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In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be. High above the gutter
A silver knife sinks into golden butter,
A glass of milk stands in a meadow, and
Well-balanced families, in fine
Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,
Even their youth, to that small cube each hand
Stretches towards. These, and the deep armchairs
Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars
(Gas or electric), quarter-profile cats
By slippers on warm mats,
Reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares

They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise
Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,
Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes
That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age, and dying smokers sense
Walking towards them through some dappled park
As if on water that unfocused she
No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,
Who now stands newly clear,
Smiling, and recognising, and going dark.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
sample precursor: there are three binding directions of a chemical group (e.g. CH3) to the benzene ring - the ortho-, the meta- and the para-... but i'll ask a different question: what is copernican north what is copernican east a copernican west or a copernican west without a "flat-earth" / how else to read / navigate a 2D map going from point (a) via vector (c) to point (b) along the short-cut of the hypotenuse - which, isn't a short-cut, but the logical conclusion of walking neither the middle path nor the right path, but the logical path? we're no astronauts... we didn't see the proof... we can only entertain the "idea" of a 3D object we live on, but we're still strapped to a "flat earth" in order to navigate... endless stories of how GPS tech. fooled people off the edge of a cliff... "flat earth" is no reverse psychology ploy... i'm no ******* astronaut... i never stood left right or center on the moon to have the foggiest sense of admiration for that awe-balancing moment that leaves so many deluded in it being otherwise: first come first served, last come: what's there's to serve that last man if not merely the drudge-report of a commute? besides... trans- and cis-, why are people borrowing from chemistry and attaching gender to what is exlusive to chemical compounds? look at them... pop chemistry... cis-trans isomerism... fine, let these people have that... my new n.e.w.s. (north, east, west, south): orthography, something clearly missing in the anglophone world (no diacritical markers, i and j do not count)... ergo? orthography = east... paranormal = west... since the west is obsessed with either aliens or hush-hush military projects... now... both north and south are meta- coordinates... on the basis, on the basis of what? two words really work well to establish a foundation: from ars poetica? metaphor (borrowed from a change of mind - meta- and -phren - mind, a change of mind, all mental illnesses are changes of the mind, alternatives to alleviate the stranglehold of the commune of the greater picture known as society)... but... there's also metaphysics... which is in the interest of philosophy... how else not to explain the obvious, how else to treat both the reader / audience as the well informed genius(es) but mistreat them as would be grander genius(es) if the socratic endeavour of "pretense ignorance" was not to be established? it's a hard juggle... east is already well established in orthography, west in paranomal... literally: metaphor - a change of mind, literally metaphysics - a change of groundwork physicality of things... a rock remains a rock in either "heaven" or in "hell"... metaphysically there seems to be a direct translation... this is why i'm terrible at crosswords, this whole puzzle structure of either working from a direct definition to the word itself, some random geographical posists, some historical posits, some outdated out-of-vogue words related to specified period idiosyncracy, a tinge of the therausus... my current crossword is an interchange: meta-phor, meta-physics, meta-phot, meta-physics and on and on it goes: even with the isolated prefix of meta-, if i return to the words: as they are... would: denoting a change of thinking (state of mind) or... denoting a change of physics, i'm met with metaphysics, i.e.: a branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles... sounds like a priori physics, yet all i can fathom if i wrestle this word to its casual use: isn't it a posteriori physics?! the what comes after physics? i should think that most people understand metaphysics on an a posteriori basis rather than an a priori basis... hence the question: what happens when we die? last time i checked: death happens last... birth happens first... any question-worthiness (according to heidegger) should begin at: the beginning rather than begin at the end, in the same way that all questions should be sought in a medium of predating the dates of events, rather than with a spirit of hindsight, hindsight belongs to the "what if" of history in that dynamism of expressed time... on the canvas of an infinitely expanding space: we seem to be riddled by a very cul de sac concept / expression of time: our quill - given that ****** didn't learn from napoleon when it came to russia... perhaps finding out what copernicus found out: "we" figured: get me off this ******* celestial carousel where i can't even feel the dizzy immediate of a ferris wheel! again: i'm terrible at crosswords, sudoku? no problem... but words: if not gushing out of me, waiting like a lizard predator for a linear narrative spew? count me out... i don't play with words, i use words... i'm a wordsmith, hence the ethnic origin denote: słowianin: slav - i don't know where these west-saxon punks derived their etymology from: słowo = word... *****-liquor juice teens thought it was: oh fo' sho' smart... still: metaphor, metaphysics... metaphor... metaphysics... disgruntled with the immediate compound readied for pop use... meta-physics... the vector is the prefix... why do philosophers push metaphysics so much, but in turn rely on the crutch of metaphor? to change their mind, if metaphysics is an abstract theory with no basis in reality, then the schizoid / metaphorical mind is an abstract in an abstracted theory of the mind - which has "no" knowledge of reality, or rather: "reality" excludes such a mind from ever absorbing an expression in it... a schizophrenic can't explain the reality of a person who can solve crossword puzzles... just as someone who solves crossword puzzles with a fear of alzheimer's: who treats the fatty tissue that's the brain as a muscle... given that the cells of alzheimer's disease are killer proteins... proteins as the antithesis of white blood-cells that feed of fat tissue... after all: what else could the brain be if not fat and water? slow burner... first the sugars, then the more complex carbohydrates, then the fat: last? the proteins... the process of starvation... you want up? you want down? again: metaphysics / metaphor... ta meta ta phusika... the things after the physics... so what's with the inverted: prior things? hence people associated a life after death... hence how philosophers have to escape into the poetic realm to quickly change their minds on the definition... a change of mind is much easier than a change of what physicality entails... most spew metaphors but keep on course... after all: given the genesis of the metaphor, a metaphor is just a tool, a humble stop-off pause... born from humble poetics: it's only a literary tool, it's not some grand pillar of morality associated metaphysics, which nonetheless dictates: first principles come last and last principles come first... here's my crossword puzzle: metaphor, metaphysics, meta-alpha, meta-beta, metaphor and the meta-alpha, metaphysics and the meta-beta... etc. etc., i will not solve this crossword puzzle, even though it doesn't look like a crossword puzzle... it's a narrative crossword puzzle, i'm just looking for the sort of fixed point people associate with prime words: red, left, blue, right, up, fox, dog... words of readied vocabulary, readied vocabulary dissociated from puzzled vocabulary... i want to established a fixed permanence of the dissociated close proximity grounded in the meta- prefix of the words meta-phor and, meta-physics... i'm starting to find this impossible, given how the words have dissociated themselves from the grounding in the meta- prefix... phor alias phren (mind) and the whole gush of isolated metaphysics of beginnings: meta a priori vs. meta a posteriori - and of course: meta a- apriori... hell if i can't solve crossword puzzles: since i already have a crossword puzzle in my head... what am i to do? try writing pop?! a dog does what his master orders, a jester tells a joke his king would find amusing... i'll just treat this enclave of an audience as a bunch of people subscribed to ulterior forms of voyeurism (dissociated from pain / pleasure gratification, esp. that of a ****** nature).

.you know like in latin you had the interchangeable tongue twisters æ and œ? well... english resurrected one more... au... oh stralia... auntie; ******* hell i've been speaking this since aged ate and i still can't get my tongue into that phonetic plughole... or what's that onomatopoeia for: it really hurts? awe... nah... aw... aw... well no cute kitten about to say aww.

well it began with the usual... i wish i didn’t...
sitting in the autumnal garden
drinking coffee and eating a nicotine croissant,
watching the fog recede into nothing
while the earth showed its naked cleavage
after what seems like centuries of arcane dryness
befitting a story of an egyptian idol...
then the panic set in...
what to cook?! what to cook?!
my mother is away visiting her parents in poland,
who celebrate the feast of all saints with the usual
tackle formidable in poland:
forget the paris fashion week, forget the london fashion week...
forget the next gucci advert...
all the action happens in poland’s annual all saints’ fashion week...
through the cemetery (ahem) cat walks
(more like death on rollerblades donning a tutu
and looking fatter than size 0 models)...
because that’s when the fur coats are worn,
the make-up is heavier and everyone comes
to discuss the materialistic jealousy of a small town...
it is a small town after all...
death knocks with all the nine cat’s lives just to prove
the point...
anyway, so i’m the head chef, and in panic
i search for a recipe... i’ve only got pork on the ready
in the recognisable frozen state...
but i also have shrimps... tiger prawns...
so i look through the usual suspects... thai green curry...
ah ****! no coconut milk!
what’s it going to be? prawn korma curry
(better mild than hot i say, with all this maple syrup
and honey colours about... talk about decay),
active ingredients? chilli powder (1/2 tsp), cinnamon
(1/2 tsp), turmeric (1/2 tsp) and ground almonds (2 tbsp),
there ready... looking suntanned my gorgeous twirls of seabed manure...
enough to spare my father making himself sandwiches (i always
disguised my “dyslexia” by associations... sandy witches...
the t broke the barriers and the floods entered)...
with toasted nannies / au pairs... relatives of some sort...
then onto writing my father’s invoices:
project plaistow hospital and some housing development near
the city airport... beckton we call it... backwards and forwards
stink crowned with drinkers regurgitating on the pave...
now that is a *******... recycling centre or horse manure?
then to tesco... for the nightcap...
oddly enough tesco has become a friend of mine once more,
i divorced the turkish shop, they added 10 pence to the polish beers,
now i’m on the sedative medication of this bottle bavaria beer
and whiskey... 1 quid for the former... 10 quid for the latter -
i’ve sold my soul! never mind...
then to the beacon that’s home... it’s night... it’s spooky...
it’s essex: that non-touristy place in england people with passports
never dare to visit, shambles.
well one thing came out true... none of the above though:
you ever consider the theory of the aeroplane syndrome in writers?
you know, like with rock stars you get the full package,
you get the aeroplane and the retrieved delay of the engine mushroom,
but with poetry (which is competing with music,
philosophers just wait in that queue for the cheese, wink, whine and wrinkle)
you only get the sound... that delayed mushroom...
you see the poet but never hear him...
it’s a typical delusion i’d call parallel or even adjacent to narcissism,
you walk down the street and the closest you come
to someone recognising you is a stranger uttering out: ‘hey richard!’
‘name’s matt mate.’
‘oh... sorry.’
it’s this aeroplane syndrome theory... it’s perfectly acceptable...
you have the image but don’t have the delayed sound...
you have the delayed sound... but you only get a photograph...
you have the english national health service mental health unit crisis...
and then you have people shunning intellectualism
trying to cure people by burning / not reading philosophical books;
the day ends with drinking and reading
an article about keith richard’s antics in the sunday times’ supplement
and the thought: well i gave her a stabbing chance
at feminism... she thought the active ingredient in anti-contraception
pills was placebo... she phoned and gave birth to me...
i said abort... you’re no post-teen mum at university, you won’t be...
******* was great but i’m not that much of a match from a cosmopolitan magazine quiz
(as duly taken on my way from st. pestersburg to moscow to see
metallica play), plus there are no roofing jobs in scotland...
the scots have mountains already... there’s no point building
scratched sky skylines with mountain ranges nearby...
so even though i went to a catholic school...
i did my first redemptive act by reading about gnostic heretics...
and not getting confirmed being the second...
i would have not taken first communion... but playing the xylophone
at the nativity play was too much fun...
plus it is the only salvador dali bit of the story...
after that you have st. sebastian...
plus you see where this is going... the greeks translated
the tetragrammaton into the gospels
of st. matthew, luke, mark and john...
and the romans were duped into the legality of
things... first name, second name, confirmation name...
surname.
Hayleigh Jun 2014
When you are greeted,
With a shell of an
Old wrinkly man,
Do not forget the person i am,
Please try to understand,
That i am not the deep curves within my skin,
Please try to look within.
Do not forget though my speech may be
Inconsistent and slow,
And i may have difficulty with
The ability to chew and swallow.
Do not forget, that these complications,
Do not show,
The things i have achieved,
The family i conceived,
The fresh air that I've breathed,
In many different destinations,
And when you get cross with my hesitations,
Because my actions due to my complications,
May be a little all over the place,
Do not forget,
That embedded within my face,
Lies a whirlwind of memories and dreams,
And though at sometimes it seems,
That i am frail and bitter,
Please understand i am trying to come to terms
With the fact that Im no longer as fitter,
As i used to be.

And when you see me cry,
Do not try to deny me
Of my dignity,
Be calm, be patient,
And look after me gracefully,
Sympathise for the person,
I used to be.
And when you take my body,
Dress it with care,
There is still life there.

And if i stand and stare quietly,
Please wait, for me.
And when you brush my hair,
Please do not rush,
And if i speak in riddles,
Please do not hush,
What may not appear to make sense,
This change Im going through is
So very intense.

And if i soil myself
And your left to clean up the pieces,
Please try to do so,
In a way that irons out the creases,
Of shame and self blame,
And if i forget my name,
Please understand the pain,
That i will never be again,
The same,
Its just my body and my brain,
Don't quite work the way they used to,
And if it appears that Im asking you,
The same question repeatedly,
Please be patient,
I am doing the best for me.

When you look at my pictures,
My photos, my life,
You will see a successful man,
With three kids and a wife.
Young girl, I've battled inner strife,
For almost 90 years,
But nothing warrants tears more,
Than becoming a widow,
Not recognising your own shadow,
Realising your body is no longer your own,
Being moved into a care home,
Where the phone doesn't ring,
Where the birds no longer sing,
And you feel like giving in,
Every single day.
And people constantly say,
How you're turning old and frail,
That your body is aging and turning pale,
And every task you do,
You feel like you fail.

And if in time you begin to find,
A snippet of the old me,
Hold it carefully,
In the palms of your hands,
For the sands of time,
Are slipping too quickly,
Through mine.

So when you are greeted with a face,
With wrinkles so deep,
You could bury your own fears is them,
That sometimes weeps,
Remember, i was once
Like you,
And one day, you will be like me too.
Handle me with patience,
Tenderness, love and empathy,
Handle me gently.

And young lady,
I ask you,
Please be kind,
And remember all i have said,
As i unravel and unwind,
These cognitions within my head.
Just a first draft i wrote whilst waiting to get my blood tests, chatting to an elderly lady and thinking of my grandparents.
Donall Dempsey May 2017
PER NOCTEM IN NIHILO VEHI
( TO VANISH BY NIGHT INTO NOTHING )

my death approached me
but: went on by without
recognising it was I...

i hid in the filthy alley
of a passing hour
Death now furiously searching for me

no...Here: here
no...There: there - either
this tiny piece of time

the once and once
only

but Mr. Death had missed the moment
had to return empty handed
I finding myself madly in love with

the next second. . .

**

Mr. Death elects to speak in Latin...thinks it gives him a certain je ne sais quoi...

It's always great to cheat Mr. Death and his henchman Mr. Heartattack. I swore to myself that I would love the next second with all my heart!
There is only this,
A smile, a kiss a moment in bliss
And it's gone.
Life wasn't supposed to last very long
And it doesn't surprise.

I have seen too many suns that have set in the East
And at least as many rise in the West.
Either Or,neither is better than the one gone before.
The day begins and will end as we bow and we bend in the wind,
Like corn in the fields or chaff in the meadow we blow,
To the breeze we must flow and in this we will know
It is time now to go.

There is only a one and ever, a kiss is forever
A moment of bliss is a lifeline.
In the fall and the rise of the dusk and the day
When night carries away your prayers on a wing
Sing to the skies.
Open your eyes
It would not surprise me that what you will see
Is the spirit set free.

And when darkness falls
Deaf to the calls of the day
Would we have it any other way?
Would we say one life is never enough to do all that living and loving and stuff?
Or would we know this,
That life is a smile and a kiss
The bliss is in the moments
We so often miss.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
Why’d you get locked up then lad?
Oh. I’m locked up?
I know you. You won’t escape lad
Escape from where?

(Jackie Wilson at her majesties pleasure 1884, West Denton, Newcastle)

The sweat rolled off Dominic’s nose.

Its ‘movement’

movement

movement

Uniting.

Meditation takes a person out
from themselves
so far out, without any need
for any additional charge, toll, or need, that when you come back,
even if it’s within
the same body,
you feel

and the glow comes back
on-coming traffic smiles, dead less grace
the worst, and 7am

chess
without a game.
a drool.
an intricacy within
mirage.
hope in the sorry soft gas explosions
and death was heavy enough to fly and give
But not in the normal way
one second, and even joy spills
and the cabbies have begun to scream and break down at each other
even though it’s not a full moon
too many people squashed on a tight balcony
drinking us all away
too many hands
not dancing
it all away


Slugs emigrate across concrete when the soil is wet.
When you wonder why they’ve left.
Its pouring
and you think you recognise a name scrawled in the wet trail.

Single, intimate, observations.

And reasons for the evening to be near.
It will be worth it! – I’LL SEE YOU! –
And now we are allowed to be glorious without price.
And now it’s sad as hell.
And the trees know that.
But the squirrels never do.
And now those words don’t matter.
And now we are allowed.
And now we go.

And the laminate floor
has the weight of a cross.
And the thing is,
you know

(It’s all softly bombed)
Not in a horrific
or knowable
way.

But in God’s good loving
loving
loving
******* for ya.

We’re finally rubbed out.

Crucifying.
And uncrucifying.

Eyes are useless here.

Blackness first.
THEN that soft
‘soft’

dripping.

easy blackness.

Meditating, sat middle
the pentagram of a small flat.
blue white board marker, on ‘easy wipe’ wood flooring.

And if I wake, I can wipe all the lines out.

SO, it went the same.
blue colour of cityscape coming-black light flashing always
across the distance from balcony
a beautiful stillness.
Waves first. Sea. The complete sea. Swimming.
ego. Ego swimming. Ego going down. Hello! And ha!
And no more jokes.
And isolation.
And no more months.
But there were gushes.
Gushes of experiences in, and outside, with individual breathes
and the proximity of love, coming closer
like a germinating hand
guiding you down
into the oceans private concert

Not too close to the expensive parts, or the bad parts,
or anywhere too pristine.
Christ, that’d be
a joke. It’d be funny
and then the surgeon would come and operate
on you;
lifting you out whilst you’re asleep

And it would go like this:

Cancer: Hey! What’s going on?!
Get off! I’ve paid my
rent and don’t wet the bed
anymore,

Surgeon: Don’t care.
Come here...
Oh for **** sake you’re making my day long.
I don’t get paid
for this.
Cancer: Oh yes you do handsome.
Surgeon: Oh yeah!

rest on the long side of your bed.
‘What’d you do at the weekend?’
Where’d you go?

...

banter broke down into spider web
substance
before fading completely, as thoughts begin
to disappear and fly down
into heavier states
from outside you saw a man still dressed
in formal office attire
tie hanging undone around a white shirt, shoes kicked off
beside strange markings on a polished floor. From in,
the understandings
are quite different
fly gently, like a loved one retiring from life
as the single light bulb watches from your ceiling
tensing one last second time in hesitation
then blowing you out with a blink.  

looked into the well where life is buried
and reached down
arms lengthened like dusty pieces of ham down a hole
touching the foetus as it crawls back up,
and up through the highway lines of his veins,
like a rabbit hunts wolves,
like the peach reacts to your bite.

We smoked and ate apple pie as the autumn tattooed
We snapped small pieces off
then ate the mites.

And then when the well filled we made our arms lassoes;
that churned the grain,
turning the quietness into storm,
and back to parts of spring.

You hesitate, touching the ape
like a clown who’s just tossed his life into the air, and juggles it,
like dead poems and hot boiling yeast.
you looked further into the well and found the figments of the ‘Narwhal’
the sea creature with a prominent horn
that shoots from its head-

Early sea farers
used to think the horned mammal was a type of
magical being
it birthed the idea of unicorns
you let the water well mix and join
as we drink coffee today, and the night is less silent
than that of star of apples and gloom
each tarantula that scatters in the red stars of sand is welcome;
and the honey man and honey woman flicker,
through numberless bank checks and bills as knocks arrive
knock after knock after knock
into long vibrational hum

All that remains
is the bursting punch
near the bottom
of oceanic well

As it tightens your grip into the follicle hibernating bears
that speak eloquent words whilst we eat;
the deep groan of munching hands
in the well helps our arms
pull up the glowing carcass as it turns back
into us within our hands, it speaks easily and slow, telling each
servant surrounding
the hole that they should:

‘Dance casually, dance inside my red eyes’.

Some take advantage of melody, as a trust that funds satellites of globe,
as if no one ever dreamed or broke the yoke of more pleasurable things;
one of your arms
is like the way that a crab crawls past over my nose and into our future home

another asks that you aren’t so violent in February
and that the month is a counting mouth that multiplies zero
beside the arms reaching for a pyramidic beauty
under the ***** shell; aborting its children like blood in the snow,
without humanistic style, more in tune with time
than the army of water lifting your throat up,
spits- that poke at us with antlers, undeterred, no legged, mating in the sand

After a while, otherness takes over, and will comes.
And emotion is long shattered,
easing out,
playing skin game and dissipating need, where all will and human comes back
it takes a while.

And our gender has nothing to do with just lust
We are the almost completely blind, as the cliché remembers
Gender is
the lack of gender and the freedom of paradigm
whilst hands are upon love,
And more night(s) turn within us.
dream like bright black stars.

Weekends. Week. Work. Corporations dancing like butterflies on fire. Gone.
Gone
Gone
Gorgeous

nothingness
apart from its face and voice
speaking

“Heyy, how’s it going?”
Projection
No
“Yes... Lover,
Yes yes yes!”
“No.”
skull now linked to the lips of a home
“Correct, correct, correct...” The intangible
darkness, over and over

a rushing
and uncontrollable
heaviness of fire.

foxes in back alleys salute
the black sky with a mongrel scream
and all the animals of the world are linked for a split minutiae,
recognising and respecting the breach;

“You’re hurting... mmmmuh-” Dominic tried to say
in the onslaught.

Converging planes that came from the lips of the spirit crowning his mind.

“You’re not Juuu, Juh Juah Juh.”

He tried to say for the next few hours, as the sun spread down
on the city
and felt a deep
empathy for another one
of its children
attempting to free
itself.

“No.”

how right you are...” The spirit said
as Dominic’s head slumped from exertion.

“You see...” The spirit said seeping into his bones
and killing him;
paramedics zip
the bag
over his face.

“You see...” The voice says again
knocking the lights off
and flinging you
by your throat

Each one letting you
go

landscape sick in multiple elements of confused colour,
parts of buildings, art: growing up in the horizon, new structures
made by thoughts, old flowers inside limbs,
smoking.

“What...” The spirit
said.

sigh at the strange place,
without looking around.
blossoms of mind and traffic
circulated
characters
on a schizophrenic island

two flies ****** invisibly
and grow from the unseen smallness of their passion
and become an instant world
in the Red Mountains.

“What’s up?” Dominic say gloomily,
laugh a little.

“You’re meant to be screaming...
And yes...
Yet another ******* month
without hitting
target.” The nightmare says,

No incorporeal speech
no anger
anymore.

She might have been about twenty five,
dressed in a shade of grey
change
that covered her genitalia
and ******* from ankle up to neck

get used to it all.
raise your chin to the sky and try to blink away from the constant lick
of the beast growing
from yourself, or lover, or day

And grow the chimera
throughout numberless
stages
like a beautiful clay
that cant decide

Finally the meer-hawk looked like a Dickensian peasant
with an intricate smile, dressed all in jail rags
stinking of sweat, *****, and time.
And then we change
again

And her black hair scooped down
into the blackening sand
where the grains accepted her slim weight
through out itself

She was tired and fed up of the back-world today
She left her contract looking around upstairs
and accepted the hit
on her targets

A transference of types in the quaking room.
A quick drop of laughter flys
into the lil bear or a lot; and a snap and a lot of hunger
for us all...

The master of the basement was mostly machine.

The front of his face that we run towards
is a centred and hovering engine
at the far end of the shadow
room
and the stench
from its thought.

a farce and enough
to turn you away
from a really good
steak.

no walls

no matter

a car mouth approaches naked.

dead cats know this, as they lay purring still, licking their paws still,
misery knows,forgetting, and the coldness of the street gave birth

to numberless seedy neon lights
flickering away from the wall less walls
once more

and you know, we
all
have a prayer
that comes
out
here was
mine:

might as well let you know
whilst we’re at it
that this one comes
out, in some accent~~
but is how it’s meant to go

“...as if to prae
inside the rain
as if to move
the moon with small hands
ah cross the yard
and lucky sky

I live in that playce me lass
with ya quiet weiyht
upon me own
of ya li’l voice
that taeks it away

Ya-renuf ta bring
al me Gods back
an pin ‘em te tha walls

Enough ta mayke
al’ me angels breathe
heavy
for even an ounce
of ya grace

Ave begged at tha hands
of jesus Christ
for that tayste
of yeh
me sweet bonny lass
an ya the only lass
‘ahve evva met
that mayde us feel
like ah cuhd heal
without bein less

An I’m lookin at ya now
with al me luv
an ah divent need
ney where to ruhn
as am ah freed dog

and in ya charms

An ‘av ney-where left to luk
but I’ll kip alreet the neet pet
cos ya by me side

an in me arms.”

But now it is rather late my friend, and
we all know how long old accents last,
mine, I cherish, I will say it when cursing
and gone
when lit among friends and when
impressing
new jobs, that I shall leave, such is
my
way
and
i may
see you
again.
karin naude Nov 2013
mum's well intended tough upbringing ended in a two sided razor sharp sword
i am independent, intelligent, and successful
that same achievements cause me no shortage of frenemies
and a severe debilitating starvation for true friendship and love
men wont touch me with a 10 foot poll
both sexes make me out to be weird beyond the point of recognising there reflexion in me
imprisoned in a life i wanted, successful
with a incurable case of loneliness, i'm drowning out with food and bad poetry
this is my roaring twenties, hooray
cant wait for the next 80 years
going senile will be a blessing
no longer haunted by pain and unreached potential
Paul Hansford Jan 2017
You came too soon, the four of you,
into this world.  Your mother,
recognising the feeling,
did what she had to do
to give birth to you,
cleaned you,
disposed of the afterbirth
in nature's economical way.
But you had no experience,
no knowledge of how to be kittens.
Almost still foetuses,
furless, unmoving, cold,
you did not stimulate
her maternal instinct.
She did not recognise you
as her babies. Lying against her belly,
you did not know how to suckle,
and she, not ready to feed you,
walked off.
You had no future.

A bucket of water, I thought, would speed
your departure from the life
you had barely started.
But you, recognising the element
you had so lately left,
were at home in it,
swam untroubled under the surface
like tiny, pink sea creatures.

Unwilling to watch longer,
I gave you a quicker end.
Your mother, unlike me,
resumed her life
as if nothing had changed.
Siann Choate Feb 2017
loved seeing your face
knowing you fell asleep when you normally don’t
hearing your laugh
Recognising voice
Before I knew you were there
My failed attempts at sneaking up on you
With every thought,
I find how much I miss your humor

Our daily conversations;
About everything.
Opening up to you came so naturally
The acceptance you showed
Respect you exserted
The confidence you gave me
The positive outlook on life
All things I learned
Just by knowing you
How easy the “L” word was to say
Not many people do I say “I love you”

Although I can’t help but hate myself “
I let myself get attached.
Without you
I’m vulnerable.
As I make impulsive decisions.
I walk with my head up
And act like everything is perfect.
Im aware I only hurt myself;
Wanting to be alone
But longing to be alone with you.
To tell you why I’m upset

Wanting to believe you
When you said you loved me
But with that expectation
I find myself broken and alone.
Although now;
I know what I want
Is what I can’t have

Continuing without you?
Not only broken and alone

But the feeling of desire
Once again;
For someone I can’t have

No way to feel as optimistic
As I once did around you
Can’t bring myself to talk to anyone.
Knowing they’ll misunderstand
Staying occupied seems best;
Avoiding the thought of you
Being so passionately spontaneous
Not passing up an opportunity
Keeping myself busy
Nervous at the mention of your name.
Hoping to find you
And that you’ll come home okay

I miss you.
I love you.
I just want you home
Until then I’m counting the days
Attempting to be happy and appreciative
But with you gone;
My happiness is as well
It’s quite unfortunate how it all played out,
The haircut,The uniform
I’ve always supported your decision
But it’s affecting me
More than I thought it would
I’m more proud of you than I’ve ever been of anything
I know you’ll stay safe
And you’ll come home happy
I look forward to that

Just promise me something..
“Keep your shoes tied.”
MoonChild Aug 2013
I had a friend,I heard he died
on his mistaken morals he was crucified.
He lived for but a moment
in the lines of her face
found peace there
a quiet definition of self.
Then came her tears
filled the crevices
washed him clean until his mouth filled
and he began to drown.
She had forgotten his inability to swim
watched helpless as he floated by
inarticulate and unable to save him.
She loved him in his freedom
mourns him in the knowledge
that now he barely exists.
Nigel Morgan Jul 2013
He suddenly felt a sadness that only a letter might lighten. Thoughts of her he carried variously in and from the spaces and places this hot day had taken him. The morning had been warmer than in previous days, and even at 6.0am there was a heaviness present carrying a threat of thunder and rain.

He knew she was not at her best in the leaden heat of this hemisphere, whilst enjoying the dry, brittle heat of Africa and beyond. He remembered a hot train journey and a busy day moving boxes into a studio space. They were fond memories because in such heat she took on a delicacy about her. He would perceive her features and movement to be finely drawn, and that perception revealed her profound beauty. Such recollections were foundations in his love for her.

Today he had decided to avoid that daily confrontation with the project that lay invisibly on his desk, locked up in his computer, though unsorted sheets of graph paper, populated with planning, were evident on his drawing board. This project was a ‘book’ of studies for an ensemble in Chicago whose performances were marked by such energy and virtuosity; the music was growing steadily, but he felt suspicious that it had been contrived. He hoped his precise positioning of pitch and rhythm would have brought forth a surface colouring and texture. It had not. He would often imagine symbols and words he could not yet define lying on a transparent sheet over the rather bland matter-of-fact notation of his scores. He had known only occasional moments of such graphic invention, and when they appear ‘right’, they enlivened and enhanced his work.

He had put aside today as a listening day, an opportunity to listen carefully to a group of new compositions presented in a series of broadcast concerts and available to re-audition over the Internet. Didn’t Van Gogh write to his brother about the need to rest during a period of intense creativity and spend a day copying another’s work? This was an equivalent to his ‘active listening’, listening with a pencil and paper, taking a shorthand of the music’s action and journey.

The first piece on his listening list was a four-minute composition for chorus and orchestra. He had been intrigued that the composer had set words by Richard Jeffries, a 19C author who had written children’s adventures about a parochial natural world and had become admired by today’s new nature writers. It was said Jeffries had instigated Henry Williamson’s closely observed prose. He had set about finding the words – hardly discernable in the rich sonic accumulation of voices and instruments in the broadcast performance. Eventually, thanks to a brief comment by the composer in his introduction and a line that leapt with clarity from the music (the butterfly floats in the light-laden air), found a passage in a book called A Study of My Heart.

Recognising my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, I cannot understand time. It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. Here this moment, by this tumulus, on earth, now; I exist in it. The years, the centuries, the cycles are absolutely nothing; it is only a moment since this tumulus was raised; in a thousand years it will still be only a moment. To the soul there is no past and no future; all is and will be ever, in now. For artificial purposes time is mutually agreed on, but is really no such thing. The shadow goes on upon the dial, the index moves round upon the clock, and what is the difference? None whatever. If the clock had never been set going, what would have been the difference? There may be time for the clock, the clock may make time for itself; there is none for me. . . . There is no separation-no past; eternity, the Now, is continuous. When all the stars have revolved they only produce Now again. The continuity of Now is for ever. So that it appears to me purely natural, and not super natural, that the soul whose temporary frame was interred in this mound should be existing as I sit on the sward. How infinitely deeper is thought than the million miles of the firmament!

The text chosen by the composer did not appear to follow the author’s words only weave a way in and around the paragraph, pulling out key words and phrases, creating a poem from the images. He could imagine doing this himself, making a poem of the text.

This business of time, and how it was to this author,  ‘all about me in the sunshine’, was the same for him. As he read it, he would think of the warm early morning light on the stone façade of the building across the road. He could turn away from his desk and see a quality of glowness that all but stopped his own thoughts of time. This quality of and in things that nature could bestow, even to the inanimate, held a wonder all its own.

And so he had listened several times to this bright, newly fashioned work, enjoying the sustained and acoustic beating of more than eighty voices (he thought) singing in close clusters. And with and against those clusters, were flurries and cascades of high woodwind, as though such figures were birds flocking into the sun on a summer’s sky. This music seemed to be about immanence, existing in the everything of itself, but unlike Jeffries’ reverie music was governed by time, and when finished, with an inconclusiveness that surprised him, would rarely, he felt, ever be performed again.
Why is it that Poetry has never yet been subjected to that process of Dilution which has proved so advantageous to her sister-art Music? The Diluter gives us first a few notes of some well-known Air, then a dozen bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately: thus saving the listener, if not from all risk of recognising the melody at all, at least from the too-exciting transports which it might produce in a more concentrated form. The process is termed "setting" by Composers, and any one, that has ever experienced the emotion of being unexpectedly set down in a heap of mortar, will recognise the truthfulness of this happy phrase.

For truly, just as the genuine Epicure lingers lovingly over a
morsel of supreme Venison - whose every fibre seems to murmur "Excelsior!" - yet swallows, ere returning to the toothsome dainty, great mouthfuls of oatmeal-porridge and winkles: and just as the perfect Connoisseur in Claret permits himself but one delicate sip, and then tosses off a pint or more of boarding-school beer: so also -

I NEVER loved a dear Gazelle -
NOR ANYTHING THAT COST ME MUCH:
HIGH PRICES PROFIT THOSE WHO SELL,
BUT WHY SHOULD I BE FOND OF SUCH?

To glad me with his soft black eye
MY SON COMES TROTTING HOME FROM SCHOOL;
HE'S HAD A FIGHT BUT CAN'T TELL WHY -
HE ALWAYS WAS A LITTLE FOOL!

But, when he came to know me well,
HE KICKED ME OUT, HER TESTY SIRE:
AND WHEN I STAINED MY HAIR, THAT BELLE
MIGHT NOTE THE CHANGE, AND THUS ADMIRE

And love me, it was sure to dye
A MUDDY GREEN OR STARING BLUE:
WHILST ONE MIGHT TRACE, WITH HALF AN EYE,
THE STILL TRIUMPHANT CARROT THROUGH.
Akemi Jan 2016
There was a dream here. It passed over in the night; a blur that burnt a fever into the earth. It died in the gap between. Fingers unlaced. Hand to the side. The sun runs soft tendrils through thick curtains. Or something like that.

Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. You’d like it. It’s the same thing all over again, but with a black guy and a chick as the main characters instead. I guess that’s what you call progress.

There was a dream here. A thick, unfurling mass of potentialities. Sartre once wrote existence precedes essence. Schopenhauer believed the essence of a chair was as much willed into being as the essence of a man. There was choice once, but it died when we chose. The breath you took before your last smoke. The air is stirred by a passing train. A woman steps off a bridge, into the mourning blue of an autumn lake. There is an empty car on fire. There is a man inside. His brother sleeps through his exam, doped up on too much codeine. There is the stench of lack. There is death passing a mirror, seeing herself in haste, but too rushed to make sense of it.

He runs fingers down the scars of her arm. A trickling, stream awakening from a long winter thaw. Vessels blue. Oceans of laughter tucked deep in the folds of her skin, so faint you can barely see them any more.

The sheets are black. The city folds itself. The sky collapses into the gutter; Jupiter bleeds into the apartment block on east side. A man leaves his home, but never reaches his destination.  There is a movie Face Off, where the identity of Nicholas Cage is challenged through the transplantation of his face. If reincarnation were possible, would we even be capable of recognising our reincarnated selves, stumbling through the visage of a billion other, unknown vessels? The skip collectors come at 4am. Metal grinds against metal until all that is left is dust.

Hands shaking a pit of coal. Shake shake. Shake shake. Your mother is dead. Shake shake. Shake shake. Jesus working at a shoe store. Shake shake. Shake shake. An atheist. Hah hah, hah.

The channels fill. Ink drops on water. Fireworks blackening the contours. There is a sun in Peru. Waste water pumps through the vessels of the city. The mayor drinks punch. The catacombs crumble like desert bones. The roads split above. Traffic stalls. Shadows stretch. Meet at the centre. A core. Slender fingers. The infinite. A hollowed heart. A heritage.

Drink your punch, says the mayor, try the grape and cheese.

There is a comic. Five or six woodland friends play grab the tail. After one round, they look over to find friend raccoon sleeping. They laugh and shout next round. Friend scorpion looks at his tail with tears in his eyes. It is funny, because death is boundless, amoral, and imminent.

A group at a party. Someone brings up the right-wing branch of their government. Everyone begins laughing, red in the face, spit flying from their mouths, arms noodling into the sky. Yeah, yeah. Hella. It is an imitation game. A laugh track on repeat. Maybe someone scratched it on purpose, or the sound guy fell asleep on the button. Now everyone is stuck, laughing. They begin to doubt themselves, but look up, reassured by the glowing sign above their heads that displays the text laughter, in bold black Helvetica. The sign is faded from heavy use, a sickly cream that looked bad before it left the factory. They were made in batches of a thousand and shipped across the country. One begins to choke, spilling her drink, bunching the cloth on the table beside her. They keep laughing. She is purple now. Another group spots them and joins in. The party next door. The whole neighbourhood. It is broadcast across the city. A wave of hysteria sweeps the nation. An online celebrity creates mugs. A famous rapper uploads himself eating pancakes. The sound guy wakes up and turns off the display, but everyone keeps laughing.

God died today. Crumpled jacket at the foot of an apartment block. Creased ticket. Crooked can rolling down suburbia. American dream wakes up. Finds herself an amnesiac in a foreign land. Catches bus downtown. Wanders vacant sun. Blood trickles from wrinkles. So many now. Creased, crumpled, crooked. Drinks from gutter. Chokes. Stumbles into abandoned church. Blood dries into grotesque mask. Hard to feel through it. Like second skin. Tired. Rests head against wall. Waits for pulse. Finds nothing.

A joke to break the gloom. Two crows are perched opposite one another, partitioned by a one-way mirror. Both break into laughter.

No, wait. Maybe tears.
January 2016

(Crows are one of the few birds capable of self-recognition.)
Revenge for her parents death the drive
that became her passion.
The story began when she was a child
witnessing their killing!
Every detail taken in by her big eyes
to get the killer the prize.

Seventeen years painfully trickled by her
becoming an assassin.
As the hatred coursed through her veins
revenge drove her on.
Though wanting to seek the love she craved
retribution on her soul engraved!

She had found a man making it complicated
her fine tuning distorted.
This new friend had found her mobile phone
saving her photo image.
Trying to find out about this mystery female
allowing others to find her trail.

Gangs had lost foot soldiers to her expertise
who acted like a shadow.
For the first time had to be far more aware
her parents murderer alerted.
The last pages of her diary soon completed
could this evil be defeated?

Knowing he would catch up with her soon
she prepared to strike first.
Entering his mansion in a covert manner
dispatching silently his crew.
Until he was there without support alone
recognising his arrogant tone.

From a hidden point confronted head on
glaring with a cold stare.
Going to fire the gun held in sweaty hand
diving found a hidden weapon.
A bullet went right through her shoulder
he was quick though much older.

Her shot caught him in a main thigh artery
shattering the femur to.
There before her the man she hated so much
was now at her mercy.
She had prayed for years to see him die
openly then did she cry!

One more deep breath she shot him in the head
cruelly on his face a smile as he lay dead!

Knowing she would be a target vanished from sight
revenge in the end did not feel right!

The Foureyed Poet.
A young girl sought revenge on the man she witnessed killing her parents! The Foureyd Poet.
Sia Jane Nov 2015
You see,
when I escaped your love
I had rocks tied to my ankles in knots,
and I walked into the lake
barely recognising myself,
just caught up in a memory and replaying
the pain in my head, so numbing that
I detached from anyone else’s love.

I thought love, real love, was about sacrifice.
You fed me lies about true love -
never ending ‘happily ever afters,’
and in my naïve mistaken heart,
I trusted to believe real love meant death -
that true sacrifice was self-sacrifice.

So, dressed in the wedding dress
(I was to wear on Monday)
my hair plated the way you liked it,
your grandma’s emeralds around my neck,
earrings dropping as a pendant, and the ring
on my left hand, I walked.

I walked.
I held tightly onto the bouquet of lilies
(were they not always meant for funerals)
and I stepped into the lake.
Cold water rising up my thighs,
cold water which actually felt more ‘known’
than the unknown land of your love.

I wasn’t even scared.

I’d washed down fear with
a bottle of pain.
I washed down fear with
pills of despair.
I just kept walking.
And the only sound I remember,
is my humming of Beethoven’s Für Elise.
In my mind, I could see you dancing
en pointe- your feet as eloquently poised
as the pianists fingers,
never in a race to finish -
just movements of grace.

And that’s who I am today -
I am the dancer
(Odette and Odile).
My humanity is now outdated -
I too, throw myself into the lake,
and, as I take my final breath
we – you and I, my lover –
are seen flying past the moon.

© Sia Jane
Read on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/sia-jane-words/last-dance
Wuji Seshat Oct 2014
Today I am a tourist
In romance, her swaying hair
Across my lap
She showed me this long night
And I bit into it

Laughing loudly and aroused
Not for sensation, but for feeling
She showed me the stages of joy

We folded our lives
As we folded laundry together
Ate our meals in complete comfort
The interior of thirsty years
Of suffering, made worth it

In a few months of purest joy
Loving her was like a Jewish legacy
Of an expression of American hope

I could hope I belonged
But romance usually had a way of
Burning my letters at a bonfire
For a muse I couldn’t have
So much color, so much sadness

So many postcards from
The women I believed I loved
Thus I remember your face everywhere

Like a poet infatuated
With the idea of love
Who has some difficulty
Recognising her at “face level”
Thomas Newlove Jan 2016
It's when you're teetering on the edge of insomnia,
When every pound of your being is exhausted
To the point where you're seeing colours,
Without recognising objects, people,
Kind souls, kindred spirits,
That you soar to the most wonderful place
Of creativity and life-fulfilling happiness,
Or at least if not happiness, then
Contentment or satisfaction.

But, like insomnia, that teetering
Is the fundamental factor -
Because that same day,
In that same continuation of euphoria,
You can be waiting for a train,
And whilst you teeter at the edge
Of the cold station platform walkway,
You can plummet to the depths of depression,
Return to those comforting, suffocating clutches,
And that cry for help is stifled
By the thundering railway carriages,
And all that is left is a ****** stain -
Stained in your mind,
The knowledge that you'll never escape those clutches,
That grasp for the underneaths of railway carriages
Or the cordless bungee of tall buildings,
The comfort of the warm ground below,
And, naturally, a poem,
Flittering away in the gust of the train
Storming through the station
Like your ever-dwindling happiness...
Hayleigh Dec 2014
When you are greeted,
With a shell of an
Old wrinkly man,
Do not forget the person i am,
Please try to understand,
That i am not the deep curves within my skin,
The fullness in my laughter
That has started to wear thin
Please try to look within.

Handle me with patience,
Tenderness, love and empathy,
Handle me gently.

When you brush my hair,
Please do not rush,
And if i speak in riddles,
Please do not hush,
What may not appear to make sense,
This change I'm going through is
So very intense.
When you take my body,
Dress it with care,
There is still life
Resonating there.
If I soil myself
And your left to clean up the pieces,
Please try to do so,
In a way that irons out the creases,
Of shame and self blame.
And if i forget my name,
Please understand the pain,
Of the knowledge
That i will never be again,
The same.
The knowledge that my body and my brain,
Don't quite work the way they used to.

When you see me cry,
Do not try to deny me
Of my dignity,
Be calm, be patient,
Have empathy,
Grieve with me, at the loss of each memory, the person,
I used to be.

Do not forget though my speech may be
Inconsistent and slow,
And i may have difficulty with
The ability to chew and swallow.
That these difficulties,
Do not show,
The things i have achieved,
The family i conceived,
The fresh air that I've breathed,
In many different destinations,
And when you get cross with my hesitations,
Because my actions due to my complications,
May be a little all over the place,
Do not forget,
That embedded within the space
The walls of my mind,
Lies a whirlwind of memories and dreams, left behind.

When you look at my pictures,
My photos, my life,
You will see a successful man,
With three kids and a wife.
Young girl, I've battled inner strife,
For almost 90 years,
But nothing warrants tears more,
Than becoming a widow,
Not recognising your own shadow and reflection
Living in a mind
That screams rejection,
Realising your body is no longer your own,
Being moved into a care home,
Where the phone doesn't ring,
Where the birds no longer sing,
And you feel like giving in,
Every single day.
And people constantly say,
How you're turning old and frail,
That your body is aging and turning pale,
And every task you do,
You feel like you fail.
And young lady,
I ask you,
Please be kind,
And remember all i have said,
As i unravel and unwind,
These cognitions within my head.

And if in time you begin to find,
A snippet of the old me,
Hold it carefully,
In the palms of your hands,
For the sands of time,
Are slipping too quickly,
Through mine.

So when you are greeted with a face,
With wrinkles so deep,
You could bury your own fears in them,
Please treasure me for all that I was
And all that I am
I am human, I am a man.
Max Hale Jun 2015
The morning awakes with stuttering respect
Night time peace is past.
The new day to me is opportunity
Familiar movements from my love
Sadly recognising that rest is done
At least for the moment
Refusing to wholly awake is one I know.
She feels that more sleep would be...well
Even on days off the climbing out is a considered move
More considered, than move
I love her for her familiar ways
My moderated interaction has taken time to evolve
I understand, we can't all be the same
I love her for what she is and has taught me
Patience and tolerance
Oh how much I've learned about myself

Love is an acceptance of difference
A morphing of two ideals
A belief that neither is right but then...
Neither is wrong
Maturing love is a joy that has moved from blindness
To being at peace with your lover
But most of all it is the recognition
That you are with someone
Who cares, understands and forgives you
Overlooks odd ways and strange sayings
The underlying passion of true love
Never recedes or diminishes, but grows
Easier in the knowledge of  an element of comfort
In wonderment and true happiness
Our jagged edges of self are no longer apparent
And the depth of our rounded love clasps us together
In time and space
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
by the time malachi wrote of elijah's half, god split too, and then the embodiment happened on two roundabouts worth of twirl: god was a third's worth of christ's trinity talked about, recognising india in a symmetrical summery of applause for anglia's capital norwich - exchanged in overcoming autumn into similar wobbly within grasp - stornoway - to pinpoint an x for some lapsed tongue twirling less hollywood and more of the towing dimensional twins: diaper dipped innocent and sunk into welly fudge wet sludge slurps of onomatopoeias, exchanged to boot pivots for the weatherman handling insignia of coordination with a queen's lazed approach to care for the public's handy utility: shaken the plumber shaken the electrician, but gloved the hand ordinating trickles of tubular artery and sparks of the veiny rarity skidding into pressurised suicides named.*

as i said it once: by the time of malachi elijah was half of what jesus became,
a trinity of thirds; but by a polytheistic nitro of interests reincarnation
was not much for the oneness: with malachi in oath
to claim elijah in half, while jesus stole a prophet's book,
which endowed a testimony, such that much of the greek "god said"
was roman "let me ease into it and regurgitate."
so while malachi wrote of elijah's re-incarnation and spoke heresy on
the pulpit of polytheism for a crowd of monotheists
not allowing a seventh of the same pool draw
of sunken chlorine breathed as a matchstick sparked,
it was malachi so many years prior
anticipating the many gods ridiculed by a singled out earth,
while jesus stole isaiah's book and hiding it near the dead sea,
and having his own testimony
of being integrated into egyptian alimony
sold and paired revealing the sorrowful desert winds that the desert
in toadish engulfed the nearby architecture. so i tell you: jesus stole isaiah's testimony,
was crucified for it, because within the penta- framework moses wrote
like a true outsider - and we prefer narcissists holding a mirror rather
than gripping a nail to a placard of steadied wood of ennobling statues
of geometrics. why then the many narcissist messiahs empowered by posing
into a polaroid fake and the lost oedipus plural theorised?
once malachi came with the heresy elijah was halved with god,
and once jesus came and the people began deciphering babylonian madness
so that the hanging gardens were architecturally sound
and the pyramids were proven higher than the eiffel:
without a sweaty wrinkles' river taken aqua vivo, we thus conversed.
elijah was a third in the form of jesus who begat one as a trinity
to further the heresy of malachi.
Steve Page Feb 2022
Do you ever escape your grief?
Do you every find release from sorrow?
I can’t say today, perhaps tomorrow,
but today I’m growing round my loss
- not diminishing its presence, but recognising
that my present is not my finish
and that I add to this grief:
my joy, reminiscence, and celebration
of those who are no longer at my surface,
but remain my foundation.

Do you ever escape?
I think not – I hope not.
For they are not a shackle,
but where I found my feet.
The anniversaries of loss come around and fall in the echo of more recent losses. I'm grateful for passed friends and family who helped make me me.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
it’s not that i hate film literary film adaptations, but only one adaptation made me want to read the book: stendhal’s the scarlet and the black (starring ewan mcgregor and rachel weisz).*

i don’t in a respective romanic auditorium
with toga donning senators
walking to egyptian flutes from the cleopatra’s entourage
gleaming old fames as to prove the pyramids
and sphinxes were above in the hierarchy of awe
to the iodine and hod on papyrus,
to give these localities the respectable aura of re-,
i take to hammock’s kenotic and burial’s untrue:
the former feeds the northern feel of autumnal london
suburbia and the latter the southern quarter,
but never mind that, it’s already minded and eerie.
i watched the screenplay adaptation of empire of the sun today,
i have to say, i was jerking up the thought
of salty rain rather than acid rain on the environmental
perfusion surprise - so i ****** a jamaican fake on the hopscotch bonnet
mascaraed on the eyes, or the romantic tears of cutting an opinion,
but honesty... honesty! three scenes made me push my
manhood away from the stench of molten iron of the army:
the was the protagonist sang the song of the kamikaze
just after they downed a shot of koji and started singing
just after doing the flap-your-hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don’t-care
salutations of encouraged nihilism.
it’s the editing part of the film, how the boy’s voice overpowers
everything else and becomes “monotone” against all other sounds,
the dignity of the boy’s enviousness and admiration
for the kamikaze... even in captivity! by god, what a scene!
the other scene that haunted me to near tear
was when the prisoners entered the cemetery of hoarded
valuables by the japanese upon invasion of shanghai
and taking from notables the jewellery chandeliers and cars
(pianos too): after seeing the prisoners familial in captivity
exchanging cabbage heads for cigarettes
proving what the world would be like without the existence of money...
i thought of the familial “humbling” of the people in captivity,
and the sheer haunt of the same prisoners returning
to a world they so dearly lost - in that each to his own
piano and mercedes benz, that neo-tribalism of earn earn spend
frivolity and self-interest that democracy prescribes
allocating us each a tomb of fancies (and sometimes the odd *****).
but the most striking thing became apparent - in these
japanese prisoner of war camps... the prisoners didn’t wear uniforms...
i can understand if those in power adorn uniforms,
but the oddity of the prisoners not having uniforms is quite
positively giggly sinister... given the fact that the other sinisterness
is when there’s a prison camp and those in power
wear uniforms and those imprisoned are also tailored for.
i see a major libra of power in all this,
for if the prisoners are not tailored for denoting their collectivisation
as in status of prisoners... then there’s a certain freedom in all of it,
like on the grander scale, in society, where the politicians,
the overseers only wear suits and the communities differentiate
themselves with hawaiian floral tattoos on t-shirts and tourist slogan ones too:
it’s almost as if the ultimate leniency of power was being exercised
not having to wear prisoner uniforms in the japanese pow camps,
unlike the pinstripe ones of auschwitz - as some collectivisation
of guilt within ideological framework rather than the opposite:
wrong place at the wrong time.
the last tear i got? well the music on the credits reel pulverised
by the images of a son re-recognising his mother by touchy touchy.
conclusively? better on your mother’s *** and able to cook too
than on the cooking *** of a wife and with two left hands preferring
the hot topic of takeaway or restaurants - hunter gatherer died -
me belly full of berry - how is it that **** sapiens is also called
**** perderus awhile the tortoises saturated achilles with peace and thought
and no chance of martian glory telling him of zeno’s paradox?
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
better than an autobiographer, a chronicler... when you die you'll find me among Bulgarian prostitutes sneezing good luck when your try to reinvented the airs surrounding the English monarch taking a **** into her crown... i know there's this thing concerned with tattoos and peacocks, but established peacocking, passed from generation to generation is just silly; animal plateaus with what man calls democracy - survives as long as the majority is kept asexual and the few engage in the acts of fleshy gymnasiums.

i like nights like these, no poems, no scaffold, nothing
to get to grips with... the last day of the Olympics turns out
to be boring... father talking about Irish Nazis
with that ironic motto of *Abreit Macht Frei

like a singalong - working Sundays,
the Irish **** thinks he has Romanians
under his belt he can goose-strut
toward a failed project... you rarely hear
of construction industry's blunt racism...
but it's there, and they dare call it
the enlightening Europe...
no wonder Islam is attacking former colonial
nations, makes the argument speedy
and solidified... it does **** me off..
you watch these anti-Chinese poets
labour words: but at the same time say
things like: depeche mode's 'words are
unnecessary, words like violence,
words are unnecessary, they can only do harm',
not the poets, those who practice poetry
and try to keep the status quo...
i hope the Irish sinking in the frozen
waters of Titanic met their hamster angels,
i really do... not man enough as a featherweight
to box against a Klitschko, fair enough...
but mind you: words are everything,
this stance to avoid the meaning of words
is not s much anti-biblical (in the beginning was
word, and with god was destined to reside) -
later man came along, and recognising that
certain pieces of information were implanted
in words he decided the stuffing was too much...
better do a Christina Aguilera -
words can't hurt, can't infringe -
so we're basically backing up to the utility of
sign language, or punches...
back in the monkey haven... so much for the theory
of evolution... are you saying we shouldn't be using
words? that's basically what you're saying...
keep it simple... keep it ~friendly....
ensure the idea persists, but that language doesn't...
we were never going to agree,
neither was William the Conqueror with Saxon swine...
i know a schwab when i sehen one...
a stick has two ends... edition of being struck over
the head... edition of being hit in the ******* another...
but i just like days, when there's nothing meaningful in my head...
it's all helium giggles at that point...
going to the supermarket to buy whiskey
two white ****** and a dozen black hyenas march in
with me... **** small? not really... well, the ultimate
freedoms, i'm scuffling speedy Gonzales (next thing
on the censor's list of forbidding acquisition of control),
it's just fun to watch and fun to watch
looking at the stereotype skinheads...
words like violence, break the silence -
words... mm, in general i call that perfected coordination,
Moses and Prometheus, in ideogram of Egyptian
stole the meaning, later translated into skeleton Hebrew...
no prince talks the language of slaves...
no point kissing rosy Christ's backside right now...
i just want them to attempt their **** with success,
i just hate living out a life as an ensured ******* for
their safeties... it gets boring when they fail...
so you get my bearing... Nazis in England on
construction site... mainly Irish Nazis...
taboo or as some would call it: no ***** to attack
their former colonial masters... so attack the
colonisers... **** first... the head comes second...
oh the moaning and groaning of women...
**** ahoy! the men are expendable.
2 white ****** and a dozen hyenas running into
the supermarket after an **** to buy red bull
energy drinks... prancing around the city centre with
wild pride... an alcoholic rat scuttles past with
the words: what the **** are these clowns on about?
you think these girls will be able to raise a family
for their shortcut attempt at impersonal ******?
they're charity shop material... i'm not imposing
a Hijab... just saying...
what a lovely feeling, what gratification after
visiting a *******... moments like these are
just there, i'm hardly fighting for the English rose...
more like fighting over a Scottish thistle...
prostitutes are great tools when looking at society...
you get baptised in their waters lubricated without
any social cohesive reaction... that's the greatness
of prostitutes... you feel nothing when such examples
propose themselves to be viewed...
prostitutes are the greatest anaesthetic providers...
you can or don't have to believe me...
i'd rather be in their company, the fullest spectacle
of transparency... because it's not really the freedom
women and men encounter, i'm in full of support of that...
**** as much and as many as you want...
the problem is bound to Satan... the original fruit
constantly evolves with the evolution of the godhead...
i thought it was about *******... but given this
spectacle... it's actually more about LIES...
lies create spies and governments, they also create
false moral physiques... they're so ******* horrid
that you end up wanting to watch your girlfriend
**** a hundred ***** than to hear her say
that she's a nun... scout's honour... lies are worse
than the acts... everyone wants to be free, un-caged,
and that's the respect derivative...
but being lied to is out of the question...
lying should be in the old testament decalogue -
more important than ****... that's why the power
resides with prostitutes for man's encompassing
some sort of sanity... there are no lies...
there's just obvious promiscuity... those little
Christian boys can gag in their confession booths in
Churches... when you stop lying and feel no guilt
and no need for being redeemed from sins (extended into
crimes, denotative as merely lies) becomes obsolete,
even in Brazilian slums... you see those little
gnomes feeding trivial experiences of threesomes
and ****** the exotica that is simply a bunch of lies;
their exotica is bound to a family meal...
a shared meal... watch them lining up in their
cars at the McDonald drive-through...
or eating alone to a solitary confession...
once you spot them, you're like: what the **** are priests for?
i've just spotted a confession! they're sitting
slouched in some cheesy fast-food conveyor belt
trying to re-enact their tales of the Amazonian rain-forest
escapades for that much more of "exotica".
Emma Sep 2018
Don’t pick apart what I feel for you.
No, there has never been anyone before you.
But, I am not an emotional *******.
I know myself, and my mind.
Am capable of recognising what it is I feel.
Love you. Kind of. Maybe. By half.
I am on the way to love, at least.
You vacillate in the doldrums, a land of grey uncertainty, rather than travelling in either direction.
I’ll wait. Not forever.
It’s like having a part of my body outside of itself.
Vulnerable and full of the absence of something divided.
Something that was previously mine given to you.
I knew love would be hard when it came.
Not this sad, or this sort of hard.
I expected modest love, and humdrum hard.
This is like being the wife of a sailor gone out to sea.  
Interminable longing and painful waiting.
My heart pulls in my chest, the steady drumbeat too loud, loud enough to feel in my fingers, feel in my legs.
It tightens in discomfort, and sends me spiralling.
I wish I could hold you.
I wish I could heal you.
But neither is possible without you.
And I’m still waiting.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
in my once apathetically empty chest, i now hold her broken heart, and as all concerns for the phobia of psychiatry, the one phobia psychiatrists have with regards to their patients is when a patient expresses empathy for others; ‘discharged!’ and they do so with a fidgety eye.

in the windy roads of rise park, an affluent scrape of
essex grime, a man alone, walked
impromptu bob dylan command to use the ballerina
footprint for a bit,
well, so he walked and thought about throwing pepper
at his shadow in anticipation of jungian shadow concept
detachment from orthodox cognition down the road
from descartes... oddly enough the ‘throw pepper at your
shadow and see shadow detachment in a convulsion of a sneeze’
didn’t happen... happy me... happy shadow...
so you see where this is going, it’s going by way of -
            *what is lucifer
            an emperor with no clothes
            no skin, no flesh, no heart
            an emperor!

                                   (jack spicer, my vocabulary did this to me).
well not really, it’s going into psychiatric theory,
esp. after the ending of this zombie princess in a psychiatric
hospital with arabic music snipping off further director’s cut
assertion for revision in the film: side effects.
got me peeling an apple that film did, better than gone girl
i thought, but enough of that:
isn’t this oddity welcome to be written?
if i use a blank page as a metaphor of an attentive “soul doctor”
in secular society, i.e. a psychiatrist / not a shaman e.g.
no woo woo ha bah ha bah ha bah take this naturally growing plant
and dance naked around a fire... i’m using it not as that
but as a patient, because upon return i’m looking at a blank page...
and i use that as me, who’s listening to the reverse of mirror realities
is impregnated with by an almost anonymous voice within
the framework of patient-doctor confidentiality...
but like i said, i had a theory on top of this... no i didn’t...
oh yes, i had: so in the talk of spectrums,
with dementia being as much deconstructive as constructive,
what about the spectrum of depression?
‘well, you’re right to point that out,
deconstructive dementia is a condition that affects older people,
they have a well known and established self,
so when dementia takes to the elders
the self is deconstructed and people stop
recognising a familiar face,
but the thing about dementia praecox
is that it’s not deconstructive but constructive,
it’s not really about dogma of the anti-psychiatry movement
envisioned about whether this self is true or false,
the optimism is that it’s constructive, and that’s positive,
because deconstruction is negatively attributed in
casual vocabulary.’
so what about depression, and how it’s akin to that, as i was saying?
‘ let’s say modern society is filled with professions that are
all about pencil pushing and photocopying the amazon
to assure the antarctic it will be filled with 2-d trees,
what sort of physical exertion is there in those professions
of skyscrapers and cubicles?
very little... depression in older people who have already
established themselves in these professions have very little
physical strain, not like the roofer or all builders in general,
there has to be compensation, an obstruction,
depression is like the strained muscles of carrying a gas bottle
that weighs 25kg... or rolling it across the roof slanted
weighing in at 75kg... or carrying a heavy roll of felt or
one of those tar doughnuts (permaquic / hydrotech),
so imagine if there was no depression, would these featherweight
commuters to the office spontaneously turn to aether,
loose limbs and turn into soul matter, moving through walls?
they have less physically straining professions,
and because of this there is the phenomenon of depression,
it affects a lot of people because a lot of people have never
used the scythe in a field of wheat, so they use antiperspirant
to loose the armpit blotches in air-conditioned rooms,
it had to come, this en masse depression...
but you know what i despair about? the spectrum of depression praecox,
it’s not a phenomenon in children, it’s a noumenon study
that requires a kantian investigation, it’s totally bewildering...
i can understand depression in older people
who do not have strenuous physical jobs...
but what if some of these kids only have a project of being plumbers
and not office workers?! what then,
they won’t be allowed the luxury of depressive obstruction
while fixing plughole wormholes of ****,
they won’t have the luxury of a desk job feeling “low”
but actually having felt too much ease before the low, which
inevitably came because of the ease.’
Daisy Daydream Jul 2012
He could write only perhaps a page at a time so scarred was he of losing the brilliance that he had somehow found again. After a few minutes of writing he was haunted by introspection reading back on what he had just written he couldn't escape the notion his words had been penned by some greater man and if he were to continue, to add to it, he would only be lessening a beautiful portrait. The effect was that each page he wrote looked like a biography with each chapter recorded by a different writer giving his work the disjointed feeling of having many contributors all compiling their experiences to tell this one story. He had never bothered to understand Durkheim's theory of alienation, but he imagined it was something close to this – not recognising himself in every story he wrote, only knowing that it was somehow someone different each time and that they were all trapped somewhere deep inside him.
Rai Mar 2013
Remember
When I kissed
Your naked soulfire
Gently caressing the time
We spent between moments so fragile
Like porcelain dolls
Fragile in their meer existence
Capable of splender
Or distroyed
Crumbling to dust
Time has come full circle
Meeting in my dreamtime
Shades of a new horizon
Exquisite upon the ivory keys
A melody of life yet born
And yet so silent is the tune of my love
Bare not a scorn
For past illusions
I lay soulfire naked before your throne
Pheonix rise to meet your challenge
A myriad of emotions freefall
Landing upon your eyelids
I may put fear where fear is unwanted
But remember
Your soul is beckoning you
To be all that you can
So in letting go
You are merely
Recognising
Yourself
Within the illusion
Helen Mar 2017
Months of sweating
vetting every word written
Shivering over all
that remained hidden

Rocking back and forth
Recognising the demons scream
Asking to be fed more
Inside of empty dreams

Then the words, they spill
from cracked and broken lips
bleeding onto tissue paper
inking stains of fatal trips

Then comes the rush
a verbiage of torrential pain
Crouching on a backlit screen
pockmarked with finger stains

The first spike of adrenaline
fizzes inside a broken mind
The churning end to a journey
that has completely left you blind

Collapsing in upon itself
is the high that's found a low
and when the reader is gone
You wonder where you'll go?

Perhaps you'll find a new pusher
Someone else to feed your pain
Someone that will dig that needle
deep
even deeper into the vein
Patrick N Sep 2015
Night, gripped by future thoughts I lie,
Mind nocturnal, never blinking eyes,
Day's events and those to come don't rest only rush
Heart hastens shadowing  pace, moves respite out of touch

Perspective the enlightener sprouts a shoot,
A momentary distraction which begins to take root

Breath is vacuumed slowly from nose to chest,
Streaming laden air out, a peaceful wind lays upon breast,
Mind slows recognising nights familiar touch,
Sleep content, knowing, I'm but a mindful piece of dust
jo spencer Apr 2013
Woke up at six,
a smart tortoiseshell  butterfly
was sitting on my audio.
I thought a more apposite
place would have been my dahlia.
Scattered wool pellets
over the carpet.
My brain was going nowhere slow.
The great Mister Zalbretys
had planted some weird
happenstance,
not recognising the  inside
from the delirious  out.
Nigdaw Jan 2022
I couldn't have made it
without you
from recognising a kindred spirit
to discovering a soulmate
beyond passion, beyond even love
you are part of me
Praggya Joshi Oct 2018
Even though the distance
Of light years between them
Will never subside
And will always remain
Interminable
But this has never stopped
The soft waves of cerulean
Seas and oceans
As well as their moonlit lover
From recognising and feeling
The gracious presence
Of each other
And joyfully confessing
their sparkling eternal love
To each other
Even in the absence of
Any means to ever
come close
Or touch each other
Marshal Gebbie Feb 2019
Two  new ladies walked into the project kitchen for morning tea, one was lithe, petite and attractive, smiling, welcoming, the other, tall and lumpy, plain and withdrawn with eyes averted.
Clearly the planet treated these two women differently. Their different auras could not have been more stark, more reflective of how the brutal game is played universally..
This great eternal injustice meted out to all the plain Janes, everywhere.

I greeted them both, then, recognising the hurt, the galling expression of the expectation of another rejection, reflected in the big girls downcast gaze…. I  reached out, made a gentle fuss of her, drew her into the group, gave her warmth and equality…all in a very human, non- demonstrative way ……
And, do you know, I was rewarded, with a miraculous emergence of dancing, alive eyes…. and really, the loveliest smile in the room.

M.
Hamilton,
NEW ZEALAND.
Jack May 2018
Why do you smoke?
All your thoughts begin to choke
Your weak windpipe, delicate from pain,
And now you’re alone, hurting again.

Why are you smokin’?
Are you truly that broken?
So desperate to leave this place,
No one to have as a safe base.

Realising all the pain you cause,
in your head, sarcastic applause,
Recognising your life is a joke,
Is that why you choose to smoke?
Softly Spoken Mar 2017
To the joy
We dance, we jest and joust
The complex interplay of two
Souls recognising selfness
Seeing the edges fit

To the sorrow
This memory fades, surely, swiftly
A conversation half remembered
The realisation that ..
I can't recall your voice

To the sweetness
A softly remembered moment
The curve of a finger
Tracing line across memory

To the senses
That I can't feel those arms
Lightly, a tear traces a path
I feel it slide down my cheek
Then unseen weight grips

To the Anger
Against moments expectation unmet
When the collision occurs
And unwanted words come forth
The rage unchecked

To the self
The clash of the ego and id
tripartite vying for casual dominion
Eros and Thanatos war
Action dictated by thought

To the internal
The experience of
A lucid world of love
of longing, of joy
And it's counterpart; sadness

As I remember that I will
Never see you again
We will never speak
You will not know
How much you are missed

To friendship
To the joy of finding each other
To the gift of you, selflessly given
To the kindness
To both sides of a being


To the present
To Finding ways to exist Sans those who've faded
Always to persevere
The interlocking of past and now
Always seeing and remembering the essence of their being
Just breathe

To the heart
No words exist for this journey
From innocence to sorrow
And back
But when led with..


Nothing is insurmountable
Written after the death of my Friend Simon, a supreme badass who, like all supreme badasses, found the normal unexciting.
Tshepo mashiane Jul 2019
A car that never changes character.
A master in going against the times.
Its high raving engine proves it's nothing close to an armature.
The legendary kidney grill never declines.
Ounce I heard that the iconic M5 is now  available in x-drive, my face resembled a wet cloth but as I finished reading the article...thank god there's a setting for the tyre shredding two-wheel drive.
BMW is a car that gives you a reason to stare, BMW lovers recognise the different models by looking at the linings...something rare.
BMW's so called rivals are always claiming they have"high tech suspension", but that's only on paper then the track testing starts. That makes you wonder how much do two faced women spend on makeup.
While other motor brands have "ambition", BMW has reputation. Its rivals are stiff in corners but the Bavarian beast simply drifts... Into position, clearly spelling out two words "no competition".
BMW doesn't exactly showcase the skills of a driver, it actually displays the behavior of the car...call that ecstasy in motion, the real capture of emotion...nothing has ever been so close to perfection.
The roaring power produces a sound that is distinct, out classing a band that is full equipped. A luxury sedan that is rated five star but deep inside it is a sports car at heart. The kidney grill ensures us that even in a hundred years from a hundred metres we will have no trouble recognising a BMW.
Something we may never measures is shear driving pleasure. The only drive that BMW knows is dynamic and although the average folk might not be interested in the track runs which are always epic, he or she knows that BMW is the perfect remedy for traffic.  
Ambition is BMW versus reality.

— The End —