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NaNa Apr 2016
Regret.

Nibbles away at the tiny corners of the conscious mind.

Preoccupying ones thoughts with remorse and somewhat desire.

Remorse over what is done
and what is to be done.

A desire
to do it again.

Regret.

Not a feeling rather a trait.
Its characteristic
embodied within the human

Its here, and its here to stay.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
allowing for a two part volume
of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu...
is unforgiving... it's asking a meat-head
to read such a body like exploring a woman's...
a gay-man's psyche is pretty much a woman...
or what a woman thinks in secret,
gay men merely vocalise what a woman does
not say... and yes, that a with a diacritical
mark... that grave above the a? the à?
it works like a comma... à! a surprise kindred
an eureka that's not really original,
an: ah! and then you say the rest of the title...
iconic pause: in search of lost time...
          it took me about five minutes to figure
that one out... lost time, but occupied a space...
  and so much political vanity is consecrated
upon the reverse.. ineffective space:
thus gained time... for all that protests are worth.

i know i go on about this a lot, surprise surprise,
i'm actually engaging in systematisation...
once you enjoy writing as much as walking
you get to reach a systematisation,
     it's a painful process, i'd never do the editing process
of a Hemingway... write something: shoot some
camels and reindeer and go back and revise a piece
of writing: drink a *death in the afternoon
-
a shot of absinthe inside a champagne glug
or the modern: shot of Jägermeister inside a glass
of red bull... (yay-gay-mr.) -
                       or how do you make snakebite?
half a láger half a çíder - and a head of blackcurrant
squash... scoot meine good look.
  but diacritical marks are what punctuation marks
are... it's only that they've become elevated,
and unlike punctuation marks governing paragraphs
and sentences... they govern the words,
         they are syllable incision indicators...
  i mean: i don't revise something i've already written,
unless it's a spelling mistake... i just write
something new... it's sadistic in my mind's eye to
revise and revise a single effort of writing...
                i'd rather centralise a theme of the paradox
of re-, in the year 2018 i will still experience
the tetratempus - containing four seasons -
         and i will never return toward making a piece
of writing become a morbidly corrected statue...
     what's done is done, let us move toward another
circumstance of being able to acquire a new kind
of observation... i can't be a sadist in terms of also
being a perfectionist... i break a leg, i break a leg...
if i write a ****** poem, i'll write a ****** poem...
but i won't be bothered like human history has been
by preoccupying itself in forwarding the drama
on Golgotha Street...
    the newest addition to the vogue scene is a corset
paired with a waistcoat...
   the snooker championships are taking place,
and i says to my father: 'a bit like chess, ain't it?'
   'sure is', he replies, 'you have to think 3 moves ahead.'
and it is... a smart sport, actually the most intelligent
sport there is... ****** boring obviously,
unless you fake the boredom and think about angles
and triangles and Newton...
   and cover the game with such congestions of
pretending to hallucinate it all...
                or take to thinking about rebellious
Saturn spinning out of orbit and doing a Mike Tyson
to Jupiter...
          but it's very much like chess...
                   it's sporty chess... snooker is chess...
  and it definitely ain't pool...
         you could actually have a ******* on a snooker table...
while either doggy or missionary positioning on
the snooker table... so what are the odds?!
         but i'll tell you one thing... snooker beats golf...
i don't know why... but once colour televisions came into
existence: it made much more sense for both
spectator and commentator... and how dare you
not cling to the 20th century if you were born in it
to translate to the 21st androids how we experienced
an evolution of technology, that made much more sense
after what i just heard...
      so there's this woman in the U.S., and this is before
president-elect and whatnot...
  and she's 22, and it's all over vice news,
and she's scared, and she's a mother of a 1 year old...
    and then this picture emerges
(don't worry, it's not anything like playing the Sims
   and moving your Sim to play computer games
and seeing a wormhole, or the infinity mirror effect)...
and there's a scene when she's talking Donald Duck
to the child... there are no meaningful words being
said... merely sounds... onomatopoeias...
and yes... this makes perfectly good sense when
stressed as a cut-off capsule...
because Darwinism doesn't really provide much
history... Darwinism is a historical erasure:
the past 2000 years could have happened,
but not really...
  but it just fascinated me...
         when did we learn or who did we learn it from
given we were placed at so many different
plots of the globe and became convergent -
anyway - the woman is teaching the child
words via the onomatopoeia of a hoarse quacking
of a duck! i probably will not find an answer
(primarily because i'm not supposed to,
if i am to perpetuate what Aristotle taught, i.e.:
be wrong and continually circumstance being in awe,
given the mundanity that nonetheless
everything keeps repeating itself over and over again,
for sustenance, and you are not sustenance bound
as corrected by your language deficiency to
ever merge into an unconsciously organised module
that might also argue an ego) -
    but i wonder how difficult it must have been
to extract something beyond the minimalism of animals
that identifies a duck with a quack, a cow with a moo,
an serpent with a sss... a cat with a meow, a dog with a bark...
    i cannot conceive how difficult this explanation
will be... but given the timeframe, i'm more awe-stricken
by this than merely being awe-bound by the time-scale...
which becomes the least affordable option of being
struck by awe, because one becomes merely awe-bound
by it, and therefore apathetic towards such a time-scale.
       how did we suddenly extract an understanding
of an onomatopoeia to distinguish our own ontological
basis for making a sound by infusing a sound that
doesn't resemble us? when did the first ape bark like
a dog? but then again, looking at the canvas already
apparent to us... what was the point of such an adventure?
hippy culture says: monkey accidently ate a mushroom,
monkey suddenly was blown away and reasoned of
a higher purpose other than a tree and a coconut...
     mudvayne quotes the guy on l.d. 50...
what's the guys name... uggh! not Timothy Leary...
ah ****! Terence McKenna! that's it!
        am i high? nope... my respectability of argument
comes from the mystical properties of... whiskey.
hmm...      that rarely happens to people.
                   it's what's called being earthbound, or gravity
prone... sink like a skipping pebble across the lake...
          and like a tonne of lard.
             tomorrow i'll wake once more and still
think about how we encouraged the discovery of
onomatopoeia to teach our children the multiplicity of
sounds, and later deconstruct such a multiplicity to
create meaningful words that go beyond knock knock! jokes
and grunts and barking...
                     but i will never know the man who
created the fermentation process from potatoes to make
*****...
                or the guy who brewed the first pint...
or the guy that smoked the first marijuana bush ensemble
while clearing the land for a place to harvest wheat...
   all the fame that exists is simply scholastic...
  schoolboy fame... which is why so much attention
goes into becoming famous in school...
                        but still that woman teaching her child how
to speak by going down into the blobby-gurgling
  tongue of the toddler, stiffening it,
      and tightening the **** and bladder too...
  by talking Donald Duck to it...
                        i probably could have had a family myself...
but can you imagine someone writing this load of
******* and having a family? there wouldn't be any time!
           still (god, what a need to repeat!)
         how did we progress from saying ape-****?
surely if we started to imitate other animals they'd join us
in our need to usurp those ******* lions!
  lo and behold... we managed to pet dogs (so they were
in on it all along)... and cats (who came from Japan,
if **** sapiens came from Africa... cats came from Japan...
bonsai frocked and all) -
                            but you have to admit...
from what is written history, to what is history and
a gap in history going back to a similitude of form -
      you can write as much historical fiction as you want...
    and you'll never have to write a bestseller about
some centurion in the Roman Empire...
   or a quo vadis by Sienkiewicz (nobel prize winner)
for the depiction of emperor Nero...
                               ******* Sesame St. giggles...
still, the question beckons... if animals can behave in
an ultra-intuitive way as if fashioned by a telepathy...
then telepathy can only exist upon a very simple,
atomic, terse vocalisation of an identity...
   a dog barks... a man can bark too...
                                but we have completely lost our
intuitive talent (if it can be called that)...
          to have sacrificed intuition is to have created
cults or counter-intuitive hierarchies...
  so a 1000 blah blahs later i still prefer to write what
i like... than write what people "might" understand
and talk to a girl about...
                                     a bit like a woman discovering
you faked writing a poem 20 years into a marriage...
                  obviously the setbacks to boot...
                            dyslexia is an optical dimension...
no one dyslexic says a word they don't understand
a meaning of... dyslexia seemingly came from
finally having enshrined the "secret" to the monopoly
of writing sounds...
                          nonetheless... at the end of the day...
it's just too much history... there's too much of it...
            there was never going to be a world
where carpe diem ruled it...
                               it was a question how we clung to
certain things, within a framework of
                                             salmon dye omni:
sure sure... piglet pink and innocent for the rest
of our lives... once Darwinism pointed at the ape,
and once physicists dropped the bomb and the bang...
no day has had any significance at all...
   + the 24h news channels...           snuggle up to a hog
             and say: fog over Heathrow... all flights are grounded.
Nigel Morgan Dec 2014
The Open Studio

Usually the journey by car flattens expectation, and there’s that all-preoccupying conversation, so one only takes in the view where there’s a halt at a traffic light or at the occasional junction. A pattern on a wall, a damaged sign, a curtained window. Waiting, one looks and sometimes remembers, and what one sees later reappears in dreams or moments of disordered contemplation. A train journey is another matter: you sit and look, and when it is a trip rarely made, you put the book away and gaze beyond the ***** windows to a living landscape that scrolls past the frame of view. When you arrive there’s inevitably a walk: today through a town’s industrial hinterland, its pastness where former mill buildings have tactfully changed their use to become creative places, peopled with aspiration and strange activity. Walking reveals the despair of forlorn roadside business falling back into alleys ending in neglected and empty buildings, so much *******, silences of waste and decay.

But here’s the space, there’s a sign on a board outside, OPEN STUDIO TODAY. Entering inside it is quiet and cold, the door remaining open to let in the December air and the hoped-for visitors. But it’s bright and light: a welcoming presence of work and people and coffee and cake. And here’s the studio, a narrow space between make-shift walls where the artist works, where the work awaits, laid out on the surfaces of desks and tables, on shelves and walls, specimens of making; ‘stuff’, the soon-to-be, the collected, the in-progress-perhaps, the experimental.

Good, a heater blows noisily onto cold fingers. In the turbulent air pieces tremble slightly from their hangings on the walls. They are placed at a good height, a ‘good to be close to examine the detail’ height, the constructed, the made, the woven, the stitched, the printed, all assembled by the actions of those quiet, intent, those steady hands. There, a poem on a wall next to the window. Here, photographs of places unlabelled, unrecognised, but undoubtedly significant as a guide to the memory. Look, a dead badger lying in a road.

Next to the studio, a gallery space. Two walls covered with framed prints, well lit, a body of work captured behind glass, in limbo, waiting patiently for the attentive eye to sort the detail, that touch of the object on paper, that mark found and brought out of time and place. Perhaps these ‘things’, some known, some mysteriously foreign adrift from their natural context, have been collected by that bent form on a windswept beach, by the hand reaching out for the  gift in the gutter, struck by the foot on the track, unhidden in the grass by the riverside, what we might pass as without significance and beyond attention. This artist gives even the un-namable a new life, a collected-together form.

Moving closer let the eye enter the artist’s world of form and texture - and colour? There is a patina certainly, colour’s distant echo, what is seen on the edges, a left-behindness, more than any subtlety of language knows how to express, beyond comfortable descriptions, not excitable, where the spirit is damped down and is restful to the mind, a constancy of background, like a capturing of a cloud but bulging full of hints and suggestions, where texture is everywhere, nature’s rich patterns colliding with things once invented and made, used once, once used left and changed, thrown away, to be brought before the selecting eye and the possibility of form with meaning its patient partner.



J.M.W.Turner writes  on poetry and painting

Poetry having a more extensive power
Than our poor art, exerts its influence
Over all our passions; anxiety for our future
Reckoned the most persistent disposition.

Poetry raises our curiosity,
Engages the mind by degrees
To take an interest in the event,
And keeping that event suspended,
Overturns all we might expect.

The painter’s art is more confined,
Has nothing to equate with the poet’s power.
What is done by painting must be done at once,
And at one blow our curiosity receives
All the satisfaction it can know.

The painter can be novel, various and contrast,
Such is our pleasure and delight when put in motion.
Art, therefore, administers only to those wants,
And only to desires that exercise the mind.



Twilight

A day aside and diaried into busy lives
So to a morning walk to Turner’s View
Above the River Wharfe and Farnley Hall
Where it is said the inspiration came
For his famous oil of Hannibal,
with elephants and storm-glad Alps.

On to lunch where six around a table
Souped with salad before we homed
Mid afternoon the day in decline
We were done with words so watched
The edge-timed light flow between our hands.

Inevitably we climbed the stairs to lie
In twilight’s path beneath the skylight’s
Square a sliver-moon we couldn’t see
Gracing the remaining daylight hour
Marbled with shadows our collected
Curves and planes lay as sculptures
In the approaching dimity and dark
Each experimental stroke of touch
Holding us dumb to speech and thought
As night’s soft blanket covered us entire


Northcliffe Woods

Oh nest in the sky, empty of leaves,
Those tangled branches
Reaching out from twisted trunks
Into the sullen clouds above, when

Suddenly a crow -
Corvidae’, she said -
And simultaneously pulled
a hank of ivy from a nearby tree.

Hedera Helix I thought
But did not say, instead
I whispered to myself
Those ancient names I knew.

Bindwood, Lovestone
(For the way it clings
To bricks but ravages walls),
A vine with a mind of its own. But

She, in a different frame that day,
Apart, adrift and far away
From our usual walk and talk,
Fixed her gaze on the woodland floor,

Whilst skyward I sought again that
Corvid high in the branches web
Black beyond black beyond black
Against the pale white canopy above.


Franco*

Blow She Still
Ed insieme bussarono
Sweet Soft Frain
Cloche Lem Small
Spiri About Sezioni
Portrait Eco Agar
Le ruisseau sur l’escalier
Etwas ruhiger im Ausdruck
Jeux pour deux
For Grilly Fili Argor
Atem L’ultima sera
Omar Flag Ave
The Heart’s Eye*

play joy touch
code panel macro
refraction process solo
quick-change constrained
hiatus sonority colour
energy post-serial scintillating
aleatoric reuse transformation

A lonely child who imagined music
on sunday walks, he would talk about
how one lives with music as someone
would talk about how one might live
with illness or a handicap. He said,
‘You cannot write your life story in
music because words express the self
best whereas music expresses something
quite beyond words’.
This is collection of new and previous verse and prose gathered together as a gift for Christmas 2014 and New Year 2015. Each poem was accompanied by a photograph or painting. Sadly the wonderful Hello Poetry has yet to allow such pairings. The poem constructed from the words of J.M.W.Turner makes a good case I think for bringing image and word together - at least occasionally.
Poetic T Nov 2015
They stared down upon high, glancing in
Trepidation at what was slowly ebbing
Forward, not a snail of a pace but slowing
To that of a sloth, mundane consequences
Where the topic of the day.

What would two of undue taste relish in these
moments of flickering thoughts on what waited
Edging forward to an unseen fate but in their
Gawking  at what was time counting down to a
Conclusion that was abiding its momentary time.

"I do hate this moment,

"What moment begrudges you at the crossroads,

"Its just watching it slop off into prominent areas,

"Never regress what will undoubtedly happen,

"But my taste buds ponder the relishing aroma of what awaits,

They as would be voyeurs of this collapse of will,
Heeding their pace of what is happening. And upon
Sullen branches they pincer upon gladly. Dead longer
Than their birth, but granting views of otherwise,
Winged visions from high above.

"Just a little nick, to ebb away spirit,

"Yes let us bleed upon the ground,

"Really??

"Why thoughts peruse me of this endeavour, and consequences,

"What ramifications would be birthed from actions?
"Nothing but a time indulged must quicker on us,

Fleeting droplets would adhere to the winds gestures,
"Carnivorous undertakers would inhale and smile,

"Do you understand what I imply on your thoughts,

"Yes undue wanting's of our lingering dinner,
"Unjust would this be upon our delicate waiting,

So they gathered upon a the caked ground, speaking
Side by side as their dinner slowly moved on, contemplating
That ever closer moment when breath would leave and
waiting would be done. But night fell and so curled up
Did their feast stop still upon cooling ground shivering.

"Should I degrees  that we wait no longer,
"Its stopped moving, just a nibble is all one wants,

"Thoughts contemplate this endeavour as rumbling is heard,
"Not of the wind or ground but my stomachs hunger aches,

So one approached wings flapping silently in the desert air,
A gust catches as claws capture the ground and stills himself.
"Whoops,
The other shakes his head at his friends near flight into nights
Abyss only to edge ever closer to their midnight feast.
He gently grabs fingers and squeezes pressure ever so lightly.
Momentary pleasure is interrupted by a sudden shift.

"O my god it just chipped my beak,

"You impetus fool I told you to heed the voice below,

Just then, without due warning an arm flared in all
Directions as if life had breathed anew and feathers
Leap in joyous freedom into the clinging air.
Noises of man and bird filled the twilights moon.  
Then as hands gripped tightly upon a beaconing
Throat preoccupying breath talons played with
Subtle tones of skin. opening them up to the waiting
Floor below and it drank so very well,

"I...,
"Think,
"I've,
"Woooo,

And with that a head now being where it shouldn't be.
That which had crawled also a last breath did escape.
As a river of life ran past my claws soaking the earth
In its need for substance. The night was still and death
Had spoken angered torment.

"Well I have never had a friend for dinner,
"Don't give me those dead eyes, ok ill eat them,

And on this night the vulture who gathered around
A meal only dreamt off in this barren place. He'd had
Invited a friend for a chat before dinner, never thinking
That his companion would be the starter before the
Main course. light graced the  morning and he was full.

"Now that was a meal, a friend would want to be part of.
"Sorry I didn't mean it like that,
"But you know what you both taste like chicken?

"Funny think is I don't know what a chicken was?

So he waved goodbye to a meal well had,
"Bye my friend or what's left,
But unbeknown to him, the air was seeded in the
Night crisp air of deaths whispers and others who
Knew that taking of fallen prey was at hand.
He sensed breath and behind coming fast was a
Hungry pack. He flapped his wings knowing flight
Beats feet, but wings pounding upon airs grace.
And still he ran upon soiled earth, to much had he
Gorged upon friend and foe, now filled him so.

"I do so hate the circle of life sometimes,

And with that thought did jaws close tight and
The circle of life greeted this fat bird, as the one
That growled found this bird to be like Christmas
It had once heard this word. a bird stuffed three,
This Ferrell pawed one had just had the best bird
Nature could have given. It howled upon the sky
At the delight of its friends, what a feast they did eat.
Alex Carpenter Jan 2014
Shades of orange and green and yellow
Settle upon the ground
Twilight wind blows through the trees
As the leaves dance, and twirl, around

Painting a perfect picture, the colors that match so well
The winds’ whispering chants, casting a shadow of a spell
Listening to the echoes of tangents of thoughts
Words moving quickly to avoid being caught

The rushed nature of the world and the words that move within
Leaves the observer waiting, wondering, where do I begin?
Inhaling crunchy autumn air as if tasting leaves from off the ground
Listening to the wind howl and tear while not making a sound

Time moves faster and faster, but at a constant pace
The preoccupying obstacle being the finish line of the race
But time seems to hold still as the trees bend with the wind
When you listen, take it in, you’ll know where to begin

Allowing yourself to see with both eyes is a rare commodity
Constantly changing subjects, society as comedy
Blinded by issues, the light in our eyes makes it hard to see
But I live with my eyes open and my being, free
robin Jan 2016
if there's no point to anything what's the point of trying if not to prove that were trying harder than someone else? and what's the point of that?
trying to prove to everyone you are worth something instead of actually making something out of yourself?
arent you just wasting time?
aren't we all just wasting time?
so if there's no point to
anything what's the point of not trying?
what's the point of not doing anything?
what's the point of this poem?
couldn't you argue the same thing?
i could spend my days pacing in my room
spend them crying tears over boys
or kissing and not telling
i could meet a nice clean cut man become a mom
i could go get my masters and buy a big house
but what's the point?
what's the point of fighting nature?
of preoccupying oneself with materialism? of acting more sophisticated then we let on?
yes it is survival of the fittest
the
jungle
rules
but who is the fittest?
the people who stuff there pockets with cash and drive fancy cars?
that's what we look up too?
that's what we blindly fund?
some metal melted together to form some akin machine?
why do we take pride in the things that hurt us the most?
why am i still wasting my time?
doesn't anyone want authenticity anymore?
doesn't anyone have a yearning for the truth?
does anyone still crave adventure?
we're all just recycled faces and personalities. nothing new. nothing to see here.
SM Feb 2014
I have realized
the world is a lonely place
In our homes
jobs
schools
preoccupying our minds
People come
they learn with us
they grow with us
We live
laugh
love
and move on
With the world at our fingertips
no matter the hundreds around us
or the ever growing bustling crowds
nothing can be done
to remedy us
from the fact
that though we can try until the end of our days
we will always be the most alone
In our minds
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2020
my neighbour is having a solitary moment
with a wee bonfire in the backyard...
don't ask me... i watched his father trim the grass
a few hours ago...
maybe he's burning that...
or... whatever the reason... it's in the corner
of my eye... and the flame is big...
and small enough... that.. if warranted...
would make a great... theatre of soliloquy...
i'm yet to see a shadow enlarged
and gesticulating that it's talking...
with a raised arm... the other arm playing
the gratified ballerina when the applause comes...
hand entombing the heart...
      i'm yet to see a skull hamlet & co.
             "moment"...
                       so that's my neighbour...
i'm perched on a windowsill sitting on a folded
leg...
           and trying to crackle my throat
like a perched crow...
                the jay bird is of the same family...
        it's a crackle... i'm pretty sure the bird becomes
its new: "revised" distinct when bound to flight...
it's very hard to find...
boredom and existential exhaustion as...
synonyms... however back you look down the
entymological route...
   i couldn't have scribble: if only...
     i couldn't have scribbled this out of...
borne from a compliment to make "boredom":
a necessity...

          perhaps i am... existentially exhausted...
wouldn't you be?
if i were drinking some kalimotxo...
               or 20 beers... there would be an incremental
effect being felt...
which is what makes drinking a fun:
a social... something to borrow from:
"celebration": disinhibition?
                           only because of this one series
drama: sharp object... which made...
led zeppelin somehow "cool" again...
   in the evening... which didn't make it to...
the: the best of - led zeppelin double **** album...
either...
           so my neighbour is having a bonfire...
and there's nothing eerie about the silence...
esp. when there's a humming...
a fire is talking... but it's not the sort of fire
most associated with pine needles...
pine cones... and ancient oak...
           so he's doing that... i'm smiling... perched...
and drinking ms. know-it-all *****...
and... that's the problem with *****:
you have to wait for it... then again:
merely waiting is not a desirable affair...
and preoccupying myself with: "something else"
for a span of 20 minutes...
       waiting for a k.o. instead getting to play
the fiddle of grand itch-maestro with...
a if it isn't a cat nicknamed by schrodinger...
then all bets are on Pavlov...
                   but it's such a tiresome debacle...
had i made a video and had it... (x, y, x) of traction...
yadda-yadda...
          all the drama: soap-opera i could have
enjoyed... an imaginary street...
with imaginary squabbles...
        but none of the very translate-worthy
orientations of minor frictions...
         the bonfire is dying off...
the fire hasn't been fed dry pine needles...
or pine cones... or merchant oak retelling the story
of marco polo and... to the fire with me:
none of this... mahagonny sheen:
i fancy... a rough stone turned into a marble-esque
sheen?
                         it might just serve
a wooden hammer... to tell the difference between...
well... my initial presumption...
should lady justice be coupled with a gorgon?
lady justice and medussa?
  iustitia (who holds a sword and scales)
& prudentia (who holds a mirror and a snake)...

perhaps if Iustitia is blind-folded...
prudence can have her mouth stitched up?

but i'm still waiting for the ***** to kick in...
and so much for "fun" trying to find oneself:
with all the readily available knowledge and...
not... not: plagiarizing...
     or "jumping ship"...

   there truly isn't some sort of worthy compenation...
the served platter: the swedish table of...
all the foods presented... and you come
and stab at the nibbles... in a congregation of
those: given the advent of eating where:
no heart or its content is of a debate-worthiness...

beside the ancient roman glutton...
and... the well trained oesophagus...
          and regurgitation... and what was once
the celebrated icon: the snake...
would sooner or later have to be replaced
with a tapeworm...

    the serpent has had its day... and marble...
time... for the lesser creature... then again: perhaps not...

in "celebrating a drink of *****":
well... so much for... hunting a mammoth...
or... sitting beside a bonfire and...
telling stories or: dancing ****-naked
and dancing...

         i see no circus(es): beside the heaps and
heaps of bread: a character "assassination"
in writing...
sooner i'll catch a glimpse of a ballet choreographer
pirouette...
than know the difference between:
spinning an uncooked egg...
an egg soft-boiled and an egg: hard-boiled...

a racing track... equivalent to...
being hypnotized by... a spinning vinyl...
because... yore! that beacon of yawn rummaging
in the background of ambience...
and refrigerator drizzle of:
when falling rain became infused with...
electricity...

- alt. to "say" shish-kebab (let's be swabian...
and... "forget" the hyphen...)
like a toothless dog...
indeed... sometimes the tip of the tongue
teases the palet(t)e... hard or soft...
but sometimes the tongue-tip teases the top
frontal incissors: teeth...

where is the concept of the: rhapsodic...
the rattle-R... the quick... imitation
juggling of the tongue against the palete...
where the breath that involves
the uvula to swing like:
"for whom the bell tolls"?

                   do you see anyone taming
a ******* coch draig... anywhere?
this? this being "this"... "vicinity" of da-sein?
there-being: there's (there is)...
          on the moon... the alpaca trail...
in el dorado... in how the zulu tribe announced
a pristine: sod it...
          if only bulls were used instead
of horses: all that grit and armour...
notably of the cataphract...
                       if only bulls were used...
but: who's here to "rewrite" history
of that already, past... and inevitable?

the terrible has... already happened...
               í hiechyd ac tragwyddoldeb!
                          to health and eternity!
chiral: no...
     cheaper: no...
              i will find the "hark"...
   chosen... no no no...
                    similar (soft) to kid...
hybrid esque...
                 that "h" is not a surd...
verbatin 'e hie'....

                Olav! Dmitri!
Igor! meine hoonds!
                  ч - cheap... ah... roaming
in and around Midlothian...
                    loch ness! no prefix to suit up
a tux into... comes as a "surprise"
with the suffix: a loch...
                       х: hardly... k, s or c... or z...
xenophone: yuppy... aye aye...

              trag-wyd-dol-deb!
  zee velsh: sometimes the added same,
consonant... nurse! scalpel...
makes way for perfecting the syllable
incision... like so... trag-wyd-dol-deb!

   the lights have been dimmed on the tablet...
the battery life's longevity: expoinential explosion...
it takes so much little electric conversion
to feed the sap of sound...
that it takes to create blinking
and not blinking: murmur:
picadilly circus phantasmagoria of u.v. -

you can be crowned king deaf...
fall asleep with the radio... when the lights
are dimmed...
       no sooner me: no sooner you...
but... i'd much prefer the sound
of a fox at night...
than teeth gnashing... frothing: idly hungry...

all and no science: "or"...
all and no politics... "or" all of politics and all
of science... and most probably:
when the priest would wear a gown...
and the vatican remained neutral...
      
       etc. etc.              beside the vote:
or: woe... or woo...
        and such is the suffix association
with:      -man...
                    that there's some sexually
pervasive: attachment of either:
wooed by woe...
or... or...           to be woed by a woo...
  the beta gang would be singing:
bigmouth strikes again in a placebo
rendition...
                 because when you want to pirate
the original: it better sound just
a little bit more than then most...
    effeminate male available...
a morrisey will do jack ****...
you have to go full-tilt hindu and back
into transgender with
                                  a brian molko...

or at least that's how i concern myself
when managing to sit through
a production of tchaikovsky's ballet...
   beside the feet: what am i looking at?
spandex... the bulge?
     like it might be some covert name
for a battle, crisp on a piece of paper:
before the puff of a battle of crisps goes: pop!
in between the fudge of marrow
and the shrapnel of bone...
              here... i find my throne...
in a memory that's at best:
an amnesia...

             and somehow lodged in:
the... would-be... renting bums of dreams...
the squaters... the dream circuit...
when... in 1973... england drew 1 - 1
with poland...
                when being... just 7 years old
from 1966... an epitome for a very befitting
ending...
a closure... like any other...
             grandp'ah once said... once said...
and great-grandp'ah once said... once said...
sure as **** the logbow men of the 100 year war
weren't english... last time i heard
that churchill "mishandled" his V...
the original V voz viz zee velsh...
             index and ******* at
the fwench knights... since... if caught...
they'd cut 'em off!

                 V-salute! salute!
                           the blitzkireg overture...
         compound! no spaces in between: no hyphens!
der blitzkriegouvertüre...
        
   "together" come "together:... the disenfranchised
speculation of... what it was like...
to borrow from the first sequence
of the 20th century...

       and pass it into... what was it like...
acid neon: blonde... the culprit of bringing
the "congregation"
   past-participle: a romania a yugoslavia...
and a poland... nerve-riddled lithuania
and whittle estonia: etc.

      that grand boag bear o' ruzzia...
             wit' its ever persistent euro-fetish...
windows! windows! we need to see!
kandinsky translated into wind!

       on this democratic canvas...
           on this democratic canvas...
einz! zwei! drei!
     raz! dwa! trzy!
                   hey presto:
               on this demokratischleinwand!
meine stimme...
   meine: boo!
              meine: ghulrückzug!
               ich: bin zu sein gehört... ja?!
  
          this grand idea of a(n) european family:
get together...
   under the banner of: der VierteReich...
                the penned scribbles of
could always replace the boom-boom-'ombs...
and the brit-thai... would sit it out:
gob-smacked into shackles
and halos and angelic wings found
in the replica bargain of dry twigs...

the english sovereignty found among...
romanian root and fruit pickers...
              and if i too weren't lazy enough...
i'd have managed to find an atom-bomb...
glued my shadow to a wall...
and started a macaques' dance of freedom
from the magpie's cackle...
#metoo!

                   the cure and depeche mode made
it under the iron curtain...
the smiths? sorry... but i'm twice as likely
to appreciate them...

     the bass rummaging from fleetwood mac's
the chain...
and the bass rummaging from
pulp's wickerman...
            
                              canys y Çymraeg!
r. s. thomas...
                 that... battle of the season...
who is to know... beside auld lang syne:
whether the scots 'ave some gaelic in 'em...
except for the orthography: the diacritical & dialect
of somewhere akin to Glasgow...

  - that "unnecessary" war within the confines
of: the proud and selected: "empirical" and by invitation:
the trope... the welsh are...
are a silenced minority... and all that would
require "us" to confine "us" to "do"...
would be...
to stop thinking of england...
as a nation...
and... australia... or h'america...
as... a diaspora...

              clearly: "they" want to be at best:
and at worst: the distinct: genesis:
valkyrie first raiders...
in that non-essential war:
if the 1st world war wasn't...
seigl pandering lizzy...
sweden wuz neutralz...

                      woz she'iz notz?
            a pwetty pwetty: cobweb riddled face
like that of chris cornell...
               glue eyed but a background all
lacking in dimension for the sort
of immediacy of a curtain! cobain...
     yes: this is me... ******* on and dancing
on a grave:
last time i chequered my patience...
i found... the al fresco museum in a graveyard...
and the 3rd party artist working
on the marble... by gesture of wind and rain
and sun...

             how: exhausted by...
you cannot write an opera in italian...
to later translate it into german...
nor... clarity! sha! shtil!
                you can't... translate syllables:
like so... from... a japanese haiku...
into a... at best... a hiatus! a european sorting
factory of minor minded details...
of: adventure when licking a seal
on an envelope or...
a footnote that becomes a peacock
and a post-stamp when... detailing the affairs
of a piece of paper being governed by:
grieving having paired with it...
the metsphor / metaphysical aid of wings...

flake me: sire...
     boxing champ burroughs and all those
lost narratives that will never make it:
market a slow attention-span;
that's already available...

                          the muse my muse...
past the bob dylan and dylan thomas...
the priest and a cardiff...
        if only cardiff could boast akin
to how edinburgh can boast about
the old town and the royal mile...
and arthur's seat... and the craggs...

and... what women want...
mereditch brooks would never become
the next: the next to what next
of a... alanis morissette...
              never becoming... or being...
but all of that: for a continued cultural presence
of being in the recital rubric?
thank god for that...

quiet frankly? the la's": there she goes...
a little bit... a "little bit" irrelevant...
when you listen to the whole album...

the trouble with falling in love...
      is the trouble of: falling out of "love"
with one's mother...
                pursuit of the details
of a foetus... and all those details
of an unread book that staged its "fright"
on a bookshelf for circa close to a century...

             welcome party! or not so welcome!
i'd love to hear more about
welsh nationalism... since: on topic...
the scots have forgotten gaelic...
because of glasgow and being: oh so all
so-over pristine & perfect...
at least the welsh! oh god...
the welsh! on these isles!

hyphen! enter!
cymeradwyaeth

               cym-era-dwy-aeth
                      cym-erad-wyaeth

applause!­ and i'm trying: so trying...
to live for a liszt and lady gaga
as a summary of the jealous eyes
thst gave birth to bitter-tears...
yeah... fame...
and the cosmopolitan web of c.c.t.v.
"fame"...
the one already arrived at...
and the one pampered... with glitches
                               of editorial staff...

gu an cuimreach!
   - the escapade of keeping strict rigour / rubric
of being fed by adverts...
to have a buying impetus...
but not... the selling / haggling impetus...
from the cheap-*** moors and
the myriad of marrakesh:
   the berber: a latin for: hard-time:
quitting-time blues of...
            there are people still involved with
the a, z, via x q and... no readily available:
ph and th...
         because they were never...
the sort of brits... about to celebrate...
being conquered by ancient rome...
and ancient rome bulimia...
somewhere "circa": the baltic sea...

               - there's a "need" to be "coincidental":
pristine the developed mandibles
and the surname akin to singh...
        or... khan...
                   double that... for whatever reason...
and call it: Wales...
and then... the english-speaking conundrum:
"conundrum"...
and at best... nostalgia for 1990s
h'americana cultural export of:
fwends...

                    then: at best...
Wales is... Silesia... but at worst...
                    Ruthenia... and / or... Galicia...
that now Masovia is...
and how the Prussians were once
the fabled lot of the germanic left-over pieces
of a people: "******" by the standard
of teutons... or... what part of the glorification
of ancient rome...
oh, right... the parts not making
the germans the antagonists...
the "paraphrase" of the unexplored...

                    that only the english...
were to be so proud of...
a much later "digest" of... to have a "comfort"
within the confines...
last time i checked... there was pride in being
graffiti riddled as the afghanistan of
the ancient period...

             the unique history of island-dwelling
folk...
that they are... and i... can write
in their lingo: as... being devoid...
of... root...
              what is the great wall of china...
when what's already available...
given the la manche...
                                                       ­                 is...      
is not...
                 such a most pristine choice
of gentleman... and all!
and all! and all were tio be advocates!
and vote bound to stress!
king and country and the pickwick society
of: loitering gimps for worth of letters!

half a face divulging shadow...
half of which encompasses a play:
a ghost riddled... humanoid loiter
of exaspersation... and none... which,
would be most available...
to loiter... for the apple of Judas and
tht clinging... #30 pieces of silver...

thus wed: las vegas english...
      loitering actors' spew:
awound an Ilfowd 'n' Bawking 'n'
Dagenham... yo popsickle
'ipe and joy-c-c / jewc...
or whatsemfwench callz: sauz...
via dat: zu-not-my-*******-zoo.. ju...
plonkers & sons. (available)
jue: not juice 'ough...
******* kite-fliers!

            talks a cokckey slang like
a cherry... and that's...
the last left-over before mr. bangladesh
    before: quckie does one speakin'
"smart" did anyone any 'ood...

'oved up a 'arry 'n' the 'etter 'alf
of the... non-essential...
sounding "smart"
in cockeny: to be made export:
"loading essentials"...
is... hardly... the right sort of
***** avenue of:
escape from cwawddyff:
you... poke you poke my eyez
out... you... better start sounding
cockney shmartz...
eh: ja: herr?!

       **** it... whatever...
elt'z and etc. this bogus party back to...
and so call itz...
a limboz partez!
Michael Briefs Mar 2018
"Sometimes, late at night, sleep comes not to the weary.
Some rooms will not stay silent.
Some houses stalk their inhabitants with ghastly intent…"
**************
My travels in Eastern Europe had brought me to a strange place, located in the dominion of Romania. I sojourned to a destination about 13 miles to the North of the city of Timisoara, where I found the sprawling expanse of an ancient castle, once used by Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457 – 1504). It was literary pursuits that lead me to such out-of-the-way stops, as I conducted my research. By day, this gilded station offered many fascinating discoveries: a grand library filled with treasured tomes of old; an enchanting, if moribund, Ball Room where opulence once found its true expression and extravagant masquerades took place; I saw mesmerizing chandeliers and an impressive sitting room, within the Great Hall, which was home to a majestic hearth.
On the day of which the events recounted here unfolded, the hearth was enlivened by a roaring fire the caretakers built for the guests. The blazing timbers provided much needed warmth on that sodden, wispy, late-autumn day. I admired the armory and the regal Coats-of-Arms. I skulked with trepidation within the bleak and forbidding dungeons. As I explored the many rooms and passageways, it occurred to me that this was a space mysteriously ensouled with medieval history and told of a former glory, long since passed. I felt caught up in the enigmatic atmosphere as I gave in to rhapsodic ruminations of what life must have been like, in those distant times. Yet, I also encountered something more…something which disturbed my revelry, by degrees, as the day progressed.
As I opened my imagination to a divining altered by the antiquarian surroundings, I began to detect a more malevolent, yet unseen, presence. Illusive whispers wafted toward me from a distance; my trammeled vision seemed to perceive phantasmal shapes with the similitude of persons, lurking. There appeared unexpected movement, but when I looked there was nothing. It was as if the shadows in the rooms and hall ways were reaching out to me, almost clawing at my clothes. Something otherworldly was trying to convey to me that I was not alone, even as I conducted a solitary route. The startling sensations seized my lucid mind in fits; a wrinkle in reality reared up but quickly dissipated, causing me to question my reason. Had I heard someone speaking? Was someone crouching yonder, just beyond my field of sight? What made my skin crawl and the hairs stand? It was these transient but peculiar incidents that I carried with me into the evening.
The night had come, with full moon looming high. After a delicious meal, I took my evening Brandy with a book, in the reading room. I read of the history of the castle which expounded upon both the marvelous and the disturbing of its 800-year existence. The Medieval world in Romania was indeed a ****** time (i.e., in wars against the Ottoman Empire) and the castle dungeon "apparatus" were utilized to dark effect, over the centuries. I had felt a very “close” and unnerving atmosphere in that part of the castle; a palpable sadness hung in the air...and I felt there was also a latent anger that lingered. I could only imagine the tortures that were carried out there. I turned in about 10:30, with the day’s events, the rigors of my travels and the thoughts of history preoccupying my thoughts. After a while of restlessness, I drifted off, as a boat upon a mild bucolic lake. The peace, however, would be violently upended. At the late hour of 3:00am, I awoke with a start and sat up, sharply, in my bed. The cause of my upset was this: I thought I heard a voice in my room where no other voice should have been! Worse still, this voice seemed cloaked in villainy; it was harsh, guttural and brutish. It cackled and threatened from the black corners! In my panicked state, I believed that someone or something sinister was watching me! I struggled to discover a source, as I blinked furiously, looking this way and that! My sight was, in turns, elucidated and bewitched by the ethereal countenance of a moonlight-enticed obscurity. For a time, I felt utterly enslaved by the oppressive persuasion of this sudden horror, as I trembled in the semi-darkness of my esoteric enclosure. “Who is there?!” I called, into a deadening silence. My ears filled with the sound of my heart beating and belabored breathing. During those enthralled minutes, I became aware of the various occasional creaks, groans and pops that tend to emanate from old buildings in the quiet hours of nightfall. There was a drone of wind gusts outside, as well, that impinged upon my hearing. When, after a quarter of an hour had lapsed, I heard no further nefarious sounds, I began to calm myself. I decided that I may have been dreaming or mistaken a natural sound from the old castle for something unexplainable. I laid my head back down but kept a weather ear out for any odd disturbance. My restfulness began to flow, slowly, back to my soul. My heart steadied, my breathing became measured and drawn out, I thought of more pleasant things… Quiet returned to my mind. Sleep cajoled and invited me back to a relaxed state of suspended consciousness. Deeper I slipped into the lake of these languid hours…
That is when the unexplainable returned: the naked horror of the moment! The twisted evil of that VOICE in my ears! A savage FACE next to my burning skull! Boney, hairy claws on my gasping throat! A reviled breath most acidic and repellant forced its way into my fleeting, aghast sentience! I recoiled from that side of the bed and leaped away, towards the door, in the dark. I crashed to the cold floor as sweat poured from my shrieking face. I clamored upwards, clutching the handle, swinging the door open, and I stumbled out into the hall way! The scream of undiluted shock echoed through the ancient building.

All the sound I heard was white. All the light I saw was red. All the world I knew was black fear!
Not a poem but a short story. Just enjoying writing up an homage to my favorite Ghost story writer, M.R. James.
Kelly Dec 2019
In the false spring, there was light

                                                               Epiphany

                               Eureka in technicolor

But blinders above centrifugal spokes
                     scattered through prisms
           a deflection of armor
And
                  
                                   The rain came.

                                                                                       Light remained.

But what previously perceived
                       as vibrancy
was shattered in repeat streams
                       of disbelief
over every evil stitch seamed
                       in the fabric of my clothes
                                                                     And Rose-

Colored glasses gave way
                                                without rest
                external tempest
                                                with self-inflicted misery
I could not leave.

                                                                    And now I see
that the foyer of this love
                                               was not chromatic
                                               was not prismatic
                    though gaudy, flashy this all-encompassing
Prison of color
                                  was nothing but
           mediated, alternating, monopolizing
                                  preoccupying
                                                                    Shades of Blue.

                And then there was you.

The false spring melted down
                    to fragments in cracked glass
Wiped my blood from broken mirrors
                    no longer asinine and crass
Still mentally impounded
                                                 in emblems au courrant
Took a sip from poisoned drips
                                                                   just one more scar to flaunt

But every day in smaller strides
                                 the forage cleared and scorched
The winter came with sleet and
                           Rain
                                                             another touch to tortured

And as the ice begins to melt
                       and false spring lays to rest
With you there are no problems except
                                                                         where to be happiest
And when the spring came, even the false spring
Tanisha Aug 2018
You
I can not get you out of my head,
You are preoccupying my thoughts...

— The End —