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Mateuš Conrad May 2016
i know, rubbed off reading Pound, but scout's honour, but scout's honour, yet again: but on scout's honour it was a collage, and and and that's what could make Ezra's too a moment of weakness with a rainbow of subjects, a page ripped out from an encyclopaedia.

night cinema, and films from to preceding decades
this the current, 2nd of decade of a seemingly
never-ending September -
first - the disappearance of alice creed (a british
                                                         ­                            film),
second - the firm (                                            "           "   ),
the other two american, one an ageing classic -
sleepless in Seattle, and the last one the devil wears Prada -
already the differences are so relentless,
modern british cinema loves to capture grit,
graffiti on estates, meaningful f-off conjunctions,
and boy the slang in *the firm
is as good as any -
one of the few films worth rummaging with at sunrise
with it fresh in memory (preferred it to
trainspotting given one face value:
Bex is way more sociopathic than Begpie, and
he doesn't end up living the easy life in
Miami or whether he is being an artist),
but the problem is... the library is too big, it's the sort
of library you'd find in heaven, although less grand,
already outside the realm of sensible reality,
beyond 2 to the power of 83 (named yogibyte),
we have this library, right now,
the 2 to the power of 3.321928 of a googol,
i.e. a Nikolai Gogolplex... but! it's not technically
a library, it's also a stock market, a phonebox,
a ***** booth, a casino... HMR & Customs, banking,
so technically we're not talking a heavenly library
(add to the list cyber warfare,
everything apart from a librarian's shush
is acceptable here)... but it got me
thinking, that film the firm (set in the 80s)...
three strands of music that interest me from the 80s,
synthesiser music (sounds really cheap now, i know)
but at least it sounds better than castrato rock
of the 80s... the synthesiser music of pseudo echo e.g.,
but these instruments were picked up by kiddies and
it was like a harpsichord to them, given previously
Bach's organs and the grand piano: a pool table
compared to a snooker table...          
and the third strand of music from the 80s... post-punk,
Joy Division (i'm not exact on the dates, blurry lines)...
Bauhaus (the man with x-ray eyes)... Staatliches...
well... post-punk... punk-entrenchment, all that
pre- post- proto- pre-fixation post-fixation...
the darker side of punk...
                                              god, this library is too big!
it's a bit like walking into a bookshop and falling
on your knees in desperation:
you can watch the aesthetic of winter through
to autumn no problem, hell, you might get a mystical insight
into this recycling bin... but when it comes to
the aesthetic of mankind's recycling bin, everyone
breaks down not having read or bothered to
read Melville or something: the price of creating
civilisation and moving away from tribalism -
and again onto cinema... cinematic warfare with
gaming, or cartoon cinema, gaming cinema,
in Seattle in 1993 they still used babysitters, now
the grown-ups sit at home while the babies
go out swinging - games less about joystick
button indentations on the fingers and more about
cinema... cinema more about games than about
meaningful conversations - take that word
games in two ways: social gaming, you know
what i mean: ******* people over;
but seriously, can you believe a band like
the soft moon exists and released an album in
2010 with such seminal songs as
parallels and sewer sickness among others?
two thousand and twelve... i was as much
gob-smacked when i realised
that godspeed, you black emperor! released
their album f# a# ∞ in nineteen ninety eight! 1998! i thought
progressive music from any genre died with punk
and the impatience at yet another solo from
robert fripp when no one wanted to do an air guitar
version of his solos (which largely borrowed from jazz).
Mateuš Conrad May 2020
an entire day of abstaining from "syringe",
whoever said it was:
the perfect dis-satisfaction -
supposedly it passes as quick as someone
puffing on crack...
                well...
                      the first cigarette...
when "quitting"... after years of 20 a day...
and this quitting: because no cheap
ciagarettes on the horizon from moldova...
or bulgaria...

    the first hit... feels like electricity...
i can feel it from my head...
right down to my toes...
          in my heels...
the tingling at first... then it all subsides...
into a sensation of a thrown stone
into the stomach:
like a nun jumping a bungee...
i feel like a teenager... who first sipped
alcohol...
the carousel of intoxication -
yet: so contained...
        there's the thrill and an
insurmountable number of adjectives
to the sensation:
face like a sponge head like blitzkrieg
theatre...
         i'm "quitting"...
well... 10 years exposed to the numbing...
perfect the ritual:
i guess i must...
    how long will it last... long enough:
to base the drinking on what becomes
the cigarette: on the peripheries:
and closure...

must i take any more revelation drugs...
apart from what's taxed and legal...
a solipsistic cigarette and some
gomme syrope: putting ms. amber
into the refrigerator...
              
i can feel the horde the tsunami from
a fat head through
a whirlwind dropped into my stomach...
and then the magic toes: tingling...
of course: i'm "quitting"...
quitting as much as...
mellow lou reed contra iggy pop
when bowie was with him in berlin...

"quitting"... the initial hit is over...
the first impressions...
the formality is thrilling...
then comes the diffusion:
the informality of fractions and percentages...
from the brain... the nerves...
perhaps the heart...
and the last place to look into:
the liver...

         and other... soft-tissue glue parts...
and the ritual:
a packet of benson & hedges...
wrapped up with about 10 rubber bands...
it has been waiting for me
for the entire day...
and now that the night is here...
a day when an apple tree was planted
along with a cherry tree...

the garden is looking more and more
presentable for sale...
but before the sale: it must be enjoyed...
i never thought that...
a cigarette: after... this short prospect
of abstinance...
is almost like the first...
but when coupled with the whiskey...
hell... i can't remember the last
time i drank and it felt like...
i was a teenager: under-age drinking
in one of those ****** clubs that
high-school girls go to find boys
with cars... out of school without
a-levels...
and boys go... to find... ms. ambers...
and jazzy gits of mr. fuzzy mr. funny...
the bavarian brothers: the weisers...

please! please! more...
these days of "quitting"...
             because what could be fun
about an absolute cold-turkey...
when you have a stash of...
  600 cigarettes... and... if the math is
about right...
and since the free movement of
people is a rapunzel dream off-the-cuff...

600 cigarettes... if i get it right...
move from 2 per ritual of going to bed...
into 1... that's... either a year
with missing 56 days somewhere...
no rolling tobacco though...
look m'ah! no bongs no syringes!
look p'ah! no snorting bleeding nose...
no... plum bruises from...

as long as there's an inhibition period...
a period of: i wish i could send
a postcard from... Basildon, Essex...
to... someone obliterated by a craze-maze
of lights... like... whatever...

i just heard stories...
                  about the effects of other drugs...
but... it's not like they come back...
with straitjackets to rekindle old flames
of "crossing the threshold" within
the confines of tobacco and alcohol...
moderately: well: not to quote the ideal
units consumed...
     i'm pretty sure i read some pickwick papers
today and... dickens "forgot" some...
conjunction words...
unless of course: his style...
                    -open            
                          to question-
                        esp. adjectives that...
or is it... nouns that act like this that and the other:
as if verbs...
            
    roughly half an hour... the full extent of
a cigarette...
the very first is probably the same
as the "very first" when you're "quitting"...
from circa 20 per day...
to 2-a-day...
                      "quitting" and first getting
hooked...
           the whiskers and fire fathers
                                   of the apache
              are a balancing act that follows...
oh sure... i'll quit smoking...
when the ritual is over...
i have left the casual smoker behind...
somewhere... over coffee...
over the tradition of that cigarette after
a meal: the digestifs smoke-up...
i left these smokers behind...
the nervous smokers...
the waiting at a bus-stop smokers...
the after *** smokers...

          the day is coming to an end...
i'm going to enjoy some music...
drink a little... i'll start calling this smoking
cigarette pattern... what? what else?!
my tobacco ramadam!
chances are... i'll still be unable
to appreciate roxy music...
   and the english dandy...
                       the music is here...
the little bit of *****... and the "pipe"!
here comes my face...
here comes the zoo...
            
             but i'm quitting... "quitting"...
the wolf of wall st. -
                      drug addict... that all depends
on how you treat tobacco...
the cigarette... abstaining for a day...
after a "hiatus" from healthy breathing...
viruses and car zinc and lead exhausts...
cow farts...
                  
    a terrible way to treat tobacco...
i find... is the casual... informal way...
a bit like... internet access...
whoever grew up with it being stationary...
like... a telephone... or a phonebox...
it was never carried:
always a returned to:
like a swizz safety-deposit box
in a bank... that could...
bypass tax regulations and subpoenas...

the good old days...
saturdays the park... the high street...
the car park... climbing to the top
and spitting phlegm bombs at people...
peter ******* richardson...
and kieran o'mahoney...
samuel richards...
         a ****** among the irish...
in england...
then again: richardson...
eh...
                                   ascot?
      i.e. a shcoot?!
                    the break between my first
ritual cigarette...
         and my closing affair for the night...
whether i drink less or not...
in the middle of the night
i wake up on the floor...
         i sleep on the floor for about
an hour... two demons want to ****
in my bed... then i'm thrown back into
the bed of cushions and mattress...
  only yesterday i killed someone in my dream...
and i was... like the zodiac killer...
anonymous...
i heard hook & sinker teases of:
the crime scene read like a crime thriller...
to appease the ego...

two days running thrown out of bed...
this is a terribly composed...
it is... "quarantine" poetics...
i'm "quitting" smoking...
                   i'm making tobacco...
i'm giving tobacco ritual rites...
                   no lazy tobacco smoking...
end of the day... ms. amber in hand...
maxing out on 2!
the next two? the next day...
              the same packet of cigarettes...
2 inside with a lighter...
wrapped up using about 10 rubber bands...
a like-for-like replica of
pin-heads "tattoo geography"...

       yes... because... someone's nearing
the snorting olympics?!
           if all you were given...
was tobacco and alcohol...
             the first one... oh! mein! gott!
it feels like being a teenager... once more...
and experiencing the alcohol carousel
for the very first time...
tobacco? that came later...
after the alcohol... after the ****...
the **** came in age 21...
the tobacco came in... age 21.09...
whatever that implies...

                      it's nice... though...
absitance... you wait for the entire day...
by the of it... some variant of... tourette's kicks
in... it's all very nice asking for
cupcakes and bagels...
scones and daffodils:
or... suicide by: lily-of-the-valley...
i.e. room filled with them...
and no ventilation...
talk about... no hanging... projects...
of Seneca cutting wrists in a bath...
just... getting drunk...
and being allowed to fall asleep
in a vacuous room filled with
lily-of-the-valley bouquets...

             we can talk about suicide... no?
when... it's... beautiful? no? ha!
how was the hemlock... prescribed?
as a drink?
             i... it's almost irritating that...
i will not write anything more sensible
after i take the 2 cigarette to the grave of sleep...
no matter...
i wasn't hoping to invest in much:
today gave me enough.
eden halo Feb 2014
my sister is picking fruit, tummy aching
with the weight of a second basket;

my mind three steps to the left
of my skull,
i ask for pomegranates

(the sun is dead that watched me
last time i ate.)

my sister says:
"there are no strawberries"

my sister says:
"there are too many raspberries"

i need something
the size of
my fist, bursting
with red cells and life
to swell my chest, ground me
here

like a phonebox, my heart
can barely hold one person
before we start to bruise each other,
peach soft, blushing
dark and aching,
as each mistake rots through
to the pit of my stomach

juice runs down her
fingers like old blood

plasma gilded, scabbed
and spilled, please
give me thicker skin,
cake me in rind and membrane
to hold the magma in.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
oh hell, every time i write some embarrassing a day prior, i turn into honour killing from Pakistan enveloped by shame... 'what the hell did i write last night? i can't remember, but i know for sure that i didn't roll down the stairs or **** in a phonebox'. well, i could sit here romanticising like Marcel Schwob, or just dig into like Marquis the Sade... honestly and oddly enough the latter did give me an *******, and he was half-the-pervert that everyone deemed him to be, flashing his buttocks from the Bastille... his uncle abbé de Sadé (i love to put that accent in on purpose - sounds better to me, less boorish) - and yes, Creedence Clearwater Revival does more justice to the harmonica on graveyard train than Bob Dylan and **** Jagger put together... it's just there, and it ain't it's because it's there that makes it... ha ha... groovy - maybe that's why they spared him from the guillotine, in that he wrote more of his exploits as wished to be done, and of the actual exploits too many were hidden in his blabbering prose undone; ****** is by far his greatest work.

i told you the black and red Oranjeboom is a trip, they used to sell it at 8.5%, now they dropped it to 7.5... that beer can get you crazy in nanoseconds, quicker than a formula 1 crown jewel of a Mercedes-Benz, i'm serious, the ****'s lethal - you drink with me you'll be talking l.s.d., you'll end up a Mongol somewhere in Siberia, stark naked in minus forty saying the words: 'where's my umbrella? where's my umbrella?', indeed on repeat... 'and that yak? i was riding a yak... where's the yak?' we have European bisons to await you colonel... 'about time, i was waiting for a bison... isn't that the place where storks migrate to to make butter over the summer? and the Jews hid when the Black Plague was sweeping across Europe leaving them immune in the vicinity of Cracow?' yes it was, Herr Mascherschtic-Messerschmitt -
'who's on the oboe? and the soloist violinist?' we don't know, working it out, 'you better, because i don't really long for a drum-beat of knocking two stones together to spark anything but fire, rather, a conversation; 40 days in the desert with Jesus trying to relocate the Jews to Goa worked out so splendid that they moved North, started speaking riddle Hebrew that's Yiddish and followed suit with ****** being gassed, but instead of trenches, death chambers - people tend to forget he was himself gassed and dated Eva a Jewess... no far right assimilation, i spoke with a grandpa that asked for sweets from an SS-man and a great-grandmother who fed her daughter opiates to hush her on the eastern front so she wouldn't cry - sometimes stating a self-consciousness detached from thinking (the inhibitor of existence) is as random as a lottery - because it's just that, thought is an inhibitor of existence, being is an exhibitor of the (sic) stated - oh please don't read me if you're into ******, i'm with the bookworms and freaks, premature ejaculators and whatnot, go eat a ******* macaroon in Morocco or something - of all the admirable circumstances worthy a stage thinking isn't really allowed, it's not exactly glorified, in two sentences:
- *i thought about it
             (how two pronouns
                                               interact without Freud,
                                               or meet, or are the proton i
                                               neutrons thought about
                                               and the electrons it)...
it's a permanent duality of expressing something and anything,
we need the first person, the eyes give it away,
but in the end we're either touching an axe to chop
down a tree or attaching ourselves to a detachment of
chopping the tree down for the Freudian third it -
it's no longer a game of 'you're it!' tagging of
the kindergarten game but a work of fiction, transitions
like that must be painful - third person narratives are
generally conceived from being lazy in the first person,
how many people do you actually need to **** the poet off?
film credits: and it's a long list, mind you.
oh yeah, that word: dzwiękać - it's about making 0.1% of
a Mozart symphony with two stones smacked against
each other for what the feet used to do, a drumbeat,
it's not exactly an act of Prometheus' Odyssey into
the first glimpses of chemistry -
alternatively?
- i am it / or some alternative to something even more alternative,
  in the French school of thought dubbed deconstructionism
  that's also a blah blah reduction,
  Bruce Springsteen and Frank Sinclair, a slum-dunk
  by the Lakers - it's still supposed to mean that i intended
  the phonetic encryption, i visualised nothing for
  you to follow-up on, sounds, poetry isn't cartoon,
  the harsh reality of having to read the Mandala of
  mouth expressions without, eye, eyebrows or cheeks
  or chin - ends up being dentistry when you want to
  say a but end up adding a            h     while
  the dentist inserts a blunt object into your mouth for
  an ah (be my guest, macron or umlaut depending
  on the volume of your lungs added to the a for reasons
  of reality's prolonging the seance of rotten teeth).
what i meant was the notion that thought is a different
type of being, or expression of out of every instance -
thinking too much won't grant you access to
people who say: 'are bored with their *** life. especially
gay men, who 'see *** as something you have to do
while on drugs'. so once **** no reassurance with
forever ****? **** it! could have given it a one-over
back when i didn't have a monkish demur.
well i can admit i'm jealous, but i just remember *******
before puberty and feeling the muscle sensation and
seeing no *****, aged 8 - the ******* help, and incubator
for all that raging monotheistic operatic harem wanton -
it's still a balancing act writing a sentence,
you are basically juggling two words, both are pronouns -
you throw a boomerang, you throw it as yourself
and expect it to come back as yourself,
pristine, juvenile, ******, intact with a pride of being
a person not influenced by others... the origin of
Columbus... it doesn't work like that,
the boomerang ends up like a windscreen with
several bugs attacked to it, bugs like Kant, like Heidegger,
whoever... whatever, free-love **** *** is overrated for me,
the ******* build-up and the flashing lights and whatnot,
i approach *** like a lumberjack a tree,
axe, tree, chop chop, tree falls... i'm out after an
hour having paid £110 for the pleasure... so you can take
your little feminism into the annals for these free-love
festivals (burning man in Nevada, killing kittens
in the hamptons etc.), preach there, leave me and my loser
****** high libido crew in the shadow of the crucifix -
judgemental ******* - i never expected so much stigma for
giving an ****** that i paid for to give, it's like an
Albert Camus novel, or worse, his life,
paid for a train ticket but decided to travel to the desired
destination by car, dead in a car-wreck - Irony with an ism.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2017
ah... we have an intermediate: oh darling... hush... we know the higher ordeals of the arts or intellectual arguments - but don't debase the manual labour... you have an alternative! menial labour! bureaucracy! and brussels is rife with it! a **** forsaken bog where once the amazon rainforest stood proud! grrr! na huja pana i w: gwałt tego burdelu!

people have no time these days?
no time, in these days?
    what the space-time dip of
the earth into a wave of augmented
space, killed off time?
people have no time these
days, because: they have ready meals?
people have no time these days
because everything is handy,
say, an electric screwdriver compared
to the manual one?
  i still remember my grandfather
having owned a manual drill -
  **** me, those things were fun!
and how about those old telephones:
the old rotary dial telephones
(which were a lot of fun, let me tell you,
it made conversations important,
not the type on mobile phones
en route to a night of drinking:
- where are you?
- i'm on the bus.
- how soon will you get here?
- given the traffic? give me 15 minutes.
and that's probably the logest conversation
i had on a mobile phone).
- of **** me, and a phonebox to boot!
ugh: the disappearing spare change:
next on the list of extinction
is the post-box -
never mind the dodo, or the tiger:
we're talking the extinction of inanimate
things!
but had you the pleasure of
holding this mighty artefact that
the *old hand / "eggbeater"
drill is (or was):
join the club!
             you're prehistory, within
the space of 30+ years... you're a lizard
jedi...
                did i tell you that coffee
was alien to my hometown?
yep... my great-grandfather dumped a ****
load of it into the river:
because people didn't know what to
do with it... mind you... only western powers
drifted away to banana republics and
brought back chocs and harsh coffee brews...
the slavs just mellowed with chai tea
in the samovar...
              and all this, in the 20th century...
seriously?! no time these days?
what are people so busy about?
are they 20th century farmers without
a combine or a horse?
               they have to have with
the 5a.m. cockerel and go to sleep with
sun-set?
         they're into hibernating ultra-*****
rabbits during winter: glugging *****
and ******* silly: just to keep warm?
are they treating the electric "fireplace"
that's the television likewise?
     oh look, the spark electric invoked
by zeus himself taking pity
on prometheus is speaking!
      **** me, well, if i ever had a fireplace,
i'd only think of replacing it with
a television set...
      people have no time?
    what the **** are they doing?
no one in the 21st century seems to have
discovered the shortcut of a microwave?
what's it there for, this thing?
     oh, that's there to give ambiance when
we get bored of the radio...
  it just buzzes and we get to think
about bees...
         huh?!
               people have no time these days...
well **** me... who or what is making
all these people so busy?!
            when i say manual labour:
i don't mean menial labour -
oh right right, most ******* in this "arena"
of expression don't know either both
or at least one, given that the construction
industry is like the army...
there's a big ******* difference
between manual labour &
menial labour...
   you know the woring hours of a roofer?!
no?!
       starts at 8am... and depending on
whether its a day for deliveries...
can end as early as a school-day:
   fui-foorty!
              oh ya ya...
             you think than manual labours
gives a toss about menial labour's
    9-to-5 ***-scratching?!
   nice to look "busy",   isn't it?!
you gonna write a puny & by the way: ******
little column, or you going to also
write a covert propaganda essay akin
to ezra poond for the fascists?
      ah, the former...
   PEOPLE! HAVE! NO! TIME!
              where once manual labour was
championed and natural,
they now "champion" athletics,
and the "natural": oh sorry, sorry for doping
scandals...
              mind you, traces of alcohol
are not accepted on construction sites either...
     PEOPLE! HAVE! NO! TIME!
that's ******* einstein, that is...
    too ******* bored to cook,
too ******* bored to compare a television
for a fireplace...
  too ******* bored to listen...
but **** me: all too eager to talk when
the opportunity comes!
   hear me talking, ******?
   all i hear is: click-tick-click-tick-click-tick
of the keyboard...
             all you might hear in an hour
is that: and an annoying meow of
a ginger maine-****: the "i'm in need of
company" ****** of space...
PEOPLE! THESE! DAYS! HAVE! NO! TIME!
but you know what the saddest
essential of the modern critique is?
  people have forgotten how to
disagree, let alone levy a dialogue -
       trapped in their solipsistic-monologues,
i've seen this countless of times:
how fiction has overpowered platonism,
notably in terms of style,
requiring dialogue...
              no, people these days don't
know how to disagree, let alone agree with
each other...
        it's a sad end of dialectics...
                      no one wants to disagree,
to later agree upon a disagreement...
   i'd be fine with that...
                  i don't ask that people agree
at the end of their discourse,
             but that they disagree,
  and with good deed due, can perhaps
disagree within themselves,
                     to then chance the spectacle
of agreement with someone else -
but people... have no time... to disagree...
they do what the english do:
  they joke...
                            and you know what i find
to be single-most important
"cardinal" sin? let's just call it:
   the papal sin:                   ridicule...
i can appreciate disagreeing -
   but when it comes to ridicule?
   did i tell that i used to collect swords?
  yeah, have a stash of them...
          one's a long hussar cavalry mean
*******, probably the height of
      an oompa loompa with blade alone...
within the dialectical dynamic i can appreciate
the fervour of agreeing & simultaneously
disagreeing...
    but when people turn to ridicule?
     that hussar cavalry sword comes
to mind, and aristophanes' head on it:
   in my regard, the equivalent of a white
flag of defeat:  i surrender! i surredner!
                             (bound to the kind of laughter
within the epitome of loci).
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

and a decent poem this could have been, but then two
distractions came -
       one of less concern than the other:

a. a program on u.f.o. sightings,
         not so much the subject matter,
but the journalistic ridicule of what was later
    translated into a "sensible" branch
of phenomenology - the branch filled with
awe and fear - unlike the branch that deals
with: 'oh, there's but a simple explanation
behind it all',
               the hardship of seemingly
good intentions in making others believe
something tends to end with a crucifixion in
one way or another - the lesser crucifixion?
evidently stigmatism -
                      perhaps a more unfathomable
experience - no hand in the cookie jar
but nonetheless the hand being caned -
later, much much later the talk of
ostracising ostriches - ducking for cover
   when a less mainstream scientists comes
along and takes out equipment to
understand certain phenomena -
          perhaps without the layman's blinking
incomprehensibility - but at least
         not journalistic poking fun off -
     or how the ostriches always talk about
the faculty of imagination overpowering
the senses - casually phrased: you must have
been imagining things... well... **** me!
why did they invent hallucinogenic drugs
given that imagination can suddenly invoke
a hallucination so potent?

b. first it started with your face,
                 then it started with a mirror
and a face in it in some nightclub bathroom -
some look terrible in mirrors
       the movement disguises the many
apparently or non-apparent imperfections -
that trick of morality that beauty (is but
a short lived tyranny) needs to almost
nervously twitch for the participant in
a brief spell of Narcissism,
  so they take the photo, call it a selfie and
say: if i look good in a selfie, the image
in the mirror doesn't matter...
                           they actually look better in
the mirror than in the selfie -
   but then i decided i had enough of the culture,
only a day before, started to look more and
more at my shadow - maybe the
shape of the nearly skin head made me curious,
so i said to myself: tomorrow night,
   when you're sober, go out and make an
album of photographs.
              hence the distraction b... putting the album
together... from colour, to b & w aesthetic,
   fiddling with enough exposure and contrast
to get the shapes out (not a brilliant camera) -
but apart from my anti-selfie i
took two photographs of modern relics -
    they having dismantled them...
                 *phoneboxes
!
  i remember walking home with a few beers
when it started raining... good thing that
      one of them had the top glass window
smashed and it wasn't there...
              a great bar it turns out...
yep, a beer or two in a phonebox and
the nostalgia of having pockets filled with coins -
   and that ramous number oh eight-hundred
    R E V E R S E        0800 7 3 8 3 7 7 3
(just like the American say it) - on the other line
a person would hear the automated message:
someone is calling you from... would you like
to pay for the call?
             relics, truly... or minibars when it rains
or cubicles to **** in... why not? anyone using it
for anything else?
                  and so it was today,
after watching the vice presidential discussion
i picked the quietest moment in the night
3:30 a.m., the quietest moment in the night -
30 minutes out, started counting the number of
steps it would take for a concrete shadow
under a streetlamp would fizzle out and become
less and less visible, until another streetlamp
gave back a full-bodied concrete form,
the less blurry and fizzling out after ~34 steps...
it takes about 34 steps for the shadow to fizzle
out when looking at it when created by
a passed streetlamp, as said, another streetlamp
replenishes the lost density of the shadow.

which brings me onto... overpriced books.
        now, stopping drinking could help me buy socks,
or a new pair of shoes...
  but...
                              i haven't picked up a book
recently that would grab my attention...
                 and the last time i wrote poetry while
also reading a book, not since the time of Ezra's Cantos,
and that's donkey's years away, it would seem.
     but by chance i came across one...
the most expensive book i ever bought was in
Edinburgh, £28.50 and in brackets
             [cheapest online £60.30 inc. shipment]...
but the book i'm going to reference seemingly
fell from the sky... Ponderings II - VI:
Black Notebooks 1931 - 1938
by Heidegger -
which stands at £30.10 from a second-party
retailer on Amazon... otherwise it's £50.00!
i am mad enough to buy this book, hence the strict
regime of alternative drinking nights...
           but that's beside the point...
i don't care to compliment the translation,
       this is the first insight into Heidegger stripped
bare from what i consider to be the hardest books
to read - the devilishness of youth -
2 ****** years and a few good books and much
poetry in between enabled i finished that
   monstrosity that is being and time -
but these ponderings? a complete and utter
revelation! well... it's no good looking at it
if you haven't read the magnum opus -
        i can say enough in that he does treat
aphorisms with a slight disdain, or rather as stepping
stones to create an alternative narrative,
    aphorism that have a different impact in a sense
that they are not isolated to just one isolated incident,
     i guess it's phenomenological in a sense
that phenomenons weave a narrative whether in
a cause and effect scenario, alternatively
        either cause, or effect; i thought i write this
poem before writing something less lucid when
relaxing with the whiskey during the end of the shift...
   and all because what's revealed from this
is how to answer the above question -
      if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around
to hear it, does it make a sound?
    if you look up all the Anglophone answers to
the question, you end up reaching the escape
route into buddhism, pop culture jokes
          and a general impracticality of it all
being related to perception and that horrid word
reality.
                i don't like this approach at all -
the easiest escape route is to approach buddhism -
that's the standard practice in English societies,
to escape into buddhism and chime jar jar jam and
joe who was later known of om -
     the book in question (ponderings ii - vi)
shows the skeleton of what is otherwise an Alcatraz
of prose in that systematic height of composition,
and that's how the concept of dasein enters
like a behemoth - in these ponderings dasein
is stripped to the bare essential of: being & there -
that's how i saw that ****** question answered -
it's not really a question of perception
    but a question of concern - and i have started
to really adore how the Germans always manage
to provide a higher tier of logic than the English,
the de facto argument of logic is:
   if i use words, i am logical -
   which doesn't not mean i categorising further
and suggesting i'm also rational,
          because that's beside the point -
illogical expression is something incomprehensible
for a logical person: sign language -
        but that's not to say something illogical
is irrational -
                    what i am suggesting is
that by using words i am logical -
            i can also be irrational, but nonetheless logical,
in the same way as i can be rational
    using the same starting point -
                                but in saying that i can be irrational
cannot mean that i'm illogical -
       because i am still using the basic blueprint: words.
this is the avenue where this £30.10 priced book
on Amazon leaves you wandering -
              but not on its own...
   as already stated...                   and i never
thought i'd be able to say it: reading philosophy
in English has suddenly become comprehensible
and rather enjoyable to me...
         by the looks of it... this will be the only
book on philosophy in English in my library
(the history of western philosophy doesn't count),
given that all the rest of them are in Polish...
      well... with the exception of Nietzsche,
he's pompous enough to be read in English,
         reflections from Scotland,
        on the faded and ever more fading former
Empire.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
so...
   i started my first drinking
session, aged 14,
in a youth club in england...

now...

it makes sense...
why the american youth enter
university...


what's the allowed drinking
aged in america?

i still don't drive...
you drive?
i don't drive...

but the fraternity seniors?
who "aren't" aged 21?
and legally abiding
to buy the alcohol?

   i'm not buying myself
out of the student debt...
legality plays a motion:
i have to earn above £15,000
to pay it back...

i'm not paying it back,
because i'm not earning it,
to pay it back...

   i guess the only reason people
go to an american college is
to taste the fringes
of *** ******...

             to taste the alcohol infused
scoops of
   what, hardly constitutes
the concept of life...

             believe me...
  don't adhere to high school logic...
teachers have attained the stature
of drug pushers...
            
  you'd be better off smoking
crack ******* in a phonebox
than listening to these
fidgety squares...

    these lieutenants of warm cow dung!
these lieutenants of no man's land
body counts...
            
i was lied to, you'll be lied to,
  point being?
  you'll become a plumber...
and i'll retain status as a "poet":
without a rhyme...

              **** it, not rubric...
and the general analogy
of pedagogy...

                       but in england?
you're doubly ******,
with the cheap labor import from
Romania and Bulgaria...

  you tried tio **** the Poles over...
now?
   get ******!
             i'm teasing starving...
because?
   i want a share...
in what you gave me?
i am all the more willing
to give unto you!

        Christian, benefactors!
let's see you benefactor
the extending *******!

— The End —