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Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
prelimenary coordinates - a blindman playing chess.

well... you either drink, and write sparingly,
     or you don't drink, and you write
a novel...
    but who would have thought, that there
would be poetic odes involving coffee...
     it's staggering how many women write
poems and have to concern themselves with
coffee...
  i down a litre of whiskey a night, don't know
what a hangover is anymore,
        and i can beat out more words
than women, who use a stimulant and write
   crumbs... when i expect a loaf of bread...
if not this website, then another, and the scenario
is the same: the glorification of coffee...
           it just shows you how barricaded the human
narrative is, of the soul...
        poetry merely nibbles, and i know it's
flaws... write without paragraphs,
or care for punctuation marks... and it's immediately
a poem...
   or... oh god forbid! there's something profound
being said with a few words...
      and it has to be profound...
                      yes, i'm the Gargamel and those
are my smurfs...
                             strange that Freud didn't think up
the man-child complex...
                         which is the opposite of the madonna-*****
complex, which he actually did...
           Edward Hopper was also bemused by
these two mental pharmacologists...
                did a little sketch holding Freud as pillar 1,
and Jung as pillar 2.
    but coffee and poetry: i'd expect more from this
latitude...
        and it's still a case of:
                   people cling to the raft that's their
mental narrative mondus operandi...
                Kant tried to say something as concrete
with 5 + 7 = 13... and read any philosophy book...
    Kant isolates the ''i think'', and Hegel isolates
    the i = i, or i am i...
                              and these are serious thinkers...
but Descartes has said a limit...
                       thinking defines subjectivity...
      thinking the essential component of what's
   not thought about: the existential compromise of
   being per se...
                    and how i always seem to find philosophy
as a stumbling block concerning everything i write...
    it's almost as if i can't escape the world of
abstracts...          a degree in chemistry didn't help either...
     am i truly so un-realistic?
               not that i'm afraid of being drawn toward
the un-real...          it's that humanity seems only like
an infertile groundwork speeding toward a forgivable
promise...
    i just wanted to say: you drink and write poetry...
or you don't drink, and write a novel...
      and true to a heart's cause i will say:
that straitjacket of what poetry is...
                           whether rhyme... or other technique...
    hanging over it...
                           it can't do:
      i abhor Nietzsche for making poetry a science...
  and it is: too scientific...
              i'd never think so little can be deemed
so perplexing... or having that essence...
                    so yes... Kant
                         really does struggle to say something
profound, but he actually does...
                     over and over again... namely:
i'd never could think of so many faculties of my mind...
    not that's what i call a plastic saying...
      ****-licking brown-nosing, call it what you like...
it's just so terrible that philosophy cannot reach
toward being a humanism, like a novel always can...
     which is why i could eat a historical novel
        by Kraszewski in three weeks in between allocating
that time to the festive season,
                     and it took me 2 years to read Kant's
critique... until i let go of that post-scriptum necessity
of having to stop at every setence and do a rubick's cube...
     a bit like: well... aren't those electron-migration
   schematics they teach you in chemistry, a little bit pointless?
   who give's a badger's nut-sack about how electrons migrate
when a a cabron to oxygen bond forms?
                         but they do teach that...
           which is why you can take a novel to bed,
on the train... but so much focus is needed for that other novel,
the scientific one... the grandeur of... philosophy...
                and that's when i let go...
   the last part of the critique does allow you to read
piece of work... like a novel... unless of course that was my
need to do so...
                    so yes: transcendental methodology in Kant's
critique: does read like a novel... at some point
you just have to let go.

ii. ...

and you do... try saying philosophy without saying
something pretentious....
               and i dare say: as long as the fewest number
of people concern themselves with it:
  the more chances we have for electricity,
plumbing, food on the table...
               but by now there's this talk of a curse...
premature Socratic antics... mind you: he was an old man...
but Plato be ******, he wrote down what the old man
spoke: and a clear number of them succumbed to
      the tumble-**** effect...
                      no real prospects for life...
        and, evidently, the dead gods philosophised,
while the rest remained: prone to throwing a show of
macho, and worshipped the body...
Olympus shone...  
   by now you should know that i don't know what
i'm doing...
                  give me the killer-switch to launch a nuclear
strike and i'd probably say: maracas!
shake shake shake...     fidgety in the brothel...
shake shake shake...
             that's the weird thing, every time i went to
a brothel i became over-heated...
      i sat there, the whole **** place always reminded me
of a perfume... jack daniels...
   and i could feel myself over-heating...
  i don't known if that was the angel conscience talking
to me... but i always felt those eyes of scrutiny...
       mind you, once the whole "naughty'' escapade
took off... i forgot those relationships where
                    an impotence was crowned...
   don't know: maybe prostitutes just know my pin-number
and hold to say to little richard: off to the crusades with you!
     phenomenal...
                                         well... thank god for
the north african imports! i'd start thinking all european
women are bound to be: neglected.
               and was it ever, not only about ***?
    it's nice to doubt it...
                           next time i'll woodpecker a grave.
but hey! the promised land!
                           at least you'll have someone to cry
over your grave...
   and did i tell you how there's this cult of the grave
in Poland? yep, that's not a personal reality,
it's a populist manifesto... i'm starting to see it
as a hell where people sort of forgot to state their emotion
to the people, now lying in those tombs...
         give me a Hindu wedding with fire!
  i wanna become elemental!
and look, libido on fire... a billion vishnu-******* in
Bangladesh...   it's this thirst for fame in western
societies that's going to be a downsize...
                                 over there that's like a **** in
a tornado...              ha ha! it really is!
   but then again, here i am, a graveyard hyenna...
walking in Liberace's talk of style...
  most of these graves, really are: tacky...
    just like Liberace, the greatest showbiz conman of
the 20st century... i love the fact that he fooled so many
women... i mean... that guy was almost as good
as ****** when it came to mesmerising people...
but Liberace had a nieche audience... so...
                 no khaki for the ss...
                                           and i dare to hold
an ethnicity? in tune with bob marley: one love, one people...
it has never been so painful to strategise globalisation...
         it's this ethnic cleansing that everyone agreed to
provided they received a smart-phone...
                   or a McDonald's fetish... and that's saying it cheap...
but that's how it feels on the periphery of H'america...
little ol' England boycots Europe...
                     and it's like: huh?
                                           presto! dum-dum.
    sometimes i start thinking that i have a hydra for a tongue...
and the more i drink, the more i start to see
       it splintering up into a polyphony construct,
but more a case of: polyphony of subjects...
   and yes, aren't we all those internet losers...
when the most powerful man in the world...
     uses twitter. bastions of respectable comment!
yes, i.e. newspapers... we're riding this meteor to the end...
          does anyone still consider newspapers to be
the pledges of a free society? i must have been asleep for
the past 20 years then...
                      someone switched on this chaos-turbine,
and we're all shoving our two cents of opnions'-worth into it...
and it's not stopping...
            and yet you still read in newspapers, this underlining
feeling of being condescended... as if they are the sole
authority... they have to behave like little despots...
                           social media's power is invested in its
shock reverberation... think: Marx in the 21st century...
           but can you? is this some pseudo Marxism?
             i might have bypassed all the king-makers and
walls... but i have no leverage... my opinions are
     as cheap as chips... well: we got ourselves a unison converson...
   i still don't see how the television zeitgeist still thinks
that the internet zeitgeist is no connected with ''real life''...
i mean... **** me! where's the highstreet with all the shops?
on the internet. where is the frontline of wars? on the internet.
  where do suicides take place? on the internet,
from all the cyber bugs that people start to represent...
    if this isn't real life... then i guess i must be sitting,
and writing this in some medieval castle in transylvania,
    and my computer is powered by a legion of
hamsters on exercise-wheels, in a damp room, lit by a candle.

iii.

for me, this is how reading a philosophy book looks like:

| | |
     fig. 1
                                          /   \
                                            _
                 ­                                 fig. 2
    Δ
       fig. 3
                                           A
                                               fig. 4

it's like i want to see something with some clarity;
there is clear movement
      concerning a book like that,
              but unlike a standard novel:
there is clearly nothing concerning the: any given
  hope to disperse the mist.
                you're given the blunt truth:
the use of language...
                     again, it would be easier to call forward
a use of a tomahawk... or a guillotine...
            philosophy books never establish civilisations,
they break them.
                and do i think that the crucifix is a profanity
of the tetragrammaton? yes.
                do i feel Spinoza's anguish? probably.
when you read philosophy to start to waver,
it's almost necessary to unlearn language, and with
each philosophy book: learn it over again.
     you can't remain strapped to this culture
of emphasis of singled-out words...
              we can't find a constructive basis if we're
about to start any mechanism from such a dynamic,
isolating certain words and weighing them
                       obstructs language...
                 i can't even begin to fathom a pledge
to using a language, if there are these plebian obstructions...
i did write some notes when i spent these past 3 weeks
in Poland, but i'm scared of rewriting them...
                    i can claim to have understood
their content at the time,
but the context disparity is too much for me...
                 i'm rereading them in England
and i can only see England as a nightmarish construct
of such grandeour... that i might only be seen
speaking truth in the north of it...
                nor do i like the tri-tier categorisation
of man... if you read Kant, you'd be afraid of
man's laconic approach to the mind, stating
the three boundaries, and literally no faculty interactions...
  consciousness (the artist), denoting the overly-sensitive,
the subconscious (the worker), denoting the athletic construct
   and liberation from the daily toils of pure physical
    disposition...
and the unconscious (the zombie)...
   if you read Kant and explore the faculties...
and then turn toward the Freudian populism:
   there's enough reason to be concerned...
                  i can't be saying someone anti-vogue:
and that was my proper concern, that i might be saying
someone not recountable in any sort of realism...
          that mine is an isolated case...
         ditto alongside: why are we juggling the tri-tiers,
and so bombastic and even celebratory in huddling
toward these safety-nets of being human?
    thus said: the reflective man has died...
       in his place came the reflexive man...
                             and if there really is a worthwhile
stance to be a: **** sapiens...
   then all hope for a bewildered man is gone...
                 when the potency of robotics escaped science
fiction, and all trodden paths of orthodox science were
      fed to science fiction, humanity could begin
the process of discarding the offshoots...
          
iv.

the new testament... a book riddled with metaphors...
no wonder the greeks exploited the hebrew literalism...
and yes, plato the precursor made this very real...
by testifying that poetry had no place in the republic,
the new testament had to become solely poetic...
   the new testament is a rebellion against plato's republic...
it's a book wholly compromised on metaphor...
culminating in a book that's founded on imagery...
the gosepls are, once again, arithmetically speaking,
resembling the crucifix... which damns the concept
of the tetragrammaton...
                      as a book: it's only gibberish in
its final circumstance of revelation as a book of imagery...
   and in its preceding case: a book of metaphors...
who wouldn't be apprehensive to be born human
with such a thing being rampant?!
                    imagery is gibberish, given that we
have compentent painters out there...
and metaphor is metaphysics, given that we have
competent magicians out there...
   so how far apart are the words: qua             and
                   quo?
   as good a question as: how far apart are the words
                          phor               and phren?
       φoρ                       &                            φρην?
        so in the congregation of μετα, how are they
so apart?  looking at language from an alphabetical
perspective... it's hard to see anything inspirational...
    nor the tangens divergence of words
that are nonetheless so proximate in their construct...
a bit like the genetic proximity of man and ape,
or man and a banana...
   φoρ (the bearer of the beyond) -
                φρην (a mind concerned with things
under the curtain) -
                        and so: the futility of looking for
        a soul... became translated as the new found feudalism
of looking for a mind:
  given the common consensus: we're all mad....
so too looking at mythology could be revised:
  that myth of narcissus and echo...
or narcissus and psyche...
                         or φρην & πσιχη -
                we already know that there's an aesthetic
in Greek, at least they showed us
      that it can be σimple, when acknowledged
  and practised -
which means transcribing the ease of handwriting
   into a digital format, can be seen as an unnecessary
complexity - as if me currently looking for a word
that ends, and showcases the most obvious Grecian
aesthetic (without mention ο, ε, ω, η, œ)...
but with due mention: so where the second variant
of α, given there's æ?
                           it really is hard to find coherency
in human language... i'm still trying to conjure up
the second sigma... unless i hit the plural noteς...
there... i hit them... as simple as that.
  and yes: the father of the french hooked c
in garçon, came from this: the sigma used at the end
of wordς... i suspect that how things were denoted
to be possessed in english, also came from it.
once again: handwritting is bewildering on this digital canvas.

v.*

i don't have an atheistic argument, or a theistic argument,
i'v
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2018
/my "insomnia" isn't exactly a problem, when rationalised via: a Freudian desert, namely, i sleep, but have not luxury to dream, which makes a sense of death all the more procreational for thinking's sake... insomnia like dementia... or rather... better the erosion of the thought aculty,  replaced by hallucinogenic inducement to counter the erosion of the dream mechanics... currently staged by boorish media, 24h reels of insomnia pusher outlets... so who gave ol' zuck the oyster tongue, greasy skin, and a wet, shrinking prune *****? comes a time when a boy gets to grow oop... chances are, if you're insomniac, you are not an escape artist, and you deem the escapism of bound to dreams, as yet another, sheikh dubai lamborghini promenade, riding it at an urban speed limit of 30mph... revving for the "fear factor" of... dancing with gingy 'arry... risqué... insomnia erodes dreams... all the better, in that perpetuation of a mummified blink... theatre's curtain falls... what sort of Freudian banana is there to speak about, when attempting to compensate the intellect, for a *******  Eiffel... notably... an individual's insomnia comes after, the media insomnia, bite sized 30 minute intervals on repeat for 24h hours... and in between, no  in-between programmes, that might allow journalistic digestion... a lack of dialectical exercise has created journalistic indigestion... most notable and in plain sight... when applying the pedantic counter dialectic observation, in the form of diacritical marks.

doubt is a luxury in the current zeitgeist,
to unravel doubt,
when compensating love,
as a chemistry of endomorphines...
doubt, is the equivalent
of an intellectuals synonym
of love... both are gambles,
uncertainties, both are:
wavering of the heart, pendulum
swings...
   doubt is a phobia-philia...
a love of fear, less strenuously:
an apprehension regarding
the fact that Zanzibar made it
into song lyrics, and is a place
that actually exists, in situ...
without any global mention
in culture mining...
for those starved from loving...
afraid of their own shadow
and loneliness,
cogitatio ex-et-qua claustrophobia...
don mclean's starry starry night...
as big as a *******
universe and as plebian
as the lost V in a thespian
and the lost F in: definite article...
FE VACUUM PINT... sorry... POINT?  
doubt is a luxury,
equivalent to love...
doubt is a thinking man's love...
in both instances the heart
is swayed...
     how quickly did the Narcissus
economics become
the semi-autistic solipsistic pillar
that undermined the shear
exhilirence of doubt = love,
post curiosity, posit trust,
posit: disembodiment...
posit... and the siamese dream factory
(no smashing pumpkins' cliché)...
nontheless...
doubt is a luxury,
a graphite find,
with synonym-covert findings
of the gem equivalent to:
a fear of the existence of
the unum anima...
     and the precipitation of
ghosts...
    in the case for the argument
for the existence of purgatory...
     nostalgia...
because being sedated by a general
anaesthetic... is not quiet tot...
but doubt is a luxury these days,
sometimes misunderstood as
nonchalance...
but rather the ease of having
opinions, for the sake of
everyday narratives,
not dialectically challenged...
doubt, is akin to love,
in that there's the wavering,
nonetheless a teasing carrot
hanging before:
the palms that became
the Roman lynch whips...
one man rode a donkey
and suddenly four horsemen took
to a gallop...
     doubt is a luxury...
given our times...
    notably because the existentialist
replaced doubt with denial...
and denial, has no luxury
of thought as genesis,
instigator, alpha precursor...
     denial is not a luxury,
it is an accepted norm...
               perhaps the subtleness
of love in the guise of doubt
as the antithesis of erratic pulverisation
not associated with thinking,
or rather: cogitatio per se, est
supra "quaestio" moralis, id est:
     narratio moralis...
doubt is a luxury,
in times, when man looks upon
man as a chimera of
a wolf, a fox, and a sheep / goat...
doubt is a luxury,
when denial becomes the norm;
          this doesn't even have to
invigorate the comic holocaust denials...
but the sort of denials,
that allow a small town to exist
and the globalist city-state
cannibalism to also, exist...
        a "denial" for the sake
of "myopia"...
          came the pseudo-Socrates...
and the dialectical-Elijah...
              Copernicus the genius,
thesaurus handy,
also the solipsist, and also
the cider brewer's concept of
autistism...
          mind you...
the thin line...
between atheism and autism...
an atheist arguing for the nonexistence
of god, countered
with an autistic- arguing
                for the existence of a self,
without being questioned
by the other's demand for an
existence of, the self.
doubt is a luxury...
denial is the new standard,
norm.
Derek Yohn Oct 2013
The fall of Rome is upon us.
I have spied it from my window,
i dare not intrude.

venimus
vidimus
vicimus
(ourselves)

The slaves are in revolt;
the Colliseum burns,
flames tenderly licking
destruction and freedom,
a beacon in the
dark autumn night;
Carthage has embraced
its high sodium diet,
it now seeks equality;
the Senate lies in ruin,
much as it always has,
now bereft of contributors.

Ego autem relictus solus devius,
faciamus nobis effugium.

Come, fair plebian lady,
get in my chariot,
i will 'Billy Ocean' you
all the way
to the end of the world,
because some things never change.

veni
vidi
vici
NOTHING
per memet

ita reliqui,
empty-handed
my new fair plebian in tow.

Roma victa.
translations:  
"Ego...devius" = i am the only deviant left now
"faciamus...effugium" = let us make our escape
"per memet" = single-handedly (literally, by myself)
"ita reliqui" = so i left
"Roma victa" = rome conquered, or victory to rome
" veni vidi vici" = i came i saw i conquered (i used the plural "we" instead of "i" the first time
SøułSurvivør Mar 2014
Summer 1986 Sunday 5:30AM

Misty morning in Malibu.
Seagulls stitch the sea to a subtle
silver sky. They sputter stridently.
Each elegant gull hovers effortlessly.
Entreating each other. Echos bounce
off the sound of the surf into eternity. The screeching of many a
soliloquy akin to silence.

I sit on the pier. The water before
me washes onto the staccato legs
of tiny waterbirds who wander
in and out of the surf. Little
windblown ***** of ecru and grey
wool. I worship in the womb of
the great goddess ~ nature. I wasn't to know the Creator was watching patiently...

6:30AM
I make my unhurried way up the
pier to my car. A cheap but
comfortable convertable. Nobody
walks in LA. I punch in a tape.
Don Henley. Boys of Summer.

I take PCH up to the incline that
takes you from the beach. Pushing
the pedal slightly as I slide by the
colossal bleached cliffs of
Palacades Park. There the homeless
sleep under the benches dedicated
by friends and family in
rememberance of loved ones.
Small plaques attatched for
posterity.

My hands are on the steering wheel
at 7 and 12 o'clock.I look at the cast
I wear on my right wrist. A token
of rememberance from an angry romance. He and I parted
respectively, if not at all
respectfully. I drive.

7:00AM
Venice beach. Not yet boysterous.
But never boring. The young people
(and old) still bundled together in bed. Saturday night hangovers will
be had by most of the denizens of
Venice beach boardwalk. A grainy
eyed few wander around abstractidly. Shopowners enter
their buildings, their storefronts
almost as small as booths. Graphitti
and giant works of art grace walls
everywhere ~ Jim Morrison and
Venus in workout leggings much
in evidence.

I smoke my cigarette and drink my
hot coffee carefully in the open cafe'.
I consider the eyefest of the crowd
that will congregate here to enjoy
the clement weather.
The cacophony and the clamor.
Touristas and Los Angelinos alike
drawn In by calculating vendors
and coyote souled street performers.
I look forward to seeing the
non conformity usually. But not
today. For now I sit in the quiet cafe'.

Venice beach. Vulpine. Vacuous.
A strangely vunerable venue. The
***** and the beautiful. The talented and the ******.

A street performance pianist trundles his acoustic piano on
casters out onto the boardwalk.
I ask him if I may play. He looks
at my cast doubtfully.
"I can still play..." I tell him.
He ascents and listens thoughtfully
as I play my compositions. He really
likes them. I ****** the ebony and
the ivory with insistant fingers.
The smile on his face is irrepressable. I smile back and we
flirt in self conceous, fitful fashion.
Time to leave.

9:00AM
Radio is on in my car now. A cut
from the musical Chess. One night
in Bangkok makes the hard man
humble...
I like the driving beat.
I'm going up I-10, a single blood cell
in the main artery that brings life
to the flesh of this mamouth town.
Traffic is tenuous. A boon here in
this conjested city.

I drive to Fairfax and Sunset, where
I lived with in a tiny one-bedroom
apartment with my mom. An
ambitious actress. I an ambivalent
artist.

Sunset. The Roxy and Whiskey-a-
Go-Go. Cartoon characters Rocky
and Bullwinkle casually cavort on
the top of a building. Billboards
as tall as the Hollywood sign. The
street of broken hearts for many
an actress -slash-model. They
wander about on street corners
looking haughty and haunted.
Waiting for who knows who to
honk. Their dreams have flown
away like the exhailation of smoke
from the mechanical lungs of the
Marlboro Man. Schwab's drugstore
and diner. The place where some
famous starlet was discovered.
Delivered into the arms of the
Hollywood machine. I opt to go
to the Sunset Grill.

11:00AM
I'm walking down Hollywood Blvd.
Perusing shops and persuing
pedestrian pleasures. Everyone
talks of the star-studded sidewalks.
To me they look tarnished and
filthy. Stars from a sultry smog
laden sky come to earth. The names
of some of the folks honored on
them I don't recognise.

I'm here to view movies today.
I'm definitely not going to
Grauman's Chinese Theater.
Been there. Done that. Gave the
very expensive T shirt to
Goodwill. I look around at the
proud and the plebian. The pedantic
and the pathetic. No prostitutes
out yet that I could see. Probably
toppled into bed to sleep
(for once). Deposed kings
and queens of the monarchy of the
night. The homeless hobble along
with their hair matted and askew.
Shopping carts with stuttering
wheels de reguer.

A couple of tourists with Izod shirts,
plaid shorts to the knee and deck
shoes sans socks gaze in a shop
window. It's borded by tarnished
and faded silver garlands... tinsel
Christmas tree.
"Want to buy a mood ring today?"
One of them querys his buddy,
laughingly.

I find my small theater and enter
the air conditioned lobby. I purchase
a soda and pass on the popcorn.
As I enter the theater's modestly
plush, dimly lit cocoon sanctuary
I notice very few patrons are here
for the matinee. GOOD. I finally
watch the premiere product of
Los Angeles. Movie after movie
slides across the screen. The callus
morally corrosive corporations
conspire with the creative to produce
the culmination of many art forms
in one. Cinema.

LA. Languid. Luxurious. Legendary.
Rollicking, raunchy rodeo.
Seaside city. Sophisticated. Spurious.

SPECTACULAR.

8:00PM
I wend my way up Mulholland Dr.
Another tape is playing in the deck.
One of my favorites. David + David.
Welcome to the Boomtown.

I pull over at a deserted vista. From
this viewpoint I can see the city
spread out like a blanketfof brilliance. The gridiron of LA.
Glitzy and glamorous. Generating
little gods and goddesses. A gigantic
gamble for the disingenuous and
gouache. Tinsel town. Titillating.
Tempestuous. Only the very brave
bring their dreams here... or fools
rush in where angels fear to tread.
All but the fallen angels. They thrive.

Oh! If this place could be bottled it
would be such sweet poison. I
look up at the auburn sky and back
down at the breathtaking panorama
The metropolis that is LA with awe
and angst. I carefully stub out my
cigarette and flip it irreverantly
toward the lagoon of lights.

I get in my car to drive home.
Home?
Could this imposing, inspiring,
impossible place be called home?

Well. Home is where the heart is.
And I live in the heart of a dream.
This is the city of dreams...

CITY OF ANGELS.

Soul Survivor
Catherine E Jarvis
(C) 2005
You can rest your eyes now...

I only have enough funds to
produce one spoken word
set to music... should I
do this one?
david badgerow Oct 2015
i'll let you be recluse & writer
you can describe how strange horrible
it feels to suddenly realize that one of us will someday die
the other left standing in the dark middle of a railroad
silhouette illuminated by a single streetlamp
mouth open with a granite rock wobbling in hand

i pray that it's me who falls first
after our parents so they won't have to bury a child
& you my only brother can remove my name from
the lyrics of every song you wrote for me

i can't give you the words to write
but find them & add them to your own memories
of me on a spring afternoon standing in shorts
on a softball field or rooftop with
hands on my knees & two wisps of hair in my face like
moths orbiting shafts of remembered yellow light

stick out your tongue & i'll teach you to whistle
without your fingers if you teach me to scowl & squirm
**** with my armpit & spit melon seeds at lowing cows
we'll dangle from plebian treebranches upside down together
& when i fall off the monkey bars you laugh
but when you're on your head in a heap of kinetic energy
i pick you up & brush ***** tear spirals off your chin

i'll drift away first into sleepland with a smile plastered on my
strawberry cheeks squirming legs & my body
coiled tight like a bedspring with laughter stomach cramps
from the stories & jokes you whisper on the floor in the half-lit gloom

i will be your darling sister forever lying to mom
about the time you burned a hole in the linoleum
& you will throw rocks at the back of my head
from a young persimmon tree like a noisy bird gargling bug juice
pretending to skip them across a pristine lake in the
blue grayness of the churchyard before dawn
SøułSurvivør May 2017
The Dragon's Egg

To understand my addiction
You have to know the
Back-story.

I was born in the dead of
Winter. Wednesday's child...
Full of woe. I was a preemie.
Mom fell on her stomach while
On a chair trying to change a
Lightbulb. As unpreposessing
A child as ever was born...

I won't go into my childhood
Difficulties too much, as they
Might prompt your judgment
Upon my parents. They were
Not really at fault. They did
The best they could based
Upon *their
childhoods and
Limitations....

Mom was sick.
A great deal. The victim of
Horrific migraine headaches
And an undiagnosed (therefore
Untreated) bi-polar condition.
She had aspirations of being an
Actor. She really should never
Have had three children. She
Simply couldn't handle it. I was
Born only 16 months after her
Firstborn, my sister Chris. This
Definitely didn't help matters.
Then, because my little brother
Mark was born just as her
Acting career took off, she had
Much less time for my sister
And I. She had a newborn, a
Career, a husband and
Postpartum depression. Chris
And I (and eventually Mark)
Were neglected. Not really
Mom's fault. It was what
It was...

Dad was a complex man.
A hot-tempered stoic. A hard
Worker who hated manual
Labor. A war hero who also
Became a runner (he would
Become a severe
Alcoholic - an addiction he
eventually overcame).
A generous miser.
A cultured plebian.
A spiritually minded atheist.

I don't blame him. But the
Last dichotomy was our
Downfall. We were
disallowed from church. Went
To an atheist Sunday School.
We learned about all the world
Religions save Christianity.
Or maybe I missed THAT lesson.
But as a result I had no real
Moral compass to live by. My
Parents tried to teach us
Ethical behavior, but because
Jesus and the Holy Spirit weren't
A part of the equation it was
Doomed to failure. One can't
Simply be "moral" or "ethical".
Without Jesus, we are all
Rank sinners. Sorry if this
Offends some of you. But it's
TRUE. Jesus paid the price.
Only faith in Him can make
A person right with the Father.
All else is vanity. My father
Spent his lifetime trying to be
A "good" man. He tried to
Be a "good" husband. A "good"
Father. But his efforts
Always stymied by lack
Of the essential puzzle piece....

JESUS**.
I wanted to read this afternoon,
But this work kept gnawing at
My concentration. Now I can
Go back to reading. Thanks!
Grassblade Nov 2020
It has been a long, tumultuous voyage..  into complacent.. stagnant.. normalcy.

I've swum the tides of fortune, pleasure, knowledge.. and as they fall I can feel the dry sand, chafing my sanity.

I've seen wonders of the world, built to inspire - inevitably in vain. Opportunity and privilege have no purpose in a frozen museum of a life.

They snuck onto me covertly.. unnoticed. A lame onesie.. slightly too tight around the neck... obnoxiously, unnaturally colored for no reason.

I've cast off all semblance of any character I once had
and I lay here now in bed
In my plebian pajamas and with my flaccid life.
The cacophony of sounds twisted
And entwined in the metal trees
Shakes my soul as I look to the sodden skyline
I view the last discarded leaves of this placid dimension

A girl walks across the grass
It’s cold out,
About 43 degrees but she lacks shoes
On her tired feet
The black of day collects on the souls of her ragged feet
But it has no effect on her angelic, bohemian outlook
She carries a smile and a switch blade in her pocket
No explanation necessary

Between a rock and a hard place I plant a flower that is my conscious
Simply to watch it grow

The stone pathway, cold against my skin
Creates an aire of direction
Follow the yellow brick road
I seek the wizard but instead-
Find a mirror,
Blistered and fractal
Producing infinite images in my own likeness
A concept of this magnitude is difficult
Much like a human action
In perspective of a fly

Our self proclaimed purpose-
For what, power, money,
Control of the masses
Suppress their minds, diminish their conscious.
The common man deserves better than the plebian life
Of a dog ordered by an invisible master
A shot in the dark,
Who puts forth this motivational bowl of oats?
Bed of hay,
Ring of gold?

I sit and watch
Trying to understand the habits of the world
Every day, the script more blasé and uninteresting than the last

The show created for those who watch,
Whose production value is low.
One must look beyond the projection screen
To understand the man behind the scenes,
The man daring you to dream.

I stop and smell the same lily as yesterday,
Just to denote any change in my world
This lily, my favorite lily,
Lives on, in the grime and muck of
America

If god is all loving and the devil all evil,
Could they be, one in the same
Changing day to day
He too must have mood swings.

As a child you’re told you can be
Anything you want,
Can this be true?
What if you just want to be happy?

Must you step on the fingers of people
Barely holding on
To the edge of the highest peak to climb,
Watch them fall to their own demise?

My happiness stems
From stepping down
And lending a hand,
My success stems from
The success of the flowers in bloom around me,
For I,
Am the fertilizer of the mind

Cremate me,
Spread my ashes in
The woods,
A field,
A lake,
A river,
The oceans grand.
Your person remebered,
Your kindness admired.

Let these blind people
Step on your cold, ***** fingers,
And offer your other hand
As a stepping stool

They may find their happiness
But only for a time
When all is said and done
Can they explain
Their reason or rhyme?
Who they answer to now may not always,
Be there.
But when they too sign up
For the eternal rest
With themselves only
Their cross they shall bare.

The streets I wander
Grow cold with urgency,
Like a gadfly I stand in the way,
Producing images of
Love, and life,
Without deadlines, submission, or oppression.

Nobody listens, but I speak my mind
I dive on the grenade
To safe these
Ungrateful cowards.

Their words
Shallow and dry against my eardrum
I bleed for new meaning
A redefined existence

Change
Cannot be something you wait for
It can never be found,
Only made
This is my change,
My attempt at change.



You may not like what I say,
But at least I try.

I know
One day
I will die
With your best interests in my mouth,
Your knife in my back,
A smile in my eyes,
And happiness
In my heart.

I bleed for the many,
The lost in translation.
My transcendental mindset
Opening my path,
I leave my door open
For those who choose to read.

Fore I know my thoughts are my own,
Whether they have been thought before or not,
I know that I am thinking them now.

The garbled sound of polka music drones on,
In ominous dance.
Something has changed
Maybe tempo or key,
The color rethought
For me, it’s so easy to see
Far more difficult to show.



Awaken yourselves
To the feverish heat
Of wisdom
And accept that
To truly be wise
One must know he cannot know

The sandy coast of endless life
Carries on in the bleak of night
Your hairy eye and jestered hand
Shall curse me no more

I’ve seen the golden ray of dark
Beyond the sun
And opened portals
To greener, sharper, harsher worlds

The stringent silence
Piercing ears and harmful shouts
Have shown me pathways beyond the sun

I’ve opened my eyes simply to glance,
And there was a man,
Tired and beaten
His voice a crusty piece of bread
Left by the children, wasted and old




He asked but a question,
Where are you from?
My reply, wordless and empty,
I think to myself,

Home, home is where I am from.
Where I belong
In the nestle of my childhood blanket.
Scent of me filled with memory, old and discarded.

I wish to return but
Memories oh tasteless, sightless memories
They shall remain.

The man, sitting on a stump of what was an apple tree,
Repeats his timeless question.
I have no reply

Carrying my thought
Through barbed wire fences
I pray to a god that is not mine and
Find a crumbling remnant of a statue
Holding a silver tarnished scepter
With a quote painstakingly engraved into the stone
"All that lives shall perish in due time"




Is this my time my thought moves on.
These worlds I view beyond the golden rays of darkness
Show me that without death
There can never be new life

Oh these sandy coast of infinity
Set me free to a new beginning
But first my work must be complete
In this treacherous world in which
I reside

My family grows hungry for answers
And receive no helping of knowledge
Passed down through the ancient cave writings of
Peoples before
The past is real
But remains a memory
Dusty and forgotten by many

This life a flower past by,
By the masses,
Material goods and swirls of profits.

Your god is not my god,
Your money means nothing
Show me what you truly believe,
Not what the texts of heralds
And documented in secret libraries
And chastised caves have told you
I too shall remain but a memory
Or shall I live on,
This sandy coast of endless life,
Teaching the ways of passage and right.
Jacob Sykes Mar 2014
I had a really good poetry line
but it got lost between the illegal substances.
I hope someone else can find it.
Cuz all I can believe is the music from Madden.
These fake orchestral pieces or are they real.
I'm also smoking a cheap box vaporizer after drinking two steel reserve 40's and those are 8 percent alcohol.
It's at 420 degrees and that's cool.
Def not a plebian.
Possibly lesbian but mom says that's really really good.
This city with its myriad eyes
watches, waits as petals with their waxen glow
And leaves unfurling
Come, upturned, to the daylight’s harsh glow
This city with its myriad eyes;

This city with its myriad eyes sees all
The rusty blue beetle with chewed out seatbelts
Swerving, screeching. Belonging to the ashes of
This glowering city, watching night and day.

This city with its myriad eyes
Will wait
Rigid, unyielding
As the plebian townspeople scurry like ants
Under their magnificent creations
Condemning you to an unknowing fate
In a glass cage

You say you are innocent, girl?
This errant city has seen you
In the ponds, idly laying beneath the willows
Above the lily pad
And underneath the heavy sky.
This city with its myriad eyes
Has seen you
Trailing your fingers along the river’s lip
Barely leaving dwindling wakes
For trailing frogs behind
This city with its myriad eyes
Knows your innocence is a veil
For your harsh playfulness
Quite the crime, my young girl
Says this city with its myriad eyes.
lonnieray Mar 2017
New note not newt moot. Why does my gibberish wither before yours? How is to say whose is better, the bitter brother betters the spalding other. Trother. The same similair kurds come fro and tooth inanimately they become similar. Why is there such a contusion, a contortioning togetherness, a wheeling feeling of the sameness. CuddleU, the 23rd letter. Beforehand blending breezing becoming contortion torture out the statistics until it confesses.

Torture the numbers until it confesses. Tortillas go number if you cover congress confetti. Ficusification. Ficus - ification. A new world for a **** word. When whirred a bird stirred. And out of the air it dropped a word wart. A **** of glistening glee. Faceless plumbers into leather feathers of frictionless glass. Bumble-mumble beeseetch the forlorn. You like to slumber. You like to slumber yet you think you slick and on far. You so on but you so like to coze up to pillows and warmth yet acting like you above it, cuddle like froth on tea.

Vietnam vitamins - cheering in the rain, cheering for the beautiful sleet, this ****'s pouring, pouring all weekend. Chewing on the plastic edges of your houses, pearlescent and truth or dare icey pubescent? Ploob plebian. Can you tell if I have an idea or if I don't? Why is asking questions fun? Why is it enjoyable to enter queries like burrowing rats into others head houses? Let's be more confidant! Let's confide our absolutes. Let's rid the bore holes of braniacs and smack diapers onto our dripping jewels. I sack the funny. The funniest letter is R. Isn't that more interesting than asking the question, what is the funniest letter? (Rhetorical questions don't count.) I make an assertion. Assertions are so often seen as representative worldviews when they are so much more interestingly experiments, something different than asking cowardly questions. Questions are cowardly, they refuse to experiment with a possibility. The funniest letter is R vs what is the funniest letter? You see. You see? Use E. Ease E.

There is a giant globulous letter E sitting - no swinging along your eyebrow, tipping almost but stuck nonetheless. Your eyelashes are infused with rubber buttercups. Tears are made of holograms, and they drip from the hollows of your talcum-powder nostrils. Lips are a blend of cigarette butts and gummy bears, the very small, very hard ones. Cheekie weekies made of pressed sheets of peach fuzz. It took two seasons to collect that much fuzz. The last batch was made of belly button lint and ten years of eyelashes. Eyelashes are enormously difficult to collect because they are inhabited with mites which eat them. Therefore they actually seem to dissolve just as the very small piles are building. There must be a better way to complete the harvest.
Sean Hunt Dec 2015
The Presumptuous Poet
(Written for a monthly gathering of poets at The Wordsworth Trust)
in Grasmere, Cumbria, The United Kingdom

Am I a presumptuous poet?
I asked myself
(Through the mouth
Of an imagined
Proper poet
To this ear of
A possibly presumptuous poet)

Some, I fear
(Maybe someone here)
May find my efforts at poetry
Presumptuous
Plebian
Pedantic
Or simply
'Proper poor'

Especially
In this holy
And enchanted
Lakes and Mountains Mecca Land
Where words seem to be worth more
Maybe I need to be
Cautious
Consider my station

And call myself a
Wordsmith
Instead of  'a Poet'


  Sean Hunt   November 30  2015
Windermere
brandon nagley May 2015
I want to be complacent, a replacement to this hole all others call a heart!! Dust from the start!
I want to be comprised of no compromise, and teased by one's wild garden.. I feel indigent to the search, where the Indegenous perch, and strike their venom fangs!!
Narcissism runs paid to high, for everyone's a god these days!
How wrong, how misled!!
Did you bump thine head at thy crawling from the womb? Or still intombed?
Postulate truth I adventure, for I seek no gold diggers, just this aaorta to grow bigger, as frowns can go their own..
An amour' unknown, curdled in with the lumps!
Didn't you know a little lump leavens the whole bread?
Knowledgeable pragmatic...
Rebut me all you will, for I do not need pills, only the comfort of a woman's attire! Flamed as fire!!!
Vociferous with one I want to be, virtuoso's, making melodys angel choired!
I need none invective, only an erudite of plebian Babylon!!
A daughter and son to raise amongst the brinks of end of days impromptu!!!
Tacitly I wait, where heaven is at her gate,
Only if I knew what time!
Old poetry from prison lol love old stuff yayy
Amy Foreman Feb 2017
Socialism needs an opt-out for the folks like me.
Doesn’t mean I want to shut out souls in poverty.

Just that sharing’s much more fun when I decide to give.
Ev’n the crankiest curmudgeon wants poor folks to live.

But it grates that regulation twists my liberal arm.
Presses me for my donation, “lets” me sell the farm.

True compassion I would render to the brotherhood,
Never shirking role of spender for the common good.

Yet I’m stymied in my caring, curiously enough,
When the government starts tearing  through my private stuff.

It’s like saying whom I must love, never letting me
Freely choose to be a part of warm felicity.

And . . .
What of charity’s receiver, plebian, once proud?
Now required under-achiever in the welfare crowd.

If she rises from her ashes, if she shirks her place.
Suddenly, the system slashes “benefits” apace.

Now, by council isolated from her former peers.
Up the ladder climbs unaided by the rich “top-tiers.”

While support they once would offer, now their fists are shut--
Uncle Sam has taxed their coffer, swiped the needy’s cut.

What if government gave freedom for us all to choose?
If the statutes guaranteed ‘em untouched revenues?

Might that self-rule foster good-will for our fellow-man?
Couldn’t independence instill kindness in our land?

Maybe it’s just me that could’ve soared above the rule,
Let the generosity of God become the fuel. . . that

Powered me to love my neighbor, opened wide my hand,
Shared the fruit of friendship’s labor with each one, first hand.

Either way, I need that opt-out:  Liberty’s control,
Giving me the chance to hand out, freely, from my soul.
brandon nagley May 2015
A thorn on mine head,
Nails to these hands,
Bullet to thine brand,
A shot to your perversions,

Excruciating turn ins!

A cut to mine wrists,
A lip for mine whisps,
An actionary cemetary_
I'll prowl with wolves and natives!!

Excrutiative!

Mine chalk to make characatures,
Tis these bones to get weaker,
As you mock me to your liking!

No sandals to be worn,
No boats to climb your shores,
Just mine own amour' in plebian tithe..

A length to ones thigh!!!!

A rope to straddle me,
Some smoke to hide me,
A queen to surprise me,
For no, not one Ive found,

A restful experience do I wake to take me home,
No soreness to these groans,
Just ****** of fresh fruited vine....
Graff1980 Apr 2015
I got these strange romantic notions
No flower petals unless it’s four play
Where strangers can hear her screams from the doorway
But before that
I want conversation
Not the plebian kind of gossip crap
But the deep unexplored caverns
That she doesn’t even knows she has
I want to share a journey of intellectual exploration
So that when we are facing
Each other naked
It’s not just the flesh that is bare
So that when we touch
She knows that I care
About her mind as much
As the skin behind
The cloths she wears
Let her know that when I stare
It’s because I am enthralled
By the diamonds she hides behind
Her deep dark dream lit eyes
Graff1980 May 2017
This is a dark palace
Of deliberately dangerous
desires that
abruptly disrupts
and veraciously corrupts
all newcomers.

Plebian minds
mass in manic displays
of their sheepish ways
submitting to
the least alpha
of the American
upper class
crusty *** crew.

The enemy
claims he is
iconoclast
and mysterious,
but he is not
what he purports to be.

On these dismal days
I observe
the hurtful hand
of our material obsession.
I see us become the property
of our possessions.

Yet, with an elegy
of creative energy
I seek to set
all children of
our society free,
writing and  posting
with the same passion
as the romantics
that came before me.
Wk kortas Mar 2021
We'd referred to it as The Avenue,
Not because it had any pretense of being
Some major thoroughfare
(Indeed it ran for no more than a half-dozen blocks
From the traffic circle at the school building,
Itself de-commissioned for some years now,
To the small bluff at the end of the village
Where buildings ended and trees and fields began,
The view, in our childlike perspective,
What we assumed belonged to the birds and angels)
But because every other roadway
Had been christened with the more plebian "street",
And as the longest and straightest pavement
It was the venue for racing bicycles, skateboards
And anything else with wheels,
(As we later discovered, much to our parents' chagrin)
And certainly we had sent any number of bugs and beetles
To their makers in our mad rush
To reach the road's crest,
And on one horrific occasion, a tiny bird,
Barely past the point of being nurtured in the nest,
Somehow became enmeshed in my spokes
To be flung unceremoniously to the roadside,
It's wings splayed out in a manner
At once almost seraphim-like, yet clearly signaling
That the hatchling in question
(Its species not fully apparent--a pigeon, perhaps,
Or a mourning dove not destined to be part of a pair)
Would never take flight.
I'd looked at it, stunned beyond word or action,
When Nicky Gesters pulled up next to me,
Whispering into my left ear, Nothing to be done, kid.
Happens all the time.  If it wasn't you, woulda been some cat
.
And, bereft of any rationale of my own,
I simply nodded, riding back down the *****
Not to return to the high end of the road for some days,
And when the time comes where some errant wheel,
Something rapacious and feline, or some other tool
Of life's winds and wuthering take me to my rest,
I hope to retain sufficient grace to seek out that bird
To proffer my regrets for my all too extant humanity,
My sad and insufficient pentinence.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2018
it becomes black and white
after this point...
  
  um...

     zee vest... und zee
     clinging onto gustav 'olst

(because why not,
it's ha ha ęglish...
     mind to match up to:
   a macron
hovering to extend,
  i.e.            
                  eeeeeeeee as in: in)

  oh very much so...
    this is the one time that
i gave a speech:
      that, never took place...

it's one of those frivolous...
airy-fairy
   concerns for activity that
doesn't remind of:
the dead and passing...

O fortuna!
      and then the synonym,
to a "lesser" extent
by lev knipper
    in the form
            of victor gusev...

don't know:
but... a crescendo beginning?
   what's the impetus vector
to begin with a zenith
equivalent of an *******
and end...
in the nadir...
         of a transcendental
   morality encompassing
all existence,
within the confines of
a question...

that's my problem...
   philosophy, psychology...
and always having to
dig trenches, resort to...
    allowing being caged
by a question...
      can you really begin with
a crescendo in music?
sure as **** we know
what the star of bethlehem
ended up providing us with...

)  ever experience
those rare instances of
auditory hallucination
that you
counter-cognition-in-"solipsism"
                       entertain?
i.e. the word: loser?                     (

and "they" literally "thought"
this wouldn't become
a pandora's box,
  better still:
                     a cassandra's box...
within the confines of
expressing a case for past war,
spilled blood...
and a vocal exercise
that comes after...

   sors immanis -

   and if not?
then that's just
         plain dumb plebian...

quod per sortem
                             sors salutis...

yet not this crescendo at birth,
not this...
               at least the waiting "game"...
not this...
         perhaps i could have
vacated a minor social role...

  instead this hyper-inflated
            detached hand,
scuttling across the pavement
up up-side-down
        pavements of walls,
in synchro. to imitating
   anti-gravity spiders...

        trying to trap a tongue
with its weaving a Lelí-Beth
                    alpha-through-to-omega
construct...­
      akin to a miraculous memory...
a violin (a priori)
              and a violinst (a posteriori)?
  who knows!
all the musical "geniuses"
           learned to play an instrument
as children...
          their creativity was
only secondary!
      
                    they were given the gift
of implanted technicality!
          and worked from it...

             and what was i given?
                 nothing i could want
to invert into making myself
  a concern for replica, or emulation...

              i, stand, as a dead tree,
before a pyramid... of sisyphus...
because sure as ****
   those pyramids do not belong
to the egyptian pharaohs or
the hebrew slaves...
      not now... not tomorrow...
perhaps before the shadow of
the eiffel tower overshadowed
the former perceived sun-dials of giza...

       if ever in want of exploring space,
beginning with mars?
lose the shadow you've erected.
  and compensate
    eating glass while sifting
through sand...

   what is perplexing though...
        so narcissus saw a reflection
in a lake...
        ever look at your reflection
in a window?
         what the hell is admirable
about it?
                         it's haunting!

only photograph is an elevation
of the mirror...

        even during the night
a reflection in glass is haunting...
   not: ******* / ego orientated...

i went to a funeral of a teacher once...
implored by her class students...
didn't know her...
                but it was a...
who the hell goes to a funeral
   aged 5 / 6 / 7
             among boys who
pretended to be the choir?

           you know what i remember...
the husband crying...
          the agony on his face,
the ****** restrictions of laughter
only eased by crying...
           which is not exactly
a prolonged form of mourning...

yeah... weird childhood friends...
   some of them ended up
in jail...
      and i'm supposedly "lucky"
writing this juxtaposing verse.
Minimum wage

The olive trees in the landscape
near the village,
Have working-class trunks
and no illusion
Of becoming middle-class trees.
They refuse to grow
in a plant- nursery and be tampered with
by botanists.
They do not envy tall palm trees.
Good luck to those who see the world
through an elevated height.
Good soil and water the plebian olive tree wants
it has deep roots and will not fall
in a storm.
Graff1980 Jan 2020
A cartoon talent
that was unbalance
he guessed
they got dressed
and directed
themselves to
zany acrobatics.

The bad guy pathetic,
plebian, and antiseptic.
He should have suspected
they were heroes in disguise.

I used to love that show but
now I am a grown up,
so, though I like to look back,
smile, and really laugh
I guess I’ll have to pass
on that old loony toons
madness.

— The End —