dread the thought of stepping on the streets once again.
Its 2021 and our woman have fear
Like the yorkshire ripper is out and about.

I curse my sight
I don't want to see that 97% are victims
We are survivors
Why have 80% been harassed in public
Look with your heart.
This is not normal
Stop normalising.

I am not a lamb and you are not my shepherd
To all the girls that are in their school uniforms
Getting the whistle by people older than their fathers
Im sorry.

I'm sorry that 1 out of 3 have lived through this.
And sorry for all the little girls hold their best friend in their arms,
As she sobs

I don't want to see this
This is not my future
So let me eat snow whites apple and wake me up
When the world learns to give a ****.
Commuter Poet Oct 2019
Blue coats
Fried food
Headphones and alcohol

Gates and overhead fans
Travellers
Waiting
Clutching passports and tickets
Whilst giant machines
Queue up
Waiting to power along
Soaking wet runways
Blasting tiny humans into
The fantasy of imagination

We have learned to fly
And normalise
The experience of disconnecting ourselves
From the solid earth

We float in the air
Like babies in amnion
Normalising the abnormal
Dreaming our earthly lives away

It’s all but a dream
All of it
Organised into parcels of time
Bundles of adrenalised experiences

Inside all of us
Our hearts beat
Once
Twice
Thrice

Calmly counting
The measures of our time
In this incarnation

Until we stop
Fade
Disappear into the fabric of the air

Wider
Freer
Greater than any jet plane

Abundant in our disappearance
Untraceable
Unrecognisable
Lost in the wisps of our former existences
24th October 2019

— The End —