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Riq Schwartz Mar 2012
Songs like shadows softly lift
the light from darkened, tainted lips,
cursed with memories from which
the lighter tones withhold their gifts.

Brighter beams, meanwhile, tell
the shadows where they're meant to dwell.
All contained within the swell
of one small voice's silent shell.

Stories told of artifacts
in hands of greed with hearts of black,
laying in curses, spreading that
which sticks, and stays, and wont hold back.

Hardly living, all alone
within the house she built of bones,
memorizing muted tones
that speak of light theyve never known.

And wandering from place to place,
the sands of time erode, erase
from this world's ever-changing face.
And so is gone without a trace.
I'm starting a new project with this. Taking groups of popularly used words from other poets that seem striking and medially congruent, then free-writing until something manifests. This is my first attempt. Just something quirky I whipped up. Next I should contrive a name for the project. All good projects have names...
Louis Bitchop May 2013
Oi **** ya make me a sandwitch
ya ****
i hate you i wanna brake up
nah babe just kidding i love you
love is a cruel thing but its worth every minute <3
"like" if you love love!
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
the war has already begun
and it's not like
you're asking me: are you wearing shoes?
but, rather,
asking whether my shoelaces are
tightly spun, or whether i have
any... like the saimese soviets
at Stalingrad: one with
the ammunition, the other with
a rifle... or the joke above the bacon
concerning the police:
one is only able to write,
the other is only able to read.
i still don't know what you're asking me,
not since they had that proud attire
in napoleonic fashion, and my,
didn't ****** dress them well enough
to reach a heart-throb status?
clad black SS mon: it seems i'm always
a beggar at the feet of women,
but i don that: i'm Humphrey ******* Bogart!
yes, the uniform, the prestige,
and then they were thrown into the trenches
in the khaki resembling more
diarrhoea than muddy camouflage...
and so came dada saying a big massive
huh? after a while the major powers
didn't catch the drift from a keen libido
and trench-warfare and what came from
guerilla warfare... namely terrorism...
should i write this cheque out to the sound of
courgette... or couliflower,
mein herr?
and so it came: the time when the civilians
started their own war, and warred
among themselves, ensuring that
no army could penetrate, which paved
the way for terrorists only able
to usurp the contract of fine wine Friday
evenings by the Eiffel tower
with the burp ultimatum...
   so we're at war...
  and god only know how guerilla
evolved into terrorism, or should it be
called: the other Vietnam?
  and perhaps too: a baguette ripped
like it might have been a vulture's wake:
or a hyennas' party of giggles and hecklers...
but such days are other,
the Paris i remember isn't the Paris i'd
like to visit...
            no one really asked for this...
but it is, what it is...
    and it's hard to see the fact when there
are no glorious marches, no youthful men
strapped into galant uniforms...
    a bit like that advert for bus inspectors
in England: they wear no uniform,
they're dressed just like you and me...
     because that's how war translates to
civilians... that civilians learn the covert
art of war... meaning that all other wars
reminiscent of past wars are nothing
but proxy wars, they're not akin to a Trojan siege...
proxy... there's no identity in war anymore,
there's no Persian empire, nor a Roman empire...
proxy wars, given the internet
and how we throw so much intimate information
into a web before we meet a person,
and then perhaps lie about the fantasy of
that representable self...
     in saying that, Daesh is unique in that
it doesn't have an identity crisis...
     it doesn't have a facebook or a twitter
or a McDonald's hovering above it...
    of all the wars currently staged, it's staging
an antithesis to what was once merely
proxy... i find it hard to believe that
nations exist... given the power of corporations...
a belief in nations is a return to feudalism,
serfs at football matches, later enslaved
by the necessary dependencies and easy-to-reach
fruits of internet-service providers that
makes me laugh at the idea that Argos (a
highstreet retailer) still ***** into advert schemes
and thinks it will survive the pulverisation
and high street turning into cul de sac....
   but hey, i'm not clapping...
       you'll find more applaus in an opera house...
i'm just trying to find the coordinates that
i can navigate with...
     it would be hard to believe in an all-out-war...
given the warring civilians...
        in whom the notion of war has
imploded, and who might attest to revenge ****
as a medium of releasing an arrow from a bow...
it's hard to create wars these days,
it's hard to create a pair of trousers to march
in when all you have is a knitted pocket...
   how did they ever find war so glorifying,
so ****** romantic? i'll never know...
     but it really is hard to wage wars these day
given the civilians are paranoid and feel
no safety... at all...
            and yes, nuclear weapons make no sense
of the arms trade... drop a nuke and you
undermine about a 1000 arms dealers...
   so forget the u.z.i. and the kalashnikov deals...
it's really panic not from a perspective of
extinction, but a panic based upon dealing arms...
not selling enough weapons, bullets, grenades...
  nukes are a great deterrent, but also a great motivation
for dealing in arms...
but it's war,
    perhaps in closed-off communities of the urban
hipters it's still only about selling the most
obscure type of cereal... lumberjack and all, beardy...
but out here, on the peripheries of large
city-states, it's tribalism thrice over...
        e.g. i laugh on the windowsill at night
the next day my neighbour comes over
talks to my relative and wonders whether she's
o.k. because he think i might **** her...
        and so he complains: he had to move
rooms in our house because of the laughter,
it cost us a lot of money...
and i'm sitting there, shrouded by the fact
that he can't see me and i can hear him and wonder:
so you're not homeless, yes?
       i think my neighbour is mad because
he wants to know me now,
after living next to me for 5 years... and not having
bothered to have anything to do with me,
wants to know me now... mate! tangens!
       do i really give a **** your wife is
pregnant? no...
                             and this is how puny
life and narrative can become... so knitty-gritty...
so ant-like prone... i have no airs to not
meddle in the grit, but the fact that i have to meddle
in it: is a right ol' bollocking...
   it could have been a nice: cheese & ham sandwitch...
instead it has to be this...
   so if this isn't war... why would i be asking
you about you asking me whether i'm wearing
shoes? the topic of shoelaces and noodles...
or as i like to put it: big gob west
       squint eye funny east...
   there is absolutely no better nations to pacify
the warring hoodlums of the west
than 1 billion chinese or 1 billion indians...
that's what i call a proper rebellion...
i mean, picture 1 billion chinese and 60
million germans...
      it's almost like tickling Genghis Khan...
it will always look like a chiquaua (west)
barking at a Rottweiler (east) ... and i can't help but
laugh at the change.
Mateuš Conrad May 2017
i usually, just get tortured,
by thinking about pickled
chiilies;
  oh come on... the crunch?
wouldn't that
   bother you... conjuring
up a kebab... and some
mint sauce, with a variety
of vegetables?
cucumbers, tomatoes, onions,
cabbage... the **** do they
add to the pita enclosure?
****...
          o.k., i get the need
to reiterate they're sweet spainish
onions...
          no peppers...
    red cabbage, not white cabbage...
no raw garlic...
but garlic is the fundamental garnish
however you think about
a turkish kebab...
same category as coriander...
this is becoming silly...
like me in a subway buying
a sandwitch...
the question... what toppings?
ah... ****... can't be bothered to choose...
slap all of them into the bun;
what, even the black olives?!
ah... whatever, yeah.
i still won't be able to conjure up the turks'
combo veg addition to a kebab...
it's the pickled chillies...
       it's torture, not conjuring them up,
sometimes; o.k.,
who the **** sprinkled salt,
            on my tongue?!
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
it truly only exists in english-speaking societies...
after spending 3 weeks in poland,
god bless the pine woods and the number
of birch trees... and the -18°C temperatures -
   i can't but feel this aura of insanity hanging
over any western society...
        it's this languishing in people censoring
each other in a vocabulary battlefield -
               it's this persistent need to censor yourself
when the word best used, is deemed by others
to hurt their ears... as if i were standing over them,
with a drill to their ear, or
    a raven claw about to gauge out their eyes...
         i never understood it, but it's happening
in western society...
no wonder society stands firm with the lynch mob of
Ełk... it wasn't a scene from Nice,
nor that bloodbath in Paris...
                       a toll of only one soul, stabbed
in a kekab shop...
      Islam will be hardly welcome in Poland:
you need a very ridiculous version of catholicism,
as is the case, from where i reside.
                    there was no candlelight vigil...
there were only his contemporaries
    lynching the poor Tunisian...
            his shop was destroyed...
and a few other, innocent people got smacked in the gob:
like the 21 year old's death: for no reason:
  just to fill in the rubric.
                       the hashtag from Poland circa
December 16th? #wolne media...
            apparently the media were no longer welcome
in the sejm...
    i just can't tell you anything grand about that,
i was watching it from a public television set,
in a cafe drinking strong coffee...
      while four Ukranian women were eating chicken
and other eastern european delicacies...
waiting for their coach to Kiev...
                   and that pauper making a sandwitch in
the bus-station...  no butter: a slice of ham
slapped into two slices of bread...
        and god: that frost below zero...
finally i could breath air! free from African and
Arabian pathogens... like they say:
bacteria, viruses and parasitic lifeforms require
heat... you get cryogenic treatment in Siberia...
    for a long time: i felt ethnically completely...
mind you: it snowed in England today,
   but it was a teasing type of snow...
  it's practically not there anymore...
                         why did i write certain ''poems''
invoking racial slurs? at the frustration of being
dislodged from whiskey,
and the keyboard...
                       i rather throw enough negativity
into a blank canvas than a punch on someone...
       but it's there: citizen versus citizen and how
we are to speak, so unfeelingly: so un-freely...
                          and the curse of having that nagging
justification for what we said while exhaling
      helium...
                       i am, however, after something more
serious... namely why there are only two diacritical
marks in the english language, and they are closely-proximated,
on the ι (iota) and the j... and nowhere else!
               it's a bit too tad presumptious that these
letters received the treatment for accent-prone recipient
mandates...
                                  english has so many examples
it deviates from when diacritical rules are invoked...
     tri-                 tripple           try  and              tip -
   random, i know...
                         but given the ι, there is no reason why
a dot above it should be the sole incissor...
     why doesn't í exist? yes: the acute iota?
                             much concerning the
lost trill of the Ar...
                                              and if i were to rewrite the
alphabet, you'd have clear beginnings,
   and even clearer borrowing to put the masculine
sound last, as in the case of Ar...
     so to borrow from the periodic table...
a...    be... ç.... (so s ***** off)
                     deed...                 e...
                         ef (e minor, F needs e to exist as distinct,
but because of f being at the back, beginning with e,
     we'll not count it as an autonomous letter)...
              gee....
                                ­                             aye-chitty-chitty h...
                        laughter knows no alphabet...
ah forget this... it's getting muddled!
  the greeks used original names to encapsulate phonetic
units, apart from η (eta), μ (mu), ν (nu), ξ (xi), π (pi),
  ρ (rho), τ (tau... hence no taoists),
                            φ χ ψ (phi, chi, psi) -
question, why not pha cha psa?
          evidently vowels were used to stabilise
  the consonant grounding, but you could have used
other vowels to stabilise the sounds φ χ ψ -
  evidently the h when coupled to a p or a t is only an F...
     but in Greek that's future: not effigy.
        thank god i took to chemistry at some point in my life...
i can fiddle with these curiosities...
           Latin has exhausted its musicology...
it's no longer an alphabet that might give us a mozart,
or some poor castrato choir...
     and from chemistry, is has to name certain
letters nouns...
       like omicron or omega... being names
more than mere sounds designated the o & ω symbols...
latin will not sing anymore for us...
   we need to strenghten the alphabet recitation...
  some letters can remain simple,
but others have to involve an: o into omicron rigidity...
  or an ω into an omega mystique...
     which translates into quick-speaking and slang...
and i don't know: 3 weeks without the internet...
strenghtened by being sober... and actually being able
to read a book of 400 pages by kraszewski...
      and i come back,
   i wish someone on the periphery of London have
         the same European experience as i had in my native
soil...  a strange experience of a monochromatic society...
       western people my age had to resort
to the internet...
                           it's so less exhausting...
                             you start to think about going fishing,
rather than shouting your point of view into
   a dajjal-eye of a video channel...
                                                 i've only been back from
a mono-cultural society, and i didn't even think about
  drinking my loyal share of whiskey...
      it's so so exhausting, beginning with learning words
in order to later censor them...
                          and yes, i wish i could go back...
      i would have been a third-generation metalworks
worker... but globalisation happened...  
                    mm hmm... what am i doing here?
       well, i'm certaintly not thinking about it...
                          england has become exhausting,
using english has also become exhausting...
      no wonder i started listening to finnish folk bands...
   i need a ******* breather.
Mateuš Conrad May 2017
i mean, that **** is weirder than the scots deep-frying chocolate bars (mars, mianly, even though i think snikers would taste better), or slices of pizza; yeah, and they say: euro-trash... how much more ****** can you get?! i don't even want to know what the irish culinary fetish is; it's enough knowing that the thai like deep-frying locust.

i never understood it, this english "thing",
there is probably no nation in the world that has
a compulsion to mix two carbohydrate heavyweights...
heavyweights?
         pasta... bread... rice...
                 crisps...
          so i was reading the yesterday's newspaper
and this recipe was included in the magazine:
      pasta with beans and pesto...
sounds good enough...
but i read into the recipe...
          400 grams of linguine,
                       300 grams green beans,
        200 millitres basil pesto
                    freshly grated parmesan...
and then it hit me:             *1 large potato
cut into
                     1 centimetre cubes...
    but now i'd be asking americans to: not bother
getting a passport...
      in school i watched the english lodge crisps
         into sandwitches...
     this is the most oddball of all current nations...
who the **** combines two heavyweight carbohydrates?
they even have this standard of lodging chips
    into buns...
               like my father once noticed on the building
site, this black guy, stuffing a banana peanut-butter
            and some bacon into a sandwitch...
              fair enough if you lodge a plantain into
the mix... but a banana?
              about as weird as the english
                     using crisps + bread... or pasta + potato.
having a glimpse at this pratice,
seems more fascinating, than, say, spotting a yeti.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2018
/                          feeding a throng of sparrows
              sweet buns,
                              pinch by pinch,
                            to their avaracious beaks...

trying to fend away
               the more imposing

schwarzmönche
                       auf die himmel!

the kafkas!
       and the inland venturers of
coastline stock...

the viking gulls (as i like to call
them)...

oh urban sparrow, O urban sparrow,
and your tender
           throng, perching
jittery on a tree,
   then scouting down to
a cold ukranian cement for mere
crumbs!

not too long ago
     a homeless dog (a rare phenomenon
in eastern europe)
   once approached me
  in the mongolian square of
the same theatre -

namely, warszawski dworzec
                      zachodni


         (warsaw's western station) -

/      tears:
                            cronica's
           interpretation of herr mannelig     /

as just beside the palace of culture
in central warsaw -

   being approached by a homeless
man -
     asking for food, first asking
him if he wanted a cigarette -
    
             surprised by the question -
replying:
   have the cigarette,

           and yes, i made this sandwitch
not too long ago -

with him, moments later,
in the corner of my eye -

      taking a **** (literally)
       on the lawn beneath the hunchback
shadow of the palace of culture...

   in the toe numbing yet
thrilling cold of poland's late March...

surely there can be nothing
satisfying when once you could feed
the trafalgar sq. congregation
of pigeons...

                   feeding sparrows?
while watching ukranians load and unload
themselves from coaches

at warsaw's western station?

              that's another matter...

                             their flickering - amber like -
nervous twitching, hyper-sensitivity -

i will never understand a man's
shame to encompass crying -

   like i will never understand
   the worth of a psychiatrist:

         having sampled the tertiary use of
language (i.e. by body)
              on a canvas of a *******:

why would crying ever be considered
shameful, when done so authentically
by a man experiencing beauty?!

   sure... the over-simplification of
a woman's crocodile petting...
  or those ******* 21st pansies that
are football ballerinas!

    it's such... a mental release!
                       it's like the sudden break
into a crescendo
      on anathema's song release...

you can take the church from the state
and keep an irrelevant church-state
vatican...

                         but the subliminal joy
of lament, within the confines of the heat-music
complex?

                          mozart didn't even
know what he was laughing about as depicted
in amadeus...
    it's not a pity craving, cramp...

     there is subliminal joy in allowing
what is too "erroneous"
                             in it also being
a river...

                p.s.

                      mind you, what is the fifth element?
you can make a funeral within earth...
you can make a funeral within fire,
you can make a funeral within water...
can't exactly make a funeral
within air -
                            since that would
just be decay...
                           and mourning rites -
         and since time forgotten lightning
has not been deemed an element...
   sorry michael faraday...

             then you can certainly make
a funeral in vacuum -

              like that marylin manson song,
an astronaut drifting through space...

ah ****...

                          those ****** sparrows;
gets me ever time i listen to some new music;
previously not on my music palette.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
the night becomes, oh so much more
beautiful when peering at it
through sunglasses...
and the computer screen,
so less myopically-glaring,
like some Piccadilly Circus billboard...
that i am drunk...
but then again...
would you rather take
an opinion of a drunk...
or a serious, sober person?
     hmm?
             sober people and their opinions...
'ave fun...
     sooner or later i'll see you
fall into line of a centurion's
cohort...
         now... that will be fun...
i drink, but that's my problem...
not as much of a problem listening
to my neighbors arguing
in the afternoon...
like... she gets abused...
her child gets abused...
         i drink and i gravitate
toward myself...
                           just don't come between
me and a bottle...
        you know what happens
when you cage enlarged feline animals?
berserk-mode...
           i never used to drink as
much as i drink these days...
oddly enough like the rest of the people,
only on weekends...
then people became cubicle...
i.e. boring...
                i could talk about bicycles,
dog breeds,
           i could talk eclectic tastes...
but then i found that people,
in their majority... had no eclectic tastes
in culture...
    so i gave up, i gave up
attempting to talk to people...
i started to think...
  i was already outside the moral
categorization of thought:
i had no: moral (th)ought left in me...
given that i remember
given my one advice...
learn to pet a dog, or a cat,
before having a baby...
   oh that responsible i am...
first comes the dog petted with
a woman, then comes a child...
to hell with bringing ****-ups
into this world...
        i'd sooner **** up a life
of a pet, before i "think" of fathering
a child...
  no thanks, i know of the angst
that my mother holds against her
mother,
  and the angst my father holds
against his mother, and father...
maybe that's why i...
           animals...
so little of words, yet so much of god...
i just remember feeding a sandwitch
to a stray dog
outside of the Warsaw
                  Western Railway Station...
or lifting up a quasi-Alsatian
outside of the fountain just
beneath the Culture Palace...
some ****** left a dog in a fountain...
it was running silly in circles...
unable to jump out from the water...
given the water level covered
half of her body,
and the soaked fur was
    leveling her down...
so i picked up the poor beast
from within the fountain...
stray dogs?
   a shame on Poland...
i should know...
  the Battersea dogs and cats home?
oh... you mean, the canine Hilton?
i laid slabs on one of the roofs
for their expansion...
i've seen the cubicles...
              pristine, fresh...
you name it...
           no stray dogs in England...
but in Poland?
   stray dogs are a staple...
"stray" cats make home
of the cemetery...
i am drunk...
point being...
   the people making all
        the huffing-and-puffing
mistakes are sober...
they are: not riddles with impaired
judgement...
they're just judgmental...
  i have my excuse...
what's their excuse?!
          sober me?
   ****... i'm thinking about what sort
of pizza i'll be making on Monday,
whether to use fresh yeast,
or dry yeast...
ever sniff up a block of fresh yeast?
the most amazing scent...
    like... overcooked cake...
or something therein...
         so i stopped worrying
about all the worrying within the confines
of political commentary network...
******* ****** up my jukebox!
why should i care?
no one exactly defended me when
i was kicked off wattpad
having put 2 years' worth of content...
i start caring now...
i grow a heart...
yeah, thanks, real great thanks
for a heart...
         can i have my pebble back?
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2018
/did you know there are no mcdonaland's in st. petersburg? yeah, just pancake outlets, serving orange caviar to boot... funny... no ****** beef sandwitch macs or doherty's... fly-over trump comb.... coe... mmmm bab... bop? ooh? yum yum, yummy feeling aussie./

oh i'm invested,
invested enough
to tell you to
              *******.

          now you tell me your
part, before you
tell me the next syrian
he's going to make context
with missing limbs
at the next para-olympics;
your go...
             oh?
        ******* it?
              theresa may
was never going to
be the next margaret thatcher;
far past saying the english
sorry...
                 well.. d'uh...
         oops... grinning...
         yeah i know...
                  it could have been a sorry.

— The End —