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[Greek: Mellonta  sauta’]

These things are in the future.

Sophocles—’Antig.’

‘Una.’

“Born again?”

‘Monos.’

Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were
the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long
pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood,
until Death itself resolved for me the secret.

‘Una.’

Death!

‘Monos.’

How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous
inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by
the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of
Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word
which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts,
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

‘Una.’

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often,
Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its
nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human
bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That
earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our
bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy
in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen
with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts
the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate
us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate
would have been mercy then.

‘Monos’.

Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine, mine
forever now!

‘Una’.

But the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have
much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I
burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the
dark Valley and Shadow.

‘Monos’.

And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in
vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point
shall the weird narrative begin?

‘Una’.

At what point?

‘Monos’.

You have said.

‘Una’.

Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say,
then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation—but
commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless
torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the
passionate fingers of love.

‘Monos’.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition
at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise
among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in
the world’s esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety
of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our
civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six
centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose
some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those
principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised
reason, so utterly obvious —principles which should
have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the
natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long
intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each
advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true
utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that
intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of
all—since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy
which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone,
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally
did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the
evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in
the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and
of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct
intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant
condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—
living and perishing amid the scorn of the
“utilitarians”—of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied
only to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our
wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were
keen—days when mirth was a word unknown, so
solemnly deep-toned was happiness—holy, august, and
blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills
unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and
unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general
misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we
had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The
great “movement”—that was the cant term—went on:
a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the
Arts—arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains
upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man,
because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature,
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-
increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked
a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over
him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder,
he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He
enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas,
that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning
voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading
all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts at an
omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not
both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose,
innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of
furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the
ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una,
even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-
fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that
we had worked out our own destruction in the ******* of
our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its
culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis
that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle
position between the pure intellect and the moral sense,
could never safely have been disregarded—it was now
that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to
Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative
spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek:
mousichae]  which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient
education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since
both were most desperately needed, when both were most
entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom
we both love, has said, how truly!—”Que tout notre
raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;” and it is
not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over
the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing
was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of
knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass
of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily,
affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records
had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of
highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate
from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with
Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with
Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all
Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from
the Future. The individual artificialities of the three
latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their
individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no
regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not
become extinct, I saw that he must be “born again.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our
spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we
discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface
of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone
could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe
itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:—for man the
Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect
there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still
for the material, man.

‘Una’.

Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the
epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely
warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually.
You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and
thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion
brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses
with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a
century still.

‘Monos’.

Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably,
it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart
with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few
days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain,
while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after
some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless
and motionless torpor; and this was termed Death by
those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-
summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness,
through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being
awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was
powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions
at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense.
The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my
lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of
flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of
the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming
around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered
no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in
abeyance, the ***** could not roll in their sockets—
but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere
were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which
fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the
eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck
the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance,
this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only
as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the
matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark
in shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at
the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular
in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance
of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had
undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted
always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure
of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only
recognized through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my
perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree
wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of
moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs
floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and
were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but
they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave
them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon
my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke,
thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders
spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una,
gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark
figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed
the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms;
but upon passing to my side their images impressed me
with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal
expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone,
habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically
about.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became
possessed by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the
sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within
his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but
equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It
oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight,
and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike
the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous,
which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in
strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought
into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound,
but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression
was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame
of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now,
dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched,
you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet
lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose
tremulously within my *****, and mingling with the merely
physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that,
half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and
sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless
heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and
faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all
perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a
delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in
it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No
muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But
there seemed to have sprung up in the brain that of
which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence
even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental
pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s
abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization
of this movement—or of such as this—had the
cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By
its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the
mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings
came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from
the true proportion—and these deviations were
omniprevalent—affected me just as violations of
abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense.
Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the
individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the
respective momentary errors of each. And this—this
keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of
duration—this sentiment existing (as man could
not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of
any succession of events—this idea—this sixth
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first
obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the
threshold of the temporal eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited
me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I
knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But
suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in
volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died
aw
Pat Broadbent Apr 2018
It’s possible to speak too much to remember what your words mean.
And so is the two-fold danger faced by writers.
Danger is to pace a hole in the floor.
Danger is to stand until you can’t move anymore
like when shallow waves **** your feet into the sand.

So I try not to stand when I write.

I keep a narrow tack
without too many big words
which pedants use to dig great holes in the ground
–moats to keep others out–
or make you think they think big.

But anyone who reads knows about Icarus
and anyone with aims must beware:
to shoot directly upwards is to strike your own head
when like fate the arrow
returns to source.

You’re only as good as your mind,
your characters only as strong as you are.
—at least, this is true in so far as you know.
True in so far as they speak.
For to test them you must torque them
and twist at their cores,
and make opposing forces meet–
but only
as hard as you can.

This makes writing a hill slick with oil.
Insecure. Potential energy.
Potential failure
seated
in all of that grime
that cakes your toes like grease that coats
the teeth of great industrial gears.

So I try not to stand when I write.

But whether the better take comes when you plunge
and you slide and dissolve like so much ice,
I must say I don’t know,
the thought
seems nice.
But the same
It seems like those who let go
Are the ones
with the least to say.

I can't decide
either which way.

All I know about writing is
most sentences are punctuated wrongly.
The period is certain,
but writing is undecided.
It is the figuring-out, a quest-bound troop
that moves with all its own fanfare.
Question marks curl up—
invisible smoke on a summer coal fire:
heat twisting the air like irons in stoke
giving sign of the transformations there withheld.
For fire mediates matter,
so writing stands ever-between.

But I’ve spoken too much and I don’t know what these words mean.
And so I fold like there’s danger in writing,
while danger is imagined like borders on a continent.
Danger is thinking
I'm dangerous enough to keep silent.
Like shallow waves,
given way to sand.
So avoid letting voids form
where the mind dismisses confrontation to more capable smiths.
Writing is –at best– an attempt.
Even with shallow structures
in rhythmic din,
the silent breaks by force of pen,
and all because of the simple fact
that quiet refuses to bend.

All I can hope is my writing upholds these unknowns
while I try not to stand.

But you ask about writing?
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
the form might be that of a poem, but to be honest,
it has nothing poetic to it -
                  i wanted to feel angry -
to vent anger out,    i drank during the daytime:
daytime and drinking?
                                                       ­         bad idea.
                               daytime drinking
and fasting and smoking
and coffee? a doubled-up bad idea...
         but i wanted to feel
a wrathful voice... i got bored of my otherwise
gentlemanly attire and what not,
i wanted to waste my tongue into
anger... best propeller of the act?
drink during daytime...
                          when night falls,
the lazy one comes out.
                   consider this -
some use language to encrypt, not
to to simply memorise rhyming and
bounce bounce the bubbly pink ball
on stage...
                    Pavlov's lapping tongue
of a dog overheating -
             philosophy deals with
double phonetic encryption,
                  that's a psychological reevaluation
of what language is, from the standard
of the three tier cake:      consciousness,
                                      s­ub-  " and un- "    -
again Christianity plays a great deal with
the point of a trinity -
                               that's the secular version,
a populist version for each individual
regardless of the church's credo -
                    but as i was saying:
philosophy deals with a doubled variation
of phonetic encoding:
                      primarily for one reason:
this is primer for idea forming -
               isn't it?
                             the first level is that of
being able to read the encoding -
   like a music score...
                                   to write a s k
              and then say the word: ask.
but the second tier of encoding sound is
to translate it into optics -
                   the basis of idea forming -
not the basis of making sounds, but to peer
more deeply into any sort of narrative -
sometimes a single word can pull
the gravity of thought
                                 away from the narrator
ego, and into the realm of the id:
        which doesn't narrated, but
    conjures up ideas: to me the source of
all "magic" formulae -
                          here again, a classic plagiarism
working on the basis of a trinity -
          i dare say dualism is so unfashionable
to most people, as is monism -
             people prefer triangles to explain
their psychological life,
          and circles to explain the physical life...
   dualism is out of fashion that
it would seem to be more (dangerously) fashionable
to be of split-mind - but never mind that -
romanticising any medical condition is
a faux pas.
                                i was spurred on
by reading a review of O'Hara's poetry,
namely the poem sardines -
                  the reviewer writes how the poet
'actually writes his poem by breaking down
language into its most basic units - words.'
well... technically this is where the other point
of phonetic encoding comes in, the third tier...
words aren't as basic as you might think -
they reside in the realm of meaning,
but also a realm of being bound to a thesaurus -
(apologies, i'm not trying to be pedantic,
  you might see where this might be going,
in terms of sharpening the point of
               what's language and
the basics of language - yes, a niche topic,
as usual, pedants ahoy)
                          words are components
(or compounds)... letters are units, akin to
mathematical digits...
                          but then again,
kilometres are units -
                                 as are miles and hours...
surely then if worded
                   the representation would be that
of a/z                             rather than
                                   p/o/r/r/i/d/g/e          
      a/z seems like a better basis for unitary
conceptualisation of language
                        using a, b, c... z as the basic
units of language... yes... much more so than words...
            because the third tier of encoding
is based primarily on letters,
                                       yes, we know the
plight of the Palestinians, but the Jews have something
i want, and use, quiet frequently,
although with variation - there's no
              toying about with gematria -
i don't accept this method of investigation -
              i find absolute futility in it -
not that i can't grasp it, but i find it useless -
         it's this third tier where ideas are formed
without any distinct orthodoxy -
                           so:
tier 1. phonetically encoding a s k to say: ask
tier 2. phonetically encoding a s k to think:
                                      what am i going to ask for?
tier 3. phonetically encoding a s k to then
            (primarily) venture into encoding
                                              a s k i n g f o r p a t i e n c e.
we're not dealing with Chinese ideograms,
    we're dealing with a linear juxtaposition encoding
   e.g.
     a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p (q r s t u v w x y z)
the bracket? i first learned the English alphabet
as a sing-along... to my memory i forgot the rhythm
of the song (i was 7 at the time) and subsequently
             the rest of the sequence... but that doesn't
necessarily mean my vocabulary suffered because of it...
still linear juxtaposition encoding, as above, only
         n y m p h  (x y s t)
                             a b c d e f g i j k l o q r s t u v w x z
                   (a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r u v w z)
                                           e x o t i c s (friz)
          a b d f g j k l q r u v w x z
                              (a b c d e g h j k l m n o p q u v w)
                 ...
                                    
     ...
                         (b c e g
                                                            - interlude -
   well, technically, you could say that diacritical
marks are used for the purpose of dissecting
words into syllables, that's not to say
          latin compound fixations on meaningful
  prefixes, such as: aqua-        or omni-
                   (yes, the etymological section
of the dictionary is the most interesting part
of that book - as counter to Darwinism,
                     or something less intrinsic with
visuals, and focused more on a shorter history
of mankind, the less ridiculous time-frame,
         or history without Alexanders and Socrates -
                  SS... the English hasn't fixed
the notation of pluralism here...
            something akin to ß      or σ          or     ς
                    is begging to come out of this problem...
lets just say the ending variation of sigma denotes
the plural, so, etymology, or history without
       Alexanders and Socrateς / cruder or more
masculine Socrateç... Tess' - as in: it belongs to Theresa)
        as Plato noted, i too, like Socrates
are investigating how my name ought to be written,
by the looks of it, from what i discovered
               i apply diacritics as syllable identifiers,
or: how to cut words up -
   ergo? even though this is not orthodox,
my name, should be written as
                   Máteuš -
                                               the acute a
stresses the cutting up of the word, i.e. the first
syllable is identified, primarily because diacritics
stress non-prefixes, i.e. simpler variations of
what a prefix is (a loan word), or a sound that
has an ancient meaning, for example pre-
or pro-, meaning the word was forced into the shackles
of being accompanied by a hyphen
when the ancient tongue disintegrated and its grammar
was no longer adequate to accommodate
the barbarian tongues of the north...  
so it has come to this: diacritical marks are not
exactly aesthetic concerns where not writing an
acute o but rather u is displeasing to the eyes...
      it's about seeing where the syllable incision has
been made... shame the English never adopted it...
but then again: the Empire blah blah blah, Star Wars
blah blah blah... special relationship with America
blah blah blah... that old chestnut -
                  or can anyone forget their eccentricity
of doth and         all that Canterbury *******?
   or even Shakespeare's English?
                                  i'm on it... well,
apologies... internet encrypting, acronyms and
eight and L8 for late. it was never adopted -
        and never will be... ****-naked Charlie
and ****-floral-naked Angie...
              sitting in a tree, one two, one two three.

  - post-interlude -

              (b c e g...
                                           i really can't be bothered
   trying to finish this little scrabble -
           i mean, looking up words
                       so i'm left with the last possible letter,
or no letter at all...
                                  what with
    the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, (y)
                                                  nymph as a word (though)
is the closest you'll get to the pronunciation of
     y (why)               in                   Polish...
                            ny-                 or -ymph
                                 obviously cut off the μ and φ...
but if you're really bored...
                  you could probably finish that
little game... for no reason, whatsoever -
        as already stated i'm more interested in things
contained in the interlude, but then again games like
this provide the capacity to abstract and return
with actual application of an idea.
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.
Marshal Gebbie Jul 2012
Oh the years have paved the way
Across my leathered, weary hide
And wracked their worst, un-countenanced,
Before a mind that can’t abide…

Intolerance of racial plague
Or sanctimonious pedants, vague.

Serenely I have watched it play
Across the tapestry of time,
Watched the rise and fall of man
From point of view of one sublime
Who sits in sun, who sits in shade
Untouched by all the great charade…

Of those who claw a comrade’s face
To gain esteem in power’s grace.

With toothless maw I masticate
The softness of this pure white grain
Untrammelled by the lure of sin,
Untroubled by the drag of strain….

See troubled waters pass me by
From torrent flow to pebble dry.

Through clouded eyes I see it all
The strong, the weak, the proud, the vain,
And those who seek eternity
But seldom pause to sense refrain…

From softly spoken words of love
Where teardrops fall to pools of blood.

Verily I say to you,
Take heed my friend or feel the pain,
From one who knows the way of things,
From one who sorts the chaff from grain…

Take heed or suffer loss from chance
For chance controls this merry dance.

Across the years I’ve sat in sun
Breathed the dust and watch it run
Amok… as sane men have their way,
To rule and wreck another day….

They die alone in cold remorse
Whilst most ignore without recourse.


Marshalg
On the bank of the river Ganges
21 July 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie
No shandy drinking
Ivory tower pedants
Will dictate to me
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
unlike painters, poetic sketches
are rarely written down,
they're spoken,
it's not necessarily a psychiatric
worthy evaluation of a lack of health,
poets levy all the possibilities
of anti-matter (the compromise)
to sketch - you can spot them
incur constant defeat, writing on
a sheath with their inky sword,
on a colour of defeat, warring with
the word, but to no avail,
yet still ram-persistent-ignorance
remaining to be utilised;
learning the english language
from the age of 8,
i meet a Cypriot in a pub in the
irish "quarter" of greater london,
and he tells me i'm posh -
self-taught elocution that
allows me to slur posh when drinking,
i had it coming, learn from scratch,
scratch your way in to the aristocratic
heights, but have a stiff-left **** cheek
and the whole cheek affair will
bubble-foam through;
aspiring Sadduccee said:
'but not because of the babylonians
or the egyptians had we such
a massive influx of religious debate
and religious intellectualism,
as under the romans...
their image-engraving system
serves the polity, they ignore
the engravings, but do so nonetheless
for some odd principle,
there's the point of gesticulation
amiss, only the ****** females
gesticulate with incense and ****** -
none dare cross the threshold of
argument, unless they head to the
undiscovered lands of the north,
by such distance allowed to be crossed,
a crucifixion would seem but a torturous
tickle, compared to the blood eagle execution.'
indeed the northern numbness of the heart,
lest anything else prevail, this alone will...
but the larger the society, the less chance
of tribalism and justice eager to sentence
culprits... more thieves and cowards...
a thief will not steal your arm or leg,
but the by-product of your arm's or leg's labour,
cowards and thieves rampant.
so indeed, the poet sketches, but sketches
with his mouth, onto the canvas of clouded
skies, bird cries and howling foxes,
he sketches like a painter might,
although respectably announcing the numbers;
a Pharisee said:
'we invented this mode of communication,
these letters these numbers for only
one monumental reason, stationed
in the Bastille, envisioned our fate we did,
we crafted this little abstracts into
as many units as there are,
for the sole reason as to complicate
our imagining of things...
strain the mind to read, un-strain it to
imagine a higher reality of a child's impromptu -
for we crafted these symbols of curbed sound
to craft incision upon incision
and create the only anatomy of the mouth:
one H fills the vowels, one H to hollow them out,
and there you have a W like a crimean tatar piñata,
god's fat **** sitting on a naked alphabet
reveals diacritical geometrics ascribed to
the four letters.... the Y?
that's a bit like:

          scythe                     cyst



                       cauldron

it's technically chiral, s, k, c....
but then they interchange like some quantum
physics explanation, the odd affair.'
indeed socrates or jesus couldn't show you that,
they only wrote an ancient form of signature
of being present (X), and with their death a full-stop...
but in times when only a minority where literate
it was rather becoming, rather expected:
to shout into the tier of the literate ones,
a message, so profound, it would take
enforced suicide or torture to get something across...
but now we're all literate... i guess the only way
to shout a message is to shut up...
a glorious time to think, by my standard of interpretation.
so in terms of sketching poetically,
leave the would-be haiku-upon-haiku aside...
europeans can't write a haiku,
they don't write them drunk...
you get a chinese drunk on your dosage of whiskey
by the first round... he'll write you a depth
of philosophy parallel to the oddity of
spring blossoms blooming throughout winter
on the border between a home county (essex)
and east anglia (capital norwich);
glutton glob gob tearing in argument,
which is a heated discussion;
so when you see a "madman" talking,
he's not addressing his self (himself),
you obviously only read in the enclosure of fiction,
so you divide it into a third party associate (the narrator)
and imaginary friends of the narrator (characters,
first person heroes, second person: people
speaking about the heroes)... and by that definition
you haven't touched a single philosophical novel...
yes, those books... written by pedants wondering
how best to syllable a little pause...
how to stress, de-stress, including over provisions
of optics.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2022
Salience, jumps out, some pundit says it,
Salience, literally leaps from the

either thin air, or signals in or through, yeah
science, tune in,
think it may as well be thin air,
- morphic resonance- if you think
- so it is,
drop out, turn on,
think lightly never too late to recall
the after all,
when ever was begun to reach today,
just now,
with me and you meandering diametrically,
through in tensioning attention span stretching,
measurable worth of value
for value, and a pinch, to grow on…

old ways to make the difference jump
with out being a parsimonious pedants *****.
Angry first line, leads past the pundits salience test of my worth spent listening.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
just reading it makes me quizzical in a queasy sort
of way...
                it's about teenage girls and their
  internet interaction...
                         frenzies and tornadoes...
earthquakes and tsunamis make more sense -
         this constant beehive drone buzzing:
what's obsolete, what isn't...
                  7:45 - 10 minutes scrolling through
Snapchat and Instagram -
                            24:00 - the phone gets a breather -
it's funny how quickly we've aged -
             we were born before the internet
was synonymous with mobility -
                          i'm used to the internet being
stationary - in one place, the radio is there,
and i'm here: you can write a lot of history with
just enough of nostalgic condensation -
j. geils band - centrefold -
                                              it's there,
a back-catalogue that merges with relations to the
d.n.a. - primarily cultural -
                after a year or so you realise you've become
obsolete in the microscope of other people's lives:
their children -
                            but like that ******* matters...
what matters? the closest any philosopher came to
utilising grammar was Aristotle,
but he only nibbled at the idea of nouns: proper names,
that's what he called them...
           he never really tried to encompass any
sorting words of grammar, other than deliberating
nouns (or proper names) -
                                               then comes Kant:
how strange to get so much by adding a merger of
two n squiggly zigzags - misnomerism -
yes, an -ism,              i'm tired of using exact words,
sometimes you just place the wrong words in
the place of the place of what probably exist, but is
too obscure to be kept - like a wristwatch in the times
of digital watches on the phones -
              i dare you to write the hammer into
obscurity, i dare you to write the television into obscurity,
i dare you to write alcohol into obscurity...
         no, i doubly dare you...
               but never mind that...
the antidote to the phenomenon: Kant's noumenon -
one and a half of an n later - generation photograph
       not welcome -
                                    i need pedants! i need pedantic
       behaviours!
                                the aversion - which never never about
listing such a word as dissection worthy:
         it's not clearly a-               (without)
                   a     -version     (example),                like
you might clearly state: apathy: lacking the germination
of all forms of pathology -
                                                     or atheism -
  the etymology of this word (aversion) can be tricky -
averted is already more plausible in the grammatical
allocation as counter-etymological -
                     grammar is like a post office of words:
this goes here, that goes there...
                                                      bu­t only
Aristotle alluded to it, only briefly, concerned with only
nouns, dealing with a indefinite / improper
                   and the definite / proper             names / nouns...
odd, isn't it?
                                  i like the notion that i'll write
a book very few people will read... it just means
i'lll generate very smug readers, and hopefully writers,
which means i can carve out a variation on the notion
of privacy: the privacy debate will just write itself -
to make writing something akin to a fisher's netting -
automated filtering process -
                                                    pretty funny...
like today, on my usual walkabout the labyrinth of
English suburbia... cigarette in hand, can of beer in the other,
a car pulls up, two girls in it, one jumps out of the car,
and asks me to put on a baseball cap on my head
and says to me: can you put it on your head,
it's a prank for our friend... so i comply...
i put the baseball cap on my head, she takes a picture...
jumps back into the car, bids me goodnight and they drive off...
                                        the ****?
                 am i an oddity, an Essex hipster?
no, i get celebrity culture, but i was just walking with
a cigarette and a beer... i'll probably trend as some sort of joke
on the internet: east London hipster making it ****** in
Essex... bearded *** takes the crowd by storm...
          self-deprecating humour transcends comedy or tragedy...
   it's just there for the taking...
                  ever get a drive-by: put on this baseball cap
   so i can take a picture of you to send it to a friend as prank
done by two girls?               well, there's always a first time.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
i always seems to find too little falling stars'
worth of poetry in the night -
the prolonged tedium of day -
given to the challenge of the night -
sometimes leaves one less observant
of the actual night, and sloppy in observations
during the day...
   i took to the second liking of e. e. cummings
today - mind you:
only the selective poems from years x
through to years z -
   but then he's much more than ted hughes,
even with his crow...
              never quiet the τετραματια fiddling
of the glass marbles -
                of both huginn & muninn -
        like the graeae: the three blind witch sisters
sharing a single eye -
so unto odin - the eyes of huginn & muninn -
in the cauldron of odin's empty socket...
  the τετραματια feeds the paganistic observation
of the gods, of the one they call the
demiurge in human tongue -
            and since there's talk of twins -
as akin to h & h -
                                or rugby goal posts -
           the τετραγραμματoν is best exhumed,
best seen, with half of one sense missing -
for one eye for the graeae to share -
   four eyes of huginn & muninn share gouged
eye of odin...
     that eye surfaced in greece, while from
farthest north came the perplexity of
the merged four.
               yet i still can't believe people could
establish e. e. cummings are writing
orthographical poetry - by sImplY writing
like: and not like, what otherwise is
orthography (i.e. the need for diacritical
marks) -
                   **** in slavic, i.e.
the proper orthographic is: gówno -
             it's not guwno -
that's orthography - but nonetheless i like
the quirks of these poems, hidden, sometimes
lost, most of the time uncherished.
nonetheless, less observant during day
makes for a cul de sac of what is to be written -
unlike, say, spending the night
backwards & forwards between future-present,
future-past, past-and-present,
    future-and-the-immediate-past...
to bewilder myself, as any theory might
allow -
       to travel at the speed of light -
well, for one thing light is not a propeller -
at this stage of our understanding it's a storage
component of energy - hence speed of light
square -
               squared meaning it's vast in expansion,
but not in being contained and allowed
to trickle out of its storage unit of speed of
light cubed to perfect a source of stable energy,
and, from what i gather -
it's not a propeller, because the equation doesn't
treat the speed of light in linear terms -
        and light is not a propeller, since the object
is dragged by a solar-sheet of panels -
it isn't being pushed!
     can the speed of light become a propeller
if someone managed to mingle the speed
of gravity into an equation, that begins with mass?
back to the future are always the films to
watch over and over again -
for any insomniac - who decided to not do
a 32 hour stretch of being awake...
        as is this other bewildering fact:
if time is linear, it can only be linear
   in a converging parallel linearity -
       perhaps best represented by 0 & 1
points of origins - sine & cosine (can't
remember if respectively) -
    but to enforce a time travel concept where
the two expressions of time do not
intersect at certain degrees - converge
and then diverge - well, would we be given
the concept of choice, with only one choice
to be had? in fiction time travel is
           represented by some sort of rigidity
of a never converging parallel linearity (=),
and given this model, a single convergence
of this model is represented by (≠) -
      which means the beginning of the end -
as they say: waves... waves...
              this travels in waves, this doesn't...
then of course there's already talk
of matter, and antimatter -
    as there was in the early church by someone
with the same prefix -
        but if the two personas didn't
exist simultaneously in the same pocket
of time & space -
   then they could only exist in the same pocket
of time, but not space -
and if they could have existed in the same
pocket of space,
                       they'd be family;
history is a straight line, history is a singular
timeline, but even then there's the
dimension of: with or without hindsight -
the what if line of history...
                and they never run in a = parallel
fashion, nor do they meet in a ≠ fashion either:
for that sort interaction is a dead end
upon their first and only convergence...
       much like vita coeo mort...
  and only then - only then does this concept
of time work...
        space travel is impossible,
for the other already stated reason in trigonometric
terms of the continually interchanging
   parallels between the sine dynamic and
the cosine dynamic...
but enough science fiction,
  they gave this other movie only 3 / 5 stars,
billy lynn's long halftime walk -
now we all know the classic military movie,
the gruesome reality of warfare,
     the blood, guts, swerves of shaken nerves,
the barbarism, the madness,
   the unjustifiable motives...
  not this movie...
      this move was worse in reality,
to any platoon, full metal jacket, saving private
ryan, apocalypse now i've even seen...
it's precursor? american beauty and
colonel frank fitts...
                  these movies are stepping stones
to a movie they should actually make:
24 hours in a slaughterhouse -
i'd love to see humanity humanised a little
bit, by first watching about a dozen cows
get slaughtered: after all...
cows don't cry mama, they're poker faced
when addressing pleasure, and more so
when addressing pain, poker-faced tsars...
      but this movie, mmm hmm mmm...
absolute horror...
notably when they get shoved and punched
off the stage,
   and this guy being persuaded to by his
sister to ask a doctor for a notable discharge,
and almost doing it,
    prior hooking up with a cheerleader -
the ******* she says about god, jesus,
"connecting" - and then at the last minute
he says: let's run away together!
  and she replies: but you're a war hero!
you can't quiet the army.
   to be honest, no military movie can provide
the absolute horror of a soldier
returning from war for a brief spell between
tours... but at least when they fight
adrenaline does the talking, returning to
a police state where any violence is condemned,
after these guys just shot a *******
bazooka into a building?
   strange realising that p.t.s.d. is not actually
concerned about what you saw in battle:
but that you didn't realise you had it in you
to do what you did... to then expect to
go into a mental institute that society has become...
honest to god,
they can give this movie 3 stars out of 5 -
by far the best military movie i've seen -
        like i said - no point glorifying war
and engaging in solely the graphics -
                after all, the berserkers were real -
and making **** jokes in the army like
they make shower jokes in prison?
                 plus, the farce of the entertainment
industry is masterfuly attacked -
then these 7 guys are given
"army instructions" on how to become props on
stage, and they're like: what did
this choreographer just say?
  i can't explain it, you just have to see it -
the real horror remains back home -
      the real home remains in the horror;
i guess the only soldiers that will ever fit
into a snug place in society are the ones
   used for state functions, like funerals of
politicians, or the ones that have their pictures
taken with tourists...
       paper soldiers...
      met combat soldiers once...
drunk like skunks and outcast...
          one thought i looked at him funny when
he recanted a story of being *****
by a massive arab...
                 but yeah... the queen's guard:
take the tallest, the most handsome,
   and you have yourself an army of pedants.
Kurt Philip Behm Sep 2023
Impress
with your meaning
not with your word choice
‘Labyrinth’
dallies
when ‘Mazes’ will do

Build
toward an ending
the shorter the better
The Bullet
strikes deepest
—straight fired and true

(Dreamsleep: September, 2023)
Rob-bigfoot Jan 2021
Et in Arcadia badly bruised ego,
Treeing up the wrong bark, headwards into the trash-can,
My obsessive jigsaw-being, pieces ceased to fit long ago,
Cleverly I snip and cheat, what a charlatan!
My monstrous vanity, how wilfully I let it grow,
Mon Dieu! what a puffy-faced, skin a-sagging conman!

My hallowed education, so proud in my learning,
With near perfect syntax, well sin-tax!
    Embracing any seedy swingers-club, so charming!
About wisdom, the true intelligence, I am so lax,
Ever alone, fearful of any emotional caning,
Divorced from all realities, way too complex!

What now my future, a svelte *******?
Or perpetual bit-part actor, murmurs the jury,
Condemned to be a rough-shod ploughboy,
A mere half-brick in a wall of sound and fury,
No cloistered quad, or brain-storming salvo,
What now a Pedants Revolt, or intellectual menagerie?

The mirror tells no lies,
Ability inexorably led me to something so lowly,
Blindfold no longer, revealed a ruined Bridge of Sighs,
No heady aroma of beeswax and leather, and so lonely!
Unmasked my whole flawed self, which I despise,
Adrift in the cruellest of seas, so vile and unsightly

The mirror tells no lies,
No more deceits, and surely no surprise?


© Robert Porteus
Light hearted bit of fun.  Not to be taken too seriously!
There are demons in the undertow
and monsters in my head
Paul and Simon at the grave
and who did Jesus save?
Thomas
or so it's said.

Pilate the lunatic has gone on the sick
and Herod's been thrown off the throne
Peter went off in retreat and
left Mary all on her own.

A crown of thorns from the briar patch,
scratch one, match one, get one free
it didn't work for him
perhaps it'll work for me.

It may be heresy or heretic,
but pedants make me sick
and you can
stick that to the demon, he man,
thee or ****** thou man, you can
take your bleedin' pick

Now
I'm back there in the undertow
from whence I came and where
I always go,
the devil I know wears me out.
i ***** all my candles
squander my skills
smother my talents
when theyre revealed
present a peasant
when pedants are near
prefer people with fur
to any human here
introvert
only known myself since birth
every human interaction
intricately observed
psychopathic tendencies
kept strictly in reserve
dont look in my direction
noone gets hurt
everybodys happy
yay
when i say eyes i meant ****
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
i sometimes take a walk to remind myself
that i still possess legs...
i have no curiosity
to chariot keeping up appearances:
after all...
a car does invoke
paying road tax...
and getting a yearly...
         m.o.t. check...
         driving a car implies:
you can be implored by
the police to be stopped-over
and have your driving licence
checked...
unlike... in some places...
where... the "lesser passport" /
identity card is invoked
for merely walking...
who's who...
into the petrol station...
a bottle of beer...
walking out: oh hell...
no bottle opener...
back into the petrol station
to buy a cigarette lighter...
the minor archimedes...
should i not enjoy having
legs that... can...
somehow behave autonomously?
that people want so much...
so much is to be achieved...
and then that marriage with
death: the inevitable bride...
to reach old age is somehow
the purpose these days...
to reach old age and to live
in fear...
   what a crowning achievement...
collision course with...
a "belief" in an after-life...
or the already suggested:
quest and... game over...
a car for...
driving through Upminster...
the teenager girls walking
around with teases of their
****-cheeks exposed...
and i am somehow:
"not" tempted?
    to what... execution of a narrative?
she will grow to be...
less gracious than...
an 18th century first edition...

it's one thing to walk through
a gallery of paintings...
after all: to paint is to have invested
in something...
words are cheap...
homogeneity of ink...
            baron square sold for
his elevated cubist reiteration
of the rhombus...
    
               transit art: sitting nicely
with some scrap-heap journalism...
today was: this! spectacular!
no different to the prior day!
no different to the day after!

           but the sun and earth...
the moon was slow...
there was this miraculous... buoyancy...
nonetheless...

one could breathe awe and breath
it... because... even though there
were animate objects...
in the narrative... they... couldn't
be distinguished from the inanimate
objects... they... became...
so coherently... predictable...
fail-safe mechanisms...
truly: deus ex machina...

                  one can almost tease
a solipsism when...
and how the wind brushes tree branches...
how the sea froths and imitates
yards gained wave upon wave
for the shape of reiteration...
but there's "nothing" within it...
to prove a: ex nihil continued:
ad continuum:
    
               the thesaurus god...
a peacock of synonyms...
    the hebrews have... 72 substitute nouns...
the arabs have 99 minor allahs...
and "we"... well.. we have...
the omni- litany rubric...
which... is boring as ****...
              omnipresent i.e. telepathic
is the worst read scenario...

   at least... if given birth to a telepathy of god...
one would be more... courtesan...
when dealing with madmen...
impregnated with the "imagination
of sanity sages": the priests...

it's one thing to... spew the narrative...
sober... dictum: sane...
but another of an omnipresent...
boor... of a god...
and thesaurus rex: forger of a mona lisa...

if it is such an abhorrent word...
the arabs would tell you:
                 dog... as would... slayer ***
the stooges sing-along...
        make way! for the almighty:
blah'lah!

the idea of "god" is most probably...
something...
infantile... imbecile...
               terminology: schizoid: supreme
binding glue...
       which begs the question:
it's not really a thought of...
   but the obstructive nature that...
has no... real narrative purpose...

                       we could have so much
more than... the joy of exercising one's
legs when walking...
it is... mid-june... after all...
the nights are warm...
           the solistice is upon us...
and i can... walk my choice of streets
and find... hardly a wish for
confrontation with a brute
about to cout-knuckles...
or a hard-on thrill adventure with
a *****...

          there has to come a clearer
gratification from walking...
to use ones legs has to become
a central theme from therein...
        how... i don't have to...
ask for a ghost-limb effect...
   how... the legs can write their own...
paragraph of an hour...
so that... the brain can switch off...
for all the claustrophobia
of descartes' res cogitans:
     i counter... res vanus...
         in...

                  how a certain scent...
short-circuits my memory
and i enter a walk-through cinema...
or... after a worthy hour...
i sit... perched on a windowsill
on a folded leg...
and look at my... private library...

  a walk through a gallery...
  and... that sort of session strapped
to a windowsill...
a crow healing a broken wing...
to look at all the books...
read... being stacked up...
     it's unlike... walking into a bookshop...
and this feud of the eyes and the heart...
and the mind: the argument...
of having read...
the brothers karamazov...
but not having read... moby ****...
but somehow having ingested...
a cultural relativity of moby ****
through a different medium...
so... no... not ignorant of moby ****...
but... you have read the brothers karamavoz...
but you haven't read moby ****...

and that's... "somehow" a problem...
which would be hardly a problem...
if you were a PRO-per... a PROP'ah...
MAN'S-MAN... a WOEMAN'Z-MENSCH!
let's forget that the prefix:
uber beside: taxi-daddy-for-her-16-yer-old
princess oi oi! cabby! blah blah...

you know... it's a lot different...
walking into a bookshop...
surrounded by... books you haven't read...
and... amassing a private library:
romford town library can be shamed!
although... proud...
they did own thomas mann's
dr. faustus... which i did borrow...

                         a book... on par...
with anything heidegger ever would write
in either old age or youth...
beside... it's one thing to walk into
a bookshop and be...
"circumcised" k.o. with all the books
you having read...
and those nights staging a coup...
looking at your private collection...
and what you're read... of it...
and...
              if you could ever see the size...
of the in-real-life... the size of...
philipp MALYAVIN's... peasant woman
dancing... late 1900s...

        well... it would be akin to...
standing before an altar of someone who
had a private library... of read books...
of mutilated books by reading...
books with creases like napkins...
          a private library not to boast
a fake intellect...
or to boast intellect therefore...
to "appear intelligent"...
   let's skip to... nurturing a double posit
of privacy... a cognitive labyrinth...
enough to enjoy a beer when walking
in the night...

        unlike going to a gallery and
appreciating all the paintings...
to look at... a stack of read books...
books... not worth discarding in a carboot sale...
a private library: notably...
in two tongues... and a third spare...
a stack of books read...

say... alone... the Sienkiewicz trilogy...
which is not the Tolkien trilogy...
i'm bored of people regurgitating....
as they would do... making videos...
citations of 1984 and brave new world...
yes yes... and what of... Zamyatin's we?  
subscript notes for:
pedophiles, pederasts and pedants...
or priests, prostitutes and psychiatrists...        
                  
it's one thing... to go among paintings
in a gallery... without a mirror or glass...
and the ******* of space that a gallery confines
the painting to...
or a piece of paper and some caryons like
a child might...
but... eh!
    not going anywhere...
      a private library of books read...
   stacked like cans of baked beans
in a supermarket...
hey presto! no warhol!
     a different paternity of time invoked...
i have... 3 years apart... and roughly
a month from each of these 3 years...
           confined to... roughly...
the parameters of a box that could also
be used to... stack-up radios... etc.

     yes... it has become apparent...
this life is worthy of exhausting the narrative...
after all... so many things in this world:
do not have a fixation of narrative
as their prime concern for: ex nihil...

                      i have the cameo cinema of memory...
the blank stare and buddha-blind vector
of imagination...
               and that... ever...
more realistic currency of presently:
entertained consciousness... with not much
achieved... beside...
an argument contra Freud:
            what if i haven't been afforded
the luxury of dreams? interpret what?
    a hermann rorschach?
                       herr doktor KLEKS...
    kleggs... and various other alternatives...
antithesis chiral...
                             of note:
the lesser detail of any known theoretical
confine of organic chemistry.
Kurt Philip Behm Mar 2023
The Pied Piper of failure
loose in our schools
Cacophony playing
of pedants and fools

He lures and beguiles
to those innocent souls
Who locked in his footsteps
—will never be whole

(The New Room: March, 2023)
Leo Sep 2020
As though we aren’t all pedants working fruitlessly to scratch our names onto anything that is still pure.
Walter Alter Aug 2023
educated by the ancient twin mystics
of misfortune right eye and left eye
to nurture in nature a desire for beauty
and sweet self astonishment
can't perceive without perceiving
music of the spheres for dummies
the elderly should be smarter than they are
being close to death and all
instead the investigator discovers
a massive construction of leashes
not even the angry wish monsters
can cut them loose and free
being elderly in form I have but one wish
women throw your bodies on me
Fallopia Prestwich was all over me
like cat fur on a velvet couch
it looks like my cheap suit cologne
apparently got between her legs
but I was done with her abstract threats
of revenge litigation and outright damnation
she was a circus muse who untrained horses
she could pitch a dime up a hopping toad's ***
her beauty left me speechless
fortunately for my many invisible readers
I was not also left writeless
the assignment was simple and brilliant
to assess the capacity of all humanity
to put therapeutic levels of luminosity
into their daily thrill ride
yah but what is it really other than
a figure 8 demolition derby
a merciless war of the hormones
the pedants conning the pedestrians
then the animator of all that there is
rolls up and gives me a bumper push
to the Brickpile checkered flag
even though I refuse to believe
his ******* tale of redemption for a price
do this do that don't think just do
bring me the head of Calliope
and we'll open her blessed plenum
well I rebelled and continue to do so
consequently here's a big kiss on the lips
for all the young Pioneers of the Soviet Union
anything named pioneer can't be all bad
and here's a big dog lick in the ear
for every Rabbi Mufti Priest and Magus
who thought they had the truth in a cage
stick this target over your ***
simple rational practical elegant
now send me some ******* missionary money

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon

— The End —