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Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.how  dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...

)            that's all i wanted to disclose...
what comes now,
is all the unnecessary details
that would constitute a prose piece...
albeit in cascade - for the ease
of the eyes bunddled up in a
claustrophobia of a paragraph:

i know: the mere word 'dignified'
seems rather obnoxious...
but... how dignified it is,
to take a walk at night...
esp. when one is recycling leftover
bottles of whiskey, whiskey,
beer... whiskey...

after reading Knausgård vol. 1 -
with his father strapped to the house
with his mother drinking himself
to death...
perhaps i'm also akin...

but... there's "****" to do in between...
good god! mein gott!
greta thunberg! run! i said run idiot!
run to the recycling center with
those glass bottles!
success though: cutting the ingestion
by over a half...

current bank balance?
nearing 2 thousand pounds...
and there's the garbage to sort between
the recyclable and the non-recyclable...
there's the tending to keeping
the house clean...

there's a remnant spark about giving
a toss about some sporting event...
there's cooking a dinner...
but... it seems i miss the man who would
find about an hour and a half
to walk the streets at night...

somehow i missed it -
but... i imagine the sight of a week's worth
of empty bottles in the wardrobe...
i've had enough and...
i call the dog that's the dignity to take
a walk at night...
to never overthink anything except
thinking - that i can leave in the basket
of nothing...

sometimes the ego-automaton jumps
in and makes my walking meditation
fuzzy... that's where i find this mythological
ego of psychology -
ego the anti-narrator...

which implies: not myself... reflexive...
not my, self... the reflective circumstance...

and there's no familiar presence
of an mp3 player (broken, ****** lasted
for 3 years, good enough lifespan)
and no headphones...

perhaps i was anti-radio some time ago...
i've amassed a decent personal library
of audio... but now i rarely use it
having made a discovery of the gramaphone
and vinyls...
and being the late 20th century colt...
i should still be ripping c.d.s onto
mp3... but...
i just wanted to check out what i was
missing...
perhaps... the crazed sound of passing
cars, will indeed, never replace
the cobblestones and hooves...
but... there's a right to heave a sigh...
for no apparent reason other than:
i've met myself this very first time
having aged...

this is not a time for west coast
1990s pop punk or punk rock or whatever
they called it... when you would
either run in gallop jumping
in a jonathan edwards style...
or looking down and walking into
a lamp-post... this is no time to be
refreshing the cinema of youth...
with the offspring's ignition...

not when you're walking: and trying not to think...

also of today: my jewish newly converted
to islam neighbour came round
asking about my mother's slight bout
of depression concerning...
her recent hip-replacement...
and what's still in the post...
the aesthetic surgery...
after all: what surgery, proper...
is also a plastic surgery - an aesthetic...
obviously the muscles and the bones
are intact... but there is always a chance
that waste tissue will be removed...
fat... etc. and it hasn't even been 2 weeks
since the surgery...
and she said: your mum should look
at my surgery scars...
i lifted up my t-shirt and turned
to show her my back... namely my
right shoulder-blade...

and i said to her: you know why i didn't
get aesthetic surgery on this mark
of cain? that's the same reason why i don't
have tattoos...
nothing against tattoos...
i have the only tattoo i need:
a mark of cain and some historical tattoos...
dates... that i keep close to me
from my time in the pedagogy meat-mincer
effort... how it began with the romans: per se...
later began with hastings 1066...
but it would never begin with:
the first battle of Tannenberg (1410)...
so you don't know how i think my mother
is exaggerating?
it's a good thing she's my mother...
she can have her ******* pass...
i'd give her the same ******* pass if...
we were married for 35 years and...
she was a woman i could grow with...
otherwise? the ******* pass i reserve for
children...

i subsequently signed her will...
yes... she came round looking for a second
witness for her will being made official...
or ****** bureucratic paper...
but nonetheless official...
i didn't mention the fact that...
the two witnesses that have signed the paper:
need to be present simultaneously...
i asked her... what's my occupation?
oh... right... i'm a scribbler...
a chicken-scratcher... writer of no
guild... a writ pusher...  

but all i wanted to write was...
i'm not a fan of the haiku...
esp. the western haiku... or a maxim:
i abhor maxims...
but if you put Kant into the juicer
and you spit out the congested
categorical imperative...
and it doesn't sound like the original, should:

act only according to that maxim whereby you can,
at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

id est:

act only according to that haiku whereby you can...
at some distant point of time,
convene for it be a shared experience
in the ratio of a 1:2 point of seperation...
2:4 4:8 8:16...
but that's not really a categorical imperative
to begin with... what sort of "idiot" would strive
for a maxim to become a universal law...
universal laws are maxim spin-offs...
or i'm just blah-blahing too much...
waiting dear god: for the razor's edge (and drowning)...
or a punchline on stage in front of a dumb / mute
audience...

o.k. 5-7-5...
syllables... given the japanese don't use
letter but have syllables instead...
again: i'm not a fan...
if it took my long enough...
i'd find my 5 syllables and my 7 and again
my 5 syllables...
but i am a westerner...
i deal with letters... i don't deal with syllables...
unless they are prefixes akin to trans-...
meta-... anti-... post-...
the western adoption of the haiku implies
the boredom achieved from too many
sonnets... is the haiku the new sonnet?

i'll try... but i'll need to open a dictionary
for this effort...

water knee deep truce (5)
to the drowning man imploring (8)
signature the soul with this last breath (9)

or however many... it's just a passing thought:
i don't know how it would be worthwhile
to think inside a box... standing outside it
to begin with...
a haiku and no punctuation:
if you're going to be puritanical about it...
no punctuation?!
no diacritical markers?!

the Kant reference is just to ease up on:
who the hell would live by a maxim,
a stand-alone maxim at that...
one maxim to make it into the realm
of gravity...

there's the plethora of aphorisms that
are observations that... well...
let's just say it's no an imitation game... (

since how the hell does:
how dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
all of the above?
darwinism in images:

stopped climbing trees...
stopped being furry...
stopped dreaming about snakes...
stopped fearing snakes...
stopped wrestling with tigers...
stopped king kong versus tiger gorgon...
jumped into a whale...
came out sonar Jonah with hell'io Job
to boot...
stopped climbing trees...
took toward the complexity
of climbing rocks...
esp. boulders... later desired
the great big button of a cookie i.e.;
desired the moon...
brewed some moonshine...
build the mirror corridor
at Versailles...
dug up lazy dinosaur bones of
that thick glutton splodge and...
retired the horse... drove a car...
etc. etc.: came across
the happy birthday of death by
gregory corso and said:
that be one of the best recitations
of poetry i have ever heard...
in youth and Paris and Paris was
the signature...

all of this but there's still...
how dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
more to the point...
how dignified it is, to walk at one's own
leisure...
a bottle of england's finest ale...
theakston's the old peculier in one hand...
a marlboro cigarette in the other...
how dignified it is...
to walk: but to also walk... at one's leisure...
not running a marathon...
not... running the concrete or the tarmac
dry with new year's even resolutions
to loße mass... (yes... since weight involves
gravity blah blah)...

this auto-correct science factoid rubric
around each corner...
i can only admit that walking...
is a sport for gentlemen...
cognitive ping pong ensues...
a solo game... perhaps...
it's not a matter of sport...
or attempting gentlemanly stature...
which could be the case...
say... if i were 75... years old...
but...

that's all fine and dandy... the psychology
behind darwinism 2.0
not even copernicus made it that far
with his "revolutionary discovery"...
or not that Ptolemy was still...
index... bibliography and historical
constipation when attempting to be
democratic and historical...
in a single poo'em... with no rhyme...
and certainly no overt-technique biases
to: "identify with"...

it's still an image burning in my head...
the gorilla that would / could wrestle
a lion to sleep with a ripped-off jaw...
the thumb-king of the jungle
and the savannah...
and of course the donning of the conquered's
mane...

but beside all the discoveries in the past
and the present...
i will find myself smirking...
laughing to myself...
that someone will find this too...
i can't stress it enough:

when i see people driving their cars...
some fast, some slow...
walking onto a bus is not a leisure activity...
it's not even a dignity...
it's a time-warp... a short-cut...
besides the point...

even this brain sometimes allow for
the dignity of walking to be eclipsed...
what its sometimes-odd bursts of egomania /
megalomania or all those other:
traits of the rational man...

perhaps this is the first day i've truly
appreciated the sensibility of walking -
much more in that: it became a dignity...
like the time i found the antithesis of narcissus
in my shadow...
once upon a nightly promenade
in the english outer-suburban labyrinth...
20 minutes walk from the fields,
grazing horses... foxes, badgers and...
no wordsworthian naturalism... i.e. the idyll...

superior intelligence, the fork,
the knife, the screwdriver the *****...
the hammer and the nail...
the scythe, the sickle and the lollipop...
the telephone the radio the television
the soap opera addicts...
the bedsheets the bed the cushion
the shampoo and soap...
all of it... but none of it at the same time...
with what comes a priori and with
what comes a posteriori...
the dignity of walking...
perhaps the only state of grace...

perhaps less "abilism" and more - upon reflection...
a mother strapped to a bed
after a hip-replacement surgery?
i.e. in a personal, very personal,
non-Teheran specific vicinity?!

perhaps the most basic meditation is required...
nothing grandiose...
nothing temporal or non-temporal...
something basic...
i.e. spatial... a meditation on cross the street
like a mindful hedgehog that you are...
and not panic driven like a mother goose
with her nursery...

walk long enough and you can even
experience bouts of spontaneous amnesia...
which is not related to actual memories
and their totality...
more in the immediacy: amnesia ex cogitans...
amnesia out of thinking...
10 minutes apart and you can almost
forget what you were thinking of...
10 minutes more pass... the labyrinth spits
you out and you recover from that temp.
bout of crucible amnesia: to forget what you
were thinking about...
which is a variant to that other escapism
of day-dreaming...
since you're walking... and no day-dreamer
is synonym of the thinker who also walks...

this variant of escapism comes of its own
accord... perhaps it's an ontological built-in-mechanism
that when you couple walking with thinking...
you'll most certainly experience these
bouts of "amnesia"... which of course doesn't
include walking in circles... but in a labyrinth
of your unconscious motives...
that the body is dissociated from a conscious will...

since... what sort of thinking exists
on a treadmill... or during running... to begin with?

how  dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
dignified in that: one is not so much able
to come across one's best ideas there...
but that one can simply come across... cogitans per se
-

yes... i.e.: to be free from cogito ergo sum...
to come across the res cogitans medium...
only while walking...
and not like Descartes imagining oneself
sitting at a desk of doubt...

i find no better alternative: walking opens up...
thinking-in-itself... sometimes that's merely translated
as: being... it does not specify / reveal itself
as a: necessity of narration...
thinking is not narration is not thinking...
if you have experienced the ugly spontaneity of
the ego... in that vein of psychology's
three-tier meta-brain dissection of the mind:
subsequently the soul... blah blah...

now i see... this has become a sit-down meditation...
it has to end...
now that the arms have been employed for
a period longer, than the legs were employed
for, prior.
Tony Tweedy May 2022
A flash of light upon the sky
and dinosaurs were gone.
In a universe that knew them not,
and held no memory to live on.

Of ourselves our human kind,
we think the universe holds us dear.
Through time and vastness of it all
so doubtful it knows we're here.

So many things come and gone
forever changing it still evolves.
Too short is our human existence
to see how all of this resolves.

We think our kind important
a central purpose for it all.
But the universal scale of things
serves to remind our place is small.

We will never know its purpose,
and may never know if there was plan.
But rest assured my fellow humans,
our path will be as the dinosaurs
when the universe recycles man.
Ryan O'Leary Mar 2019
Ireland is beginning to
look like India, we are
just as *****, filthier in
fact, when one considers
the population ratio, not
to mention our so called
affluence and no military
navy or airforce to ****
from the nations coffers.
The Irish Republican Army
funded themselves, yet the
government proscribed them.
The only efficient organisation
in the country, our Hezbollah.
Now they are anti democracy,
trying to do to The Brexiters
what they complained of here
for centuries, not recognised.
Ireland is beginning to look
like India, our flags are similar,
so is our Prime Minister, perhaps
he doesn't notice the litter, that's
it, Plastic Popadoms, recyclable.
Lawrence Hall Dec 2018
The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord
Borne to Glastonbury, the Isle of Avalon
By the holy man of Arimathea
Then lost, and quested for by noble knights

The Holy Grail is present still, each day
In vessels blessed for sharing Eucharist
Whose Elevation in the Upper Room
Was then, is now, and forever will be

In setting fit, in prayerful accord:
The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.


Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Swanswart Aug 2016
This poem is green
Would you buy this poem?

This poem is do-it-yourself
backyard garden green.
This poem is save the world
give peas a chance green;
this poem is azure sky
squeezing the golden sun
all over the world green.
Could you buy this poem?

This poem is apples and oranges
farmer’s artist market green.
This poem has
leaves as pillows
and blankets as grass;
this poem is a lil’ patch of green
earth purchase me plot;
this poem is  
100%
recyclable
disposable,
sustainable
  (after all it has gotten this far)
You should buy this poem.

This poem is green,
its’ tyro-technics
shooting out of asphalt cracks.
This poem is a snot-nosed brat
full of SASS
(short attention span sentences)
This poem is the hope of audacity.
This poem is fumbling with bra straps
and tongue-tied techniques,
this poem isn’t old enough
to know any better, it’s wet
behind the ears green
petting zoo pellets green
willing to SCREAM green
but not part of
a gang green
this poem is all alone
with its words
Buy this poem?

This poem is green
Its envious of
solar panel studios with eyes on the price
of a venti economy
This poem is the green-eyed monster
of product placement pick-o-the profit
This poem WANTS to make
consumer obedience the easy culprit.
But really…
This poem just wishes it could sing
Won’t you buy this poem?

This poem is green.
This poem has no half-life,
shelf life or
night life.  
This poem exists solely in this moment
of your imagination.

This poem has milk carton desperation.
This poem is begging for change.
This poem was stolen from all of you.
This poem is not for sale.
Buy This Poem!
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
December 25 - 28, 2010


Stuck in Miami, Florida, because of bad weather in NYC.
Composed after reading the poetry of Campbell McGrath, who lives in Miami.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
­
electric pinpricks of
unfamiliar red and green lights,
bedroom traffic guidance
courtesy of a stranger's
tv and cable box,
an emblematic totem tonight,
of my physical dislocation,
reminders that I'm enslaved
by weather machinations.

I lay, resting uneasy,
in a strange bed,
one night too many,
snow storming in my head
snow storming up north aplenty,
a blizzard of ruminations are
my white coverlet,
while stuck in Miami.

faraway drifts have
force fed and freed
an imprisoned restlessness,
a multipurposed, slashing.

Miami midnight incision has
let out the bad humors,
let in an unfamiliar odor -
lechón asado,
which texts my Pharisee nostrils
in Cubano,
words muy ironico,
a single waking thought,
"who ya kidding?"

Everglades rain
imported from California,
recycles on rooftops,
thrumming a heart beating,
syncopated, watery refrain,
a regifted heavenly present.

the sound waves mark
as a barely undulating wave,
inside this super soaked brain,
that transforms wine into water
and scan lines into these letters,
"who ya kidding?"

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing, are his
defrocked muses annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
coronets trumpet his unmasking,
this essay, a revelation,
a product of their
harmonious discordancy.

a single note crowns his head
as he weeps whole food
organic, non-recyclable tears,
products of his new inquistional,
a self-inflicted interogatorial,
"who ya kidding?"

compiler of an
occasional talented catch phrase,
strung'em together like
cheap pearls,
pretensions of literary acumen
once populated his Id,
articles of spilled word *****,
but Florida rain has cleansed
his Northern haughty pretensions,
with an injection of truth serum,
a pharmaceutical wonder of
a local poison labeled,
"who ya kidding?"

A day laborer, nothing more,
rise up at five, brown bagged,
a client of Mammon's *****,
soul sagged, life hagged,
a sum of cultural cliches,
a cell phoned baby boomer,
a would be millennial,
constructed of paper mache,
who on occasion,
has been known to say,
"Let's play poetry today."

the poseur chokes
on this new poison,
delivered by unhappy stance
by the arrows of his
current misfortune
for he now suffers from
the deadly disease of
"compare and contrast."

a slim book of poems
of Campbell McGrath's
(his phraseology,
a veritable theology)
shoos the blues traveler,
over to a funhouse
where an honest magic mirror
cuts him down to size.

his poetic aspirations,
a residue of self-infatuation,
are summarily dismissed by
the truly gritty, quick justice
of a master poet's
"who ya kidding?"

so watch how a would-be
poet disappears,
in a barrage of bullets marked,
nevermore,
his dignity, more than hobbled,
his cheek, gone, gobbled,
his juice, a currency unaccepted,
his holiday present,
a ceasefire of conjugation,
a cornucopia of declinations

dare I ever write again?
who indeed, am I kidding,
other than myself?

I am an addict, not a poet.
My eyes are all dried up I can't cry anymore
Even if I could I wouldn't waste my tears
It's all in the wrist a simple twist of fate
You have a beginning before you have a finish
When you **** one out it's not the end
Just dig in and pay the price of the ticket
Fire yourself out of a hundred foot cannon
And choose your death before you fade away
Slap your woman on the *** and show her you love her
Let her know that after the fact you'll still be there
Pass on the torch and roll another number
Lay you to rest before you turn into another.
It’s time to take down all the decorations,
They look tatty with no celebrations
to give them purpose,
Bauble’s shine turns to rust,
The tinsel starts wilting
Like flowers left in a vase.

Fragments of sellotape cling to the wrapping paper,
And grab at the walls and window ledges it passes on its way to the fire
Trying to escape death.
At least a kind of death.
Floating up out of the flume to be part of a white Christmas for next year.
A flake of ash that ice molecules wrap themselves around to become a snowflake,
And to think you used to be wrapping paper.

So much tasted of last year,
How much is recyclable?
How much to care about complacence of wastage?
How much should I shed a tear?
How much should I care for carbon footprints and ******* tips?
I don’t want to care at all
It’s too much baggage.

All I want is to fly this year,
I’ll make a kite from the bones of the Christmas tree,
The baubles and tinsel and snow spray stripped,
Now bare of all personality.
Maybe it will fly…
If it doesn’t,
There will always be next year,
Until there isn’t…
…And even when I die someday,
Maybe I will get to be a snowflake.
  And I’ll get to fly that way.
Mateuš Conrad May 2018
how often do I have to return to the comparison
of dogs, when my patience and
social formality is tested...
         and without these piquant passions
I'd... well I wouldn't even try to
become an oriental monk or a
Bangladeshi yogi (if that's what you're
asking)...
            guess it will never be in my heart
to turn my blood blue
and pretend to blush like Vishnu...
then again: maybe there are no monarchs
seated on the stools of cashiers,
at a supermarket?!
       perhaps older women should be
taught not to serve your men buying
alcohol, thinking that they are en route
to the men in their life...
     whatever the story,
          but for god's sake,
   just because I've taken my headphones
off and slipped them into the neck
of my t-shirt doesn't mean I'm: suddenly deaf...
ah faaaa'ck the woman's comments
ruined my afternoon moon which
subsequently ruined this classic pasta
bake I was making...
            because that sort of commentary
from a supermarket cashier isn't on...
PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE BORING JOBS...
THEY HAVE EASY JOBS
    WHICH MAKES THEM BORING...
and I'd love to see a bunch of these
supermarket staff spend one summer
covering the roof of the Scottish Widows
HQ near St. Paul's:
   WORK ON A CONSTRUCTION IS...
    ARBEIT!
            you don't have a chance to
scratch your backside let alone
think about flamingo coloured clouds
to, "pass the time"...
          can't exactly expect a job,
devoid of physical exertion,
and somehow wish for an intelectually
budding focus point to counter...
  people have "boring" jobs because
they don't have as much physical investment
in it... and not every job, made easy,
is guaranteed intellectual prosperity...
albeit there are some "easy" jibs
that nonetheless require a sense of
the other, id est: responsibility -
exemplum gratis: a crane operative...
      roofing is a menial task,
albeit with the meniality of the labour
eased by a physical investment...
all these, menial / "boring" jobs?
   exactly, where once it would be equated
to toiling in the field...
          no intelectual expansion,
added to the missing loss of physical strain...
hey presto, you have kings and queens,
literal ******* monarchs on supermarket
cashier stools!
      MANTRA:
    remember to have the cool of
an alsatian, rather than the bark of
  dachshund (repeat that x3)...
WHY?!
    loose tomatoes, on the vine...
even at the self-checkout the checkout
machines have, a ******* weighing
mashine for the cashier,  
    by her generous graces: to ******* use!
if this sort of cashier is so
******* expendable, why the hell have
supermarket cashiers in the first place?!
people have a knack,
at making them expendable...
    this poem would not have come to life
if the supermarket installed self-checkouts...
because?
******* dinosaur...
    I can understand going to the butcher stall
or the fishmonger stall and receiving
a barcode sticker...
    fresh fruit and veg. in a supermarket?
    does it ******* look like I'm
at Spitalfields?!
    sorry, Poles can't own shops, can't work
in shops, will always return to
shopping during the Marshal Law days
paranoid about the Soviet invasion...
fresh tomatoes, every self-checkout
machine has the option of weighing
loose veg...
    yet there she is, a twitching
a.i. in waiting recyclable with a question
(prior to the suggestion of my deafness...
no, the sound of cars doesn't fill
me with a techno romance, music thank you,
can't summon a ******* sparrow
even if I waned to):
WHY AREN'T THESE TOMATOES WEIGHED?
mantra: remember to have the patience
of an alsatian...
     oh, sorry, could you just put
them to the side?
   the barcode road ended...
     SELF-CHECKOUT MACHINES
HAVE A LIBRA FUNCTION!
YOU CAN DO MORE THAN JUST SCAN
BARCODES! YOU ARE SUPPOSED
TO WEIH LOOSE VEG!
   THE SUPERMARKET HAS HAD A FRESH
DELIVERY! SEASONAL PRODUCE WILL
NOT BE PACKED IN SOME *******
JUST OUTSIDE OF MADRID AND SHIPPED
WHEN LOCAL PRODUCE HAS JUST BEEN
BROUGHT IN, AND IS SOLD LOOSE,
BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN BAUGHT IN BULK,
THE SUPERMARKET HASN'T PAID FOR
BARCODE PACKAGING...
expendeble human being...
     and god, I sometimes wish I could
bark like a duchshund whenever
a mosquito-bite's moment of irritation
      came like that on every
occasion...
          little dogs bark...
I haven't the energy most of the time...
so I have the mantra:
save the barking and go straight
for the bite...
        hence the alsatian...
             currently there's a "debate"
about: disabled people protesting for
almost 20 days about receiving
     an increased living allowance...
and I'm like: you sure a ****** would
have insulted my hearing
     and did a job worse than I would
have done using a self check-out?
        all ******* smiles if they were
given this "menial" task...
   heads full of hot air, smiles all round,
and... on the odd occassion,
a deviation from scanning barcodes...
but I sometimes wish
   I could bark like a little dog
on these mosquito-bite type of scenarios,
as trivial as they are...
   in a supermarket...
    but I can't exactly lunge into
gnarling and biting...
            guess I have to pretend to
be the ever loving, patience of an angel
labrador... type of...
              dog, walking an invisible
blindman...
     hell, the ***** I bought on this
trivial escapade makes the past day
a glitch... and the night:
    open to an endless stream of interpretation...
she was right though,
   I am not the sort of story
behind alcohol that she probably
knows and has moved past
self-pity...
                    all out war of tongue...
well, sure...
    AVE! MENS FACTUS EST ****...
hell, Latin grammar is like
a semitic text,
          right to left...
            doesn't matter if the text
is ancient and was also, once upon
written left to right...
   the grammar might as well be
semitic...
               good that I didn't bark...
           ah...
but to have ended the day and escaped
into the night, with this deadweight
making me bloated?
     the fact that people
can't keep social manners in comment
sections of articles...
           and don't have the capacity
to bash about a pixel blank?
        it's as if these people are so docile
and oblivious to situations
where they could have barked
    but didn't...
    but also: didn't even have
a conflicting argument to not bite...
hence... ha ha...
   the comment sections, those of us
aged 30+... are familiar with.
There is this idea, this feeling you say:
A revelation of profound compassion
Riddled with crippling paramount tribulation
Dribbling with drops of pontification.
Thoughtfully and yet aimlessly kicking
Unctuously vacuous presumptions. Promising,
Eventually, to unveil brick by brick
This facade someday and assure me
The imprisoning edifice, with which you keep
Under lock and key, will be effaced
And naked, soon, someday in front of me.
Yet, here another day passes.
From curbside to manhole, up sidewalks and across gravel grit.
Then a squib toward onlookers window shopping
Glaring down at me as both they and you listen
To my dissonant and hollow caterwaul.
CLING, CLANG, BANG! Look at me I'm just a can!
Crumpled and malleable, a thin sheet of five cent aluminum;
Recyclable, reusable, just a means to a mans end.
Ah! But I am not what you think I am:
Within, a bountiful boisterous bloom, unravels
The arid breath of lies and procrastination you exhume.
Your insipid words fall vapidly in my mind like corroded rust
Gently drifting onto a lapping lake.
They are an erroneous ear infection boring my wits
And dulling my thoughts, a waste of time.
All of it bottled, canned, and manufactured
From within your ******* emporium.
Keep your bricks and mortar, think they retain your unctuous pride
While this time, for once, I kick the can curbside.
Jon Tobias Nov 2011
I am an earthquake

In the desert

Working the rough sand to settle

In my belly

So that the ache in the pit of my gut

Might lose its shape

These shoulder blades feel like wings sometimes

Too bad these hands are prehensile

Not feathered or webbed

Just full of chemo-quake

And tremble

Unless I can hold your hand

Hold my hand

I’ll reverberate your ***** soul to settle

Till we’ve shaken the dust a firmament

Big enough to stand on

I need redemption enough

That stuck in the filter of my cleansing

Is enough dirt to build a hill to stand on

Forget heaven

When I can stand on the land of my past mistakes

And revel in the beauty I left behind

Don’t get left behind

And don’t go to heaven

Just stay with me in the middle

Where I have managed to compact this broken to solid

Like a ghost in a landfill

Haunt these hollow halls of filth with me

Until ***** is all that’s left

***** is all that is left

I understand that you might want to bathe sometimes

Not everyone can live like I do

Not everyone shares my infatuation

With broken things like I do

Let me get you just a little *****

Let me break you too

Let me recycle our fuckery

Till the filaments fit

I am a “found” artist

Making the broken beautiful

What everyone keeps forgetting

Is that even we are recyclable

And there isn’t anything that cannot be rebuilt

So let me make a new heaven

So that I can be like a ghost

Haunting a landfill
Stuck in my car. Thank you phone.
Kristine May 2016
I’m nothing but ink
I’m bleached pulp dyed blue and red
Recyclable
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2022
an interstellar vacuum
is far from empty,
all the water in the universe
is melted comets,
and it floods all reason.

bloodstar from afar
or Cape Canaveral close,
no astral projection there,
only a cipher in a foreign quadrant
until...teardrops,
big, wet, unsympathetic drops.

hear it now!
the sonic boom of
marooned tourism,
in short shots,
fast cuts,
horizonal eddy currents
ripe with thorns,
like lakes of suspicion,
if God is listening
then this mission is in trouble.

downcycled planet in the wires
and cigarette lighters,
a home without space,
Andromeda chained in sacrifice
to sate the monster,
her punishing beauty
cascading over the peril
that everything in the universe
is recyclable – even you!
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
lawyers don't use dictionaries... they use thesauruses... why would a lawyer use a dictionary in the first place? to get a concrete meaning? i hate how novelists are still prone to use that infernal tool... if a dictionary is a compedium, having precipitated from philosophy, and how the encyclopedia is a precursor of the scientific method... then the thesaurus is nothing but the end result of jurisprudence... that branch of philosophy that doesn't really have morality as the central piece of its care for a compass... the thesaurus exists for the sole purpose of man exercising "law", or as the poetics of Moses said: you will "know" the "difference" between good and evil... clearly the conjunction and means we wouldn't know, hence the existential either / or... but more precisely: between neither good or evil... of law and the thesaurus and the juggling circus act of synonyms and sharpening flint stones... and looking for words, and shallow ground and a bias for a fully established mono-personnae vocab with a dictionary.... or at least that's how i like to think of it: that the basis for humanity expressing a moral obligation of law is settled by creating a counter-intuitive fluidity of language... the holy bible of the strand of philosophy that deals with moral will, i.e., jurisprudence, is set in the thesaurus... there's no point referring to the dictionary and law books... i'd discard the dictionary completely... after all, dictionaries will never teach you anything rhetorical... you begin learning law by learning to avoid the dictionary, and equpping yourself with the thesaurus, no wonder i once called it thesaurus rex, the idea that humanity has any foggiest about expressing law, rather than finding a law, like that of gravity, is precisely why the scaffolds took to the stage, and the guillotine in the french revolution...  but i am capable believing man can bake a decent loaf of bread... not so naive in a belief that all law and justice stems, as it does indeed stem, from a book, like the thesaurus.

i have a very due exposure of what a 21st century
poem currently looks like: i write horror,
  but i wait for the music to become translated...
   aren't we the ones to write
the most kept, most worthwhile
secrets the next man might
wish, or care to encounter...
i write under the one pretense
that modern people don't
dive into amnesia of forgetting
classical music, as i know
they will, when they only listen
to classical music in cinema...
a *vide cor meum
from hannibal
(cassidy),
or from seven...
bach, g string & violin concerto no. 1...
at least applying classical music
to the genre of horror in the cinema
can lace us to universal memories...
tender hands, oh such tender porcelain hands...
bitten by the frost...
bitten by all except my teeth and lips
to dare perform the custom of lip unto knuckle,
like a knight,
         bound to receive the slap across the cheek...
so much less with ego-ego bonding...
as much as Hegel might presume...
that my love to no gravity of womb be secured
the imagination lost with the reactive
tendency for *****-count...
            and how horror really is the basis
for ensuring movies are filled with music...
if so much of life is equipped with having lost it...
unless we're sprechen deutsche Dante..
              or what's left to claim there was a spark
of believing the nearest of touches with
Michelangelo depiction of the gemini architects...
juliusz słowacki: the clad angel,
szatanioł -
   who's books i never read, and instead read
Kraszewski, or so the world is understood to be left
in the mechanism of constant continuum...
but this is only an imitation poem...
   how cruel, how unkind, the world surrouding us,
that our friends become our enemies,
and that after, so few and ever fewer to be accounted
for are asked to be friends, or can be...
how i will never life in Venice,
or Tuscany,
  and how i can be laid naked and senile,
not having a venture into these pockets of paradise
as a tourist,
   how can such places remain intact as fictional
oasis, enclosed in history books, and there
be read about, among egos and bookwoorms,
and have one soul, eager to think about them,
not having trodden a single banknote of pavement
in them, to not have bought a cup of coffee in them...
it's a sadness realised, and never forgotten,
but at least never beaming to have been
undone from such an arithmetic, as to have done so...
with only two words as remedy:
Kant & Königsberg - it almost begs to revise
the concept of nationalism, starting with the stated
example, as the face to resemble local avenues
lost, or foremostly undiscovered.
localism, first, then we can gain the gateway toward
nationalism, and the drift, the tide;
only when things are assured to have taken to
local "journalism" can we explore a world,
and thereby a happening / being in it...
what Kant lived, heidegger excelled in describing,
just the local, the mundane,
the: if you don't have what you like...
be content with what you do have, and be content
with it, as if it were something you would like to have.
so much concerning the study of being is formulated
upon the basis of not having;
  to me being is not having...
not possessing; so much of being is about
   not having, not possessing...
why pirates always overshadow the adventure of
clinging to the seas...
why pirates are the worth romantics easily translated
onto the silver-screen, and why admiral become
shoved and scarecrow stuffed into libraries with
dust and bookworms that wish:
that a moth might wake up, when a book it opened.
that it becomes self-evident that it's better
to possess and have, and not-be, than it is to be...
in that layering that's known to be man,
we're last in attempting a human feat...
to ascribe ourselves being human,
is to describe ourselves having roles...
   for by not ascribing ourselves the role of man,
we act with impetus to congest the world
with have, for there is no possession
in the ethereal, or with god alone... and that means:
yhwh will hardly translate into the n.e.w.s. or
the crucifix vector with the satanic lie from mt. sinai,
as the chinese are ready to prove
not being convinced, or converted...
only by acting with impetus to congest the world
with "having" it, claiming ownership of it,
can we act by deviating from claiming the sole role
of being men, and therefore like an oak
reduced to tooth-picks, call claim to
the industrialisation of meats, pork, beef, paultry,
and lay our foundations for the seemingly
countless examples of occupying space...
and the professions that come with it...
   until an enzyme akin to space-time emerges,
and as technology catches up to our comforts,
and says: we have to insert a revision,
a limit, a robotic schedule for the jobs that
are, well... pointless...
   then we worry... what with taxi drivers and uber apps,
and bus drivers and robot steered cars and the Docklands
light railway...
               and why lawyers will always be there,
a bit like us, dictionary prone, and them,
stretching the contempt for humanity having
a content for prescribing law as if contending for having
invented gravity, and using nothing,
but a thesaurus...
they should have just said it! *****!
there is no basis for jurisprudence working from
the 0 of a dictionary, a 0 meaning: plateau...
sea-level... jurisprudence does not even
acknowledge the existence of a dictionary...
when poetry, philosophy and all the other arts
use the dictionary as a reference point...
jurisprudence, or the practice of law
only uses the thesaurus... as do some writers,
who try to look smart for about a second
when they're looking through their recyclable *******
of a novel that takes 3 years to write:
milk bottle, tin can, milk bottle, amazon wrapping,
newspaper... law: same ****, different cover.
Kate Herrell Mar 2011
a partial lobotomy of grey matters only to broken mothers of lost soldiers,
pentimento fading a revelation of humanized
modernized sentiment beyond the reaches of fingerless hands;
jagged bangs cut across the face of Burn-Victim Barbie if she were
seven feet tall,
imperfect,
9-dimensional shattered knees.
vote or die downward spiral protecing six-fingered man of mystery:
my name is the youth of America,
you killed my voice,
prepare to suffer in the solitary expression of the empty room.
peanuts for peanuts in a gold star self emporium with
thinking as a feeling sport contested by numerology in all matters moral.
Our very own
Satan as Hamlet,
set in a post-9/11 forgotten Washington,
drowning Ophelia in an ocean of plastic bottles non-recyclable.
meditation of the Om on a springboard of economic dis-stimulus:
up with the people!
in the midnight Vendetta,
too young to learn or sin originally,
masterful drunkenness shrouded in opera scenes from a hat.
fast track to a treble cliff diver
if you ever were my home.
Jessie Nov 2013
Significant others
believing all others insignificant
little did they know
what they know is very little
how can we love at this age
when love is, in fact, age
oh fine wine
and here I am
drinking Bud Light
out of a *******
aluminum
recyclable
can
Max Reinhart Oct 2012
There's a room somewhere,
locked fast behind an unassuming door
looming grey-brown at the end of a
misshapen corridor.

Inside, the relics of a time lost in time
to time.

A mitt, engraved with the counterfeit signature
of a ballplayer whose name once rang a bell,
smelling of adolescent sweat,
still dusted with sandlot crumbs,
a reminder of those ground *****
that sped by too fast to field,
those fly ***** just out of reach,
suspended in a June twilight
lost to time.

Ribbons and awards and certificates,
signed by leaders of puny regimes
paved and repaved over,
proof of a world before this,
an era of (now) perceived achievement,
legitimized, glorified by Old English type
printed on recyclable stock paper.

Ticket stubs from blockbuster flops,
receipts of a linear plotline:
Drama, comedy, a budding romance -
Temporarily amusing on such a spacious screen
but ultimately unfulfilling;
the plot peters towards the end.

Lost in time the boy cries out
with no one left to answer but the man
who, as quietly as he entered it,
exits the room,
as always, leaving the door just ajar,
enough to muffle the shrieks of a little boy
chasing an invisible horizon.
Mitchell Dec 2013
Night fell
And we witnessed the brilliance of man's folly,
Every note falling in deciduous perfection;
Even prayers can be lost.

The stars flashed on,
The sun was nowhere to be found, and
And the moon belched like a drunken pirate,
Bending the trees and sending their leaves
Skyward, off to wherever they go.

There was a whisper
Between the blades of grass
We laid on.

There was a worry
Clouding over you
That told me there
Was to be more.

Candy cane fragrance
With a dash of cinnamon salt.

Grinning through the darkness,
We touched palms like children,
Caught in that blue jay dance.

Morning came like mist over a hill.
Our eyes fluttered open and close.
She rose first, then I rose with her.
We met by the window and looked down on the street,
Both of us feeling the fleeting of a feeling.

Secondary rituals over coffee and pastries.
The sun came through that café window like a shotgun blast.
And when she paid and left,
A kiss on the cheek for cordiality,
She dropped a note that read "Until next time."

When you don't see another for some time,
You wonder what they came to be.
A periwinkle ***** of 5 cents a pound,
Or a river lady loon that sang without a sound?
The maze has many turns, until you reach the end.

Those monsters
Under your bed,
Their color's shining
Ox blood purple and red.

They told me your name.
They scribbled your address.
They want what you have.
They're wondering why your'e so stressed.

When she came by the place again,
I wasn't home, so she dropped me another note.
This one had only one word:

HI

I can't lie.
I was quite
Surprised.

I thought she
Would have
Less to say.

Two days past.
A knock on my door.
Moon light's *******
Stretched into my
Living room window.

My couch held her like an egg in a carton.
Toad colored hat latched around her head.
Hair covering her eyes, her mouth, her broken nose.
She wore orange flip flops, wiggling her toes.
A zit planted in the middle of her forehead like white rose.

She asked why I hadn't called her.
I told her that I didn't have a number.
She talked about her soon to be dead father.
I sat down to listen, thinking of my forgotten brother.
We talked with a space between us for a long time.

When she began to cry, she came to me,
Like a bee to a flower or a fly to fresh ****.
I felt her hand on my chest and her breath in my left ear;
There's no guilt like the wicked
And there's no faith like the religious kind.

Hand in a hold.
Love is a recyclable mold.

The tattered priest protects the walls
Of his splintered sanctuary.
Every dream had
Is another man's
Discarded memory.

Oh my sins, my sins,
Where should I begin?

When you're born to lose,
There's no thought to win.

6 months past
And still, she came.
Our love for one another
Was a knot
I couldn't untie.

A year past
And the stars and the moon
Were a cure that
Blanketed our child, our family.

Living our days out,
Mixing poison and penalty,
Running from a life
That showed any shred of reality.

Buried side by side
Underneath a bent orange tree,
I died one day,
She dying the other.

We use the leaves of Fall
For cover,
And the blossoming buds of Spring
For something
To reach for.

When I say the maze is long
And that the hours are heavy,
I meant not for your blankets to fall cold
Or for your room to awash with darkness.

She came to me that day,
Just like someone will come for you.
And I had no choice,
But to attune.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
i get bored of using websites
with only strangers on them,
it's like trying to be a stage-fright
actor imitating statues,
it's almost but a too
clear bewilderment;
i wonder why the internet was never
intended for the sole purpose of
bureaucracy, trading, banking,
and all those social requirements,
the dark side of the internet isn't
the dark web as such, it's the oddity
of using the internet to socialise,
the hindering, the crutch, when otherwise
all benefits of the internet have
proven effective, for example?
the shrinking diversity of the high street;
large and accessible world,
yet no community in the vicinity,
and then friendships 12 hours apart,
and then you step onto the streets of suburbia
and death's grinding grip of things,
because, let's face it, the bright lights
and constant social engagements will only
appreciate you for as much time as necessary
to feel over-confident and then you're
easily recyclable - and then the pre cemetery:
suburbia.
Chloe May 2015
Give him everything you are.
Strip yourself to bare skin with chills on your spine.
Wishbones and collar bones,
your ribs protruding through your shirt.
He doesn't like fat girls.
So love begins on your knees in a bathroom stall
10 minutes after lunch.
Stomach acid burns your esophagus.
"I wonder if his **** going down will hurt as bad as ***** coming up?"
Be skinny.
Be everything he dreams.
Quiet, soft, subtle, pretty and confused.
Be this, that, and everything in between.
Be willing.
Be recyclable.
Be trash.
Broken glass in your retinas,
don't look him in the eye.
Let him have every part of you,
but hold back the feelings.
Be emotionless.
Be empty.
Now hope to god its enough for him to stay.
Ignore every part of you screaming
"he doesn't love you".
Unbutton your pants, pull off your *******
and reply,
"But I can make him."
I did this with 48 different guys.
Edna Sweetlove Aug 2015
One of Barry Hodges' (aka Edna's)  charming "Memories" poems

I was in the office with my colleague plump Bet
[totally one of the filthiest ***** I have ever met,
a woman so indiscriminate in selecting a bloke
that no one could be ugly enough to miss out on a poke]
When we heard the news about the Twin Towers attack,
And dear Betty was seized laughing, an aphrodisiac
So fervent it resulted in her gobbing out a lump of phlegm
Green and hideously noisome, a truly lovely gem;
"Splot"* it went onto the floor, lying there reminiscent
Of a frog hit by a passing ten ton lorry laden with cement.

I recognised the symptoms of her desire unfolding
Only too well; I knew that when she got really going
With a frenzied bout of combined giggling and regurgitation,
Only one thing could bring her back to cruel reality: mass copulation.
Thus you will not need to be a polymath to realise and know
That what fat Bet required was to be ******, fast not slow,
By at least half a dozen strong hairy men of lengthy measure
And preferably up her fat ******* for max sensual pleasure,
Whilst she doled out ******* to anyone who offered
To risk their ***** in her mouth so kindly proffered.

Thus it came to pass that I rushed through the corridors
And yelled out to one and all "Betty's got the ******",
Whereupon every red-blooded chappie in the office
[including the one-legged dwarf printer Smelly Boris,
he of the infamous wart-encrusted, donkey ****]
Dropped what he was doing and rushed to the fray headlong
Eager to get their hands on waiting Bet, without fear,  
To give her one up her quivering flabby rear
Before it got too well-stretched, with gape and sag,
Like an old, empty, recyclable, inverted shopping bag.

So, we turned on the TV set to keep an eye on
All the happenings in distant Manhattan
And to keep Bet's state of excitement on the ball;
Dear reader, if anyone ever asks me "Old chap, do you recall
Where you were when the WTC came down?"
I can't forget
That, eager to get stuck in, I had just got my turn with waiting Bet,  
And seeing I was twelfth in line to give her a good poking
Her ***-hole was well and truly greased for action, O 'twas soaking.
In conclusion, my hearing was seriously damaged by her sublime
Multi-decibel screams of lust. Begorrah, but I had a grand old time.
Francie Lynch Aug 2014
I'm raining,
Draining with flotsam,
Washing onward
To the gutter.

I'm decomposing,
Recomposting
On the truck
To the dump.

I'm recyclable,
Reuseable.
Re-fashion me
For a different life.
Hold my hand through the bars,
we can learn how to live all over again.

Mind your Ps and Qs, keep them in a penny purse.
wear your orange jump suit backwards,
live out your sentence in reverse.

Crinkled, crumpled and recyclable,
throw yourself away.

You know that it'll take eleven kps
for any real escape,
yet you try nonetheless.

The sticks and stones, the pebbles I've thrown
don't leave traceable dents.

There’s a mountain made of
boxes I nailed shut, long ago
I mailed them to myself, with a shove.

Up to your cell, wobble towers,
tiny boxes creating stairs

The edges curled, cardboard grew ridges,
the cutout dream
caught fire to my bridges.

We couldn't have turned back,
had we tried.

Etched into the walls,
messages to future prisoners;
instructions on avoiding cafeteria calls.

Hiking boots with cleated treads
for steep hills, rocky cliffs.

The extents gone to freeing the caught,
comfortable behind their striped shadows
are left unnoticed and left to clot.

Used napkins on tourist ferry seats,
cheap asian sauce hiding jail blueprints.

Hide in the elevator shaft,
I’ll meet you in the back stairwell.
You bring life jackets, I’ll bring the raft.

We can pretend the verdict swung
and go back to being free enough to visit supermarkets.
Rebekah Wilson Sep 2018
I'm an environmentalist;  
                                            
                                             I keep my friends recyclable.
Zulu Samperfas Dec 2013
Luminol when sprayed on a cleaned wall
that was once stained with the blood of a human being
will light up every splatter, and reveal the crime scene in all it's
chaotic splendor, even after years of careful hiding

Things happen every day in my creamy, dreamy life
moods, like the calm bay that hides the sharks underneath
the blood splatter of the natural cycle is covered in blue indistinct waves
while carnage and drama play themselves out in the silent muted depths

And as the bay gets darker the further you go down
especially in the deep canyon where a fervent Japanese submarine snuck
into California waters, and chased a boat around briefly before dissapearing
forever, just as these depths contain mystery and waste
so my thoughts, once so churned and pained, lie dormant and unseen
with the plastic forks that are stuck in the sand
and the plastic bags that move by in the darkness like ghosts
Because beneath the surface, in that deepest groove
is where all the pain and waste and wreck of civilization has accumulated
and is creating a new order in a once pristine reusable recyclable landscape
But I cannot see my depths, only try to feel them
in a primitive way, like sonar--what is this?
A small submersible floats through the deep cold water down there
through the snow flakes of biological residue that is food for life
and it looks at the garbage and sends back a video signal
that this is a warning, of our ceaseless, accumulating destruction unseen
if you refuse
youre refuse
and theyll do
what they do
ahmo Aug 2016
i'm afraid there's nothing left in the tank but fumes and false hope.

aluminum is not a friend, it's a recyclable material that contains happiness when the world turns a blind eye to its ubiquitous pain and i am only a scarecrow in a field full of bodybuilders and terrifying childhood memories.

it's all too much. the emptiness is only invisible when the music bruises my ear-drums or when i think of how your lips and teeth felt on my bones. the band-aids will fall off but your words are branded like factory farms.

the worst part? i'm a sketch left on the easel in an abandoned schoolhouse. i'm a half-assed mannequin. i've translated the seasons into colorless cycles in cyclical misrepresentation. astute observation leads me to believe i'm the product of a meaningless procreation.

shutting off my eyes doesn't feed all of the starving souls who actually want all of this oxygen, and we have false hope that some of these fumes might turn into rice and beans and
the love we've always wanted

but never swallowed.
ahmo Jun 2015
I can't say
my voice has been stolen.
Only frozen.

Somewhere between
the solidification
and the crystallization
was a frigid realization.

Sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
at the 32 degrees.

Sometimes sciences takes a back seat
to  the once-broken, since mended knees.

The mind will fight
but the pen still scribbles a right,
or a wrong,
or something recyclable taken away yesterday.

Now-parallel incomprehensible darkness.
with a voice once frozen.

The light will relentlessly hide
as the rain will inevitably fall.
The frostbite will blacken,
but
you
will
stand
tall.
Francie Lynch Apr 2016
The factory gates are locked,
And there's no work today.
The line-up's getting longer,
And the soup kitchen's closed.
The cardboard box was recyclable
As a home above a vent;
My children have no clothes,
I hear my school's been closed.
Then I hear you call her ****
Because she won't sleep with you.
The lake's been closed, no swimming,
And the park soil is contaminated;
I think we're underestimated.
Clear the area
Before Gilligan removes the head,
Or Hawkeye looses his arms.
This is not a false alarm.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
i mean, i'd love to have an English girlfriend... if she could cook.*

elitism? no, hardly, it's because you're
not someone walking past a beehive
dressed in flowers, doesn't mean anything,
it's not elitist, although poetry naturally
became a snobbish artefact drifting
among easily recyclable material of fond
farewells and petitions to vote and whatnot.

me? i quiet like the gay bitchiness of
Frank O'Hara's poem about the health of
Ginsberg - i imagine all those performers,
the umbilical cord cut from their essence,
having to entertain, repeat, entertain,
repeat, memorising their works
for a rapping cascade, mm yeah, mm, yo,
mm, yeah, *******, mm, yeah, in da'h 'ood,
mm, yeah... i can't forgive them,
they entertain and pulverise their one
potent act, then repeat, Stockholm (repeat),
Paris (repeat), Berlin (repeat), New York (repeat),
to affirm yourself like plagiarising
puppets - it must be horrid - to have
a plughole in you, in you that you require
to block - art becomes more like boxing,
dodging punches of the new, comfortably
sofa, artistry pre-readied to entertain,
no stumbling blocks of a **** poem,
just the continual revival of the true one,
the only one - lost themes of conversation,
no conversation at all, poetry lost to
Spartacus addressing the feeble minded
but eager in heart to ride an elephant for
Hannibal - Aesop biting his nails rather than
cutting them - long live the memory of
a few odds and black sheep -
Frank being ****** - mentions
Auschwitz symphony no. 1 a# of Adolph
Deutsche in that poem *fantasy
-
hey, my pride is on the line, every show i turn
on, after Pope John Paul the 2nd became a
traitor i hear of Eastern European ******
everywhere - by god i too like to ****,
but ******* became a 110m sprint with
scaffold to jump across - prostitutes eased
the problems, no rabbit chase -
i ****** then played Monopoly to ease the flirting
mechanism - categorising man as mammal
breeds man categorising himself elsewhere,
a woman: mantis, a woman: black widow...
once you start categorising yourself as a mammal
and then build a telescope or shove a satellite
into orbit you'll be slightly confusing -
so what's what?
i just bypassed the printing press, nullified editors
and publishers, no one could experience such
freedoms in the 20th century, there's no question
of profit, it's... A MAY ZING...
it's a multiple ****** just now... who gives
a rotten egg's worth of omelette these days?
you see what's getting printed? you've seen the ****?
it's not even worth the softness of toilet paper,
i'm not surprised it's written like a tonne of lard's
worth off heaviness, there's no sprint technique
in the writing, it's a marathon of procrastinating...
a volume concoction of ADHD uno having a trip
flicking a lampshade switch on / off / on / off / on / off
for a month or a week... a real page turner...
well, that's that... sarcasm is dry gin and tonic
with the humours... self-indulgent, but i like that...
i'm just waiting for the trained monkey
to read me the encyclopaedia while cartwheeling...
so if you hiccup that saying: all eastern european
girls became ****** once the iron curtain was lifted,
you're probably right... and being a castrated ****
more or less i'm getting the giggles...
like that time watching a Dutch boyfriend spitting
in his Polish girlfriend's face...
well... if these girls are ******... western men
are *******... leech kiss my entry with this point,
leech kiss more clingy that Judas' -
wankers wankers... wankers.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
i'm rereading a book of published poetry,
and i'm feeling democratic about
fame...
              i got a pencil balancing on my ear
like a non-binge drinking Smurf -
i have a doctor's appointment tomorrow
over the phone: a triage, the bureaucrat
lady is clueless about 20th century
mail... post.. you know, lick the envelope
and lick the postage stamp.
she gets about 20 emails a day worth of
cat videos... ****... it's gonna be painful:
                  i need half a week prior to sending
the notice that i'm almost like an amputee and
i have no recyclable third limbs to attach to the missing
one! woman! understand! she's bonkers about
the calendar and doesn't know
anything about carrier pigeons' intelligence...
woman! not until the date, all mailing services have turned
electronic. no they haven't! the postmen are scared ****-less
but that's beside the point! woman: no, wait until
the exact date of expiration. me: it takes hours
to travel from London to Berkshire!
the transition from 20th to 21st agriculture
of brainwaves, atypical of 19th through
to 20th century differences... she's never learned
arithmetic, but she knows her bureaucratic
rubric limitation like she might know the
holy trinity with the stance: Ayers-rock immobility
to whatever argument might come my way:
this conversation might be monitored and recorded
for "training" / anti-troll purposes -
****, i'm just agonised about the fact that i was
supposed to get a turnip when instead i was sold
parsnip; that can't be good.
but the times i could have taken two girls
to see Aerosmith at Hyde Park
with a joint are long gone, ancient,
fables, Achilles principles the time referencing
to anything curated: passable... turtle mobile...
youth really felt like the Mongolian explosion...
most of the time...
                           people are wondering
why the 1960s didn't work as much as wondering
why Communism was stage-frightened
by the Pope... at the zenith the 1960s was the bomb...
then it fizzled out... by the time Communism
was underneath a heap of Martial Law
Commandments... no wonder the dual failures...
well, because it isn't really Karaoke these days:
but it's sing-along nonetheless:
genius dries up... if it ain't a Mozart,
then its collective (genus), the the fizzling out of
the once fizzy is harder to take on the chin...
**** and puppies!
                            oh sure, a success story
in terms of providing the household appliances,
but in terms of art? a ******* failure...
look at them: never the earnest clappers
and idolatry stinkers... Judases among Judases:
or some said: moralising artists is the best gig in town...
we can bank-out the bankers and all
will be frankly worth ***** trained applause...
and they did that, exactly
to the non-existent prose... they sold out artists
and bailed out bankers...
because the sheep always sway with: b'ah, b'ah...
translated into humanity: blah blah.
but i have to admit, it was fun taking two girls
to an Aerosmith gig in Hyde Park,
passing a joint around...
                    as ever the cenobite...
            well, due to motto:
a ***** don't give, a dog don't take -
                   cos' the elder gent has the influential
              chess-moves apiece: colts to the gutter...
                yep... ******' worth of ******* stutter.
                                        now i have a book
of poetry, alter.: a word about my "sensitivity",
a doctor's appointment at 8 a.m. to no definite hour,
triage takes 5 minutes... the ingenious n.h.s....
              i'm drinking whiskey and staying up all night...
after the appointment for a sick notice
(which, to be frank, the English nation should be
proud of, £120 a week and a free poem in friendly America -
friendly... hmm puff puff a laugh) i'm heading to
my former high school to drop off a book of poems
with the signature: to Meester BUNCE...
     who gave me a poetry assignment aged 16
and made me a poet... (no, not the crass pathetic
rhyming types that make it a living rhyming
in advertisement, rather the new-narrator types) -
i'll correct the publishers errors in pencil
and tell him to keep a copy, and stash another copy
in the school library - he always said:
Shaky rather than Shakespeare - never said poaching
a pear...
                        shaking a spare? shaking a spear?
      it really doesn't matter...
i ought to have a shave and leave the goat
where it is...
                         he wasn't that much for me:
that ingrained emblem of England to later continue:
exacting national pride like Mickiewicz in Poland...
                      these famous people
just get their remains moved many more times
after they die than the living remortgage during their lifetimes.
Mark Thompson Jun 2013
The stripes in one ear.
But through the other, the music of,
timers, chatter, lunch dates, and gossip,
heels clicking across the floor, black, yellow and glossy.
Steam, glass bottles, plastic bottles, recyclable cups and coffee beans and nuts.
Hipsters...
Pomp and derogation and self empowerment your the sake of self indulgence,
and the who knews of what firsts,
and the ******* iPhones!!!
Everywhere looking out there apple eyes, winking at their older brothers,
openly mocking their lack of flash and exclusivity,
(secretly resenting their rarity, in a world washed in white).
Its the 3.
The 4.
The 5, 6, 7, 10!
Look how clean,
Look how much I payed,
Look how little is left of myself, as my own.
I am one.
I am unique.
I am original.
You are one, of a million others.
You are unique, in your perspective of the world.
That of a carriage horse with blinders, led by his driver to buy and throw away and buy again...
You are original.
You are.
You are unique.
You are beautiful.
But you are Nieve, lost in the sea computerized ******* produce.
So you,
you one in a million.
You unique flake of snow, with a pattern all your own.
Let me take you from this place.
To the beginning.
Where the apple got his name.
Where the trees grow fruit to eat.
And the only music is that of the wind.
And the water.
And leaves in the trees.
And when you feel, rather than hear.
You will be the thing you want most.
Yourself.
Yourself alone.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2018
i concede, if you really think
that i have to vote to make democracy
work, fine...
            you can have my right
to veto...
                 but god forbid you come
between me and taking out
recycling "waste" every sunday,
   esp. onion attired
   (t-shirt, t-shirt + a long sleeve
                                      shirt)
and a blue fruit of the loom jumper...
freezing both my imaginary
  **** and testicles off...
       the testicles are the real bit
of this "hermaphrodite" though...
           because what is this critique of
modern painting?
                 sheeeeee't,
                             a re-discovery of geometry?
we only achieved having rediscovered
the cube with picasso...
        sure, an over-quoted example,
       does that mean modern musicians
will re-dicover the orchestral triangle?!
hey, pots and pans with
a drum kit in the universe of
          a butterfly caused a tornado...
but please don't take away my fetish for
taking out recyclable goods,
   i know i wasn't born german,
but living among displaced germans
on an island (i.e. saxons):
    you get a lick as some sort of
compelling impetus to repeat and act...
        it's really bad to cling to rhyming
these days,
            once upon a time that's all
the poets did,
                   i ate
      a piece of pita, bread...
                     esp. in february, which is
arguably the coldest month,
   you can see the moon during the day,
and during the night...
                   it actually makes sense
to recycle...
                      the whole: "re-invention"
of a wheel...
                       sure, hardly a revolutionary
act, but, for some reason
a highly satisfactory "loss of limbs" act...
   because didn't "mediocre"
fester with the most potential for horror?
   though i wonder:
you ever attended a polish catholic mass,
when they recite the creed?
    satanic murmuring to me...
  had to down 200ml of cherry *****
to sit through it...
            because those who attend
the mass at Częstochowa are
gesticulating kneeling, praying, pitying
before the schwarzmadonna
               (ha ha, "irony"...
an etymological curiosity:
           (he) często, chowa...
                           often hides...
               that's the literal translation
for a name of a town...
               the pronoun is in there,
because that's how english functions,
shrapnel... pronouns need to be used
very often, polish?
           sometimes you can talk for
two hours and never use pronouns)...
point being: who are these people
praying to?
              must be the ****** artist
at some point...
            the person who actually drew
the icon...
                  because i find it beyond
contempt to have to
    internalise the subject matter contained
in the painting,
         or what's that objectively?
never ask a lunatic to explain the point
of a church with no one else
shackled to the church in there with him...
        spooks!
              yet as any german might,
i just love taking out the recyclable
materials in orange bin bags...
                     and you really can attest
to a moral compass via this simple feat...
        actually, most times two polacks
talk, you never actually use pronouns...
      hicky over there
   is still paranoid about other people
dropping the A-word,
               but he could sign of Hiroshima
and now he's riding a lazy eyed
donkey with a twitch in one its eyes...
jockeys, camel-jockeys, you name it...
                 i know you can hide a letter,
well, j, but no he(h)sus... zus... ave zeus!
   in that tilde on yer N...
                                but how would to
unravel the R-trill?
                rrrrrrrr-olling?
       in english the R has been numbed...
******* cobra bit the toff's tongue
and he's trying: not to slurr...
                                              r̃obot?
ha­ ha, ******* wavy line...
                     o.k.,
                                          we can do that...
i would have never have known that
R = sysiphus mechanism
    and O.... well, just that dumb piece
of sculpted brick...
                         can't believe it
though...
            so much pleasure from recycling
packaging.
summary...
    crotalus atrox,
    grzechotnik,
                          alternatively known
   as a one "man" band of
                    playing maracas -
    unless you can beat this trill-R on the tongue
representation worth of tilde:
                                        go for it!
   re-inventing the wheel is going to be,
real easy from here-on-in.
Sean Fitzpatrick Jul 2014
Dispose of them properly!
It might get caught
On the neck of some poor soul.

They are recyclable!
I prefer ones soft,
The ones polymers are made of.

Wear them loosely!
They aren't good for skin,
Besides these masks get sweaty.
Stephanie Dec 2014
I’ve never believed that love is finite.
I’ve always thought that love
is a renewable resource.
Recyclable.
That as long as you are willing
to give out love,
you will receive enough love in return,
to refill yourself with.
But the problem with that was obvious,
some people simply do not give.

So I changed my theory.
Love is infinite.
It grows like trees inside us,
blooms and expands
like every breath is the first.
It plants seeds in our veins
and grow gardens in our chests,
and no matter how many times
that garden is mowed over,
cut down,
ruined,
there will always be one seed.

And it will regrow.

— The End —