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Nat Lipstadt Feb 2014
slept and soaked
the sabbath Saturday away.
the body, achey breaky,
cranked and croaked,
slewed by a slew of common miscreants.
one, a stitch in my side,
feeling like someone's inside,
wanting to be born, feet first,
coming out the side of my chest,
instead of my ******

so,
promised poems and bills to pay,
put aside for a more poetic bill paying day.

awoke once near midday,
an unusual wake up call,
my nostrils do attend,
when the honey odors of
cinnamon and vanilla invade
the french shores of my subconscious.

I love three things French:
the elegance of their language grande,
their frenchified fries and frenchified toast.

was fed some french toast,
bathed in vanilla and cinnamon,
thus drugged,
went back to bed again.

as I drifted off for the third time today,
heard the woman dramatic say:
"must have, must have,"
two words that I from my past,
consider a curse,
a grave phrase of choice of my ex-wife,
her way of saying I didn't measure up.

must have
paprika
to roast your chicken
for Sunday dinner.


relieved beyond measure,
as I to dreamless sleep dispatched,
vague recall a poem forming about the
spices in my life.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.bacon doesn't exist in Polish cooking... podgarle... the under-neck meat of a pig... or just plain lard... rather than olive oil... 1 onion per 1 scrambled egg... paprika and lots of garlic... and definitely some cayenne pepper... certainly more onions than eggs, scrambled... and definitely using animal fat... to fry it on... hell... if vegetable fats are so healthy... why is there a term for the vegetative state of immobility of an otherwise animate being?

****! not against Norwegians...
what the **** am i saying?!
spotted one vegan girl...

              pork head terrine...
slavic version of
the Scotch haggis -
      
                 omnivore -

        you eat what?
i eat anything that, once upon
a time, moved...

                i've actually fallen in love
with a fetish that i circumcise into
a lobster...

  i want to eat a lobster...
chicken bone marrow isn't enough...
i want a lobster...

              i want to taste the foods
that could cure me of
ever wanting the 72 virgins
promised by Islam...

    instead? i want the feast
of Belshazzar...
to begin with...

i don't like bacon...
i prefer prosciutto...
   i haste bacon... it's too crude...
too anglo-saxon...

i hate the stink of frying it...
******* hate it like
a Muslim....
    prosciutto? different story...

and i hate ***. sushi...
smoked salmon,
and raw herrings in cream dill
sauce?
   or with pickled cucumbers
in a cream sauce?

thumbs up...
i'll only eat sushi,
if i take a knife in public...
and eat it with a cut up lemon...

raw lemon and sushi?
i can do that...
                  but i need a bench,
in a public space...
and a knife...
                      i can stomach that
sort of sushi,...
but? scotch smoked salmon,
of the Baltic king,
namely the herring
in a creamy sauce...

you come near me with
that ******* about calorie
intake?!
  i'll tell you to stomach
a ******* rhino!

               not here, not now...
    i don't like the sort of impoliteness
of people who do not eat
the other person's food...
****** me off...
eat the food, **** the turban!
i said! eat the food, forget
donning the turban journalistic
opportunity!

****-wits!

               the food! the food!
eat the food!
you don't eat the food?
you might as well be donning
a donkey's **** on your heard,
thinking it a Sikh turban
on, your 'ed...
you, *******! ****!

eat the food...
   is it me, or having watched
channel 4, in England,
finding the English people
overtly picky about
the food they eat?!
you figure that one out?
they're picky... don't you think?
picky as if half of them are
allergic to nuts!

             ah...
but the English want to both
entertain the food, & the clothes...
       goodie ol luck!
      
the "thing" you've had,
prior to 1945?
you're not getting it back, forget it!
i too remember Tony Blaire
ensuring
Hong Kong was a
revival of the ancient Greek
city-states...
        
                 love the diet...
            too bad i eat the rare,
most decent architectural pieces
of pork...
     like the head,
meat + cartilage + fat + sclera...
   in a terrine...
   yummy... ******* yummy...
      
      what else?
chicken hearts broth,
chicken stomach broth...
    cow intestines broth...
   pig liver sauce...
         czernina...
   duck blood soup...

                   the Semites
and the Arabs can have
their Kosher and Halal rites...

we? the people of the north?
we have the economics
of the purity of a slaughtered
animal...

unlike the Semites?
we use all the bits,
best for frying or worst for the broth...

which segregates us from
Golgotha and last supper poetics,
Semitic poetics,
of invigorating a stance
for the...
     transmutation of human
flesh, subsequently the
        refusal of pork,
but somehow normalizing cannibalism;
Rabbi?
  how about? NO!
NO!
   i rather eat pork, curated
to Italian standards of smoking...
i will not eat the filth of the *******
catholic Eucharist!
   no chance in hell!
the Semitic critique of pork
is my critique of the... "bread"...
you eat it!
    i'm not eating it...
now? sheave the silence,
   and the lamb...
      oh yeah... i'm anti-semitic -
against one Jew... hey-zeus christos!
I busted my brains
open and scooped
out the raw flesh
and useless ****** material

only to replace it
with dashes
of schizophrenic paprika
and hits of new world
ordered acid....
onlylovepoetry Mar 2019
first I smell myself.

the deep bass tonality of my musk,
hot, creamy, sweetness unique, of coffee and creamy,
my owned sweat oiled secretions massaged into her skin
emplaced by vigorous parts rubbing and tongue caressing,
under the fading shadows of my glancing, desirous admirings


then I smell herself.

sinking sunset glimpses of last nights parfume parfait,
scattered in random strategic locations architecturally planned,
some flavors come over me like modest waves,
others spelunking found in crevices, cracks and caves,
where humans tread in guileless search of guiltless pleasure

then I smell our sharings.

lemon and thyme, paprika, sea salt and pepper,
a basted rub laid upon animal skin consuming, and consumed,
the vinaigrette balsamic and California yellow raisins, pine nuts,
decorating leaves of red soil spinach and spicy arugula,
word salads, so miraculously ingenious, you swear off eating flesh

then I smell our combinations.

the air conditioned atmosphere that blends us properly chilled,
the olive oils pressed from two colored differing skins,
the mortal and pestle finely grinding our own fresh crumbled dirt,
appearing in places where dirt is wet panko crumbs encrusting us,
our combined liquidity, shaken and stirred, drying in martini tandem

it is 8:17am and this recipe of reciprocity,
at its most pungent peaking,
for soon raining waterfalls of potable city water
and the sophistry of French soap,
the pseudoscience of modern chemical shampoo,
together erasing, scrubbing away this poems aromatherapy tapestry,
your perplexed complexing nostrils will mock you once more,
for ever disbelieving, thinking you could no longer write of
only love poetry that crested high above the trite


Friday, March 29 2019
Aroma olp musk balsamic paprika sea salt ***** martini olp
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
.perhaps in my company we wouldn't be... opening a bottle of red wine... to let it breathe... or pouring it into a bowl to give it more air to breathe with: otherwise on life-support machine through the bottle-neck... right here, right now, we have... a glass bottle of beer (13, guinness hop lager) and 4 cans of stella artois (the wife beater's lager, so they say)... yes... beer in cans... for all intesive purposes - a good way to transport beer... in aluminium cans... but we're not bums... we don't drink beer straight from cans... we pour our beer into a tall glass and wait... so the beer can exfoliate like aladdin's jinn in the glass... away from the confines of the can... we don't drink beer from a can... we can drink it straight from a bottle... but if it comes in a can... we pour it into a tall glass... just so... so there's some head on top... we're not english in that respect either... of cutting the head (of foam) off the beer... which is probably why i always order a stout in a pub... you can't pull one without the creme de la creme on top... a head on a beer is what makes it look less like carbonated **** or concentrated lemonade... we're not bums... we drink beer from glasses... never directly from cans - the metal gets in the way... a beer like a wine needs to breathe too.

i found that there are only two types of music styles
that are suitable for drinking -
that's... drinking and not going out -
playing a cat with an imaginary fireplace...
the less imaginary fireplace being:
a stare confined to... watching a pillow...
and the general schematic of a bed...
and sitting hunched in imitation: all crow because
no crow doesn't get you far
on golgotha of daydreams: if only i...
humble servant of dusty feet - the tourist,
the pilgrim - would set off...
         on an amphetamine riddled skew into
a messiah complex adventure...

                     but not me...
                once upon a time the only music
worth drinking to was the blues...
            a long, long time ago...
                hell: once upon a time any music
would do if we all decided to go dancing...
or at least waited for the dance to come of its own
volition and not mine: i.e. the me in i would
just be dragged under the teasing waves
and slurped out to sea...

                   a thousand waves are all but the single
tongue of some swindling kraken...
drinking and random shamanic interludes in
the youth of the night-club...
when there wasn't a tally for score or...
the ones shot down by manfred...
good thing he was called manfred...
   and not some swabian helmut! oi oi!
                                             von Richthofen!
and that was when...
           until came the five beers and on
the 4th it became apparent...
                                  the red garland quintet...
soul junction...

   and it's not... a gerry mulligan's night lights...
piano sentimentality and the ode
to all things urban, cosmopolitan...
                        yes... it's not grenadine in that
sulk of yours... it's cranberry juice...
the city and... the sewers and...
                                 jazz for the urban scenes
of: anywhere but the park...
the graveyard... a choo-choo slowing into
a station... and billy joel come:
mid-life crisis and a new york state of mind...
while over 'ere we have...
     teasing the woods: where concrete ends
and mud begins... thus we can have our Adam...
and...

only today i was walking past his bride...
doing my odd citizen duty of recycling glass...
and buying the amber sedatives (carbonated)
for an evening with some cannonball adderley
or some donnie byrd... or a horace silver...
that's the beauty of jazz...
the music is all there is... the names come and go...
sonny rollins and the story behind
the bridge... and how he would pretend to
but not pretend to... retire and go off and practice
on the bridge so as to not disturb his neighbours...
all the details are there: on the vinyl sleeve
from 1963...

now that's jazz... i don't even want to mind
how pretentious this might sound...
but... it doesn't in that: jazz is jazz in that there
might come some great improv. -
after all: it's all somewhat improv. -
   but you can't really make such basic
generalißations...
        speedy-shoom-of-a-choo-choo whizzing past...
schematic!
   classical music is all a priori...
                              jazz... it's all a posteriori...
how? when people phone in between
1pm and 5pm to classic.fm and they make requests...
they sometimes ask for something specific...
but usually... they vaguely allude to... a feeling...
something "uplifting" - play something "uplifting"...
ergo... there's this... a priori "item"(?)
in the music that's... an expectation...

          i do know what jazz sounds like
a quintent: drums, bass, piano, trumpet, sax...
yes... the guitar... asking the algorithm:
a quintet is five - what is six?
        sixtet - d'uh... sextet... well that's the basic
"i know what jazz sounds like"...
but with jazz there's always this lag...
it's this lagging behind:
    i don't exactly know what i'll feel until
only after i've heard it and in the meantime too...
jazz is all a posteriori -

while classical music for me is all a priori...
given that... it's not exactly improvised:
there's the orchestra, the movie, the script...
   and it's such a music that doesn't worship
itchy fingers of improv. - the stale or rather:
the head-about-to-explode of scoring the music like
a dissected **** of beef...
the cuts for the violins the cuts for the woodwinds...
more so: the almost shy drumming...
the wet-drumming... like rain playing
rattle fingers on tin (roofs)... or what rain would
sound like... if it was made from sand...
either way... jazz is a baggage...

hardly any sort of envisioning a journey from
(a) priori through to (b) posteriori -
and at least with jazz... you never have to really
cite who's playing... in a passing gesture
for all necessary bookmark purposes
of: where i am in the library of jazz...
unlike in classical music... where...
it's either Mozart, Beethoven or then again...
some obscure composer... perhaps ola glejlo...
but it's less about the music per se:
it's about the music of THE composer...
bonus marks for keeping to a rigid diet of one
and completing the herculean task of digesting
his entire oeuvre...

-       so i was walking past the most usual scene...
a car stopped... and she got out...
she must have been no more than 16 pushing 18...
the heavy make-up hid her otherwise boyish
contorts... a short black dress...
and as she got out of the cab...
she had her high-heel shoes in her hands...
   she was walking the cement barefoot...
i peered into her eyes... the lights were out...
perhaps her soul was screaming - perhaps this was
her first disappointment - and it was only... what...
not even 10pm on a saturday night...
my nights of youthful regret usually came after 3am
having to wrestle a berserker...
or how a dog looks like when it takes
to beer with a fond heart and only three legs...
god forbid but "they" would also cut my tail off
to further throw me off balance...
the walked passed and i looked into the cab...
a very, very nervous asian was looking at me
and then her... this didn't exactly look like...
she was ***** or was fighting to escape...
           aren't those scenarios usually stage in and around
woods - without any pedestrians walking past?
call it a trainwreck a carwreck...
                      or just running mascara...
that bad, eh?
at this point... society is a cruise ship...
and i'm stuck with ottis and none of that sentimentality
of the dock: running away with a bag of
chips wrapped in newspaper away from
seagulls... who... are apparently prone
to kleptoparasitism - a real thing... i swear to god...
the animals that want to eat in the realm
of trans-species... dogs have had their
kleptoparasistism repressed: crumbs from the table...
the chicken bones with hopes for
cartilege and someone who... is bad at
cleaning the flesh off the bone: pucker up...
move aside leech... watch this slurp...
ol' hank mobley and wayne shorter...
        one cascade after another...
5th beer in and...

yeah... so that's what a carwreck looks like...
for a girl in her late teens...
the cute black dress...
   getting out of the cab holding her high heels...
walking home barefoot...
she wasn't crying just yet...
but i could see puffy tender demon baron
of the soft cheeks readying to turn into
medussa's stare-grip... but not there yet...
this must have been her first time at "life"
and the night life and saturday...
         the cab driver looked scared shitless...
as if frozen in time... about to have his photograph
taken by a more sensible shadow of his...
i did think she just escaped a bad
session of prostitution...
but not even prostitutes look so ******* gloomy
as she did...

the ******* ***** it up -
the pundit ***** it up - the show goes on...
stage or no stage... an audience or no audience...
those eyes though... not yet crying...
but they felt... like wheeping oysters nonetheless...
you know when eyes are like that...
teasing bulging out... they appear dimmed
at first... but that's a dimming before
the sparkle of tears...
it's the 29th of febuary - yes...
mr. zodiac wasn't kind to those who still believe
in the horoscope but never tried
gambling on a winning team or horse...
it's still winter and those poor feet of hers...
she must have told the cab driver to stop...
hell... half a mile before she would get home...
a 6ft2 115kg sore thumb up with a beard
up ahead: stop! let me walk past him...
that's why i gave an inquisitive stare at the cab driver...
the cab driver was looking at me...
aren't the **** victims the ones jumping
out of the cab as it speeds off or whatnot?
so this was... staged?
              i read the "situation" wrong...
well no... i didn't find a lancelot in me...
there was no door to be held open...
           not tonight...
                                           i was in a mood for
beer and jazz... and luckily for me...
marvel of all marvels...
     haig club (1627) was sold at a bargain...
                        down from 25 quid to 16 quid...
goodbye excessive drinking the cheap *****...
hello: clubman haig... is it whiskey...
is it ms. amber... or is it chanel no. 5 -
                   is it whiskey or is it a perfume?
a snapper of a dinner standing-up...
   the scent of the last bite still on my moustache
even though i had washed my teeth...
the beer bottle opened - a drizzle on the hand
and then the hand smearing the liquid all over
the stinking hairs from an unwelcome scent...
i don't mind stinking like hops...
                  but hops is better than smelly food...

- regrets? ah yes... the "what if" universe at large...
that "whaf if" this and "what if" not...
"what if" yes and... when a man takes to walk
the street at night... he's only looking for empty
streets and... the hope of not seeing his reflection:
which is never about abruptly stopping
a cab and taking your shoes off
and walking in a tight-knit black dress
having met the world and...
                     was it heartbreak or just...
disappointment that... there are no unicorns
and she isn't daddy's precious?

any of the rudy van gelder editions...
                      "what if" i had more than just these
words... a barren wasteland of a flat
with no furnishings, not a book to call it a genesis
of a private library... not a single record
to play... no bed no curtains...
and she was the: honey-catch and snare and...
what if i were still in my late teens and
didn't have these invisible tattoos of historical
dates and the tattoos that riddle bones
that are... "habits of hygiene"...
      by hygiene i imply: ontological fixtures...
immoveable objects of accumulating my mortal
years for this formal circumstance of
the worst magic trick of all...
                   transient and... packaged elsewhere...
apparently going nowhere...

if this was a truly urban scenario...
but we're talking essex...
the outskirts of greater london...
if i bothered myself tonight i might go
to a place where i'd sit on a throne of a stump
of oak and listen to owls...
spot a rabbit, spot a badger... the foxes would
come of their own accord...
and perhaps even a deer or two... or three...
there's no glit of a picaddily circus romance:
when a girl decides to get out of a cab early
and put her porcelain toes on the wintry cement...
as if: supposing she be enticing me...
as i was thinking about the scared-shitless
cab driver...        

to have once upon a time believe in love:
the sort of love you'd see in movies...
but that's of course...
before you'd get a chance to see love...
in opera...
blue pill red pill... spiderweb of fiction...
blah blah...
watch the sort of love in movies...
then go and see an opera...
most notably verdi's la traviata...
  the movies fizzle out and you don't really
need to read this to begin with...
        i was in love once...
it was a love that was in love with itself...
          a mirage a carrot on a stick...
probably something akin to this sort of impromptu...
rescuing a girl walking barefoot home...
oh sure... happens almost every other saturday...

- the beer is for these musings, for the jazz
and for... cleaning the kidneys and a work-out
for the bladder... the shot-at-a-crescendo
will come with the haig club whiskey...
is 70cl really worth 25 quid?

- there's a difference between food with a USE BY date
and food with a BEST BEFORE date...
most notably goat's cheese...
once the best before date expires...
which is way way down the line from
the use by date... the cheese starts to taste
like... ash...

i should know since i know of the alternative
to doing shots of tequilla...
the salt is replaced with licking some cigarette
ash...
the tequilla is replaced with *****...
and the slice of lemon is replaced with
black peppercorns...

so i do know what ash tastes like...
piquant tastes: this omelette of an octopus and
of tongue...

- society is a cruise ship and i'm waving it goodbye...
welcoming a sunset of a sea as calm
as a mirror... telling my feet to take root
and stand... inaccessible...
otherwise... i am barren when it comes to having
some (h. p.) lovecraftian sensibilities from
maine... aloof and anemic... anemic with bloodshot
eyes...

- of course she isn't a mystery...
the narrative would run: the little match girl...
hans... hans! hans?! hans andersen is drilling
a hole into my head about... a woman walking
home barefoot...
yes... but she is walkig home...
unlike the little match girl...
and unlike the little match girl...
this girl was carrying a pair of shoes with her...
it's not my problem whether
i'm the sore thumb that "got in the way"...
a fork in the road: like any other fork...
like any other road...

do you have to reach being 34 to see these
teenage break-ups and regrets come and bump into
you after you've done...
that most spectacular feat of towing a backpack
full of glass for recycling?
where is one to recycle bones?!

- right not all the ***** in the world is...
something of an adhesive... a hitchhiker pollen...
a hard-on of: ****** yourself for a hard-on
just because even flapping a pancake will do right now...
to ease constipation whenever necessary...

- it's a torilla... but it's wrapped like a burrito...
well... it's a torilla... kultur shock -
sarajevo - the entry level shock-awe and
blitzkrieg of drinking from the fountain
of the Haig...

- second tier... to treat pornographic movies
like... early cinema... silent...
otherwise a return to the magazine form...
and the ripe imagination readied for:
improv... or... when was the last time
my left hand didn't feel like an oyster...
and an oyster didn't feel like a leash...
and a woman's ****** stopped being
an hour worth 120 quid? -

             - third tier... the haig club whiskey
is not worth 25 quid... it's over-rated...
you're basically paying for the bottle...
i'll stick to my guns...
only the irish know how to make whiskey
on these isles... bushmills: mellow, tame...
the picts have decided to lodge
a smoking salmon into their barrels to die...
i'm supposed to have an aftertaste of vanilla...
with all that smoke... i'd be happy to taste
hungary and smoked paprika! that would
be a bonus to boot! -

- i can appreciate the picts for trying...
but let's just leave brewing whiskey to the irish...
and let's keep the english away from hops...
they'll make an undrinkable ale from it...
never the lager...

   - armed with balkan rock... standing before
the h'american monolith of tongue and culture...
or... just before what's filtered for the export...

- no... of course i don't think h'americans are dumb...
i just think there's only a naive majority...
i'm going to find the vermin and huddle among
them...

- sooner or later we'll be calling the germans
come spring... for winter provisions...
"keeshond" or: hund... i much prefer the latter...
from under the iron curtain forged from
a broken jaw when biting the curb of:
under the silicon veil... nowhere else to go...
beside Ishrael...
                        
          remains of the ottoman - which is hardly
me put into an iron maiden of akimbo...
where's the geisha and the samurai?!

- is your beard long enough?
      like mine... i tease it... catch it with braille
cardinals: the thumb the index and middle fingers...
twirl it... wait for some thread to tie it together
into a hanging ******* of a bundle...
while at the same time:
          before you... a throng of vermin...
this beard... a magic flute!
the zenith of my thinking...
and ultimately: the nadir of any narrative
that might be inclined to escape and
not become 3D...

- i listen to songs in german...
i put on airs of pride - my chin starts to contort into
the moon's scythe and sickle...
even if the night is overcast with beard,
or cloud...

- then i put on a record that's 20 years old...
deftones' white pony...
and i remember being a teen...
hungry for hormonal diet...
a diet to stop the bones from aching
as they grew extra sprouts:
adverse to the skin and photosynthesis...
bones that were expected to grow
entombed... not in flesh...

- sketches from the gasoline additive when
it comes to a beer, starter...
otherwise: elite... gonna breed on top
of the general... pucker up the tremor for a vibrato
kiss and leech her lips off...
to expose her most pristine:
todlächeln -
                           not a chelsea grin...
the joker lapse... i mean... extending the shaving
lines and just, completely, forgetting there's
any botox involved to grow a peach
from a duck of the reinvention of
the deflating balloon...

   leave no selfie without it...
                   herr grinsen: die / das / die / das...
i keep forgetting the definite plural and
the definite singular... feelz... feels...
maximum impromptu: das bösartigwimmern...
anything in german at this point...
sounds better than...
wenigbruder englisch...
                       dies, mein krawatte beste...
alle schwarz alle weiß:
      say to me... nein pinguine willkommen...

anything to keep these mosquitos these
zeppelins away... alt vater großartig Schwab
from this... herd of minor dicta
of the children of the house of ßaß...
translated nomad from the high pressure
***** basin of:
later, trajectory... later... the yawn and canyon...
and the sky above...

- beer first... whiskey after...
shrapnel... and gasoline... no car... no speeding...
fast but otherwise still walking...

            - a hurrah and the cohort of a hum...
to match the echo of the centipede...
         the silence and otherwise the simplified
complications of a conversation...
the bed torn between *** and sleep...
between saturday sunday and monday through
to friday...
   and the need to drink with someone else...
"the need"...
          
the skulls breaks at the sight of sea-riddled-and-*****
cliffs... daggers persuaded to be forever sharpened...
the fiddly parts of ***** as accountants when
it came to the pennies, copper, and granules
of sand... seized: the rivers of time...
constipated shock value elevated...
                            
                                am i to find a lover when
the orchestra tells me...
these words will never find a dear sir / madam
or circle round for a yours sincerely...
                godzilla... the theme i remember from
the days when the japanese still had control over the beast...
otherwise... an overweight t-rex with...
arm extensions... the lotus feet of the chinese...
which also includes...
the savory diet of... tendering dog meat...
i.e. beating the dog to a plum softening...
which is: then again... not curing the already dead
curated meat...
life aware needs to be involved...
brick by brick brick on brick...
the status quo: made in china...

         cheap whiskey... although in an expensive bottle...
that is the haig club whiskey...
        so much for ezra pound admiring
the ******* ideograms...
what's to admire... when...
it ends up being a crude...
current latin emoji-infiltrated grafitti
equivalent to: CUL8R...
               chow-chuckle-mein-hong-shui-chew?
all that intricacy into the ideogram...
and all that remains is...
bat soup... and an advantage at playing
poker... omnivores...
you'd think that Islam would be...
more geared to break ranks among the omnivores...
like all the fickle gods... a good joke...
they abhor / are told to herd sheep
because: what sort of pig would survive the desert
and not become crispy bacon...
camels are fine too... as are their testicles...
never mind the pork leather shoes and pork
leather belts...
but the chinese omnivores are fine by
Allah: Muhammad & Co....

                               khadijah **** khuwaylid..
wrote the first surahs of the quran...
she was the literate:
the stephen vizinczey epitome:
                          in praise of older women...
last time i heard... muhammad was illiterate...
pray! that i've exhausted sympathy on
him being an orphan...
but not a ******* oliver twist thrown into
an orphanage! b'ooh h'oo...

                     the end... the whiskey isn't going
to drink itself;
as i have exhausted the patience of my bladder...
while there's the remaining concern
for a bewildering and a simultaneously
bewildered peacock... on the hunt for coy;
which is not exactly the darwinian daydream
of the short-hand greek alphabet...
the α-β male thermodynamic...
          the Σ-Δ female harem...
salmon swimming up-stream to spawn...
                             and... Ω-man / unicorn...
                     sha! schtil!
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
you know about as much about copyright laws, as i do, about shoelaces; what's the word... oops?*

and what did i decide to cook today?
oh, just some hungarian goulash sauce -
extra paprika - pork -
served on a potato "pancake" -
mixed potatoes with flour, an egg,
salt & pepper, more paprika -
fried onions & bacon, and, would you
believe it? brussels pâté...
i was desperate: there was no lard
in the house...
   served on two grand leaves of
col lettuce: yummy as a sunset glazing
a hyacinth;
and no, on a flower it's called
caramelised butter effect,
   it's not actually called photosynthesis
at those moments.

i'm still bewildered by these people who
"just happen" to dictate a "reality"
by calling the dasein of events a case of:
on the internet, vs. the real world.
utterly bewildering...
no, i'm still bewildered -
let me tell you a little story...
do you know how much mail
i get through the door each year?
perhaps 4 letters...
        reality check: the b.b.c. is broke,
it's actually the broke broadcasting corporation,
the british bit flew out the window,
they're airing shows from the years
MMXV & MMXVI primarily -
oh look who's coming with the surprise -
no, it's not *pacman
: the ol' jolly roger
by the name of jimmus savillius -
****** broke the bank with his antics,
not the b.b.c. is a dog with three legs,
broke! ha ha!
             there's still something
bothering me... what part of "reality"
are these people pushing, that can't see
the duality, instead choosing a dichotomy
of the existence of the internet,
ah, either they're too young,
or the internet itself is too young,
and they haven't seen the shredder impact
of the internet on the high street...
when was i at a local high street?
honest to god, heart on my shoulder,
hand on my other heart singing the regional
anthem... can't remember...
if you only get 4 letters through the post
a year, and even less emails -
unless of course you tell people your email
address...
   either i'm the biggest loser, or the biggest
winner in this fiasco...
   i get as many emails as i get actual,
post-office letters...
    **** me, lucky you if it's a handwritten
letter, without an electronically generic
signature, you must be santa claus!
ah, pretty pretty, esp. since it was written
in green and purple crayon...
     get in there my son, you're bound
to enter the major league of *******
and *** fiddlers: just make sure you mention
the black component preference,
like, you know who.
           i can't believe they're coming for these
people, i swear to god, if someone working
class was to read the saturday or the sunday
times supplements, they'd go gargamel
bonkers... as i once explained the smurfs to
a scaffolder and his girlfriend walking
from an off-lice, as we both joked:
   she's short enough for the blue...
god, her reaction as impeccable:
heaven sent no hell apart from a woman's
fury at being either scolded or joked about;
works every time,
  so, gentlemen! can we return to our
drinking?
                  and they said in pop culture that
grief was an aphrodisiac - twice down
the shoot, thrice with the shakers as **** it is...
as it turns out so is male humour is a gemini
with grief...
     the furious vagi... and i knight her:
            n'ah...
                        i still don't get where
or when the reality check will take shape...
how much of "real" life on the internet
is not mere commentary?
... ... ... ... i'm giving you some time to answer...
whatever happened to the intricacies
of the "real" world and the internet?
what about those hacks, what about
internet banking,
   what has suddenly become so unreal
about the internet?
oh right, so we can hold a welsh f-u f-off (V)
to the publishers, and bypass their
bad taste in prose?
          thinking about it: i think it is...
oh sure, we'll earn a few collateral badges
of those who fell with weak psyches -
but to say, the most splendid, known
to man, ever imagined ******* -
well... you'd be a fool to distinguish
the internet as a wachowski construct...
listen mon, you're saving the amazon,
pixel by pixel by pixel alone...
   but you've also woken the eyes of
beelzebub -
          and the irish are pounding -
and the russians stopped drinking for a month -
and the poles decide:
it's our time to march with the gob!
i still can't believe that people can't
fathom a simple newtonian calculus
of integrating two entities -
     and making them as one -
      personally?
i'm an impatient person, or, rather:
i don't like people wrestling with me over
copyright, copy what? what?!
there's only one page on the internet
that respects copyright laws... wattpad...
no other page on the internet disallows
the ctrl c through to ctrl p...
not one... ******* if you think anything
about "copyright" laws in the 21st century...
one page, one page out of a billion,
that respects copyright, and what do they do?
they kick me off it, because in
privy i asked a girl where she was from,
to get the feel of what inspires her...
like in that film the passengers -
where the girl says: i could write all day
with a view of the chrysler building...
  well then... UP YOURS!
Ian Beckett Mar 2014
Alta cocina in Cochabamba for eight,
It’s llama for lunch accompanied by
An Andean black rice which I find
Is quinola, which is easy to like if
You are already committed to llama.

This llama for lunch in Paprika, is good
I wonder if gauchos lasso them from two
Meters, at least, to ensure, they don’t spit
This is why Blazing Saddles used cows,
Makes the movie more macho methinks.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2019
.note to self: to make the perfect hungarian goulash, for ever capsicum pepper used, use a romano (sweet) pepper... bay leaf, allspice... pristine pork... no need for chicken stock... decently sizzled lard trimmings (from the pork)... a generous amount of garlic to balance the onions... chilli... and... a 2 : 1 ratio of paprika to smoked paprika powder: cooked generously for an hour+ having poured water into the mixture and some tomato purée... a decent cut of carrot and root parsley... and then... only then: the chopped tomatoes... salt to taste... fresh parlsey on top; yes, served on a massive hash brown (raw potatoes, grated, egg, flour, salt), with a sidedish of coleslaw... come to think of it: no... why would you add nutmeg to the sauce?

                                              nicht ist mehr?
              nicht ist noch -

                       a cough of Ernst Bloch:
    and there i was thinking:
where does Franz Marc (blues horses)
                        and Kandinsky ever begin?
precursor to:
      postcard poetry -
        i'll watch me a painting and invent,
rather, succumb to: phenomenalism -
               what with the senses already dimmed,
blunted to b & w and bad deutzsche grammar?


walking through the mess of yesterday's town,
i couldn't but succumb to the allure
of a thought:

   a thought that resurfaced just about
when i finished my going-to-bed-routine:
smoked a cigarette,
did the no. 1 & the no. 2 &
    ****** off on the toilet,
             smoked another cigarette,
drank a glass of water with
     the prescription,
                     dressed myself in pajamas,
     closed the blinds,
   closed the window,
    put on the headphones -
      put on a horror movie soundtrack,
switched off the light,
       lay myself in bed:
   toiled in it for an hour...
hyper-excited by the prospect of
heading to central London
        to pick out a cabbage vinyl..
     ate a piece of chocolate in the dark,
followed by a decent gulp of water...
fell asleep...

  but prior: in between - the allure of
the thought:

       self-worth attached to certains
jobs...
         and... how else to expand on this?
i reckon i'll write as much a decent
verse in the morning with
a coffee: than i will ever
           (constipated) get out of a nightly
session with a bottle of amber-glug...

if only i was so desperate as to have
written some of this prior to
closing my eyes:
                                 exposing my eyes
to the insomnia glue
       of a brightly lit screen of
                            a brain-harvester...

comparison:
    no one would really care to think
of a street cleaner as important...
     well... for me:
                            if i could be a street
cleaner: i could have all the legs
   and recycling heavens' wheels of
fortune to: blah-blah this sort of
wordings...
                       walking yesterday
through town i noticed two of them...

clean streets...
    what could be more important than
clean streets?
           ***** streets for rats...
            
         but i could never...
never count a barista to be a barrister:
yet both could cite you
some sort of philosophy:
  one would cite you something from
jurisprudence,
   the other something from
       what pedants discuss in an opera
prior to the curtain fall...

yet with a barista?
   a strange hyper-inflated membrane
of self-worth:
  noticed in a supermarket cashier,
noticed in a ekspedientka (saleswoman)
  ekspedient (salesman)...
the more trivial the job becomes:
the more self-worth buds under
the surface: with no ulterior outlet beyond
the role...
   like this shawl of glass full of
water: having more water poured into it...

(god, this looked better in my head):

            how much self-worth permeates
from the face of a street-cleaner?
                zilch...
                    ah..­. but how much of "something"
permeates from you walking
down a clean street:
    indifferently -
                you'll hardly think yourself
as garbage: staring at the blank canvas
of pavement...
             yet the barista?
              it's as if he knows:
i've just put on a kettle, boiled some water,
squeezed some coffee...
   ergo? i have to "look" important!
the street cleaner?
    do i really have to "look" important?
i know this is important:
what? whatever the hell i'm doing.

or at least that's how the narrative goes...
in my little head on my little planet
of cycling upside-down apes...

the more trivial a job:
   the more self-worth needs to permeate
from the person given
a function, which, otherwise:
would conscript disdain...
        the camouflaged workforce...
self-evident:
   walking past a bank...
wait... weren't there 6 cubicles
here with cashiers?
                em... self-service?
imagine that!
           sooner or later
                there will be talk of
                             the                   self-:
not being a philosophical curiosity,
rather a study of the past,
or the reaching out attachment prosthetic
of revealing a dead someone
  a dead former profession...

                   crux hyphen:
                       i'm already part employed
as a supermarket cashier,
  i'm already a bank cashier...
               nothing new: auto-cue:
propagandist line, skewed news...
    
but there's still the blatant glare of
the staring match (and the missing E
starring - and the missing macron
on top of A in the latter) -

                  a láte(!) lātte -
rhythm (caffèlat) - cough-la-la-'t:
   hey, scribble here, scribble there,
you hear it in English all the time,
the ever pertinent question:
how do you say that?
  measure metres in inches
in: metric syllables no good...
   'ave to *** beck tou d' imperial...
yes: and because Dickens...
really really, wrote just any better
   schlang than anglo-saxon Idaho...

self-worth: volumptous in certain
instances in public:
   the same self-worth attached to...
would you really want
to have your shoes-polished
with your feet in the shoes?
i wouldn't...
                      trivial *******,
i know... but such is the beast of
self-worth disguising the trivial
nature of certain professions...
   where would be the Wall St. broker
without a shoe-shiner?
boy oh boy: on the same dirt road:
        shoeshine is that thick splodge
of canvas worth a twinkle 'ere,
           a twinkle o'      'er...

airy-fairy: bottom's up and
flaky in the visage of the pompous
boston alto horn of
              a Parisian kelner...
bulging mass: bloated larynx:
puff ****: the three piglets and
the asthmatic bad wolf...

quick... untangle me from this language!
i have a no-nonsense person
to speak to later:
and i can't be bound to
  this metaphor Dali allure;
literally a square is a square,
red is red,
     and escapism only in
              a prosaic paragraph;

this hardly compensates
even the bare scraps of what is
a work of ethic of...
                                                an ant.
no dead birds in the oven
no innards in the stuffing
nor fatty drippings to be scraped and poured

the smell of roasted veggies
wafts through  the wintry air
pumpkin and sweet potatoes
marshmallows  green beans  lentils
turnips  & collard greens
hashed browns & black-eyed peas
quinoa  sorghum cuscus hummus
carrots  leak  broccoli Romanescu
gumbo in southern regions
wild rice dishes in the north
tastily spiced with turmeric
cumin and baked paprika
Indian curry  soy sauce  chipotle
as well as with the usual suspects
of garlic  salt  and pepper
and whatever fits the taste of hosts

in short
a venerable feast to demonstrate
how nature feeds us a large cornucopia
of plants for our delight and sustenance

in short
no need to **** a bird

                * *
Ottar Dec 2012
Chick peas et al Garbonzo beans'
a machine with blades, the means.

Tahini, lemon juice and a red pepper flakes,
A chipolte in abodo, smoked paprika, is what it takes.

Roasted red pepper, garlic too, touches on the button,
The roar, whirr and with the sounds blending till done.

Salt and pepper to taste,
Not too much or it is a waste,  
Not to little or, well, you know,
A hint of red just shows.

With your crusty bread, dig in like you hold a shovel,
Two handed flavour, taste and bite into that crusty bread,
Flavour moves and sends a smoky heat sensation to a new level,
Hope this is the best tasting poem that you have  read!
Surprise!
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
i hate it when a ~haiku is forced upon me, but such
is the case, and it's not a case of dittoing out
a mechanical aspect of that body that's
known as vocabulary:
thus, suddenly, as if a ****, or
a reflex the tongue commanded
the entire body -
left-wing obstructions gave way to
right-wing rebelliousness -
    the left said the tongue was no dagger,
the right said: merely a dagger -
the gyroid: or the muscles we never thought
existed! lanky tendons, etc.
    never the microscopic proof reductionism
and never the telescopic proof           ",
always somewhere in the middle:
and that's about right.
               i wrote a poem, it sounded about right
and then i get the wanked-over shoulder
calling it life-support dandruff
because of the many sprouts possible -
as ever: some come and give a voice unto
the people, and some come and give an ought
unto the people.
               a choice that's mutually inclusive
of thought and choice as a battleground
for the mechanisation of language into
sulphur gas and bayonets
and a thousand wildcards charging and screaming
lost toward the bewilderment of
   forgotten sexting.
      what a mighty affair:
the only country delving the prospect of
an atom bomb being dropped again doesn't believe
in munition economics and doesn't see
that the paranoia can be stopped when the capitalist
sober-heads enter and say: but where's the profit?
there's not profit in an atom bomb:
it ends too soon,
     you never got a Hollywood chapter yoyo
      concerning Hiroshima or Nagasaki...
you got one about Pearl Harbor...
a competent act of war... but not like our
civilians really matter: we civilians got the treatment
of being active members of the army,
while the army personnel were given civilian
Pilate status, the army was given civilian status
and the Japanese civilians were given army status...
oh forget the noodle swindler -
that handwritten hoola-hoop spinster of
carbohydrates is long gone...
          or the greatest paranoia against all other
nations comes from a nation that actually used the weapon!
       i could write a haiku version of what i lost,
but i'll still have to write something about you-tube
vloggers and how they are the newest version
of the objective propaganda machine that's in
the Islamic camp of merchants...
       prophet-merchant? give me a break:
if his word doesn't sell, then who's does?
my endorsement? less of a cosmetic light-touch surgeon
attitude, my endorsement is that of
Morphy Richards' Soup Maker...
cooking pumpkin soup...
  pumpkin... well: it's hardly an easy peel when it
comes to cooking butternut squash...
it's a disaster! a hell to endure! no wonder it's the veg
that frighten offs the ghouls and the ghost
you can't peel it, you have to Apache skin it
like getting a colonial wig: scalping your way into
the high court, albeit minus the greyish curls -
******* is a king of culinary demises
that were sought out expeditions -
you have to knife your way beneath the snail-like
shell and then there's that cobweb of mush
with intrinsic fake seeds / flies lodged in
the orange cobweb - for all that effort
i appreciate it more as a lampshade than a food
source... but then the advertised starving Africans
as anti-colonial compensation for "our"
grandfather's recollection of monochromatic cultures,
before globalisation took off.. hmm.
the soup? pumpkin, potato, onion, garlic,
nutmeg, paprika, chicken stock,
salt and pepper to taste...
tomorrow? a pumpkin risotto...
hey! seasonal abundance, Spanish strawberries
in late winter are too watery anyway...
   people forgot that certain things taste better
in season, that's namely fruits and vegetables...
   go outside your fancy, outside your whim,
you'll finally have to say: my eyes eat
at the very credibility of such things being
there without the season... but my tongue does not
taste the thing that requires a pentagonal sense
honing in toward an agreed to democracy:
it ain't there... as ever autumnal fruits make their
way toward the culinary redcarpet -
                   apples, pears....
     but the real ice brokers remain tangled in
the gnostics of dairy *****: you only see the *****
when the milk turns sour...
              and the two segregate
their cauliflower bergs and that pristine seethrough
        matrix -
then it's like watching the 1054 schism:
          aquasal herring
                               and aquadulci tench -
as painful as listening to my father speak english:
it's just ****** painful,
i write english and speak it like an Anglo
   and he speaks it like an Arab:
with me it's: left right left right left right
and his is an ancient form of actual Latin
              right left right left right left -
of the tongues that appropriated the Latin lingua
optics that weren't conquered it's the same as it was
for Seneca of Virgil, e.g. red beast / proof of all
scientific generic category principle: **** sapiens
                  upright man / bestia rufus -
and that's still orange beast - then aliq for yellow:
then liquid and runny khaki - a monetary equivalent
of money.
          but of the tongues
                      which is why i kept my mother tongue,
i can't imagine what would have been the case
had i not kept it intact... i'd be whitey boy bleached
into an anaemic Arian with those rubbery red
             lost for words rabbit crazy irises that
albinos sport when on the sociopathic treadmill:
that's a daily commute for most people.
i should have anticipated something better coming
out of a forced bad gateway message when
i tried to published and didn't save the outcry...
but it was never a reality when defined by a few
people... it always necessarily the many,
the market square, the hustle and bustle,
     then again few took to ****** to say love...
understandable: if something is called private
it's not called reality, because so many people
have so much **** to say in public that they
treat private life as a tabernacle -
reverse that and suddenly you find people
who possess a "voice for the multitude",
but not (not oddly enough) a thought -
ah the caring scream when not bound to
the horror genre of politics: it's too late!
               end here: a prior to rather than, a
desirably said to appease and conform:
by now we're all cited as having only said
an onomatopoeia of what words should sound like -
we're found hacking a door to shreds with
an axe, rather than merely curling our hands
so the knuckles can be used to knock on the door.
still, i made pumpkin soup today,
tomorrow i'll make a pumpkin risotto -
and the pumpkin is, rightfully, the halloween king
of all vegetables: i am not surprised it's the perfect
lampshade people leave outdoors -
hell of a thing to peel, a butternut squash
would have been simpler to make...
but for the first time in my life:
  i actually appreciate the colour orange...
as said: cooker orange is beyond that fluorescent
acidity of a citrus fruit:
  cooked orange is actually grand...
raw citrus orange?                and a handful
of creepy crawlies.
    funny how the spectrum necessarily made me
endorse a soup maker, rather than the next
big thing in the realm of toothpaste and mascara.
You're a little pastry box wrapped in blue tissue paper.
You’re the first bite into
every brownie,
every ****,
every pie,
every cute little confection.
You're that thin ribbon of caramel across a layered slice of cake,
You're the sugar still lingering on my recipes,
the little puffs of flour with each turn of a page.  
You're that extra dash of cocoa
and that sprinkle of vanilla and  
the egg stained finger prints on jars of paprika
and cinnamon
and nutmeg.  
You're the soft crack of a brown egg,
the raw taste of extra batter..  
The sizzling butter in the bottom of a pan
You're every scent of spices and salts and frosting
and the sticky sweetness of glazed honey.  
You're the walnuts and sprinkles on top of last summers birthday cake.  
You're the peppermint sensation on the roof of my mouth
and the sweet flavoring on the tip of my tongue.  
You're the delicate drizzle of chocolate
over a homemade batch of sugar cookies,
the finishing touch.
pimiento angeldust,
where have you been
all my life?

though I wish
I met you sooner
let's not bemoan
days gone by

but start now
in agape mouth
with a thorough intro
upon eggs and 'cado

and this tongue
that loves you so
bluevelvet May 2017
Don't take that as
an insult,
you are there too.
Like a little seasoning,
Paprika perhaps,
a little flavoring so
the heart won't stop.
But that's just
something I've grown used to.
i felt this would make a better poem on it's own.
Be afraid.
The breakdown of civilization
is at the hands of our well-meaning,
overly thrifty,
spoon-wielding  mothers.

Be very afraid.
They are entranced by spices
and covering condiments,
pepper and powder,
onion and garlic galore.

Gingerly they add cumin and dill,
cinnamon, nutmeg or cloves
with thyme to add sage and curry,
parsley, paprika and allspice.

Their casseroles become
zombie food
as the dead
reanimates.

These cheese-added monsters,
hungry for mystery-meat,
render brains to mush
and bind our bowels.

They stiffen our gait
with numbness and nausea
until we are rendered victims
of another pepto-pandemic.

And in the night
of the living dead,
feeding us salt
in a casserole apocalypse,
we panicked victims become
the casseroles we consume.

Now paralyzed
in fear
by the light
of the open refrigerator.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
only today i felt this strange fear from boredom, i don't expect housewives to feel it, although i'm certain they do, brain-draining watching some Jurassic adaptation where man's imagination really did a runner - not into the fantastical but into the absurd - like in science fiction, did a runner, completely off the mark given chemists making shampoos and toothpastes and fertilisers... ethically-free science fiction - but this housebound fear from boredom, greater than a fear of death it seized me and rattled me, i had to go out to buy a few beers; just like it happens to really rich people, they make their homes into micro-units of what's out there, in society, a swimming pool when there's a communal one elsewhere, a massive library of unread books, when there are plenty of those elsewhere, home cinema, snooker table... it's the entire spectrum of social pastimes condensed into a single household... anyway, i got hot and bothered, i'm starting to think it was not a fear of boredom, but what to do with the piri-piri chicken i was marinating: tomato puree, 1tbsp balsamic vinegar, half a large lemon squeezed, 1sp sugar, 1tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp cajun pepper, 14g of parsley, mint, oil, 2 chillies, 2 tsp of garlic puree, salt to taste - whisked in a food processor; ~1kg of chicken - because i thought whether i should shove the chicken marinate in an oven bag and cook it for a while, or whether to take the chicken out from the marinate and place it on a baking tray... ****!

poems and book reviews these days, nothing more,
get someone else to do the legwork -
a thoroughly modern malaise -
social anthropology - titled *tribe
-
the pros and cons of modern life and our
search for tribal mythology -
the 8x more chance of depression and
other mental deviations in wealthier
societies than poorer ones -
once it was called adventure, now
it's called tourism - after a while you sort
of get bored of the naked ego
and the clothing range your thought
provides you - unless you keep thinking
out the same thing, over and over again,
dressed like Armani, all black, nothing else -
odd, isn't it? they're playing the cat game,
cat wakes up, same ****, different cover,
well, the same cover - same fur - can't
change - the paradox or parody of
the fashion industry, i.e. that the designers
wear the same thing over and over again
and insist people require a spring collection,
the latest autumn trend.... parody.
so back to this piri-piri chicken      n'ah, not really,
i was thinking about what we already did,
this anti-tribalism, to have given ourselves
the opportunity to experience the least
amount of pain, the anaesthetic, sleep inducing
on the butcher's table more or less -
but we also created another anaesthetic,
this anaesthetic is not so subtle - it concerns beauty -
ever see it? ever walk into Tate Modern and
think about Raphael or Michelangelo?
you could tell me i'm overly nostalgic -
but what i see in plain sight is an anaesthetic in place,
against beauty, esp. in architecture -
who'd think of building a new Coliseum or
a St. Paul's - the Tate Modern (as you might
or might not know) is inside a power station,
big massive chimney - would have worked
better in the Battersea (Pink Floyd's Animals
album sleeve), but then St. Paul's is right opposite
and what a staggering dichotomy it is -
i'm sure that's what you call an anaesthetic in art,
the sort of art you have to get or not get
because, frankly, admiring a tin-can of tomato soup
even by Warhol's standards isn't exactly appetising -
i know, conveyor belt necessity and all, once
artists painted on commission for some duke or
duchess, or king to be adorning lavish palaces,
but as according to Walter Benjamin - the work
of art in the age of mechanical reproduction
-
some could once claim the original to be worth
a stupendous amount of dosh, but with the above
mentioned essay, the original is worth diddly-squat,
because there is no actual original these days,
because artists don't necessarily have to invest
in raw materials - and the copying process is 100%
perfect, what with photocopying and all...
but **** me over once more, how am i going
to cook this piri-piri chicken?
the few beers took the problem off my hands,
i ended up marinating the chicken in a bag
but then shoved it into a baking tray
an covered with aluminium foil, forty odd
minutes and the chicken was tender - ~5 minutes
without the aluminium foil covering while
the oven was switched off and the temperature
was descending - the carbs? couscous -
alt. North African semolina - and extra cucumber
in tzatziki - a few hours later and i'm a little
buddha not thinking an ounce or a continent's worth
of suggestion... one of those rare albums
salmonella dub's  inside the dub plates,
i'm a real provincial with this album,
tumble **** here, tumble **** there,
never settling for a ****-garden -
i told you i'm just borrowing the language, in fact,
given my alcoholic and status as vermin among
the bulldog rigid British (Londoners can have
their little gay pride parade, whatever, they
better give me up for surgery to a veterinarian than
a human doctor, after all, i'm all ******* gerbil from
now on in, it doesn't take enough pacifists to turn
my attitude into a Neo-**** and bulldozer the Union
Jack into a shallow grave, i don't expect the Caribbeans
and the Pakistanis to usher words of: it's how it is,
a rite of passage, **** your cumin and your ****,
battle of Britain, who among the R.A.F. flew and spat fire?
us) i'm more Apache in a bigger zoo than the one in
Reagents Park, i'm in a conservation zoone -
i'm Aboriginal - shaman of the fire water -
i'll be as ******* ridiculous as i want - go chant
you little kirtan get together mantras going,
i'm sure you'll *****-fight-those-pigeons dead without
a single coo being ushered in - and your little yoga stints
asking questions about the flexibility of the skeleton
not pulverised by scientific eyes for a schematic and
a schooling rubric to domino up the cranium with mandible,
ulna and radius etc. -
but at least i know what sort of country i live in,
and what country is wandering into political apology that's
too late, in ratio 27:1, soon to be Turkey + the Yugoslavian
gape, Albanian and Macedonia by 2020 -
>30:1 - great Welsh ratio that is, oh ****, wait, Scotland too?
i never thought about it coming - there's my 2 cents
on the topic, and that England is becoming more American
by the day? that's good? really?! i thought the
aim of England was to inspire America rather than
vice versa... what a ****-storm these few days ended
up being; ol' McDonald didn't have a farm, but
had the slogan - *i'm lovin' it!
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2014
prefer celery to carrots
light scrunch over an orange hard crack,
straw red over berries bluest,
coffee over tea,
skies white clouded
over
all clear, unadulterated uni-tone,
blondes, brunettes, redheads,
even pink or blue haired,
well, ain't going there
(wink wink,
too smart for that...)

but that's just me

colors viral virulent  over manhattan grey~black,
a good Pinot over a glass of Jack,
beach and sea undefined
over lake delimited, outlined bounded,
ocean caught fresh over farm raised,
city slick over country sweet,
striped bass over monk,
tuna bests salmon,
but both miso coated please...

Italian Indian Ethiopian
Sushi and occasionally Chinese,
all grand,
but my kosher deli and dogs, pickles,
yellow mustard ball parked,
tops them all
especially when serving
all-you-can-eat
over tasting portions...

but that's just me

right over left,
naked better than ****,
polite over rude,
Rembrandt tops Vermeer,
but his light nonethess,
extra over ordinarie...

Swiss over white American,
Gruyere beats goat cheese,
citrus tops apples,
sweet melon my
secret passion,
paprika and oregano,
never ever cilantro,
milk over OJ,
especially, grade A
milk of human kindness,
all flavors

love my poems centered,
(except for this one)
with no sugar added,
but a lot of cream and sweat,
both a necessity, not a luxury,
prefer mesmerizing,
crafting hard, laboring,
me writing, you imbibing,
leaving you oohing and loving
me
because of the appreciation built in
over
ditties that are semisweet
sugar nadas that populate the
easy come easy go away
poem of the day

but that's just me

like myself hard
cause when I melt,
to a child's grin shyest,
laughter silly me provoking
it is ever so better so...
tears, any kind, don't mind
laughing and sorrowing pouring,
let genuine be my only test
speed limit barrier unlimited

sorta saved a street crossing
phone-occupied-woman yesterday,
put my arm across her body
fast hard, unasked
so she wasn't
bicycle crashed,
both looks well received,
the *** and the gratitude,
but latter over former,
if I had to choose,
but I dont

but that's just me

Joanie M. over Judy C.,
Amy over Adele,
Eva Cassidy over all...
Zombies over Beatles,
Blunt over Taylor,
Rhyming Simon over Billy Joel,
no typos over flaring,
glaring no caring...

your poetry over mine,
cause it amazes,
cause mine,
just old familiar crazies,
just runaround Sues from yester pester days,
transcribed for a someday later
future grimacing laugh of
good god did I write that!

but that's just me

wrote quite the many
literary escapades
this morning,
like the yore,
good old days,
when every glance,
remark passing
made me run
to tablet them
in perpetuity ASAP

placed them before you
scattered thither and dither,
like all that jazz notes
running hands over planes geometric,
most just average,
but all there in hopes
you would love me better

but that's just me

sneaking inside you with
a wink, a tink-ering whimsy,
a stupid smile, a wicked sinning
humongous grinning
with a belly laughing,
havoc raising, me crazing,

*but that's just me
11-1-14
thinking I like celery better than carrots, and the rest you just read...
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2021
i've cooked plenty of curries in my life
(in the back of my mind there's this mainstream
narrative that comes to the fore
with buzz-words like: "cultural appropriation"...
so i can't cook a curry for myself
i need someone native of the "concept" of curry
to cook it for me? the use of cumin, coriander seeds...
star anise... cardamom pods is off-limits
for me? like donning a sombrero?
i hate acronyms but, in this instance i'll just
keep it short and shrimp-y i.e. w.t.f.?!)
but what i recently conjured up has become
a... revelation...
i know that the taste profile of some Asiatic
people: the Chinese love their dichotomy of
sweet & sour... as well as sweet & salty...
come to think of it: i like those profiles too:
salted caramel is the next big taboo topic?!
the first proper revelation came to me via...
refika's lavash & hammered beef recipe...
she's on youtube: it's so **** when a woman
as voluptuous as her knows how to cook...
plus the ol' raven hair: beyond that...
it's not that she knows how to cook:
i can trust her to cook...
    not that i was willing to make lavash from
raw goods... i can buy that...
the genius is instilled in the marinate...
what was it...
oh hell... my beard is itchy... i guess at the mere
thought of eating this dish...
sea salt, pepper, lots of peppercorns...
fresh garlic, fresh rosemary (thankfully i have
a garden and i have rosemary in it)
dried chillies (whole or flakes)
olive oil, white wine vinegar...
into the pestle & mortar...
the beef thinly sliced then marinating for
15 minutes at best: the vinegar tenderising
the meat quicker...
fried for 2 minutes or whatever time it takes
until you see the meat pouring out the most
hidden blot clots...
but beef & rosemary?! huh! who would have
thought... i certainly wouldn't have...
sure... LAMB & rosemary...
but beef?
oddly enough the meat works just as well
when topped with English cheddar...
you don't need a Turkish cheese...
but that's not even the end of the story...
of the lavash wrap...
it's the side dish...
the onions! slice the onions into crescent moons...
squeeze them to get the party going...
they must be red onions... some salt...
some more white wine vinegar & let them pickle
for a while... after the "while" add some
sumac (i also add some gochugaru chilli flakes...
for colour and tingling buzz)
SUMAC... topped off with some fresh parsley...
i could be writing about my escapades
in the brothel... but this is so much better...
what's ***? meat you can't eat...
at the end... it's meat you can't eat...
tease it, nibble it: but you're not going to eat it...
i very much like the ethereal nature
of cooking: it reminds me of the time i studied
chemistry in Edinburgh and conjured up
Esters from scratch...
Esters? oh, those scented compounds used
in the perfume industry...
yet today i came across an even bigger revelation...
Indian cuisine? done... Chinese... no problem...
the number of curries i made in my life...
eh... ha...
            hell: even the Hungarian goulash
for a massive potato "pancake"... garnished
with something sour... cabbage most likely...
or at least a coleslaw to off-set the smoky-paprika
taste...
green peppers a must...
of course you need some sprinkle of paprika
on the lavash wrap-up...
for colour: to "combat" the "insanity"
of cheese... & some extra pepper....
& rosemary...

well you can't exactly call a stew a curry
a sauce or jue... it's not  juice if it's a juce...
some "chew"...
esp. not in the Persian cuisine...
pity me at me at my self-wallowing in being
cosmopolitan on the outskirts...
i'll take one step into the night
and i'll be met with the resounding
presence of foxes...
i stopped being bothered about BWV 988
being just a cliché...
which it of course is...
so many pieces of classical music were once
beautiful...
now... in the gulag of the muzak...
they have become: morphed...
hardly stand-alone pieces of music...
moonlight sonata being the "other" over-emphasis
of needing to match-up to the demands
of / for mass consumption...

i hope this doesn't read like some foodie
blog... every time i want to replicate a recipe
i have to scroll down through so many
self-congratulatory deviances
from the narrative... none of these food blogs
seem stressed about giving out
what's needed:
the list of ingredients... eh... the methodology
doesn't really bother me...
i always miss the click-of-the-button
where i can simply get to the knitty-gritty...
there's always "some story"... some care to grasp
at some "authenticity":
it's almost like rereading Wittgenstein and
his focus on tautology!

come to think of it...
i watch out for tautologies...
like i watch out for metaphors and misnomers
and the... ahem "air quotes":
you can't stretch it as far as a metaphor?
then we'll be stretching it into a misnomer
status...

FESENJAN...
it's not like the Persians were not knocking
at "our" doors since... perhaps time immemorial...
what about that off-shoot tribe of Aryans:
the Sarmatians settling in the basin
of the Vistula?
funny... the concept of the Aryans...
that the Germans espoused it...
while... historically... never mind...

it's not a curry! it's a Persian stew...
i couldn't fathom it at first...
you make a walnut paste...
you toast 'em...
salt, pepper, sugar...
some of the usual suspects appear:
like cumin...
cinnamon...
    but then you get:
pomegranate molasses...
and fresh pomegranate seeds to garnish... with...
you also use fresh parsley instead of coriander...
only one tablespoon of tomato puree...
some ground almonds...
a pepper: which, along with a can of
chickpeas somehow, "somehow" managed
to disappear in the sauce...
garlic... sure... ginger? no...
onion... yes...

         i knew that Persian cuisine tickled
the sour fancies... but i never knew to what
extent! zest of a lemon: juice of a lemon...
no aubergine... this time...
turmeric: the peasant's version of saffron...
no difference... you can sprinkle some of that
anti-bleach magical dust and it works
just as well as a pinch of saffron...
but we're talking about the sauce...
cinnamon i already mentioned:
even though you can use acacia bark as
a substitute... pepper: already mentioned...
honey...
imagine my shock: no mention of a canned
lot of plum tomatoes...
******* roasted walnuts...
pomegranate molasses...
tomato puree...
ciućpajza...

this wasn't a curry... walnuts, though... when roasted?
ahem... "cultural appropriation"
of the Indians using cashews... & almonds
in their Korma... but walnuts?!
hey presto... some Turkish ingenuity combining
beef with rosemary!

is my native tongue a dodo lingo?
i'm just... wondering...
perhaps with the omnipresence of English
we'll all be savvy cosmopolitan nomads
by the end of this century...
i still manage to squeeze in a word:
or two... into my currency of the current:
lingo... but... the point
of: no one's speaking it beside me...
it's not a rhetorical question...
it's not even a question to begin with /
per se... it's a... vague obligation to:
some mustard seed metaphor sort of "power"...

youtube used to be such a fun website...
until the wallets started rummaging
hyping up...self-tutorial videos of make-up:
cover-up...
it used to be (this)... now it's... )this(...
sure... don't blame women...
it's not like Helen wasn't fabled for gearing up
a thousand ships...
Eva Braun wasn't Jewish... no no!
she wasn't... wi- do you really need the suffix
-nk?!

a grammar school playground filled with only
boys... hey... presto!
a girl comes in...
        what's going to happen?
the worst things... imaginable...
i'm giving birth to a shadow...
she's curious about giving birth to the gambit
of: more time... please...
i can be done with all of this spectacle in
a moment... she needs this misery to continue...
come to think of it...
i don't think the supposed
"forbidden" fruit of Eden did anything to Adam...
i think the fruit was a placebo...
he just towed his ******* ******* along
to experience the wind & the dangle...
whatever the metaphor of Moses implies...
ignorant of dinosaurs?!
seriously...
there's a talking spine of a t-rex...
there are the crocodiles of the Nile...
there's the imagining of a large fire-breathing lizard:
a dragon...
oh sure... the idea of dinosaurs wasn't somehow:
unconsciously implanted into us...
dragons precursor the discovery of dinosaur bones...
don't they?! don't they?!
imagining dragons precursor our discovery of
dinosaur bones!
no?! no?!
hell-oh... Pandora... how's tomorrow?
oh, right... can't say... just like today then?!

since the usual quest of bypassing the atypical
gatekeepers has been... quenched...
i'm no Tolstoy...
western democracy is worried about democracy
per se:
ooh... something terrible is bound to happen!
some terrible has been happening since
time immemorial...
it's only inflated:
in a society bound by glorifying sociopaths &
psychopaths...
the fakery escalates... so much of this culture
is bound to celebrate: hardly the opera singer...
hardly the poet... forever & until more
the Thespian... you know what happens to a culture
where only one art-form is given:
too much attention it deserves?
there was that period of time when
poetry was celebrated... when the western
letf-oids seemed rather... refreshing...
what now?

           let's go back to civilisation based on
the motto: we need carrots!
we need cabbage! we ******* need root vegetables...
oh forget the fruits...
that's not important for us...
winter is coming: a warm winter...
to borrow a phrase:
how can there be any hyperboreans:
what eternal sunshine?
i think of an eternal night...

               when i think of the wind:
there's not one... there are 8...
the wind from the north... south...
the wind from the north-east...
the wind from the south-west...
i count 8 winds... if there aren't 8
then we have a lemniscale...
a lazy: reclining 8... or a beta metaphor: B...
no?
the origins of numbers are all Hindu?!
sure... the letters too?
i can... rewrite the origins story
of numbers using only Greek or Roman letters...
with hindsight it doesn't punch-up
but... proud retardations of borrowed
cuisine aside...
L: 7
4: G
      mirrors! mirrors!
9: P
8: B
1: I(ota)
3: E
2: Z
5: S
6: b...

we didn't march across the *******
Siberian tundra
arriving at the Caucasian
peninsula for no ******* reason?!
we also managed to drag along the tribes
of Mongols... Turks... that settled in this grand...
continental funnel...

i learned "numbers" from Sanskrit...
i suppose the letters too?
like... ooh... i love how Hangul was
conjured...
   Sejong the ******* Solomon...
Abraham... St. Cyril...
   i always thought that Cyrillic script
was a cheap-*** variation of Greek...
sorry... it looks: looked:
will forever look: sort of shabby...

this time round: the devil didn't come round
with either fire or sulphur...
smoke & mirrors...
smoke & mirrors: Kowalski!
Lora Lee May 2017
In this tightly interwoven
tapestry of
           silks and cottons
softness upon stems
an intricately-*****
                     journey
manifesto of life
        I find myself in
patchwork landscapes
of ochre and
rust turning
           turquoise
earthern shades
of cumin and cardamom
cloves and coriander
piquant red of paprika
alighting the senses
My fingers reach out
to sift the powder
to crush
fragrant fronds
of fresh basil and oregano
upon the blueprint of tips
allow their scent
to permeate my skin
and infuse tissue
                of tongue and lips
and I seem to be
in this
           bustling marketplace
my blood afire like
dried ghost pepper
searing and brightening
all flavors
fenugreek and asafoetida
to soothe the ache
of emptiness
chervil and chive
to get juices flowing
I want to slit open
vanilla pods
get at the beans
revel in their essence
wear it all over me


In this realm of spice
and paradise
I am flying,
a magic carpet of dreams
unrolling before me
like an unfurled flag
of new existence
The sounds of hagglers,
fading in raw visons
of shiny apple colors
olives piled high
textures of smooth cherry
budded broccoli
of walnut wrinkles
aroma of guava

Music takes over
I am in a cloud of
oud and lute
syncopated tabla
bells and rumbling
taut skin drum beats
Or is that long low whir
simply my heart purring
to the cadence of
       freedom's call?

I only know
that in the whisk
of a second's split
I will savor the flight
and also the
                fall
Lynn Al-Abiad Mar 2017
Doux et amer
Du café avec de la cardamome
L'odeur du garam Masala
Et l'air du paprika
Framboises, myrtilles, mûres et cerises,
Un cépage fruité de la méditerranée
Les oliviers nous ombragent et je regarde le soleil se coucher sur ta peau
La nuit se prend à mes paupières
Et je me laisse aller à l'odeur de la mer, à la chaleur de tes rêves et à la lourdeur exquise de ta tête sur ma poitrine.


---------------------


Sweet and sour
Coffee with a hint of cardamom
The smell of garam Masala
And the breeze of Paprika
Raspberries, blueberries , blackberries and cherries
The fruity taste of a Mediterranean wine
The olive trees offer us shade and I gaze at the sun setting on your skin
The night conquers my eyes
And I abandon myself to the smell of the sea, the warmth of your dreams and the lovely heaviness of your head on my chest.



- LynnAA
Baies baies baies partout! Et un peu d'amour, à ceux qui aimeraient y croire.

30/3/2017
Patrick Kennon Sep 2017
Godzilla!
Ratrun bro
DG!!!
Cool spaceship
very alien
I like paprika on everything
Stop
this is a LOCKED unit
This exit door is for EMERGENCIES only
Alarm will sound
Unlock with NA-1 key
674 EE31640
Model S/N
Check
Fire Fire
Thanks Jordan
for the words of encouragement
and the St. Michael's card
it really
helped
Rapture dragons
AC/DC
<3 Love etc
FCV
NEW
Sharina Saad Jul 2013
Just bought some capsicums
Big,round, fresh capsicums
Sweet and sour chicken in the menu
some fresh tomatoes, ginger and onions
A great recipe from mom's kitchen,
doesn't it sound and smell awesome?

green and red capsicums on the table
Take a sharp knife to cut them into halves
Paprika adds  flavor to my chicken recipe
The taste I must adore...

Surprise Surprise...  almost trip from the kitchen stool
A sharp knife falls on the kitchen floor
The green capsicums screams in despair...
" Are you really cutting me to pieces?"
And the red capsicums yell,
" Cut the greens not the reds?"
Is this my imagination ? Am I cooking in a dream?
capsicums can speak? Oh.. They really speak...
and pleading me to omit them from the recipe...
Again I look at the pretty capsicums..
Deciding whether to cook them or not

To capsicum I offer this thanks,
when needing something like peppers
It's you I very much adore,
Without, this recipe is lacking in so many ways.

Decided! In mom's kitchen
There is no compromise
Pretty capsicums green and red...
In my cooking *** you go.....
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
well d'uh, of course thinking can become more toxic
than the toxins "ruining" my kidneys liver and breath,
i'm not prone to automated cognition,
automated cognition is applicable to rudimentary tasks,
perfected in the lineage of manual labour,
and to be hanky panky frank, i sometimes wish my lived
revolved around a perfected manual labour,
than this scrap / dung-heap of writing.*

when i was making paella today
(kashmiri chilli powder is milder
than the usual ****!
paprika, turmeric, main ingredients:
mussels, prawns, chouriço -
match the c with the upper part of an s,
and the diacritic mark with the
lower part of the s, i.e. ɔ - chicken)
i had a thought, democracy, or current
democracy ought to be fed the f. d. Roosevelt
spirit of isolationism... this warring democratic
Zeitgeist can't go on forever...
there are no real city-state alliances
these days, e.g. manchester (osbourne's
northern powerhouse is competing
with the blond mop-head london of booritz)...
the countries being attacked are cities
in rubble... they can't couple city- and -state
together... they're given the option of
puppet nationalism... and cities can't function
under that... i think it's necessary to make
democracy less war-like, less warring,
it's exposing its weaknesses by warring
with its scientific strengths but its inherent
organic weaknesses, just today a heterosexual
couple couldn't tie the knot in a civil partnership...
because it appeared the church was pushing
subverters into secular ranks...
the secular ranks dismissed secularists for ****'s sake!
now they'll have to go back to the church
and tie the knot... it also appears secularism
is only reserved for homosexuals and confused
homosexuals (transgender peeps)...
i still think a warring democracy will not provide
an argument, a democracy practising f. d. Roosevelt's
isolationism would do itself justice,
after all we never hear of new york's grandfather:
york, england... do we? what's in york?
ah... no broadway... just a ****** cathedral and
an archbishop at war with the the archbishop of
****-and-berry.... nothing much... everyone
turns off their lights at 9pm for the early doze-off /
early rise... farmer folk... you know: baa'h baa'h
ol' mc'donald 'ad a farm.
i know that the grand city-states of our times
want Baghdad to join them...
i know... it's not really working out.
Paul d'Aubin Feb 2014
L’épicerie «Mozabite» d’Akbou

S’il y a un lieu dont je me souviens,
C’est de l’épicerie d’Akbou,
située dans la rue centrale.
J’y accompagnais mes parents,
et pénétrais dans cette échoppe
avec tous mes sens en éveil,
surtout pour humer les senteurs mêlées
des jarres d’olive et de piments rouges.
L’épicier était Mozabite,
avec des pantalons bouffants.
Le roi des commerçants du lieu,
car dans l’espace resserré
jamais rien ne vous y manquait
dans cet incroyable fatras
où le «Mozabite» faisait ses choix.
vous tirant toujours d’embarras.
Il y avait des tonneaux d’olives
vertes ou noires dans leur saumure
avec ce goût qu’elles ont : «là-bas.»
et puis ces senteurs mélangées
de menthe, paprika, cumin
des parfums de fleur d’oranger.
et à la belle saison des dattes
pendaient les «reines» : «Deglet Nour»
Parmi toutes ces friandises
Il en est deux qui pincent mon coeur
Cette galette ronde et si tendre
la «Kesra» plus tendre que le pain.
et les sacs remplis de semoules
qui sont la base du «Couscous» Kabyle
Alors que l’agneau est son prince
Merci à l’épicier d’Akbou
qui sut si bien aiguiser nos sens.

Paul d’Aubin (Paul Arrighi)
Toulouse - février 2014.
Paul Arrighi was born to "Bougie/Bejaia" in 26 february 1954 any month before of the beginning of the Algerian war
Jordan Gee Jul 2021
demon in the bathroom mirror
last rock of crystal went missing
bulging eyes in my reflection
I didn’t like that
i couldn’t find crystal but i don’t ask
those guys actually saved my life.
two hours to billings, montana and the
prairie grass glistened in the
last minute Sunday morning sunlight
thanksgiving day drive.

designer machete and the wineberries
broken shabbat demarcation line
and i tried yet again to perform a task
to completion without getting distracted
screaming from the bathroom

‘i can’t hit a vein! I can’t hit a vein!’
water in the rig
miss crystal swimming in mine
Christ in the Cosmos
two plantains on the kitchen island in
a town house on west orange.
no man is an island
but I pretended that i was so
i could finally climb the double helix home.

i  can’t be creative if i’m always in
a mad rush.
‘Prove to me your value! Justify your being here,
can you see me? Why can’t anyone see me?
how about now?’
tongue caught in a snare
pestilence in the mason jar
smoked paprika in the finish
water in the rig
‘Jordan? Was there even anything in here?’

i used to lay prostrate on the
couch
ad infinitum.
one thing they don’t tell you is that when
you’re dope sick you have to take
a giant **** about every five minutes.
the free cable in the apartment complex
actually saved my life.
furniture - mid century modern -
had to let it go.
hadn’t really listened to music in 18 months
besides pop country radio stations
‘i got that summertime, summertime sadness’
ad infinitum.
somehow I had decent pair of headphones and
a small, black verizon smartphone circa July 2013.
‘do what you want, what you want with my body…’
Lady Gaga actually saved my life that day.

demon in the ikea medicine cabinet mirror
giant rock of crystal
missing
water in the rig
‘was there even anything in there?!?!?!’
the mirror reflected back to me a stranger’s eyes
mirror is another name for a stranger's eyes.
i tabernacled in the high desert plains,
Sheridan, Wyoming - powder river country.

i felt the God-force emerge yesterday
up and outward from deep within my belly.
but today i’m fussing over straw-men
in plaster-of-paris suits
and i ate tortured beef at a
diner in Leesport, PA
and I can’t turn back into the man I was
no matter how hard I try.

so now I sit before
the most holy apostle St. Jude
located at Our Lady of Fatima Grotto
across the street from Kings College, Wilkes-Barre, PA.
‘The quickest way to Hell are the temptations of the flesh, exclamation point.’
i came here to reclaim my value but
i can’t seem to find it anywhere.

i keep getting flashbacks of the water in the rig
and the screaming from the bathroom and
if i didn’t tell somebody about this i was probably
going to *****.

3 cheers for the Black Madonna and
the big surrender.
i’ve swallowed so many shadows by now
that i don’t recognize myself in the mirror
or in your eyes.
but my body is a christmas tree and
from the branches i hang
plastic tinsel and
crystals and
broken timing chains
and a cedar wood mala.

I see that Christ is always pointing to
his sacred heart
but no one ever told me that
the anahata chakra had a back door.
no wonder sometimes I feel like i’m a
hydrogen bomb welded inside a lead casket.
someone open the ******* door and
let some light in.

the sun doesn’t rise from the west
and there is no rest for the weary and
to this day I act like that wasn’t only
water in the rig.
"Time is a ball of wax."
-Beck
Doug Potter Dec 2016
Basil, paprika, cold Hungarian goulash,
bleu cheese and stale cinnamon
coffee cake dominate
the taste of  your
mouth and skin;

it’s not because you are
slovenly that pulls me
into you, I am alone.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
you seem pretty ordinary to me, which is why i wrote this
poem, a poem not in a classical sense of musicology
given there techno and big beat and black man's Mozart in the
jazzy quarter... you just seem pretty  ordinary to me, as one
supermarket attendee said while
getting the thief-lock on a bottle of Jim Beans's whiskey:
sometimes you have to be cruel
to be kind... i watched him wrestle
that thieving plug like suffocating a
salmon... Bobby McFerrin inventing
beat-box, you know how the story goes...
entertaining the many, forgetting
the little shrouded figure in the
shadows, ready to pull all the strings
on a suicide vest... and then.. BOOM...
Sinjid's your uncle, as my mathematics
teacher said... no one ever mentioned
the rise of the Turbanator, but it might have
been added for the sheer blow-over tactic
as to why it was a keratin fetish in the Arab
department...  Hollywood in the 1990s looked
so cool, i mean that in all the best phrases...
after the 1990s it just went tsunami-style into
a nose-dive of ricochet of ****...
then again.. why not avenue q? or cluster k?
ah, the aesthetic parley, the black dot tattoo
with some verse from the book of genesis,
better call them the biblical-phobias,
any citation needed in this joke? probably none.
the 1990s felt so lazy, so Utopian almost,
after the drugs of hallucinogenic properties
and the sedatives where translated into
alphabets, we all wished to experience them...
but once the experiences were encoded,
the Beat generation poets started when high
we sorta said: **** it... nay bother...
they wrote about a compass as s a fidgety Byzantium
cranium with a Bahamas postcard...
down the Turkish shop i'm allocated the word: bro...
he did have his goods suffocating the public
eye of a bench... turned into a lawyer for a bit,
told him about the bench, told him to expose it...
now i'm a bro; this sort of **** will have
Isis soldiers lament the passing of Robin Williams...
like i said, in the 1990s we almost made it...
after that we hit a down-turn of success...
i don't know what happened, bowling for Columbine
certainly did, populism is so far removed right
now that i'm starting to think of the population
of Fiji... and how people would gather around an idol
of pop music being sold to us...
people naturally wait for the cut-off points...
friendships, grandparents, pop artists...
we leave them as the additional grains of sand or droplets
of water in the conundrum arithmetic of passing by...
but when i watch that video of don't worry, be happy,
i think of Fitzgerald's the great Gatsby's everyday life,
without the glitz parties to attract the sycophants...
that's my first translation... every other
translation doesn't really care to bother me...
that video is for me the way Gatsby ought to have lived...
King Lear in Pyjamas running the chequers charade
of impromptu: deaf con black, arctic privy white...
and three knocks of a chisel on the dental of mummies
to check the carbon dating as "no hoax";
i don't know why Bobby McFerrin's song (plus video)
makes me think of Fitzgerald's the great Gatsby,
but it does... it's Robin Williams in the pyjamas...
i figure... the ultimate trick is to play the
rich lunatic, wearing pyjamas on the beach...
ending the tryst with the words:
"sunset already?" sure, full-glare-of-the-sun
simmering of oven baked chicken tights
with added smoked paprika and a secret marinade
recipe. that ought to do it.
Donall Dempsey May 2015
I remember your father
kicking in my womb.

The sunshine
fell on the floor

as if it were
worshiping me.

I felt just like I was
the ****** Mary or something

being told what was what

in some Renaissance
painting by some guy whose

name I can’t even
pronounce.

“Woah there...little one! ”
I said chuckling to the kicking.

“There’s still time enough...less of the rough stuff! ”
I tried to coax it into quietness.

“Don’t be in such...a hurry...I’ll still be here! ”
I smiled to it and myself.

Then I had breakfast of coffee
& scrambled egg & chives
with a little dill & paprika sprinkled on top.

Went on making baby
for all I was worth.

The paprika would explain
the red hair!

God...when it came...it was
a difficult birth.

Felt like a peach...split apart.

Beethoven came into the room
from some passing car radio

& then floated out again
as if he were gliding around
on his own notes.

I tried to follow
where the music was going

but it got entangled
in next door’s clothes line.

A pigeon walked up & down
the window sill

trying to look as if he was
very busy but he was only

passing time
&...poo!

“Shoo! ” I scolded it
and then wondered


what a pigeon would look like
in a *****.

Need a lot of changing!

I took a stray feather
from a pillow

balanced it on
my swollen belly

(God I was...huge!)    

& laughed
as it got kicked off.

“That’s my girl! ”
I grinned

‘cos I was
sure I was

having a girl

but instead
I was

having your father.

Always never knew where I was
with him.

He was always his own
person

even when he hardly even
existed.

Then when he handed me you
& I realised my baby’s had a baby

I just cried
& cried

...’till I
laughed.
Macstoire Sep 2015
Once upon a mealtime
When salt had gone away
He had left in such a hurry
And with no sub to work his day

Poor pepper started panicking
Mostly missing his dear mate
But also with a worry
If he alone would taste so great

So he soon sent out a message
To all the pots upon the shelf
'Partner needed quickly,
I can't dust dinner by myself'

So suddenly came rescue
In fact response was vast
The rest of all the condiments
Took triumph for him fast

First of course came ketchup
So used to being shared
But pepper didn't quite believe
That they would be best paired

Then came Mr Mayo
With a winning stance he stood
But too eager for the winning
Pepper didn't think him good

In butted boisterous barbecue
Believing there was no other
Unless there could be any left
Of his favourite sweet chilli brother

But pepper wanted neither
For he cared about this dish
And they came in heavy servings
Which wouldn't be salts wish

Still with plenty choice left
He looked upon his friends
Mustards, chutneys and pickles
Fine flavours they'd all lend

But then he heard herbs and spices
Who were giving a loud shout
'If you want salt not to be needed
Then you'd best not leave us out!'

This quickly made him realise
That the best friends he could make
Would come not squeezed all over
But served with a gentle shake

So he rounded up the shakers
But he wouldn't work them all
'You're right you'll help me nicely
But who mostly? It's your call'

The chilli taking charge of things
Addressed pepper with this test
'Well what is this dish we're warming
And we'll tell you what works best?!'

When they looked upon the oven hob
They saw mix of veg and meat
Chopped finely and frying in a pan
Slowly taking up the heat

So suddenly they knew now
Who would win the role to take
Cajun and paprika
A fine taste they surely make

So shaked upon the cooking
It was served with a success
No one need ever know
That peppers day had been a mess

So later in the evening
When salt stumbled his way home
His apologies were heartfelt
'I'll never leave you all alone'

But pepper soon forgave him
He said 'there, there, it's ok'
For now he knew the secret
Of how to cook in the best way
August 2015
W Winchester Nov 2015
I have no idea what to say. I don’t know what I believe in.

I do know what I don’t believe in, though.

I don’t believe in god. Or any salvation, really.
I don’t believe in sheltering opinions and coddling students. I don’t believe in censorship.
I don’t believe in the idea that we should teach by word of mouth instead of leading by example. I don’t believe in hitting children as a form of discipline.
I don’t believe in authority that abuses power in order to **** anything in their way.
I don’t believe in searching through your daughters text messages to find out if she’s in trouble in place of fostering a relationship that allows open communication with her so that she doesn’t need to hide.
I don’t believe in hanging threats over people’s heads in lieu of the things they have done when they were a different person.
I don’t believe in kicking people while they’re down by telling them that “someone somewhere out there has it much worse than you do.”
I don’t believe in hurting for everyone equally at the same time.
I don’t believe in painting my nails purple.
I don’t believe in vegetable juice.
I don’t believe in veganism.
I don’t believe in paprika or leprechauns either.
Hell, I don’t really believe in anything– and that, I can believe.
Originally a class assignment, but I feel like it belongs here too.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
even the queen doesn't wear as many pompous garments
throughout the year, as she does  upon coronation,
or the annual opening of the parliament -
high almighty she sits, in the chamber
of the house of lords, before the
"commoners" / middle-class pimps
lords of the manor of Cambridgeshire
are later summoned by black rod -
all the knock knock jokes stem from there:
black rod - knock knock.
the commons' - who's there?
black rod - black rod!
the commons' - black rod who?
black rod - black rod you wouldn't even care,
                    the pigs' trough is waiting.
but even the queen doesn't wear
all the garments she's entitled to upon
this occasions - i mean the full garment...
so is the commoner's approach to
vocabulary... on a printed page of a book
a poem looks: so much more menacing!
it's as if i actually have stamped
each poem, and they're not r.t.s. (return
to sender) example of bypassing
and destroying the the royal mail
with a magician's snap of the fingers...
but as honesty goes, the internet made
one magic trick, snap of the fingers,
and a thousand centipedes of postmen
disappeared in a second... gone... flushed
down the social-cohesive toilet...
it's called: improvement... the Chinese
are like: bring them over, we have
a billion and we need the leg work,
done and dusted, the last meaningful
letter i ever received was... i don't remember:
safe to say: never.
i am actually comparing something,
opened a beer, sat on a windowsill,
and thought to myself: after i digest
Stephen King's media outlet with his
many ghost writers, i'll smoke a cigarette
and read that ghastly thing that has my
name and picture printed on it...
it's ****** hard to read your own thoughts
back: given elephant narcissus in the room
and the bay leaf sensation in your mouth
rereading the ******* -
oh, by the way, in my culinary arsenal,
on today's menu: pork tikka masala -
i know, a heresy, tikka masala paste extra,
but to infuriate the palette:
not ground cumin and coriander, seeds,
a bay leaf... cloves (not necessary),
and cardamon pods -
                                freshly chopped tomatoes,
creme freche instead of double cream and
yogurt - garam masala, Kashmiri chilly powder,
paprika, turmeric... anti-dementia exercise:
what the **** did i put in?
50% youth unemployment in Greece,
45% and 40% in Spain and Italy respectively,
well, if you're going to have an existential
crisis, i.e. you're not in denial about old age
and how the Dutch and the Swiss and the Belgians
are the great humanitarians of our time...
might as well have one now.
funny enough, most people will not be saving up
for a pension... they'll be saving up for
euthanasia... honest to god, the lemmings are coming!
the lemmings are coming! in human terms:
that's not a myth.
****... what a digression... even the queen doesn't
wear the many garments presiding over her
role as being understood upon the annual
opening of parliament: in layman's terms,
i mean that to be synonymous with vocabulary...
a.i. says one as an abstract version
of all the other pronouns...
   the royal says we: because there's always
an entourage of lackeys and servants -
all the commoners get stashed in i, the over-exemplified i:
egoism, you, he, she, and the paranoid collective
of the royal's we, i.e. they...
it came to me rereading the Frederick II
Hohenstaufen Linguistic Experiment
-
i realised, because of certain words having
a near ~synonymous status:
mainly because they're so closely bound,
and like triplets, you can't have three different
wombs to get the bunch out
(oh, i have fried twins on toast,
once or twice, twin yokes in one egg,
i wonder: would they ever... er...
become Siamese? division gone awry,
or God teaching angels mathematics,
someone's bound to slip up... oh come on...
give room for some ****** simplicity!) -
what i want to reiterate is: even the queen doesn't
wear all the required authoritarian garments
throughout the year: look at her taste in
frocks... a puppet without a puppeteer -
now that's authority, wink-wink-oi-oi
nudge of the elbow, 'ello 'ello 'ello 'ello;
the same goes for me, you and every other
Jack and Jill... three words...
all statistical... mode... median... mean...
now, i haven't the foggiest how to differentiate
you a meaning for each... thus
looking at the poem i mentioned:
ontological modes - i.e. certain words can't
provide ontological modes -
attacking the verbiage, you honestly haven't
read continental thought, roll a spliff,
****** off... anyway...
it's like the queen's story... let's say her
garments are necessary analogy: she doesn't
wear all the pompous cloth and pearl
every day, unless it's everyday in a painting...
that's the same with vocabulary...
plus mode, median and mean are congested into
an alphabetical coercion -
let's say zoological and anthropoid -
so far apart you can almost keep them freshly
imprinted to a satisfying differential immediacy -
i.e. you can give me a meaning of the two words...
but mean (1) is soon followed by median (2)
                later comes the meaning of mode (3 -
in alphabetical order... even though
the alphabet has only a quantum chronology -
  compact a, first, then b - stranger that it
wasn't supposed to be necessarily e) -
which is why we seem to unhinge from specific
vocabularies - in education we are strained
at times to learn specific vocabularies,
but later discard them, we're actually repelled by
categorised vocabularies: niche vocabularies -
from the moment of hinging unto certain
words, we immediate unhinge from them...
leave school, learn to earn money...
as with the queen: we don't wear all the garments
of the vocabularies we were exposed to...
the difference being: she gets reminded...
the majority of us never get reminders
about using certain words: even in pub trivia
general knowledge quizzing, or that's the last
resort... for the most part, that's
what the dictionary is for:
                            it's prime utility has an
   a posteriori ontology -
                whereas the thesaurus (rex) has an
a priori ontology: which is why writers look up
words on the synonymous scale to create an exotic
jungle, which would otherwise look like the meadows
of Hyde Park... plus the dictionary states a word's
etymology - which doubles the proof that
a dictionary has an a posteriori ontology / nature
    of being used -
                                 in abstract, yes, ontology:
                 nature of being per se - box of chocolates
and Forrest Gump's wisdom on: you never know
what the kaleidoscope will show off and what you'll
get: mint?! yuck!
                             but as i already stated:
even the queen doesn't wear all the garments
required for the annual opening of parliament
every day... as with us and our lesser jewels:
words - not all words are there to be kept on
close surveillance through the year -
                     it's worthwhile remembering that
each of our faculties has a weakness...
and not all words are permanently loyal to us,
primarily through environmental fluctuations
governing their use, outside of a chemists?
would you necessarily hear nouns used in a chemist
outside a chemist? probably not...
so that's how i do mental crosswords -
well, i have absolutely no clues -
you have a bank balance an average Chinese
might have of 3000 ideograms -
    find me the tetraideogrammaton!
    earth wind & fire... & water...
                       but that's how i known i'm doing
crosswords in my head... a long forgotten word...
revisited... and instead of creating clues and guess
work: i have a narrative, anew -
a word once used in an examination paper,
later discarded, now revisited for my pleasure -
but we never have a complete account balance
of our vocabulary, that's always fluctuating like
stock-market share prices -
                we're like the queen without her
authoritarian garments most of the time -
                              we have (on purpose) set up
various bank accounts for specialised topics /
obscure knowledge - i really don't know if this
was a good idea - crosswords and obscure knowledge
trivia - again, like at school, this is a way
to misplace the greatest outlet of memory:
the optic foundation - the photographic something or other...
which, by way of consent has the power to
show us the dark room being opened -
      the Black Dot Eraser - happens all the time:
the Black Dot Eraser is like a concentrated form of
something, prone to insane gravity of pulling everything
into a nano-metre dot... a blind censor -
                      who says: i haven't seen anything prior,
and even with your words attempting to illuminate
the sense that hasn't graciously been bestowed upon me:
i will not see anything after.
                       unappealing the quest for
a unifying sense datum... of the five variations,
      given the five senses, how can we every reach
a simple i i i i i                 rather than a variable
                                      i i I I i?
      it's a basic schematic - a variation of?
some words (datum in exclusiveness) have variations
   in being ascribed sense - given there are give senses,
not every word (datum as exclusive of 4, but inclusive
   of at least 1) can be ascribed a placebo uniformity:
   i i i i i -                           since the nature of a datum is
   to show us fluctuation:
                                      e.g. i i I I i...
   given that different people, react to a word differently
in each sensual medium: the fluctuation of
   being given a piece of information inscribed in a word
when ingested by hearing, seeing, speaking, etc.
well... that's that: 200 camels came by the oasis
and drank 200 litres of water each (that is their
actual capacity after crossing a desert) -
                                                            and that's that:
testimony to the superiority of the oryx.
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2016
~~~

when between the table and the fridge,
she wishes to pass,
and I,
obstacle roundly present,
am alerted by a gentle squeeze of my ***,
happily acknowledging the purposed duality of her

cheekiest, sweetest,
signal given


~~~

a food array presented,
paprika colored roasted chicken,
spaghetti squash salted,
salad with cranberries, candy walnuts,
even raisins hidden within and
all before me placed

she objects little,
with eyes silent uplifted
like two pie rollers in striking position,
when I commence to sup,
with my just dessert
of apple crisp,
that by coming first,
is grandly philosophized,
that today,

"the last shall be first"

~~~

she wakes me prematurely,
her only cause, the intruding concept
of her successfully doing the telling,
first one to win the everyday claiming race,
the first to say on this day,
I love you foremost and also,
"haha I win"

**** it

~~~

miscreant me,
happy loafer,
habitual offender of other things
that the censors here,
would not permit explicitly disclosing,
for which she looks wise away,
mumbling only
"half of his
addiction to cinnamon raisin loaf,
still, far, far, better

than none"

~~~

I know she loves me cause:

1) she likes unfailingly every one of my poems
(a half truth)
2) she loves best, faithfully,
those she loves the best,
that are the ones that release,
without permission asked,
those that come with a side of tissues,
at the ready,
to be emergency issued

those tissues
I call,
the ladies-in-waiting for

**the gentlest stream of tears
Spenser Roper Mar 2014
paper person
paprika kaleidoscope
papaya yahoo!
papa papoose
papacy cyan
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
feminism is sexist in that it does not really acknowledge the house-husband, the aesthetic of work has changed, we don't need people to work like mules with a scythe in the wheat fields, we have tractors and combines, and yet there's no respectability for the house-husband, unlike the once famous role of the housewife - and yes, the aesthetic of work has changed, more trades have become mechanised and i agree that she should be out there making things look more and more pretty... but alas, seeking the role of being a house-husband reduces you to alcoholism... but hey, i'm cool with that - so after all the major wars have been fought, world war iii would never take place, nor the fears of the cold war ripening even to a lukewarm temperature, we sided with the war of the sexes... and it turns out, given our perfected system of reproduction that means we'll never become extinct, it just takes two guys and a surrogate mother to live on - because the classical fancy became exhausted by keeping the memory of Shakespeare for too long, reducing him to an educational tool, rather than a breath of inspiration.*

unavailable for the past few days,
sorting out poems,
having to go to the local shops
to buy apple cider and beer for
the fudge sauce for the streak steaks
and chips and asparagus;
it's hard to criticise christianity these
days without falling into a
cliché of nietzsche - so it's easier
to fall into the other famous cliché of his:
who the hell put woman in the kitchen?
she can't cook! ain't that something,
i do miss the mist of vapour and
the thickening of a sauce that asks for
two cups of ketchup... that's not going
to work, maximum 2 tablespoons, pushing 3,
and yes and no: 1 teaspoon of sugar (1/4 cup of sugar),
1 cup of apple cider (1/2 a cup of apple cider),
1 cup of beer (3/4 cup of beer),
1 tablespoon of yellow mustard - perhaps a bit
of mustard powder too,
2 tablespoons of lemon juice,
1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce,
1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper,
1 tablespoon of paprika,
butter onion oil garlic... so the bracket quantities were
in the original, the ketchup is still up for
a parliamentary debate -
after all, smoking cigarettes does makes your
palette more sensitive to the two viruses
that are stranded as too spicy & too salty, hey presto
grilled new york strip steak with beer,
cider and missing molasses - so now tell me,
why bother memorising poetry and eating in
restaurants, when you can just let poems be
and memorise a (hopefully) yummy recipe?
touka Jan 2018
a hurdle to jump, she parsed
to pass through a season
and leap unsoiled through its shedding
a haunt of hemingway's
to whine against another want
oh!
as spring clamors for its own warmth
maybe needless, but i would ask
to spend whatever time
with faint regard of whatever time
i'll see this one out
matt nobrains Aug 2011
"you sack of crap,"
i spit, broken cigarette clamped between
my lips.
speeding by the rIver at maybe
or 60
street lamps whipping
by like faeries.
i'm drunk
we're all drunk
beer cans in the glovebox,
on the seats under us,
filling the car up to our ears,
filling the trunk,
i swerve and suddenly i'm home.
i clamber up stairs,
throw the door open
collapse on my bed
and pass out.
and that's when i dream
these visions come to me
of grinding teeth, flames, screaming
there's a beautiful woman, completely naked
but instead of human legs she's got horse's legs
"what the ****,"
i say to here,
"let's get goin"
and she says
"you'd take any woman that could fog a glass, wouldn't you?"and i say
"no, just ones with horse legs"
and then i wake up. it's morning now.
i feel sick, hungry, hungover, tired,
and forget all about the ominous dream for the time being.
i put some eggs to boil
i go outside and have a cigarette
and while i'm sitting there i remember that night
there was a bunch of people, and drinking
speeding through space time,
what strangeness this all is.
all humans,
some of us drink to forget
but
i drink to remember.
it's metaphysical, it's important,
more important than
money or what the **** ever.
i go back inside
i run cold water, peel the eggs,
it's difficult, the shell keeps pulling off
chunks of egg with it. i get frustrated and
spit
"sack of crap,"
and take a bite of the egg.
mouth full of shell shards, cutting my gums,
the egg wasn't fully cooked. i pour mustard and
paprika on it anyway and eat it.
i get the sense that my life is a metaphor but
instead of thinking about it i go get drunk.

— The End —