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solenn fresnay Mar 2012
A Odessa je suis morte un matin d’octobre
Si je devais revivre je voudrais être psychopathe et brûler des maisons
Non, surtout pas ça
C’est effroyable de savoir écrire, même juste un peu.

                                                               ­               …/…

Marcher
Errer
Déambuler
Fermer les yeux
Ne plus penser
Mourir demain
Il faudrait que je meure demain
Mais vraiment, je veux dire
Me pendre au cerisier
M'étouffer avec le noyau d'une cerise
N'importe quoi
Trouver un truc
Mais mourir demain
Pour justifier ma raison d’être
Simplement poser mon stylo
Sur cette jolie place ensoleillée je vous ai regardé
Vous lisiez les yeux fermés

ALORS CHUT !

Pour justifier ma raison d’écrire
Simplement m’envoler
Ne plus avoir à me justifier
Etre juste un peu plus simple
Partir
Continuer l’errance à Odessa
Devenir transparente
La peau sur les os
Rêver
Pourquoi elle
Pourquoi moi

Dans le fond
Je ne suis pas bien différente de vous
Je n'avais rien à écrire
Je n'ai rien à te dire
De ma vie tu ne sais rien
Et si je dois mourir demain
Tu découvriras alors peut-être
Je dis bien peut-être

Et si tu lis ces lignes demain
Tu comprendras alors peut-être
Je dis bien peut-être

A Odessa cet après-midi
Je n'ai fait que vous regarder
Peut-être aurais-je dû m'y poser

Je travaille pour survivre
Je vis pour écrire
J’écris comme je respire
Le souffle coupé
Je tombe.
Puisque je dois mourir demain
Juste fermer les yeux
M’éclater la tête contre le radiateur

A Odessa cet après-midi
Je n'ai fait que vous regarder
Un jeu dangereux qui se joue uniquement à la première personne.

A Odessa cet après-midi
Nous avions rendez-vous
Tu n'aurais jamais dû venir, maman.
epictails Mar 2015
You smell of teardrops
And a little bit of rain
But it doesn't make me less lonely
Doesn't make the night less carefree

Incense me with your words
Trap me in your senses
Oh Odessa,
why must you be so lovely?

Odessa,
Come to me as you are
Turn on my fire
Linger in my desire
My heart is your home
Together we can be alone
Our love was so splendid
how swiftly it all ended

I see your deep eyes
But your heart is grave
Our lives are no longer touching
I can hear my glass dreams breaking

Wish me well in your delight
As I am torn by my plight
Oh Odessa,
won't you fix me?

Odessa,
Come to me as you are
Turn on my fire
Linger in my desire
My heart is your home
Together we can be alone
Our love was so splendid
how swiftly it all ended
Hi guys!Hahaha this is my first attempt at making a song. It's about a girl named Odessa who somehow made a way into my mind. She might be this indie musician who makes really dope songs. Anyway, tell me what you think! :)
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights

and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise

(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre
.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.

germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi
Matt Oct 2016
Forget these
Rich American women
I see on the tv

I want to live in harmony

With the woman
Of my dreams

Sweet Lord
This I do pray

Take me to Odessa
On this day

There I will meet
A woman so fair

Into her Russian eyes
I will stare

Browsing through
The magazines

An endless supply
Of beauties
So it seems

Dear Lord
Take me to Odessa!
I was inspired to write this after watching a documentary about the women of Odessa who often marry foreigners.
M G Hsieh Nov 2018
You cast that vermillion border
and glance at me with unswept eyes

Your voice holds pain and the comfort 
of solitude

I have journeyed you a hundred years.
The wind gets caught 
in your waves. You throw us back to sea

I hunger for you,
the clamor of rocks that descend into darkness 
and the clouds that hide your secret skies.

The ecstasy of you in the very 
pit of me waits to come out

and engulf me once more.
In the beginning was the Word…
And only then was the world.
Out of chaos and the darkness,
Out of nowhere and the blackness…
Something more than a miracle happened
Filled with warmth and light that sparkled.

The world got name and became alive!
All around began to thrive.
Not in gratitude, not out of a sense of duty
It believed in truly saints and only beauty.
Eyes opened and stood in delight
It could invite, excite but not to affright.

In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was God.
Earth and sky, the stars and oceans,
Without emotions but with devotions.
Rains and snows, beauty forebodes
And even the dust of not traversed roads.

It would be ridiculous and naive
To dream about the dawns, be a sensitive.
To be the hands on the starry clock,
To make on the land a beautiful woodblock.
As all that had already been put wise.
And in time the Sun could arise.

In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was Peace
Everything could freely breathe.
If you remove it, the chaos will again start,
The universal fear and black exhaustion,
The indifference and world of combustion.

The worm of doubts shouldn’t gnaw the heart!
The rest is later and the second will be smart.
For some it is unusual and one can’t agree
But as to me in different way it could not be.
You have to hear Him to be reborn again.
His Word is saint and everything explain.


In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was Love.
The beginning of all beginnings and all the springs,
The beginning of all the most beautiful things.
The beginning of all the sources and a new start.
You have to hear it and know as it is Gods art.

In the beginning was the Word…

©Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
The 25th of January, 2013
softcomponent Nov 2013
Waterborn water horse upon shutter drawn blades,
in the form of these blinds in your face
as you peek beyond peaks in your ability to see..
pixels in the mountaintop, drippity drop drop on the cottages embalmed moss roof,
and a beautiful day, and a beautiful day, and a beautiful thought that told me to say
I felt it in the air when you said that you cared through your fair molten hair on that blonde summers day on top of the rock of Eli, in relay for the slight elegance
upon and underneath irrelevance, and shelf Imams in books on Islam..

Shabat Shalom on Hanukkah.. celebrate the stars insofar as Andromeda,  
my mommas thumb on her 13th year, her 16th beer, the work-man's clear intentions with the way he mentioned words in tension, clenching marbles in his startled glance,
***** minds rubbed upon his work-man pants as this city grows bigger prose in the rows and roads of goals never reached upon the age of 70,
plenty see this creed as Cree in nature,
ship-shaper upon white paper, written in natures hip-hop hater,
forests are erased here.. drugs are never laced here.. I feel like I'm 8 here.. but I'm 8 with a career in thinking intangible all-honesty's on unity..

I see God as the groove master.
I'm just a disco disaster, looking to plaster a little bit of dissidence upon the fence in recompense for the densest chessboard invasion of Kicking Horse pass,
but alas, I broke my arm, wearing a cast you can hope to sign if you wish to charm the devilish sin of sugar-gin, open in to relig-IN.. as in I no longer ****, I Pope..
I wanna take a Pope of every single religiounana,
and see what they saw, and believe what they want, and concieve of their god and impede on their laws..

crows caw, upon a cross and there's a JEEzz-- static discharge.. he interrupts me..
he says to look.. and when I look he tells me to see see see see see, please see, I see what you see, it's not Jeez-me like the Bible Belt.. it's Jeez-US,
we must realize what I meant to grasp as the cusp you have teetered on since before the common age.. each and every all of us is a sage in the same way..
we're all God, and.. we're all God, and.. we're all God, and.. we're all God, and
shake the hand of the rainbows faint glow.. merry old isotope, Santa Claus hippy hope, never tethered hemp rope, old Egyptian space probe, great globe goddess..
**** decimated Odessa, I guess us was lest we forget this or get us to pinch out the **** of a historical era of error.. concentrated terror of terrorists in concentration camps..
an oil lamp burning upon sand saddled socks and snow-covered rocks and an old Buddhist templed temperament held in this mountain of tea and honey..
wearing my runny nosed halted-horrific, all-it-every-and-us is this terrific..
my distance from hand to hand is still as prolific, get the gesture? or am I just a cosmic jester?

lesser is best, so lest we forget the rest all congested in bread and butter covered brain matter,
rain shatters flames and her face was the place I escaped for a hit of false tragedy.
an older poem.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.that moment, when you realiße... "it's not yet another garry glitter song"... because quiet frankly... you still haven't seen Joker... you're stuffing raw dough into biscuit shapes in a make-shift Tibet... as a raw-treat... and your body is tombstone stiff... but your eyes are on fire and your soul is dancing... synonym parade... because gary glitter can be excused in the same way that: rob halford... rob halford isn't gay... isn't gay the metalheads would otherwise say... but because the song can exist per se... since... a glaring gary is no... jimmy 'the kid-fiddling dj' savile... and he's... no ian watkins... because... if you asked me... rock & roll part II is a gary glitter song? och! ouch! pinch-punch 1st of April is upon us recoil... hell no! i still read marquis de sade... only because by my standards... he's quiet decent... all he ever did wrong was use the imagery of a crucifix as a ***** when asking a ******* to peform the sado-masochistic act of ******* before him... otherwise his phallus was lost in the niqab of the bastille... his uncle though? ah! that's another matter! although: much aggrieved but somehow agreed... you could still buy marquis de sade's novella ****** in London, once upon a time... perhaps you still can... but does that even matter? i am about to get a primer about the Iranian inherent hate for h'america anytime soon... about how h'americans manage to bundle the Persians into the rag-ah-muffin crowd of camel-jockeys and easily replaced arab donors... and those poor iraqis... doing their bit...  who is to forget the phrase: turbanator? i.e. not referring to sikhs... no one besides moi... welcome to l'inglese... the modern lingua franca... and i do feel so sorry so very so very much for the natives that were beither born in Bratford or the rustbelt fly-over states of h'america... if joe biden says: learn to code! guess what i was but wasn't told being ***** from a ******* that was poland come the drop of the iron curtain of the 1990s... coming to the 2020s... me conjuring up the Silicon Curtain?! really? adverse to learn to code... learn a new language! and globalißation will "win"... internationalism already works on a bilingual basis... there's the established language of commerce... which is english... i'm sorry... i'll be kind... "you" will have to move... if not cognitively... then otherwise... i learned yours... learn mine! that's the motto... this is where linguistic nativism comes in... not borrowed time from places like h'america... not some emblem worship... just ol' lil' england... i hope this doesn't reach a wide audience... i am having to consider learning romanian... du-te dracului! that's a starter...

i've found out that, the only way to truly enjoy
a glass of red wine is...
to have also rolled your own tobacco...
and since we're talking the highest quality rolling
tobacco: golden virginia...
after rolling it... you gentle bask it in a lighter's flame
from top to bottom... to warm it up...
so you don't have to finish it off as if *******
through a straw...

that's of course if you're drinking red wine on its own...
but there's a reason why i hanged around
with a few spaniards in the past...
why i went to paris and met this two catalonian
hot-takes... who i later visited in Barcelona...
drank kalimotxo for a while getting ready
to hit the party scene...
was given my first joint in my life...
and... hello lullaby...

next day we toured the sights...
we never made it to the gothic quarter...
or the el reval...
we went into one of those shops
in a shopping mall that sell everything...
that's when i discovered portishead's debut:
dummy all by myself...
and then onto camp nou...
to be honest... throughout all this time...
i felt like a glove...
no really... i felt my company was being...
tested as to whether it could be well worn
and: worn out at a much later date...
i was, what, 19 then?

what will leave me well versed in travel,
jumping continents?
i should really add prague along the line somewhere...
the days when i would solo for a weekend
and never bother with any if at all: precautions...
i can't imagine the sort of trips
my "highschool friends" took...
en masse... and always to a resort -
say, in greece...

the joker scenes are out...
the scene where he's dancing on the stairs...
sounds good... mhmm...
oh... this is gary glitter?
the art has absolutely nothing to do with the artist...
it's not like gary glitter can get away with it...
but... i'm pretty sure he can get away
whereas... ian watkins?
in that crushing defeat of musical genres...
when emo wasn't quiet a thing...
and nu-metal didn't die out...

i'm a cheap ***: all the people are raving /
were raving about a film...
and i'm waiting for the delayed spectacle...
only recently... avengers: end game?
what a major ******...
this "self-aware" introspection into movie
franchises that explore time-travel...
here's an alternative: study chemistry
and get a hippo's ***** ready on the wet
dip... i'm guessing this is a period of time
when: the genre of science fiction will
slowly die off...
i don't see how science fiction can sustain
itself...

- which is always beside the point...
moving on... english... this acquired tongue of
mine...
if only i were so adamant as a czesław miłosz:
had i a translator's worth of shadow,
and baggage running around after me...
like a sacred cow of the Raj...
how did i learn to mitigate?
i don't know... what i do know is...
drinking and habits of listening to music...

it starts off with: listening to some
music using english...
it sooner or later gravitates toward
something in german...
after i tire myself of german lyrics...
i'm heading toward scandinavia...
chances are: i will visit "mother russia"...
but i'll probably sink into
visiting byzantine chants...
once i figured out a way to move
from scandinavian paganism...
work my way past german folk
from the medieval period...
and finally arrive at: αγνη παρθενε...
obviously i will have to stop over
some quasi-folk germanic songs...
northern crusades:
teutonic songs... or the templar songs:

da pacem domine...
pristine times! the drunk carol singers
has sung their bit... there was no rest
for the wicked...
the carol: god rest ye merry, gentlemen
was sang...
reality of the everyday happened
no day shy away from the "celebration"...
i find more comfort in songs
of the templars...
perhaps the gregorians with their calender...
but most certainly the byzantine choir...

of ancient greece and what is known...
what can stand out from byzantine greece?
except from: byzantine bureaucracy?
counting knots in the fish-net stocking
on a centipede crawling out of a harem?

my musical diet: when i drink...
i can't listen to music when english is involved:
for too long a "passing" of: enjoying it...
i grow a beard and satan mount
a throne of wood and amber...
fiddling with it like a mad maestro that
has been given 100 violins and no...
woodwinds... and this is my "orchestra"...
a beard... crux of central europe:
with the zenith on the border of the river
Oder...

i do wonder what this scenario would look like;
if the girl gambled otherwise...
the pretty-****-pick sent by my offspring...
or my full-crop of hair...
and a beard... ***** envy can hardly be
a social events on the pedestrian stage...
but cranium envy?

the diet for a session begins...
it has to begin in english...
but who knows where i'm otherwise willing
to lend an ear to?
i can't be stuck with music i can understand
lyrically...
if i can't understand how to compose music...
well i did once know how to play
the ***-ar... and worked a nightclub
for a mandolin: just to serenade a Fiona
from a window a maggie may by:
rod-it stuart in edinburgh... once...

how romantic of anyone...
hell... this is still in english?
why aren't i pulling the strings of a czesław miłosz
and not retaining my nativspreschen?
why? i love to tickle german...
i love to tickle deutsche more than i care
for speaking english, or... rather...
writing in it...
but unlike a czesław miłosz... i didn't bring
a linguistic ghetto with me...
i don't have a ****** ghetto to go to...
perhaps... if i mingled with enough
of my "fellow", "countrymen"...
much easier said than done: if you're Irish...
and the only THing you have to worry
about is... diacritical nuance...
the THing, the Θing... is an english:
what the irish consider to be a surd affair...
T'h'ING... it's a t'ing... not ******* F even
if you looked at it with a bollocking of
a microscope, either!

- and this once high-school "fwend" once suggested...
'maybe you should go and find your own
fellow countrymen'...
who the **** do i look like? paddy?
an arab, an iranian, an italian...
or some *****-cheeky-cheese-brigade of sorts?!
my, "fellow" and "countrymen"...
on foreign soil? em... allegience to who?
i have severed my ties with Poland...
i keep my ties with Poland on the basis that:
my grandfather and grandmother are still
alive... when i visit them...
i don't expect them to be into this whole:
post-nationalism: internationalism non-nationalism
globalisation gimmick of: at least,
at least the modern lingua franca:
which is the l'inglese....
because... quiet frankly? i have a stash of:
mutterzunge bubbling beneath what's being written,
with some mongrel-german and mongrel-russia
auxilliary...

ah... the natives of the english tongue...
well... it's quiet expansive...
it can go beyond encompassing merely england...
it can go so far as to tread over scottish gaelic...
somewhat irish gaelic too...
only zee Velsh... seem to be... W: whistling free
in their linguistic stand-off...
who the hell even bothers to hear
about any scottish gaelic?
there's only gaelic gaelic: irish gaelic...
and there's welsh...
scotch gaelic? huh? apart from: a wee this
and a wee that?
*******... tartan and god's **** *******
of beer and the side-trash-dish of the savior
of whiskey in a gulp of ms. amber's **** juices
from a...
one of those distilleries...
that served up a whiskey tokaj whiskey...
i still remember the picture...
a girl i was dating took the picture...
in front of her a belarusian jew cosmo...
to her left... a russian looking into the glass
of whiskey with some philosiphical insight
begging to come out...
to her right... a dog ****** with his nose
in the matter...

figures... the ****** will sniff **** out...
the russian will: peer into the glass
for some "magical" insight...
philosophy or what not...

as if insuating: concerning the "little" people
of europe...
unlike the portugese, the spanish,
the italians or the greeks: acronym: PIGS...
but i least i'm no czesław miłosz:
i don't need to move to cam'cam'h'america
with a language in tow:
for some sort of lesson of: preserving roots
for a tree...
my version is apparently:
the bad integration strategy...
esp. on paper...
why would i still retain my tongue...
on paper... in this medium...
citizen ist citizen:
bürger ist bürger ist mir!

heaven behold i have to use alt sächsisch vaterzunge
to speak to the grünschnabel...
i fear for the natives of this tongue:
esp. since hiding behind the stipend of:
the empire upon which the sun never sets...
to have to hide behind a cultural import
from h'america...
or australia... is what gives rise to these
pseudo-communist grey areas of Bratford...
or Islam-came-ah-knocking in
Rotherham...

even i have to escape this...
this l'inglese... this new frontier of...
no frontier at all: except for the skull moon...
and baggage of frohlicht!

is priti patel a civic nationalist?
well i'd be ******* sterile if i didn't say:
a babe with class any loser in
my vicinity said: a banger...
if priti patel is not a civic nationalist...
then i'm not in england...
i'm nowhere...
******* banging bunny... anyways...
and the first time i managed to ******
a black girl for a quickie...
it took just the right amount of cocktails and...
enough coccyx banging into my pelvis that...
i... almost wished for a 12" ****
and the "proper *****"...
no... really... imagine a black girl mixed with...
a stick insect... and you just so happen
to have served her up...
a genuis concoction of cocktails...
the coccyx is bound to appear...
alligned to your poor-pelvis plum-sore...
one time or another:
no ***** envy in sight...

hence my "wish"... give me the 12" cod...
and enough plump *** as that will allow...
otherwise: no...
i would still like to imagine being
circumcised via the orthodox methods:
of a rabbi... not via some over-*******...

why am i writing about this with such fondness?
em... 21... nearing 34...
i can count... how many times i've had ***...
using only my fingers...
that's beside counting the prostitutes...
which... when you forget to trim your ***** hair
and you just end up kissing for an hour...
kissing prostitutes: what a noble affair...
bumble, trumble, tumble, twitter, bitter...
grinder... tinder... don't know:
i can't remember having owned a smartphone...
or a mobile...
that ambition died when:
i was left with calls 10 minutes from a meeting
for a pint... on a bus...

that's... 34 - 21... 13 years with sporadic
casual *** patterns...
oh and that thai bisexual girl... woman...
boy... i picked up from a park bench...
we listened to some jazz... drank some beers...
"weaped"... then had a cigarette in the garden
and ****** while i was kept in suspence...
honestly: i didn't know what i was getting myself
into... it was a thai surprise moment...
sports bra... and... until i reached into
the nadir of the zenith did i find out...
phew... no pronoun debauchery...

13 years and the sort of *** life that could
be celebrated by a *******
harriet turtles of the islands of galapagos...
while, around me, in the vicinity:
kama surtras left right and center!
why would i drift toward...
scandinavian pagan songs...
byzantine chants... crusader anthems?
i don't know: it's hard to punctuate
ridicule into that sentence... ridicule and irony...
self-depreciating humor...

- 'music was terrible in the 2010s'...
perhaps... except of a ****** band: LAO CHE...
i will still be punching myself over
my sentiments...
and "they" can come and speak english
like it's "theirs"...
but at the same time... not be "english" at
the same time...
perhaps it's the north h'american conundrum
of patriotism with the old continent
sentiment "for" nationalism...
perhaps if we all speak this one
magical language...
we can still find ourselves
with unboxing cues in a bazar in Tehran...

and they were Persians before
the Arab camel-jockeys came...
and that spirit of poetry died
and the old antagonism with the Greeks:
too died...
arab camel-jockeys with their... sole book...
and enough time...
enough time to see them sitting on
an iceberg of dinosaur crude fuel...
that truly was and is a miracle...
i still don't see why the Ottomans wouldn't
want to treat the camel-jockeys as they
should have to have prospered:
since no Lawrence would ever come from
ottoman Istambul...

but oh oh: tuba büyüküstün the god-smacker
and the slow death of martyrs' promised: harems...
even a slow-to-understand man
can find his solomon and his queen of sheba...
somehow, "somewhere"...

so much for drinking some wine...
and: it's not like speaking the truth, drunk,
managed to get anyone into trouble...
perhaps the "kind" alternative?
nietzsche on barbiturates?

i sometimes wish i could be alligned
to a female sort of companionship...
without the immediate awe-struck beauty parallel
with: what's actually beneath being
awe-struck... but no...
i will have to do my best with dogs,
cats, the odd fox... and pyramids and pyramids
of stacked ms. amber bottles...

wine and the gods' anemia... or haemophilia...
i never which one it is...
i almost wish i could sentence myself
to the banal grey-ish merger of:
the everyday with a woman...
but... alas... i still have a mother...
and i'm still unsure about the times
when she's lying or telling the truth...
but, given, she's my mother...
i allow her the benefit of the doubt...
having a mother is enough to:

going down the river of keeping a woman
company: in company that precludes
having *** with her...
bad grammar or just the unnecessary word:
precludes...

it's enough to be in a company of a woman
you can't have *** with...
and quiet another...
to be in a company... you can have *** with...
this "can" will probably never
arrive at the sober conclusion of:
you "might" or... that you even "will"...
i guess the antithesis of gambling came
when prostitution wasn't allowed...
a man sought alternatives...
50p bet and all the thrills....
that... yep... 110 quid an hour would never give...
gambling and *******...
the siamese child of desolation of
Moloch and his bride: Ursula (usury)...

what's that "motto"? when the fun stops: stop?
here's a way to figure it out:
see a ***** before you start gambling...
and when you gamble...
bet for a quarter... less than but equal to / no more
than a pound...
i've started to bet on football results:
a win... and the other team also scores...
i managed to find a bet accumulator...
that would leave me off...
over 200K richer... from having bet a pound...

like i once mentioned...
the 3Ps of today's clinical "advice"...
there's the priest... n'ah...
there's the psychiatrist (you'll want to see him
first, seeing a psychologist is pointless...
he has no prescriptive authority...
he's no big pharma loved-up yuppy sort of...
gwy)...
or there's the *******...
priest, psychiatrist... *******...
i did the priestly bit when i visited
a monestary in France, Taize...
i was young and the hormones weren't kicking in,
just yet, and i would have stayed...
but i wasn't rich enough to buy myself
a place at that, kind of, prestigious "university"...

psychologists and psychiatrists...
what the tongue can't lick or taste:
a tongue can't heal...
talk talk talk... but no: suma summarum:
no oeuvre momentum...

prostitutes and betting habbits it was...
settled...
this one maroccan colt with his one maxim:
there's no water in a desert...
ever see more water than that in a puddle
in a concrete jungle?
and that's hoping for: evian...
tapeworm free water... ever?!

so much for tinder...
and so much for... ahem... adverts: ok cupid...
claustrophobic dating advice with no
spares...
if you can't pick them up fresh
from a park bench of uncertainty waiting
for that, that thai surprise?
so much for being a h'american...
and a *** tourist... in Odessa...
of Kiev... or getting milked for the bogus
*****-****-thrill of it:
to genesis the whole model escapade of:
dosh stashed in a porky inch-by-inch
leather itch of: spend spend spend!
Austen girl Jan 2015
I call her the shadow dancer,
punished with hope..
She twirls with reflections,
and shadows on her broken feet..
She struggles to remain beautiful,
to perpetuate the stereotype..
She leaps, weightless into the heavy air,
pointed broken feet, hiding the pain..
Odessa, the swan in her lake,
flying, oblivious....
trf Mar 2018
Sketching surveys of desolate dreams,
purveyors of private property plots,
their impatient greed,
ignoring purple spray paint warnings.

Six feet under, resting next to Grandpa's coffin,
live valuable minerals, their rights forgotten,
a farmer of soy beans, wheat and corn,
oil & gas law to Grandpa was foreign,
but he knew why our creek's current flowed north,
upwards, defying gravity or reason, why these men had come.

One time executive cowboy hats descended on the farm,
in pickup trucks, just purchased from an oil lot in Odessa,
Grandpa took aim and raised his Beretta,
their unfit hats lost to the blast, the only harm.

I was only five, when I saw his lengths of protection,
he took me on hunts for deer, boar, quail, dove,
would always aim his rifle, fire and miss,
blamed it on his eye sight, yet hit bullseyes on paper targets.

It took me 20 years to understand why, with swallowed pride,
he purposely missed killing these animals,
cursing his eyesight instead, winning an Oscar for his humble acts,
was he blinding me from death?

There was no vision impairment, I found out in hindsight,
probably the trauma witnessed, as he died with 20/20 eyesight.
If you have a grandparent or parent who is still living and they only have a few gallons left in their tank; please spend as much time with them a feasibly possible. Things that I can't explain in words will later make sense in your life, that might not have, when you were younger. I wish I could have 30 more minutes. What we used to perceive, we now later see.
nick armbrister Dec 2022
Coloured Putin
Shoot her full of rainbows
Scythes from heaven
Souls down in Hell
Hundred thousand dead
Mamushka I miss you
Our Leader sent us there
Not an Odessa holiday
Opposite of that mama
Forgive them all
It's Putin's orders
Hundred thou casualties
Bullet ridden rainbows
Her essence is black
SELL OUT
Nick Armbrister
out in 23
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
and what a difference a clock brings, two clock stand
on a shelf already, both of them with dead batteries -
a third is brought in, and it ticks,
and it Tokajs - and up rise the zemplén
mountains where Attila was laid to rest...
and after a night of drinking -
the ticking clock gives out an energy:
that makes you wake up early,
the alarm is set 15 minutes prior noon,
but you wake up earlier than that:
a nervous energy surrounds the clock
like a bomb, you actually are the bomb,
going off early - otherwise?
what Sartre said about 3 p.m., that
the day is laid to rest by that time,
and if ever from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. in
the land of Noddy you dreamt a void
of pristine calm, then after 3 p.m.
the t.n.t. in you is wet, and there's no
spark, the ultimate existential angst -
as with any synthetic approach of creating
sleep, you are sometimes powerless to
the cure, hardly any analysis of the day's
dignified toils, in biblical jargon:
to live by the sweat of the brow -
some would claim this to be an aristocratic
pastoral - and it could very well be:
a decadent with a ***** room with whips
and handcuffs - but also a decadent with
a personal library... who would have thought
the two are so akin, even with their
seismic polarity. so on a day like this,
two coffees in, four cigarettes later,
a minor literary feat, as ever a poem -
with an approach of: get me out of these
straitjackets of conformity, according
to genres and proven techniques akin to
the sigma opus (or, oeuvre) of an Agatha
Christie... or as fellow men said: eat, ****, repeat...
the true art: how to find the eye of the storm,
the centre, away from the pulverising
strobe lighting of this realm: find me a straight
line off this ****** roundabout - if to infinity
then all the better: away from the re re re re
of res (the repetition of a thing) - be is summer,
be it spring, and the countless admirers of
such idle pursuits as said: shall i compare you
to a summer's day blah blah -
or start stiff, a corpse stiff in writing: mere
warm-up - then loosen the joints (conjunctions
prepositions et al.) and let us butter those
nouns - and change a few nouns into verbs
as already stated - a real ******* moment in
writing: haphazard here, unexplained mutations
here... let us return the same frenzied favour
that this hellish carousel imposed on us;
and as ever, a day that begins prior to 3 p.m.
will usually yield a daylight poem,
the sun is to bright, a vampire like myself
cannot stand the seemingly ultra-violet tinge
to things: a real phosphorescent sheen to all
things oily, whether my lipid skin, or the aloe
of leaves - then to the massive stumbling
block of the dictionary and all principles of
a priori entitled with that fiendish book -
as with every mind: algorithms never provide
the answers, if you haven't already experienced
the word said, by someone else.
so with a day prior to 3 p.m., you wake and wait
till the "natural crumbs in eyes after sleeping"
(rheum) dissolves - the radio is turned on,
the empty bottle of coca cola is ****** into and
the waiting for the alarm to ring - but it doesn't,
you're up already, and take up dietary reading
snippets of ivan bunin's memoir about
the civil war in Russia: cursed day (some could
say, one of the most enduring books concerned
with pleasurable reading while lying in bed,
flat out) - and this poem? all because of the
following snippet from a narrative:
            the Odessa Alarm is requesting information
about the fate of these missing people:
     Valya Zloy (zloi, i.e. evil, alter. in polish?
        zło, alter. in ~english? "zwo'h");
   Misha Mrachny (mrachnyi, i.e. gloomy, alter.
in polish? mroczny, alter in ~english?
             a dried out y, a hollowed out y,
                                   cz via ch, dependent
    of the exclusiveness of independent elocution);
  Furmanchika (furman, i.e. driver...
              an etymological mirror -
           a driver who transports goods using
    a horse and carriage, this is 1918, after all);
  Muravchika (muravei, i.e. ant, alter. in polish?
   mruwka - orthography as rigid aesthetics?
welcome to the army son... but it's actually mrówka,
    i call it personal preferences sometimes,
  not necessary rules, there's no limit to this anarchism,
and there's also another word: murawa (thick grass,
akin to earth, and ants burrowing) -
but you don't see ó at the beginning there, do you?
  the aesthete says: further in, mostly when
   congested with consonants, the alter. to what
the Chinese call: the great wall - or defence against
Mongolian invaders: doubled up with ideograms
that put the Egyptian ideograms to shame,
   is that necessary classification? owl pigeon palm,
less skeletal, then necessarily not ideograms:
hieroglyphics: it gets funnier when phonetic approximates
come across meaning approximates,
   you get ~etymological something or other,
e.g. mirror, you hear shouting: misnomer!
          and you're like: well, you have surd lettering
   and i have ~thedesiredword, so ~exact -
nonetheless, intricacies of a polymer with a benzene
ring at some point.
               i was lying though: this poem actually
came from a very English peculiarity -
name the word aunt, and how i'm sometimes
tongue tied on it: not ant when the English say
auntie - i.e. antee - or how the tongue is less
tied to a Sisyphus stone with the word augment:
so i guess i have to practice augmenting
the word aunt - so it sounds similarly good as
auntie - and that's the prickly feeling there,
a syringe on the tongue and less of a tongue-tie
but more a tongue-numbing - liked to a dentist's
request: open wide and say ah - not a - ah -
                     ah choo!               and many chopstick
dances later: the sound of pain, a shortened version
of aww (which is intended for babies and puppies,
but not all things small) - as in cute -
thus this au grapheme (no Latin variation akin to
æ or œ) - which is acute in comparison to
the two examples çited - ash and eðel / eθel -
                meaningful enough to drop a unit from
the couplet - as the English already do,
                            as explained already - ouch -
and many more theories can be revelled in -
   when looking for handwriting smoothness
of wave weaving stylistics - given now the hand
no longer writes, but the digits dent in grooves onto
    a much smoother surface (in terms of fluidity).
If you are a poet it means so much
as others souls you often touch.
Your own soul you cruelly cut
petting the others with your blood.

To be a poet means to sing of beauty
and it’s the main poets' duty.
Rhyming  words, to tell the truth
and it has to be quite smooth.

To be a poet means to burn with passion,
to treat the others grief with a compassion,
to love the others as yourself,
to hear the voice of kind elf.

To be a poet means to dream,
to tell the world a touching theme,
to speak sincerely and frankly
but not just rhyming poems blankly.

Rhyming words is not the main,
there’s no need to strain your brain.
If your heart has nothing to tell
rhymed words will look like hell.

To be a poet means to write
as if your blood gushes from vein,
to write the rhythm of living breath,
the rhythm of life that seethe.

Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
30/9 2010
David Nelson May 2013
Death of a Saleslady

she was a seller of thoughts
the taker of time
she would crawl inside your mind
and lead you to the edge

she was the creator of dreams
the Odessa of voyages
her touch drew you closer
standing on the ledge

her kiss was a serpents bite
poison on your lips
it was only the beginning
now you were trapped

she could lead you anywhere
her wish your command
you would beg for just one more
until you were firmly slapped

you finally realize you awaken
the mind begins to clear
you begin to see the evil of her ways
her purposes rather shady

the spell has finally been broken
the end of wildest dreams
she has been cast out of your world
the death of a saleslady

Gomer LePoet....
a twist on the title of the Arthur Miller play, "Death of a Salesman"
A hammer and sickle to tickle them
cries of, 'it's Stalin' to ******* them, then
silence on Red Square.

Dacha's popping up everywhere
communism like evangelism
gathers the money in

holiday plans.

There are true ***** drinkers
thinkers like
Solzhenitsyn
gulags
and the rags of
Moscow.

I won't go

to the palace where tells of a ****** or
on the long road that tells us of more.

The KGB
a resident family of the community
are looking for me via Odessa.

I've gone to Sweden to lead 'em astray, can't stay in the concrete connivance no way, but
I end up in Siberia wearier than the dogs who run with the pack.

Looking back at the back of it
there's a lack of it, but I'll manage it and a carriage would help a bit to carry me home .
Glenn Currier Feb 25
Lightly my fingers rest on the letters
hoping to coax  out of them
a lyric or a prayer to end this day.
I love these letters
who open the universe,
who touch the cheek of God
and fall here like shooting stars
or small planets
for you to see.

I miss a stone and step into the shallow stream
like a child hoping for an adventure
from his misstep into the clear water
where he can fall into the sky
and ride a cloud to Odessa
Pikes Peak or north to the Cascades.

I remember when the soles of my feet
were calloused from running across lawns
sidewalks and streets to play
ball or adventure into the nearby field
where we fashioned a fort our of tall sticky ****
and made up rules for initiation into our club.

What a life I find in these letters
who surrender to my touch so easily
what a symphony to match the music of Mahler
coming across the net falling here into my ears
like undeserved grace.
Vladimir Lionter May 2020
My friend did die under
Lubango in the year
1990, as sailor.
I will never come there.
He wasn’t a hero but
He was just a soldier
As if the dead remained at
Duty among other
Living soldiers farther.
There were three Odessa chaps
Great is our power.
We served fully the mass
Angolian in dark hour.
We came back, the living
In those so hard years.
It means our being
Lucky despite foes.
{28.12.2015}

* * *
Друг погиб под Лубанго
В девяностом году.
Мы не вкусим с ним манго –
Я туда не приду.
Друг мой не был героем –
Он был просто солдат.
Было нас только двое
Там херсонских ребят.
Ещё трое – с Одессы,
Ведь большая страна.
Мы ангольскую мессу
Отслужили сполна.
Мы вернулись живые –
Значит, нам повезло
В те года роковые
Супостатам назло.
{28.12.2015}

Translator - I. Toporov
Jamie F Nugent Jul 2020
What name can I give you?
Surely there are none
and it is pointless to try,
like giving names to
celestial bodies,
or quantum particles.  

I thought I could capture it,
that the gaps would be filled in,
like space between
crocodile teeth
clasped on a zookeeper's hand.
I thought
If I could paint like Wyeth,
I'd have my Helga.

What name do I give you?

Maybe Odessa,
laughing on the crest of a wave,
dragged by purple currents,
among gulls on Earth,
and storms in the sea?

Perhaps Athena,
with gleaming eyes
and an owl in your hand?

Or Queen Maeve,
raw with beauty,
buried upright
facing your enemies?

Infeasible,
but it must be something,
for the shake of necessity,
So as to call out when
loitering on lake's edge,
or from across a room
when I see you there,
uncanny as my reflection
in a convex mirror.

I'll call it out.

It's not that I want to,
but that I do;
Just as frogs jump,
just as the tongue
pushes on the aching tooth,
I see Venice in
cheekbone crevices,
smell Vienna in a tangle of hair.

This tropism is
an elephant stomping
the marrow out of me,
and it's alright,
it feels good,
and Wisdom is her name.
TJ Struska Mar 2020
Blue wind gathering brown leaves, Spinning them
In angry circles
Under snow clouds with a
Witch wind carrying the sound of freight trains,
Coal and syrup tankers,
Box cars covered with graffiti
Hieroglyphics of the inner city. Dark cars blurring
Brown and black,
In rhythmic clacking order,
One then another, then 126,
Then a caboose, with a conductor you never see anymore. And the gates lift,
And the cold wind rocks
The car as you drive along
Numbly. And you slowly learn the lows and highs
Run on parallels,
Like dark trains along the
Clackety rails of your life,
And the cold front defies
The sun, While I draw
This dark stone,
And the images of winter
Engrave my heart like a stylus, And the mantra
Of dark memories
Become my dark comforter,
And I draw them to me.
And I count the dark horses
Running over darkened hills.
And I picture a barroom,
And I'm lost among the wolves, And I study the **** on my finger,
And my life runs red in my hand, While I wait upon the
Spaces, looking for my pearl,
My red pearl of abandon,
And I draw the wound within me,
I am, I am my Normandy,
As I count my breath between spaces, As I
Gather the darkness around me.
Odessa, Odessa, lying in the sun.
What fable you bring me,
What fate have I wrought?
O tepid sunrise,
I beseech your graven order,
And laugh at your presumption,
And I draw the dark hand,
And the Joker smiles at my
Misfortune, While my millstone draws me to
Deeper water,
As I plummet the square root
Of infinity.
And it's a dark hole,
My dark star,
Pulling my being to abyss,
As I laugh, laugh upon the
Graven ground, And haunt
The dreams that haunt me forever.
I hope this poem doesn't scare any of my readers away. Times have been hard the last few weeks. That's why my output has been less. This poem is brand new. I wish all well during this hard time. TJ.
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!
TJ Struska May 2020
A pale horse riding
Atop a dark Vista,
Knowing what name
Is writ in the dust

Eschewing lineage
Of Abel's dark brother,
Red roses bleed
In Neptune's cold sun.

Here at the bottom
Of Mickey's lost hour,
All rails terminate,
The end if the line.

The pen is my muse
A linier connection,
Writing Mozart's
Concerto of rust,

An ill wind finds
It's way with the weather,

A muttering stranger
Lost in the rain.

These bleating words coming
In hollow smoke signals,
Chittering of nothing
Drunk on the stoop


Pinned to your sleeve
Like a hag in a *******,
A crumb for the gods
So easily amused.


Dredging the dregs
Of one's own possessions,
Setting them down
In buckets of rain.

A sad reminder
Rimmed with compulsion,
A harbinger skittering
Alone in the dirt.

Here in the mill
Stinking of textile,
Memories haunt
A crumbling wall.

No need to mention,
It comes when it wants to,
A brutish devil
Whispers obliquely,

I cannot remember
What dream I've become.

I kneel in the night,
The tigers surround me,
Strange dreams in half- life
Blue saucers of sun.

Here in the dark square,
Ring up Odessa,
It presees the future,
So fast and so numb.

In the depth of the Maelstrom,
Abyss in the darkness,
Hollow upon
A billion blood sea,

As fish swim Lakes
Black at the bottom,
Ghosts of oblivion
Dance in the clouds.

Twice what it's worth
Is half it undoing,

No I remember
What dream I've become.
I woke up on Monday dizzy and disoriented, it lasted for days, I was afraid I couldn't write. My depression heightened. In this four days, I wrote 2 poems, this is the one about depression. I think many poets can relate..TJ
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
because all the narratives are slipping...
once upon a time...
once upon.... there was a time...
and people had their lives...
huddled: bonded...
spoke to the fire...
teased a shadow drunk on a night-out
not returning with a one-night-stand
****-budy...
teased a shadow drunk:
for a handshake that would
become a classical: greek... wrestling...
the advent of judo...
sort of... hey there!
         i'm bored of the lies...
             i'm actually more than merely
bored: i'm numbed...
here's to! fishing for: the last covenant
of nazis...
just today...
i was watching the odessa file... 1974...
jo(h)n voi(gh)t...
                             even though...
****... this... **** that...
a people so... "conquered":
brought together...
                 what speaking of land...
to be conquered...
             yes: fishing for nazis...
scouting for them too...
the diaspora finally congregated...
i have to... feed into feeling...
an itch of...
the bother... should...
the words of: Balaam the Diviner...
              i guess i am a "diviner"...
i sentence each word with:
please! spare... this land this...
whatever it might be...
    of which i am... "exiled" from...
i keep the mothertongue in the shadow...
rhaspodic...
         we had affairs in the shadows:
when we wrote...
not much fun... when all the rotting
woodworks are busying themselves
with evixction notices for the:
karaluchy - cockroaches...
              
   two or three words:
   the original advent for the pursuit
of life... hell... that almost feels like
feeding ten piglets!

the black lives protests were just
an interlude...
the attack in reading with three dead:
you keep a libyan hound
on a leash for long enough...
collateral damage...
     of the union to oust Gaddafi...
i would never be a fan of anyone...
so... gifted in exfoliation of attire...
but then again:
fishing for nazis... without...
their... signature... hugo boss...
uniforms...
          who dressed these "neos"
in forgetable... attire?
   uncorked a bottle of champagne
when figuring out...
the new innovation of what was
once: the radio...

i.e. make them... wear...
forgetable... attire...
       some grey suit...
     but... of course the but!
   they can't succumb to the eccentricity
of... wearing the same ****...
over and over again:
the trick would still be played...
that they might...
for themselves: of course...
and have the clothes washed
and primed for re-use...
like back in school...

                  i could swear to have clicked
on my usual ctrl + c / + p...
wikipedia.com...
   for the ц: not being on the keyboard...
by "magic fingers" and all the more
a "magic will"... redirected to...
russlandjournal.de/en/...
    
          ah... "surds"... "signs"...
      like...                 the g-nome...
                           the g-nostic...
                                  otherwise: some variation
of... diaGnostics...
                             my own little...
bless the veil of inconvenience...

my little escapism: well it's fresh...
it's not a newspapers' opinion column...
when journalism was something
noble...
          it's fresh and it's...
how did i abandon finishing Dicken's
   the Pickwick Papers?
                      to have to glue the ridge...
that page turning skeleton...
it is... after all...
an edition from the 19th century...
i want to finish it...
but i dare say... if i did...
the binding would not retain its:
intactness...

                  so... are we still
scouting and fishing for nazis?
the romanced old baddies?
      the ones that would... somehow...
agitate the arab world post 1945
in shady dealings...
how... the diaspora would finally
congregate...
and a people could be robbed
of their land...
an israel...

        but the... diaspora didn't...
"finally" congregate... a sceptical bunch
of kippah kaddish qabbalah scientists...
ibn saud and the myth of the dajjal...
by god: the arabs would never drink...
impossible... camel jockeys that they:
were... are...
so... sugar-frenzy!  
                 they do like their sweets...
and sexed-up juices of trickle
phlegm from the harem of harems of:
****** olives and ******...
                      grapes...

            hell... wouldn't it be just nice...
to see someone... donning a ******* with
pride... for... open-range practice?
but these's days...
it's all a game of... so... who's who?

arab playboys or new-money beijing
shrimp whittle-wichard squirt: a squint
on the altar of lemon-C... some minor
vitamin deity...

                  narratives: all shrapnel...
    all existential "complications"...
have... honest to "god"...
become... constipations...
and the best of these are in england...
what with the school of...
that aesthetic...
  aesthetic-of-curating-hierarchical-norms-/-standards-/-expectations...
i was looking for a word...
a german hyphenated centipede was born...

etiquette!
what was a "complication" came to be easily
served as... a constipation...
oh... and i've had my fair share of
those: wild adventures of Mr. Turdy...

was once: a not once upon a time: je(t)ц(t)цeit:
or the concept of abolishing a theory of gravity
and the great devauliton of a van gogh painting...
classical verbiage...
word salad of misnomers...
if they were only misnomers...

candly floss of stripped nuances...
the elder: a democrat...
"social distancing"
or the... grand revisionism /
revival of the feng shui...

igorant moi...
   feng shui: a geomancy...
...........................................
.........­...........................................
.................................
...............................­........
......................................................
.­..........................................

        (my my! and that is!
a schematic for...
a loitering... paragraph)...

   who among the porcelain folk...
tinged with...
       is to speak of chiromancy...
or... to treat the stars and their
constellations...
with... impertinent questions...
to salvage some sort of a remaining
whole: that some man lived...
that some man...
would be...

a zen parody... a zen anything:
anyone: anywhere...

      to proscribe a tao placebo:
is to live a taoist sickness...
to live "anything" and an "anytime"...
to be so conflated with the confines
of an immediacy: a heideggerian: dasein...
that there's a "there"...
sein... there are more connotations
being excavated from
the etymological "term": unwavering noun...
concerning being: a space...
a coordinate...
than there's... wild dreams!
annotations to subscribe to
a temporal fatalism... by that...
indeed... time...
                  fall of the: and gathered
knee of amen...

                bridal coup:
this.. laced fake sellers' poignancy...
the brightest of minds...
and the darkest of tongues...

i came to this posit: inquiring...
my last... salvaged futility...
and it had to become apparent...
i had to find myself:
unable to leisure...
for the eventuality of all eventualities...
the supper of languid:

the mushroom hijacked the brain
of ape...
              parody...
the tree imitated serpet in shedding
its core... of bark...
the elevation of answers...
via... the 1960s psychadelic
experimentation phaze...
              + + + +....
                                we had to...
acknowledge the gemini:
clone... and the brain subjected to...
the pickling jar...

            why wouldn't i partner
up with... the death closure dynamics...
verbiage...
yes... yes... because...
the sober are the sane:
no sight of dolly the prodded:
proud matriarch fo miles around!
b'ah b'ah...
   i sell my consonants
with an ambiguity of vowels...
every... chance... i... get...
to have to: and i have to...
divinate the tetragrammaton...
in the "H" the vowel-catcher...
phoneticism of the god of words...
and in the beginning...
easy "thing" to desecrate...
the hierogylphs...

   the 'ebrew god wouldn't...
desecrate... the roman alphabet...
wouldn't... desecrate the phonetic
encoding of the greeks...
cul de sac of "adventure"!
             i hear...
the litany of the gods of the conquering
hebrews!
the 'ebrew god... didn't...
conquer and...
the egyptian hieroglyphs... were...
conquered...
                  canninites... canine bark-alongs...
dog-whisperers...
            
the hebrew conquered...
           cuneiform...
                  scribble fancies of arabs...
the revenge of Keturah
the mother of Khadījah
this... inbreeding of violence...
old sway old...
                   new sway new...

             what cave... when working with...
sand?
i **** on it: perhaps...
there might arrive a castle...
i blow on it...
   sand come... sand go...
or... sand go... sand come...

the dehydrated mind is everyone's
new norm:
because: the cpllective said so?
never the sanity of the mandarins...
lie on top of of lie...
cherry-topped-up-with-lies...
but still...
a "forward vector"...

                but the hebrews...
couldn't erase the roman alphabet...
or the greek alphabet...
they... managed to hide the runes...
they best hid the glagolitic script...
but what good did that?
when the greek solved a revival of
the glagolitic script and served
up a palette for cyrillic?

ergo? the hebrew god failed...
the fate of the hebrew people...
with the 20th century...
as a zenith...
was also their nadir...
          the god of the word:
of phonetic encoding...
you can't... somehow...
stage a fake war...
when... the roman alphabet was
to be used... in computer: code...
encoding...
you can't... erase this progress!

  you couldn't with a hierogylphic owl...
so much... teasing...
did... the mandarin: your god:
your sanctity saviour: of what?
god of "gods" blush... shy away...
the hebrew phonetic letters...
posisted against the mandarin
octopus?
what is it? crude bollocking:
and a shard...
          a truly... ripe... "prophecy"...
solomon's harem
the envy of a newly bred...
muhammad...

          i asked the willow...
why it had to gimmicj wilting...
with a Y... as it always turbned...
not the willow... the oak...
sure as ****: not the birch of pine...
to leisure... aging...
by... leusuring a loss of...
skin... leather...

  easy target practice for the god
of the hebrews...
              somehow...
the numbers were also concerned...
for all the love of hiding your vowels...
like they might be
diacritical markers of "accent"...

          hello: pseudo-sand peoples...
4 (ה)...
                  that's as best as i can arrive
at...
kippah... kaddish... qabbalah and lot...
a people: a country...
not worth invading...
a... diaspora... a people...
not worth displacing back:
into a congregation of:
"nationhood"...
if only... israel...
and there came...
the paupers of the vatican...

   i guess... i guess:
i'm not guessing... the returns policy
of that... parody of a clan...

a diet of diatribe...
  how can the hebrew alphabet claim...
superiority...
over the roman or the greek...
alphabet...
     "alphabet": phonetic encoding...
when... the greek moved into the theoretical
constants of science...
and roman... remained: instilled...
    for "phonetic" questions...
  
hebrew: proto-writing...
        i would wait... for hebrew to fail...
when being... dashed...
forged... upon the wave...
crashing onto the caverns of seafront
mandarin!

            to retain some of these letters:
as numbers...
is enough...
            but sorry no sorry...
        ktav ashuri...
   the hebrew god... jealous and proud...
the norse gods... bended their knee...
and became invisibly: doubly apparent...
from Runes unto Rome....
finally! a phonetic encoding system...
that... the hebrews...
couldn't perfect:
or find themselves ar superior odds to...

40 years became 2000 years...
a slow decay i.q. lesson
culminating in the denotated rubric of:
auschwitz... sorry... sorry told...
you can't... treat...
the proto-italian perfection...
like it's some... *******...
hieroglyphic! like it some...
proto-borrowed... syriac / cuneiform!
sand-****** kippah-u.f.o.!

savvy? no savvy? we can have
this argument going... on and on!
it's not like...
  i have care for the crude...
it's not like people are going
to return to the cafe or subject...
they'd hope... themselves
to a live maggot and concert...

you can't... you can't...
perfect what's already perfect
in latin with hebrew...
the music! the music!
     a cul de sac war project of ******* whipping!
which is all the need for
a circumcision!
added
of a worth of a niqab!
...
   i'm starting to think that... the kippah...
is a side-project for...
investing in solar-panels...
honest to god: no joke...
it's like the hebrews are being bribed...
and bribed: auschwitz nutz truez...

     because... the hebrew phonetic encoding...
system of x-ray letters...
can... will... somehow...
get rid of the latin...
   they couldn't get rid of the greek...
when greek became cyrillic...
useful idiots... and a laughing god.

my former respect has become...
a... shambo: a ****-pit...
shambles: exact!

         i always hoped to... keep my...
pretty.... toes... to the last.
Kurt Philip Behm Mar 2022
Deep in the fountain
of life’s betrayal
My knife drank freely,
a last denial
With screams unanswered,
he tried to run
The first of many
—from Odessa’s son

(Warsaw: March, 2022)
Aditya Roy May 2020
In Odessa, the Turkish have conquered the part of the world
I cannot get your honey for a *** of gold
As you make pure art out love so secret
Love is like the brush strokes of the sky administered with thirst
We watch paintings in the morning
With a cup of coffee in the evening
The world has not changed from the Byzantine period
The stars are still far and the fault still lies in us
Caesar conquered more than he could adore
Yet, I will treat you as a clam treats its pearl
Rounded around it like a sleeping boy
A secret society was formed in 1814 to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, in Odessa which is in Ukraine.

— The End —