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cast off
they never wanted us
they just want what we've got
I decry
because I must
before what I remember of liverpool
is ground into dust
underfoot
of a conservative government
determined to sell off everything
that makes us
us
we must what we must
its time to take back
what was ours in the first place
its in our blood
ordered liarbility
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2022
precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.
David Swinden Jan 2017
A city to be proud of are nick name is Scousers
Do you remember The Beatles in flared trousers
The Soccer and songs of “You Never Walk Alone”
So many songs include “In My Liverpool home”
Two great Cathedrals that light up in the night
And John Lennon airport where you catch a flight
With two big soccer clubs there is intense rivalry
But when it’s all over there is plenty of camaraderie
It’s a city of culture with museums and History
It’s my Liverpool home, where i'm proud to be  

David Swinden © 6/1/2017
My home town. Written for a challenge on another site.
Steven J Kelly Mar 2018
We are Manchester. The City, The place, we’re hospitable people with a smile on our face. You can beat us, mistreat us, and blow us to hell. We have had it all before and we don’t dwell. We’re the northern powerhouse of the northwestern elite, Where the Geordie's, The Scousers, The Yorkshire’s retreat. The premier League, The Roses Cricket, The Heineken Cup Is a one way ticket. United and City two football teams with stadiums full, bursting at the seams.

We are Mancunians Of this fair City, The People, The Love, The old nitty gritty The worker, The Shirker, The Homeless, The immigrants, each one of these they are all itinerants. The Steel, The Cotton, long since forgotten the old smokey chimneys blew out smoke that was rotten. The Massacre at Peterloo. Local politicians just don’t have a clue. With all the sights this city has on show here’s something that people don’t really know. Manchester is where New Zealand Born Ernest Rutherford split the Atom.

We Are Manchester, The City, the Place, where Sir Humphrey Chetham has his musical grace a school of music with musical taste. And where a  man with a paintbrush painted streets on boxes. I don’t think Lowry ever painted foxes. And A comedian from Collyhurst who was absolutely awesome, a real funny guy by the name of Les Dawson, and where a man from Chorlton on Medlock became Prime Minister back in the day. David Lloyd-George had a hell of  a lot to say.

We Are Manchester and it's the place for me. And a proud Mancunian I’m glad to be. I’ll sit in a cafe watching people pass by. They are all in a hurry and I wonder why. I see a business man in a three piece suit, and the homeless guy that is counting his loot. There's the ******* the street giving out free papers she is smoking those ciggies that give off those vapours. It's pouring with rain and she’s getting wet she’s worried about money to pay off her debt.

We Are Manchester and this is our City don’t waste your time we don’t want no pity. We are Manchester we are steeped in tradition we leave other cities standing. There’s no competition. Where A man from Moss Side a Vicar not a Dean called Rev George Garrett invented the submarine. And where the great Anthony Wilson was a journalist & impresario and a man named John  Nichols invented the great drink called Vimto. and so When he wrote “This Is the Place” I’m sure he did so with a smile on his face. We Are Manchester and I’ll state our case because we are Manchester and we are ace.
© Copyright Steven Kelly 1989-2018 Kellywood Productions 2018 All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2022
title: loop
body:
or holes or days
and oh: or months...
let's pretend years
never existed.

sometimes, it's truly weird... but i'm not English... or British... sure... for convenience's sake, when asked by officials in the NHS... put me down at white British... once was the case of the Anglo-Saxons... well... at best i'm an Anglo-Slav... but i can't allow all these racial "minorities" residing in England to label with me... "reparations"... a "colonial-past"... or... post-colonialism, or whatever the fetish is... i just belong to a people without a colonial past... sorry... that's racist... to be unable to differentiate people ethnically... it simply is... that's how H'america rots... it has no ethnicity distinction... it's either all RACE or ***... can't tell apart the Serb fascists from the Ukrainian fascists?! i can't buy into this whole: i'm white therefore i'm somehow also the inheritor of post-colonialism... i'm on side with the Russians given this argument... sorry... i'm not having it... that's ******* racist: just because i'm white is somehow indicative of me receiving the minority sadism against the British in the realm of post-colonialism... **** no... **** never...you will not put other people's history onto other people: because you're ethnically-blind... just because i'm as white as a Brit doesn't imply we share a shared history... ****-off cupper-neck... come come... milk me the golden **** of Moloch! right now... i'm loving the Russian attitude of... *******... or we'll **** with you...because it simply doesn't make sense for certain ethnicities of the white race to... capitulate to the "racial minorities" of a post-colonial argumentation of: new schematics of how society's to be orientated... nicely... just nicely... i'm seriously thinking about ******* off to Liverpool... the women seem nicer... less paranoid... less-stuck... less... ugh... yucky... itchy... whatever it is with having... over-value delusions of... obviously having bypassed the safety-net of becoming a nun...

the day started well enough... i must have drunk about half
a litre of whiskey: forgetting to take some naproxen
to ease me into sleep.. woke up with cold sweats
at: some time just past 5am...
some nightmare... Holocaust related? i don't remember...
but if you're waking up sweating and shivering
at the same time... lucky for me... i meditated on this towards
work: well... the horrifying has already happened...
i never understood the argument that 6 millions Jews
died in the Holocaust... technically... those were 6 million
Polacks... while France capitulated to **** Germany
in whatever span of time...
  it took longer for Poland to capitulate to both:
**** Germany and Soviet Russia... and we're talking:
a nation that only recently emerged after being non-existent
given the partitions... while France... a colonial power...
anyway... had two coffees... a precursor of a bad idea:
showered... applied 7 different "beautifying" products
to my hair, beard, face... armpits... collar bones and neck
and hands...
   ****** off... as ever... one hour early:
why do i mismatch my timing whenever travelling to
Wembley... if i catch the fast (Southend Victoria train)
i can get from Romford to Liverpool Street in under 20 minutes...
since... the train doesn't stop at: Chadwell Heath,
Goodmayes, Seven Kings, Ilford, Manor Park, Forest Gate...
Maryland... straight onto Stratford...
and then Liverpool Street... and then that's another
20 or so minutes on the Metropolitan Line to Wembley Park...
well... nice weather... spring is in full swing...
another two coffees from McDonald's... sitting on a bench
on the Olympic route...
eating an almond croissant... oh looky-looky...
company... starlings...
                        i was surprised: where did the pigeons *******
to? so i'm going to be sitting on this bench
by myself... drinking a 4th coffee... eating an almond
croissant... smoking a cigarette after the "feast" while
having this troop of 4 or 5 starling beg me to pinch
of my croissant... ****'s sake: the day is starting to look
beautiful... i couldn't resit...
plus... there's that added bonus of looking mythical...
eh? even mystical... since a few coworkers already spotted
you and you're not some old man in a park
throwing breadcrumbs to pigeons...
you're throwing pinches of an almond croissant to starlings...
i always said: better a soul of an old man
in a young body than... the complete ******* opposite
of... whatever leads to dementia: lax...
old men having tantrums of teenagers...
                       just looks silly... and it was sort of like
that today... with the Scousers... Scouse...
   i was expecting such a lively, lovely atmosphere...
i swear... the further north you go... the lovelier people
become... my heart poured out at the Liverpool fans...
the Manchester fans? eh... not so much...
they're sort of like Londoners... stiff-upper lip: tense...
paranoid... i don't know how to describe them:
proper... after today i'm thinking about visiting Liverpool...
******* for the weekend... maybe book a ticket
at Anfield... but just go and see the city... wander...
get lost... find myself...
        i'm tired of continental Europe... then again:
i'm also tired of the south of England...
           4th coffee in... i thought i was going to die...
a thumping in my forehead... i already have high blood pressure
issues... four coffees in... almost zero food:
calorie intake: for someone 6ft2 and 98kg... it's not 2000kcal...
for the first time on a shift
i had to do my jacket up so that my neck would
be covered... the tie was suffocating me...
with ideas of dropping dead from a heart-attack...
thrice prone to *****... the one time i did i enacted
being a cow... i swallowed it back down... crummy...
eh... flakey... sort of like when you...
bring back milk that's half digested: when it splits...
into cheese and lactose juice... acid...
on my way back home: a most glorious full moon...
cider... sweaty shirt...
and this... fiddly ******* the Metrpolitan line...
mixed-race... sort of reminded of Harley Dean...
fiddling with her blonde-tinged curly hair...
i always found curly hair... um... hmm...
too infatuating... she does her make-up...
her lips with a crayon and then some quasi-lipstick...
cute nose, cute forehead...
and she just keeps looking at me...
with the most doe-esque intimidation of:
          why don't you react to me?! why?! why?!
she's so ******* blatant: she can't hide it...
i'm sitting there with my shirt undone...
   oh right... hairy chest of a pirate... thick bulging neck...
babe... i'm tired... i've been up since 5am...
started the shift at 9m... just finished come 6:30pm...
of course i'm *****... ever time i become tired
i need to relax: since i've been keeping this hardened
**** in my ****-pocket since this morning...
i'll get back home... sit on the thrones
and do the no. 1, 2 and 3... which is **** while sitting
down... relaxing my ****... taking a ****
and subsequently jerking off...
but she was so blatant... d'uh... pretending to look
into the glass behind me for her reflection...
checking her phone without taking a selfie...
how her hair would look better arranged if she
has a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head...
truly... a pretty little number...
but i was already coming down from a high of:
Scouser women... are all the English girls so pretty
up north? like i said: i think i need to take a weekend
trip to Liverpool... or Newcastle...
i was taking aback when a married woman
approach me... started talking... gripped my hand and
then proceeded to kiss my cheek...
infatuated by the beard...
  that's nice... that's why life is worth living...
random strangers... coming up to you: infatuated
by your presence... having no reservations:
no inhibitions... needing to kiss you... touch you...
always with the northern types...
and i'd agree... southerners: the fairies...
Londoners... so ******* Victorian: reserved...
it's like playing poker 24/7...
   most of the time i find myself of keeping a trustworthy
line of conversation... i just become mute:
bored... i don't like the nitty-gritty of small talk...
what the **** do we have in common?!
absolutely nothing... beside... what?
trying to keep each other comfortable?
no... i'll use my silence to strain the fact that:
we're not friend in school playground... we're not...
but it's different with northeners...
i witnessed two grown men... cry... because they
were refused entry for being sick... puking...
grown men crying... because they couldn't be part
of the Liverpool choir of: you're never stand alone...
mind you... coworkers getting ****...
deservedly: too eager... too eager... push and shove...
can't we just talk? once you get that *******'s worth
of an SIA license you start losing the plot...
machismo... ugh... talking about people who can't
tell the difference from judo from throwing
watermelons...
oh but these northern girls... a married woman
just walk up to you... tipsy... tipsy as:
custard is most definitely pale, high noon sun
yellow... grabs your hand and kisses your cheek...
times like this: i feel... gratefully alive...
it's so very little but at the same time: so much...
i can forget the 5am wake up call...
of the nightmare that stirred me...
i couldn't possibly cry over football...
something beautiful, like Prokofiev? sure...
lucky for me we managed to seize about 10 cans of beer
from someone... who managed to bring those cans
of beer home? moi...
beer... relaxing to some Type O Negative...
i'm pretty sure there was this other woman
on the train: fixated on playing with her...
she kept stroking it... stroking it...
some other day...
like a cat with an itchy scalp... what the **** do they call them?
archetypical clues?
i heard that once... if a woman in your vicinity is
fiddling with her hair... she's into you...
i seriously want to forget these stereotypes...
i prefer the more direct approach...
she comes up to you: a complete stranger
and kisses your on your furry cheek...
it might have been sunny... it might have been warm
today... but the tenderness of those lips...
i need to book a weekend break to Liverpool...
seriously... i need to visit Liverpool...
those woman are insatiable! i need to ******* to Liverpool!
i already can't stand the claustrophobically
constipated London girls...
   it does my head in!
            what happened to: perchance: some... foon?!
on a *****-nilly... what the **** is this?
the ******* Black Dahlia... no... wait...
the Black Narcissus nunnery? the ******* hills are full
of music?! or is that... filled, with?!
this is a trajectory toward a death-cult...
o.k. whatever... i'm getting slowly more drunk
and relaxed and... not in the mood of...

whatever... i just can't face up to having to faces...
it's enough that i already juggle two tongues...
but i can't face up to having two faces;
i see people taking themselves overtly seriously
and i'm thinking about... puking:
and then swallowing the puke that doesn't leave
my mouth... like a cow's digestive schematic.
Obadiah Grey Jun 2011
I quite like plastic sandals;
**** shaped candles;
and big assed women in my bed,
I like artistic folks n artichokes;
n piccalilli on rye bread,
I like big gay men n Tony Benn:
loud mouthed scousers and Steven Fry,
I like The small faces whisky chasers;
n come home Lassie - makes me cry
I saw you standing there
As you were staring straight at me
You mustn’t have heard me calling
Because you carried on walking
As if you hadn’t heard a thing
Like an island on the verge of crumbling
Into the deep blue sea
I am desperately trying to find someone to save me
From my dull reality
Like an island on the verge of crumbling
Into the deep blue sea

I Don’t want to come across as ***** or rude
But I’m not here to hold your hand and
Whisper sweet nothings in your ear
The ****** fantasies flickered through my mind!
As you stood there unaware
Of the fire’s you were kindling up
Girl won’t you let me fan your flames!
Ohh fan your flames! Cmon!

Opportunity came a knockin for a few swift moments
Only for father time to whisk that chance away
Ohh Where have you gone?
I’ve been searching for so long
So SO long
Like an island on the verge of crumbling
Into the deep sea
I am desperately trying to find someone to save me
From my dull reality
Don’t want to come across as ***** or rude
But I don’t just want to hold your hand
I saw you walking over there
I’m no geographer but I know my basic geography
The world ain’t flat
So by walking down there
You should be coming back
My way sometime soon
I meant to tell you all my thoughts and feelings
But I swallowed them up in the boldness
That is my pride
Hands so clammy
I choked on my words
Forming incoherent blabber
I want to be more then friends
Please disregard what those scousers told you
I don’t want to come across as ***** or rude
But I don’t just want to hold your hand
Let me take hold of this opportunity
I don’t want to spurn this chance to say
My hormones are about to implode
And I must confess
I don’t just want hold your hand tonight
Obadiah Grey Feb 2015
I quite like plastic sandals,
**** shaped candles,
and big assed women in my bed,
I like artistic folks and ***** jokes
and piccalilli on rye bread,
I like big gay men and Tony Benn,
loud mouthed scousers and Steven Fry,
I like The small faces whisky chasers
and come home Lassie - made me cry.
I like the upturned curl
of ******* dog lip
the hurl and swirl
of big girl hip.
I like Bevelled slick edges
and reeaal eeaasy slopes.
chilli dip wedges
with fresh artichokes.
wanton loose wenches
and swivel hipped ******
daft dawgs and dentures
and granddad - who snores.
Micheal Wolf Nov 2016
Moon rise over Secombe
Where's the supermoon?
No bigger than ****** normal
In a ***** orange gloom

The biggest moon for years!
They said all over the news
And hidden in the clouds up there
like a torch with a failing bulb.

It's supposed to be romantic
For lovers to bathe beneath
Get naked and romantic!
Not here you'll ****** freeze

All the scousers watching
Looking for a glimpse
"My ****" said a voice in the crowd
Let's get a fecking drink.
Big Virge Jul 2015
So What Does This CLASS Thing...
... Mean To YOU... ???

Someone Who Went...
To A... " Public School "... ?
Or A Gent In A BOWLER...
Whose Demeanour Is Cool... ?

Well....
If This DEFINES Class To You... ?
Watch... Laurel and Hardy...
They Wore Them TOO... !!!

But All They Did Was...
... Act The FOOL... !!!!!

ME... Well I Went To...
Your Average State School...
Surrounded By Kids...
With A Few Who Were Fools... !!!

And Some Came UNSTUCK...
... WITHOUT Any Glue... !!!

Cos' They Left School...
WITHOUT Paying Their Dues... !!!

Like... LEARNING In Lessons...
Instead of GIRL STRESSING... !!!

Well I'm The TEST PRESSING...
That Proves That Some Lessons
Can Leave People STRESSING... !!!!!
And Yes... Second Guessing... ???

What Class Am I From... ?!?

I'm... NOT From A Class... !!!
Except A... " Classroom "...

But THAT ISN'T TRUE... !!!!!!!
My Mum And Dad KNEW...
What Couples Should Do...
In The... "Privacy of "...
A... " Double Bedroom "... !!!

IC1... IC3... ?
How About... IC2... ?

Do These STUPID Groupings...
DEFINE... What Is YOU.... ?!?!?!?

Well... If They DO...
Good Luck To You... !?!

But Police Like The Government...
DEFINE Who They CHOOSE...
Just So Their PUPPETS...
Can... DISH OUT ABUSE... !!!!!

Being BLACK Is A Class...
ALL of It's... " OWN "... !!!!!

Cos' Most OTHER Folk...
... DON'T Enter The Zone...
Where Blacks Are Deemed...
To Live UNCONTROLLED.... !!!

I've LOST CONTROL...
A... Couple of Times... !!!

But Now I Stick To Writing Rhymes...
To Show My Class By Using MY MIND... !!!

Class... DISTINCTIONS...
Go With NARROW Minds... !!!

While Words I Write...
DEFINE The Times...
WITHOUT Class Signs... !!!

I'm Just Another VICTIM...
of... Western Systems...
That KEEP US... A P A R T...
By The Use of.... " Isms "....

... " CAPITALISM "...
Is A CLASSLESS... Ism... !!!

Cos'... If You BELIEVE...
You're Just CASH DRIVEN... !!!

While... " RACISM "...
Is A... Class Filled Ism...
Where Blacks Are Deemed...
To Be... FIT For PRISON... !?!?!

But That's NOT ME...
Cos' I Haven't Been In Em'... !!!!!

I Grew Up........
In London... " West Ealing "...

But This DOESN'T Mean...
That I'm Liking DARJEELING … !!!

This Class Thing Needs CLEANING... !!!
Cos'... Living This Life...
Does NOT Have A Ceiling... !!!

This AIN'T Monty Python... !!!
Life Has... DEEPER Meaning...........
Than Visions of... " CLASS "...

Houses For LOUSES... !!!
And I'm NOT Talking Scousers'... !!!
They're ALL Right With Me...
It's People From London...
With... NO CLASS BELIEVE... !!!

I Can Tell By Their Looks...
When They're Looking At ME... !!!

These People Are FULL of HYPOCRISY... !!!
This IS How CLASSY TRUE Londoners Be... !!!

Who Then Have The CHEEK... !!!
To DEFINE... Who I Be... !!?!!

My Father And Friends...
Used To Run In BARE FEET...

My Mum Used To TEACH...
And Both of Them Came From...
That... Bajan' Country...

With Sugar Cane Fields...
And White Sandy Beach...

My Father Is NOW...
An... OSTEOPATH... !!!

So Let's LOOK At That...

He's Treated STAR Athletes...
And White Folk That's FACT... !!!!!

Does THIS Give Me A PASS... ?!?
To Be... " Middle Class "...
Even Though I Am BLACK... ?!?

This STUPID Class Question...
Is Simply A... FARCE... !!!

Divisions Are... VAST...
Like A Galleon Mast... !!!
But BREAKING These Boundaries...
Is A Task... BEYOND Class... !!!!!!

And This Is UNCERTAIN... ?
Who... REALLY Has... ?!?

.......... " CLASS ".........
British folks and their ... " Groupings " ... !!!
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
standing on the hellbender periphery...
something happens in
the anglo-lingual world...
something correlating injustice...
"whiteness" - the babylon circus...
you name it... and somehow...
this doesn't explode to other areas
of the world, but merely implodes...

perhaps it's the same in france and germany...
how scandinavia (notably sweden)
succumbed to this: i will not or rather:
i don't want to know...

i actually miss not having made
myself available to my grandparents
for this past month...
i'm pretty sure i would have read
and read and stayed sober...

4 years outside of the confines of both
england and december teasing january...
a hip-replacement surgery of
a very demanding mother...
turns out... her worries were unjustified...
if the surgeon was happy...
the nurses were happy...
it required almost a month of passing...
her vampirism draining me...
until some physiotherapist explained
it to her...

but that's not enough...
to vacuum each day to better keep her
impulsive-compulsive ticks in check...
as much as i like the joke of owning
two bonsai tigers...
and i haven't minded the cooking,
the ironing, the whole Cindarella shabang...
but when there's all that...
and there's the father loitering
around waiting for a new contract...

all the great things i ended up doing
with a degree in chemistry...
this is my last outlet...
get busy scribbling,
drinking and... over-rating my ambitions...
but all these anglo-lingual problems
just invite themselves in...
i listen to them and...

on the doorsteps of Russia...
can you imagine what sort tangos this
multi-cultural experiment would dance
in Russia?
that's practically an Asian entity...
or in the Balkans with its still preserved
Turkic presence of Islam...
anywhere where...

- i really can't see the problems...
other than this: this is a very terrible piece
of writing... look at it...
flabby, disjointed...
different problems in Russia...
or... ha... written in the vicinity of London...
with a mind-set still bound up
to having Belarus and Ukraine as neighbours...
and Russia too...

on the hellbender periphery of "whiteness"...
this whole: we were colonial powers once
argument... is sort of dead on my ears...
even i can attest: the darker skinned Kenyans
and the lighter skinned Nigerians...

i'm actually tired of the whites
who are pushing their transcendental *******...
never more free if they didn't push their
ideas and instead learned a new language...
apparently england fares the worst
when it comes to bilingualism...
circa 30% of its 15 - 35 year olds speak
a second language...
compared with Denmark: circa 90+%...
germany circa 80%... Poland thereabouts...

for some reason i was never taught
to "love" my fellow-countrymen... being an émigré...
how much of it was an automated: self-exile
and how much of it: we did this for you
to have a better life...
better life - as i now ask...
it's a life... i don't have comparative literature
to call it any better or any worse...
it is what it is...

i'm tired and i'm drinking:
which usually implies that i will be more honest
than usual...

the better parts of me i've left with other people,
what i have accumulated is,
the worst part of them... mostly their: sanctimonious
appeal... or the bigmouth strikes: yet again...

even Russia is a multicultral societ...
but there's no prancing beyond the better part
of the trough of Moscow's snippet piglets...
moss-co... opt in or opt-out...

the lost ability to consecrate one's life
in postcard snippers of photographs:
that once upon a time other people would take...
but now you take yourself...

imagine a man that masturbates once...
every "blue moon"... on / off...
what door is opened most frequently
in the house? the fridge is opened more times
than even the front door...
and then there's the selfie barrage...
because... looking into a mirror is no longer
enough...
if photography can be an art-work...
what the hell is the photograph
when one can focus in on something in a mirror?
are people who take these photographs
are afraid of looking in the mirror?

to have to stand completely stark naked...
mollusk-esque...
and the world's not quiet an oyster...
and all that: one punch sucker and it's
not so much a one punch k.o.,
and a one punch k.o. and a postmortem...
i've seen one of these examples:
"i.r.l.": i even hovered over the body
with a bunch of bystanders and said
out-loud...
'well... this sweet ******* is
not seeing next spring' - i.e. getting up
and having life-support machines
attached to him...

evolutionary: to begin with...
it's norman normie normansky...

oh yeah, i've seen a one punch post-mortem,
i've been to a brothel,
and i've been to a strip-club...
but still in Russia...
and esp. in Poland...
on the periphery of "whiteness"...
and there was no "cipher" to follow-suit....
what's expected is...
not expected...

because the button of cleavage...
which... let's face it...
one can't distinguish it from the peach
of an ***...
i wonder: would i, ever be bound...
to the grand canyon; "exemplification"?
please, stress any "further"...
two croissants doing the rub-rub
in an imitation game for two mollusks *******...
as ever: looking for
a tomahawk and a... scalp...

but in Russia: you would never see
this pseudo!
pseudo is a cuss-word reserved for petting
hunting dogs...
when you want them to aport! in reverse....
not in Russia, not in Poland...
good cuck-luck taming Ukraine...
perhaps all these ******* ever knew...
was how to seem: mouthy...
appropriate... and what better place to start...
than some obscrucity equivalent
to Rotherham!

oh i see it... when the THETA becomes the V...
rover nor rho-f-f rho-f-f...
******* r and am!
or simply quartz... and spam canned ham!

i was never expected to be the thief among
prostitutes...
kissing and the dosage of the reprimand
buther... cut always below the bulk
of a knee... survived the thinning
of the shins...
in psychiatric terms my "codition" is alluded
to as: the crude soup...
never was a more sane man demanded
to feel inadequacy...

but i salvaged for better complaints...
this is not even, remotely assertive of...
when i want and i will not
disparage from sound savegery
and... "that thing in the back of my mind"...
the sane people call it:
the hallucination of morality...
they're all hush hush about it...
they don't want to be prescribed:
shock-treatment of... being dropped into
an ice bath... to hell with their bowties!

jesus mary and joseph...
i could never become a jack the ol' ripper
though... i became a tapeworm of kissing
when it came to the canvas of
prostitutes...
parasitical lips... bite-down tooth envy
of my great-grandfather...
what i could never kiss...
i always wanted to bite to tease with...

now my libido is satisfied...
i can claim not being the hyperbolic outlier....
i don't need a wife,
a mother in law... a child...
a shadow life of a Chikatilo...
to lend myself to Cain...
i can absolve myself with the rites of Abel...
how... oh how this most pristine how...
i only supposed i'd be dead...
and not playing both "victim"...
prosecutor... and inspector columbus to boot!

conventional language scares me...
there's so much hiding behind
immovable objects...
that in turn the moon or the table become
quasi-deities in a world
littered with demigod *****!
of the polytheistic gods...
which one... didn't chance a common semblance
to a *******?
perhaps i've earned this rigid tongue...
rattle and sawdust itching from it...
first bound...

last resort: this is not about to become
a conventionality of language...
this is not going to become...
an aud lang syne...
this is not going to become: tea-party
forget me: forget me or taste the forget-me-not!

revised lent topic: on the hellbender periphery...
how these post-colonial former subjects...
well unless you're in Poland,
Belarus, Ukraine, Russia...
mein gott! i really should start knocking
on Russian's door, more often...
this sort of ******* that's allowed
in England would be... most likely...
quickly suppressed...
for the good of the people:
it's always: for the good of the people...
oops... " "...
yeah yeah... "for the good of the people"...

the colonial ambitions...
and the guilt of being white in eastern europe...
which is why i can never master
the english conundrum...
while kenyans are darker than the nigerians...
but in their dark-choc...
seem to be basked in coconut oil
that oozes from the Indian ocean...
Kenyans who import timber from Ghana?
and the Nigerians...

oh sure sure sweetheart!
we can revive the Balkan enterprise...
you just say when!
we'll have the christian serbs run amok...
over the islam minorities...
sure sure...
it's almost akin to: teasing Russia
to climb out of its Caucasian bed-root...
when it ****** with the Turkic peoples...

and of course... coming across the
Afro-Europeans of the colonial present, past,
and future... there was only one history
of / for the Europeans...
origins in Africa...
sorry... what about the Indo- prefix?

here we have the sanskrit...
here we have the hierogylphs...
but... what of the writing of ancient
Kenyans?
i'm no better... came st. cyrill and his greek
contra the glagolitic...
which is... probably southern slavic...
and... there were the runes
and the ancient romans fighting
the tribes of Danube... but never as far north
as the Baltic did they come...

but in mind: i'm always going to be bound
to the periphery knocking on the doors
of Kiev and Novgorod...
with the Mongol also citing:
he too knocked...
something happened... had his hand cut off
at the wrist with the remnant budding
leftover of the Crimean Tartars...

so... this passover former colonial...
"grief" is now running former colonial society's
mischief?
am i white, or am i asian?
i will never know...
Islam and what? the crusades of the baltic states
by the teutonic knights?
and Europe and Europe and Europe
without the english, the myth of troy revived
in Italy... and the proud yet backward
greeks...
i too thought: if it's not feral enough...
it's feral enougn where english is not spoken!

after all... england is a far far away place...
even if i'm currently "living" in it...
it wasn't invaded and all it had to propose was...
its own ******* to the external world...
pristine england...
pristine p.s. england...

this anglo-phile... ahem... "problem"?
in ukraine or in russia?
it's a problem and a problem of this sort
is treated with a sort of amnesia...
equivalent to:
today's Monday, yes?
oh... today's not a Monday?
will i still you if you mind calling it a Tuesday?!

the body intact bound to a vicinity of London...
the mind... detached... elsewhere...
perhaps it was the over-rationalisation
of the darwinistic approach...
again: even copernicus didn't or wouldn't
have entertained such an over-reach
of his heliocentrism become dogmatic...
copernicus who?
exactly! only someone like wittgenstein
would celebrate copernicus...
the west only celebrates galileo:
because of the trial...

i can attest though... mendeleev is secure!
is it perhaps odd...
that some ****- would not find
differences between a croat
and a moldavian?
a kashubian and a silesian?
a scot an a welshman?

imagine my ah! gasp!
the tribes within a tribe...
the "home" team consisting of liverpudlians!
and the "away" team consisting of scousers!
liverpool f.c. supporters of the former...
everton supporters for the latter...
but we're all white!
i'm "white white" because i've acquired
this tongue and i can...
somehow... forget mein: wurzeln...

mind you... elsewhere?
that word... root? in deutschezunge?

wurzeln: decipher: nurse! scalpel!
wur-zeln...
no no... this will not do...
wü-ř-eln
alternatively...
wü-ž-eln...

and that's not "woo"... it's a V-not-U...
voor-zeln!
alternatively there's the ż (rz)...
which is equivalent to either ř or ž...
ř = r(z) and ž = (r)z...
"when" and "where" you know that's
an orthographic distinction to begin with...
i.e. ř = r(z) and ž = (r)z
when rz = ż...

i really have "real" problems to mind
of my own, on the periphery of:
the "western lands"... st. cyril is biting at my toes...
as ancient roman bites back...
the alphabet intact...
you either learn some greek...
or you don't gloat about being lazy about
not having acquired some passable "knowledge"
of cyrilic...

so? here's to taking another selfie from the perspective
of fearing to look into a mirror...
and here's to some new obscure modern hieroglyphic
take on the "thumbs-up"... and: shmiley :)!

better i stick to the diacritical markers...
niche point of interest...
niche to the point of claustrophobia...
but of all these anglo- problems?
these "racial" problems?
yes, yes, racial problems in "eastern" europe...
of real concern...
the russian empire and the kazakh people...
mongol remains...
ottoman remains...
western europe now being nothing but
shame for the rest of us...

"the rest of us"... "us"...
"we" could have said... before they had a chance
to gloat... to buffer gloating...
to pride themselves beside pride per se...
to mistake pride for gloating...
before "we" came and learned their language...
and found the leashes of their starved
dobermann hounds...
the mediocre liberal elites of the dutch...
the belgians and their... swiss ambitions...
hell: did they really have to invite
the swedes into this "problem"?!

perhaps this is written in english...
sure as **** it's not written by a native...
i'm no more an englishman than
a parsley root is a ******* carrot!
although i dare say...
that essex hue of being: toasted...
coming from a lazy afternoon at a snippet
of a Brighton beach?
the well-tanned look?
no... even i don't want to fake being
Thai in December...

i thought i'd ease the "tension"...
who can say: i'm piglet pink with a dash of
cranberry... cosmopolitan cocktail whenever i
pretend to "feel like it"...
otherwise porky leather...
and then... the layers and hues of...
copper and chocolate *******...
then there's that amnesia rust...
and there's always that porcelain japanese...
the albino iranian and we can have
a ******* **** contrastic hues...
copper over there, some cinnamon over here...
some chocolate in between
and some porky leather 'ere...
personally i think i'm more sepia than white...
there's still that visible blood in my veins
that allowed me to conjure up:
the blue-bloods...
better in german: der blaugeblüt...

perhaps: when in rome...
well... the vandals and the rest of the evil brood
had to, at some point...
tell the romans... you're not being yourselves...
there's no longer a social cordiality in place...
there's no more: when in rome...
because i'm not native of these lands
and of this tongue...
but i will not be... smothered by some
*******-worth-a-roasting debility mongers
and mongrels of: subversion!

you should visit Russia from time to time...
if you get a chance to **** a siberian
******...
hell: don a ******, she'll tell you she's
on contraceptive pills...
then "all of a sudden" you'll find yourself
wondering: matt! i think i'm pregnant...
months after the relationship ended...
and she's on her next pair of gloves;
but she's calling you... for you to pick up
the pieces...

diese englischprobleme ar nicht mein "sache"!
and if there's a heaven...
i pray to god i speak some obscure dialect
of german... bohemian german...
silesian german...
i'll even settle for gothic german!
not for some love of the people...
i just want to imagine myself as having
died a: lebkuchenbäcker...

a gingerbreadbaker...
since *** didn't cut it...
and ******* became a yawn...
there's only this...
the remains of exploring language
without having those stiff, polite...
practical, teasing an escape from solipsism,
formal... samples of language use...
this is the best i can offer...
to use language for the sort of reasons...
that with the language thus used...
i will not have familiar ground to stand /
walk on... since this language does not
exist in the dignified everyday:
lick-the-envelope... seal it... send.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2023
Kaiser Clown

borrowed shoe:
stolen foot.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

auf die frei zungen ich kennt -
   (of the three tongues i know) -
ich kennt zwei
    und kennen eine:
    (i know two and know of one):

auf die frei: ich lieben dieser
                        äußerst
(of the three: i love this utmost)...
                      
    in my youth i spent a good deal of time
watching Disney's Robin "fox" Hood
cartoon in German, somehow it rubbed off
on me...

      i was never born with anything even remotely
resembling the love of the English language...
can there be a love akin to the Anglophile
that excludes the love of the language?
i love everything English except for the language...

each day i'm slowly planning my escape
into womb of the mother of the isles that
was first spoken in Saxony...
         tired Bavarians? tired Pomeranians?
but the Saxons were a landlocked people
who gave them the courage and adventurous
spirits to claim the seas with more than
oars and steer the winds with
sails?

      English didn't come to me as some
poor Romanian kid listening to current pop music
or back then, early 1990s... movies from Hollywood...
i didn't want to speak gimmicks...
i was ****** into the deep-end of speaking this
tongue by starting off a mute...
even with the influences of cartoon network
none left a too great impression on my ears
as the German version of the Disney cartoon
of Robin Hood...

   even after watching the English version many years
later... i can still hear the German dubbing
and i can't escape it...

auf die frei zungen ich spre(s)chen es
mit ein konkurs auf substantive...
(of the three tongues i speak it
with a bankruptcy of nouns)...

        at least i have made progress with predispositions
and conjunctions:
i am better coordinated...
but how... how can one be an Anglophile
without a love of the language?
i can adore the way the English care for
the countryside... how traffic is managed...
how taxes are collected how foreign cultures
can slowly integrate and everyone can feel
somehow, seemingly at home:
even if the natives do not for a while...
but without a love for the language
i cannot be a true Anglophile...

                the beauty of Shakespeare disintegrates
when a simple German neo-folk is played to me...

   in der zwölften stund (sage vom untersberg)

- in der zwölften stunde -
at the twelfth hour
- wenn die raben fliegen um den berg -
when the ravens fly around the mountain
- tun sie lautstark kunde -
they loudly proclaim
- von des kaiser macht und tagewerk -
the emperor's power and legacy
- solang der kaiser schlafet -
as long as the emperor sleeps
- tief drunt' im dunklen bergensschloß -
deep down there in the dark mountain *****
- solang fliegen auch die raben -
the ravens will fly
- hoch über seinem marmelschloss -
high above this castle of marble...

   no words in English, and their meaning make much
for... however simple they might be in German:
the simple fact that... they're spoken in German!
das: sie sind gesprochen im Alt...
    
it is only natural that i sought out the origins of
the English tongue in German,
as much as i am not interested in the etymology
of designated word:
i could never be this youth exposed to too much
English culture wishing to sing pop songs
or utter single line pin-pointers from
films: ehrilch mein schatz,
   ich tun nicht ein pflege
   (frankly my dear,
    i don't give a **** / care)
    or... ich wille wieder (i will be back)...

so the indentations of learning English in a later
developmental stage of language acquisiton
didn't rub off on me: as it does on people
with accents of their mother tongue
who never lose it... and merely culturally appropriate
English as a spoken tongue of culture
and not a "cultured" tongue...
native tongue: a shape-shifting accent
of an educated "class"...
    even today! West Ham was playing Everton,
Toffees... ******* Scousers... Liverpool dwelling folk...
two younglings asked me to speak to one
of the managers who took their banner away
expressing disgruntlement with
how the football club was being managed...
huh?! am i still in England...
i have an easier time understanding Scots
than i have understanding anyone from
Manchester or Liverpool!
i can't understand them!
maybe that's why the Scots are like the Irish:
they come from a proud literary history...
oh... i spoke to an Irishman today at
the football game... woke up at 3am to come
to the game... i understood him perfectly...
i can understand a Scot and an Irishman...
i wouldn't be able to tell you an Irishman
from a North Irishman...
but i could tell you decipherable English
of the Scot and the Irishman from
an undecipherable, local, "polyglot"
mishandling of the English language with
such local accents and idioms as that of
Liverpool or Manchester...
can't understand the *******: even if i tried...

obviously i can't relate to a love of Russian...
as they might say in Poland:
better 6 years of **** rule: by fire...
than the subsequent how many decades it was
under the rule of the Soviet rule: by ice...
a slow burn of war is more demoralising
than a quick stretch of spandex and all hell
and all fury and all hearts united
than this scuttling of rats and shadow-bullets
shot from shadow-pistols!

of course i would naturally side with the Germanic
side of my upbringing:
i have no itch for rekindling any Russian brainwashing!
and i know that the Germanic side of "things"
has become a breeding ground for feral creature-oids
that resemble as best cuckoldry and at worst
the shadiest parts of the ***-scenes in Amsterdam...
but... bone-headed Russians and their
pride... that Russian pride... it's one of those intoxication
liquid i want to drink any of!

hmm...
   perhaps because i know English as a utility,
there's nothing romantic in it for me:
i buy bread with it, i ask: i used to ask for directions
in it, i ask someone in that conventional
formal way how they are and hope for the less *******
that most Americans reply with: how all is dandy
and it's all Texan blue above and not
the grey of the island skyline...

i did think for a moment: i should haven taken a step
further and attached myself to Swedish...
or Norwegian...
but then that's what a German would do...
as an Anglo-Slav it was only natural for me to succumb
to the allure of German...
the natural dynamo...
i fall on German and the German falls on Swedish...
or Danish...
**** knows who the Scandinavians fall on for
inspiration... the Finns?!
after all: the Finns are somewhat Scandinavian:
more Inuit people than...
        
one is a tongue one learned: or, was rather thrown
into learning...
but it's unlike a learning from it being passed on...
no one passed English down to me...
i'm a first generation immigrant...
i learned the tongue in the same time
as my parents learned it...
unlike all those 2nd generation immigrants
who were born in this land
and learned this tongue outside the dynamic
of their parents learning the language:
the only difference being...
i kept the mother tongue, the native, intact...
by refusing my parents' claim that:
if i only spoke English at home,
the English i acquired from being schooled
in the English educational system...
if i forwent me speaking my native tongue
to them: their English would somehow improve...
that they would, somehow, miraculously not have
a foreign accent!
as a child i picked up three majors things...
Catholicism wouldn't take me... i might have been
baptised without my consent...
but i had all the necessary obligations to
give or not give my consent when it came to confirmation:
i haven't been confirmed... i head too many
Gnostic Heresy texts as a teenager...
their idea that somehow i would mistreat my native tongue
in order for them to gain something for it...
like most Pakistani 2nd generation children...
perhaps, maybe... a few slip through the netting...
who still pride themselves on knowing Urdu...
most? with their loss of the mother tongue pick up
their own idiosyncratic accents within the confines
of English: they are literally children robbed
of bilingualism by their parents...

i mastered it and by mastering it found it with
shortcomings that only the tongue i was born
with could expose...

today this alpha looking male sat next to me on the train
and spread his legs... smiling... listening to music...
**** me mate... how much spreading do you need to do?
what i found:
poetry, best read when commuting...
i'm building up a complimentary package for a friend
of mine... she sent me macadamia nut shells
and dried pineapple and honey and...
a feather... i said to her: i will not send you anything
before i compliment a feather you sent me with a feather
of my own... i went cycling two days prior
and: imagine my luck! some magpie... ELSTER...
was either shedding her feathers or was in a fight...
i picked up about half a dozen ELSTERGEFIEDER...
magpie feathers...
on the train... you're better off reading a book
of poems than a newspaper...
the optics are much more clarifying...
none of the claustrophobia and oczopląs
               of a tightly-knitted (printed) column or opinion
paragraph... spread out text...
  poetry books as an alternative to reading newspapers
in transit... that's how i imagine "it"...
once upon a time newspapers were tightly knitted
beyond the scope of the printed paragraph:
it would require the solitudes of Sundays
to sit in calm and quiet and read them...
these days: that tabloid press with headers
and exploding wordings for the newly acquired
people of literacy: the addition of pictures...

nothing new, therefore nothing old...
mein herzenskummer ist was giBt
                   der Sonnenaufgang seine
      rinnsal auf schüchtern farben...
und! unt!
        der Sonnenuntergang seine
    busen-auf-verkörperung:
                auf: das nie vergeht!

                   how easily the displaced spiders...
turn to new architecture of the spider web
should their former and no sooner
than sooner: distraught with the havoc
of a man's quill of fingers having to differentiate
walking into a spider-web confusing it
with: are my eye-lashes camel's now?!

some shifts at work are terrible,
esp. when working with two females...
everything is wrong...
even telling after-work jokes is wrong...
talk of fish fingers... loads of ketchup...
that's wrong too...
top it all of this one is joking about the other
and the other is lesbian
and she has a new girlfriend
and fish-fingers: well... i am a man and i never
equated the smell of ****** with fish...
i know that tadpoles and ****...
but never fish... fish fingers... *******...
ketchup? i joked: that time of the month?
no laughter... no laughter...
if women are joking about their horrid ****
i better not be asked to, ******* joke!

better working with mute men on zombie mode...
i'm already a year behind having my social medial
stalked... sure... they can stalk me when they
figure out my middle name and some Slovak
diacritical markers... not until then...
just because i look silly when ice-skating
and everyone has seen the video doesn't
mean i'll give up my internet presence so easily: so...
i have a project aligning myself to German
so close to my heart i can find it forgiving...
to desire in the heart-of-hearts
to: **** this tongue enough to speak it when drinking!
because i find that Wilhelm was sort of right...
about how Germany was no empire
expect something on the continent
that gobbled up a part of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
because the Germans were an established people
and there was no sailing spirit in them...
after all: one might be inclined to think they
wanted to upkeep the romantic, familial orientation
of Christianity...
but the powers, the colonial powers at be...
whether the French the English or the Spanish...
who does, Christianity belong to, these days?
one might have asked the same question
before Christianity spread to the Nord Lands...
prior to its prior occupation with the Syrians
and North Africans and the Greeks...
Romans as a side joke?
who are the current mass of Christianity if not
the former colonies of the English
the Spanish and the French?
i know of Christians in South America from
the cross being dumped by the Spaniards with
vain hope... vain hope of the French in Africa...
and the English in Africa... and North America...

at least the Germans didn't... spread this...
Christianity might be allocated to about 12 individuals
within the confines of a single generation...
beyond that? money-grabbing money-laundering:
a religion with only the sole focus on LOGOS
while reading up on Zhuangzi you have several
other, dutiful terms to meditate on...
i might have been smitten by Hindu thinking before
being doubly smitten by Taoist dialogues...
one still remains a categorical imperative...
outside the realm of dialogue:
the best way you can help the world is
to help the world forget you and you in turn forget
the world...
obviously i'm doing X and counter-X...
i'm writing... by extension of writing i "want"...
or is that: "i" want to be remembered...
but thinking is no telekinesis nor is speaking
any telepathy...
             i speak... like today... i get this oddity of looks...
first she asks me: oh what should i reply
to my friend... just been to a Hen-do...
strippers? oh sure... there were strippers...
first time married? no... second... so what's the ******* point
of a hen-do? cluck x2 laid eggs x4?!
  
so her friend sends me a photograph of her newly bought
dress... laces... or whatever the ******* call
a would-be reimagined-curtain...
i tell her: she could pull it off... if she was a size 0...
the lace could really add dimension and curves to
a thin body...
to hide the skeleton...
but you know what would work for her?
a meringue dress...
you know the type? a one piece...
cut just above the ***** line...
simple: smoothed over... no patterns...
all the way from the cleavage to the feet...
so then she shows me her wedding dress...
it cost her £130 while her friend paid over £2000...
exactly what i was describing...
she just sent an AWW and tried to deflate the question,
or simply avoid it...
yeah... she looks like a flayed torso...
because... SHE's fat...

           eat all you want and as much (perhaps)
but at least burn it off...
if there's no work in the fields:
then there's no work in the fields...
but there's enough rubber burning on the bicycle
to escape the monotone drudgery of
urban living... as i found today,
upon Hook Lane cycling up to Chigwell Row...
there's no need to eat excessively...
no comfort in all that fat without
a leather chair or enough warm clothing...

treating people as these existential morons:
conceptualizing the non-existence of free-will is one thing,
another: to debrief them: life is without agency...
a choice-less Darwinism where
jelly-fish are somehow automated: sprouts:
well... no other life could or would ever be!
people without free-will is one thing:
the shackles of the dynamic of choice...
one choice sets you free, subsequent choice shackles
and inescapable binary of freedom-no-freedom...
science governing the flip of a coin...
but... people, robbed of any sort of agency?!
of self-authority over themselves:
so, so easily mangled and mishandled leaving
their fate unto... no fate: double sure...
unto others?!
i watched a few horror movies in my lifetime...
none seem as horrifying as this +mundaneness
of the horrible leftover: forgotten...

i must have a Germanic attitude toward these matters...
i was born into the living spirit of the ****** tongue,
the membrane in situ staging the conflict
of Rome vs. Greece...
or Germany vs. Russia...
i see no end to it...
i was born from the Germans trying to burn out
the Jews from "my" lands
while the Russians trying to subdue the flames
all the while...
i was still borne from a history that required
a solitary antagonist...
less so an protagonist of solitude...
either way: i was going to slither my way through...
like water like serpents...
wie wasser wie schlangen...

mein herz bricht aus hungrig flammen
als ich stürzen blind Samson's
already toppled temple
            
i know i that i will not write the sort of beauty
that's poetry that's everything that's
Zbigniew Herbert's
Godly Claudius
the Game of Mr. Cogito
Mr. Cogito observes his face in the Mirror
the Seventh Angel
   (my favourite of the angels listed?
Dedrael - the apologist and cabalist)
   to name but a few of the poems...

it brings such relief that i can't bring such
beauty into this world: perhaps if my mind was
not muddled by the utility of English
and my romance with German -
perhaps but only perhaps:
i don't even know why i started to write poetry:
maybe it was my lowest ebb
psychotic running on steam and pretend
legs between Edinburgh, Glasgow,
London, Dover, Athens, Belgrade,
Katowice...
                    walking into a bookshop buying
a copy of Rumi's verses...
buying Dostoyevsky's the Brothers Karamazov
and, just by chance... Bukowski...
what was so supposedly special and hiding
within the poetry of this man?
absolutely nothing: i was mad enough
to try it then and to keep at it:
not really knowing why...
  
compared to Zbigniew Herbert i write trash:
perhaps i read too much fiction,
even autobiographical prose: prose in general:
i don't know how to shut up the ten mouths
on the tips of my fingers but
i know how i can seem menacing
on a shift at work... hood pulled over my head
leather gloves squeezing each knuckle
asked by the atypical extroverted woman
whether something is wrong...
pulling my hood up, smiling, yet still being
compared to the grim reaper...
jokes aside: someone is counting the time...

a welcome break from Knausgaard...
this little safe-haven of poetry read in transit...
finally! something that's not mine
and not in English!

that's the terrible difference between men and women...
going to the Fulham shift i was sitting
behind three women... i'm guessing two were
newly arrived brides of war from Ukraine
who also picked up a Thai-surprise bride...
birds sound chirpier and more pleasant to talk
to... sitting behind them reading my little poetry
book... with a magpie's feather for a bookmark...
the women talked... about?
photographs... filters... instagram models...
plastic surgeries of people wanting to look
like their photographs...
impossible dreams! dreams of women...
and some womanized-men...
on my way back... same book same bookmark
and a young man sat down next to me...
put on some decent music i could
make out through the headphones...
angled his horizon to look over my shoulder
as to why i was reading a book with so much
open space and so little words...
not any fiction, not some constipated prose
of imaginary conversations...
and i could feel his leg pressing against mine...

perhaps i am not gay but i can't imagine
being friends with a woman...
i truly can't... there's either *** for me: with women...
or there is friendship with men...
with each man i meet i can achieve this
transcendent: otherwise unpackaged will
of subduing and seduction that only a woman
can provide me... but a conversation with a woman
is painful: at least for the majority of times:
there might be a special place for a woman
who might not necessarily:
but is probably older than me and shares
the same sentiments as me...
probably lives far away and thinks that hand-writing
is like exposing herself all naked...
will go out of her way to send me a feather of a bird
from over 3000miles away...

while i will send her a necklace with a single amber
stone on it... or i will send her a crab's pincer with a hole
drilled in it and ask her to buy some leather-string
to have herself a second necklace...

at work Stephanie the supervisor had to make it adamant
for me alone to know that i would be her Alpha...
whatever the hell that meant...
Alpha... well yeah... because i do try to ensure that
everyone is treated fairly...
the Asians boys of Bangladesh and Pakistan caved it...
this work or this cold of England
finally bit them...
     it's an unrewarding work if you don't have
an escape plan, like i do...
i'm always flying to other pursuits outside of this
work... customer service... being polite to people
that might not be polite to you or simply ignore you...
but even my standards i thought they were
taking it too far...
but i made a pact with them...
they took out a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured
out shots... if there's going to be a snitch among
us... it will be the man who does drink...
so when asked if i'd like a shot i replied: why not!
the weather calls for it... whiskey to warm up!
mixer? oh no no... straight!
plus... you can't mix Jack Daniels with Fanta, can you?
a few new colts were bullied into peer pressure
of silence, asked if they wanted a drink: said no...
me? i had a drink... i'm not snitching...
well i did when Stephanie was coming round
when i just said: nothing about the drinking...
but if there are 7 of us standing in one place...
but i'm the only one giving any customer service
by giving directions and good-evenings while
they're just standing talking to each other,
having a good time? apparently some people still
can't internalise being drunk for their own
self-amusement, drinking is somehow: getting together...
clearly these boys haven't been alone
and drank a litre of whiskey each and every single
night for months on end...

what really bugged me is when they took out a spliff
and smoked it between the four of them...
even as the customers were coming to see
Tottenham beat Fulham 1 - nil...
oh for ****'s sake... it's one thing having a cheeky sip of
whiskey on a cold day to warm up...
but to also smoke marijuana on a shift?
in full view and easily scented air of winter
before customers?
these guys don't want this ****** job...
thank god none of them are either bus drivers
or train drivers or plumbers for that matter!
maybe doctors who forgot to take out a pair of
scissors from a patient's body when
the patient is getting stitched up?

the worst i ever did was drink the night before
and sobered up on my way to work...
ah... not to mention that one time this
girl tried to scout her paranoia from prior relationships
with abusive alcoholic boyfriends onto me:
a man she just met... pampered with an array
of chemicals whether that be a cologne or this alcohol
containing face spray...
who i later tried to sooth by bringing her my homemade
weisserwein... cloudy... like any weisserbier...
chirpsin'... 3 way conversation conspiracies...
until the lie stood on dwarf's legs rather than stilts...
and to think: no i wasn't thinking seriously about
getting into a relationship with her...
she tried to get me fired for "apparently" drinking
on the job! a person she just me...
neurotic ******* *****... it's good that i showed her
what she would never, ever... get...

the difference between men and women...
the shift finished... prior to finishing we already knew
that there was some major ****-up on the tube...
the signals went down...
no Circle line, no Hammersmith & city services...
no services on the District line
from East Ham to Earls Court...
ergo? you'd think there might be a northbound
service to Edgware Rd. from Putney Bridge...
nope... Earls Court is a 4 x 4 junction...
sure... there was the southbound service
from Putney Bridge to Wimbledon...
and whatever service that's a station after
Earls court toward Richmond and Ealing Broadway...
as i'm guessing from Upminster to East Ham
and from one station after Earls Court
to Edgware Rd....
this girl was supposed to come with me
to Stepney Bridge from either Romford or Chadwell
Heath for the shift...
i was 15 minutes late because i felt like getting some
tea and an almond croissant...
she was? an hour late...
by the end of the shift when the transport invonvenience
was building up we went for our debrief
and she was all irritated in the eyes
when she wanted to get an Uber to Hammersmith
or whether it was she thought about going
without telling me: where that would cost her £50+
quid...
                  so when i told her...
i'm not going down the Putney High Street rail connection
because: (a) look at the ******* congestion
of the crowd and (b) i don't need to go to *******
Waterloo because that's ******* south of the river...

mmm hmm mmm... what, should we do?
i told you... i'm either walking or getting the bus 220
to Hammersmith...
debriefing over: she stayed behind for banter
and all the things that hinder an extrovert,
esp. a female extrovert... un-decisive, fatalist,
everything just ******* happens by some whisper
from astrology...
    Aquarius said to Libra that the waters were
about to spill... i ****** off from the stadium
like a hart... shook hands with the managers
thank you goodnight... as i was walking out
toward Hammersmith some young stewards were
shuffling really quickly it all looked very much like
they might be scratching vinyl...
i asked... you heading to Hammersmith?
yes yes... see! that's i like to see!
male to male camaraderie...
we have this unconscious motif of: from *****
you came to ***** you shall return...
it's a bit senseless to go to war these days...
less senseless when you're trying to get from
point A to point B...
there was about 40 of us running for the bus...
amongst us? 1 woman...
***** AHOY!
   obviously i left this girl behind...
her other option was asking one of the managers
to giver her a lift... ******* free-loader...
by the time the manager would have clocked out
all the other parties i would have wasted an hour...
just to get a lift... and then what?
stranded with her? even though we weren't going
to the same point B?
   i left with the *****-mentality... happy too:
because i could read my poetry book in the prized
possession of solitude... and no solitude...
because given the hour... something freakish was
bound to happen on the train or tube...
and it did... some proper English boys talking about
not wanting to take a nightcap in Romford heading
all the way to Shenfield joked when this guy started running
down the train carriage...
and those SKANKS so drunk who were blocking
the doors: subsequently delaying us
subsequently not catching their train blah blah...

well... just as today happened: talking so freely to men,
boys, young men, first point of "concern" / conversation?
establishing "taboos" or habits...
you smoke? you drink? first time you got drunk...
when did you start smoking marijuana first?
and then a natural progression into...
so... what music do you like... just... so naturally?
with women? even with Francesca,
this butcher boy of a lesbian...
it's a cul de sac sort of conversation...
she only talks about herself,
even today i received a text from her...
i broke up with Natalie... broke up i.e. she met her
on Tinder... she stayed round her house
for three nights... Natalie made her lunch for
work one time... cooked dinner another time...
4 days and nights they dated... already broke up...
there you go... Tinder-dating-shoplifting hearts...
window-shopping romances...

free market capitalism? sure... but not when
capitalism overstretches its influence
and we're worse off than the despairing existentialist:
PHILOSOPHERS of the 19th... the precurosor
fabric... i'd say the 20th century existentialist
philosophers had it easier...
but anyone in the 21st century, thinking, even remotely:
would be hard pressed not to express something
of substance bugging all of us:
no great war, no great upheaval,
proxy wars, the Thespian dictatorship over all
the other arts (with the exception of pop music, perhaps)
and the journalistic juggernaut of the quickened
availability of almost anything and nothing...
the free market of capitalism having invested
in creating this... Frankenstein in pieces...
this IKEA ******* LEGO model of a Frankenstein:
but at least Frankenstein bothered to construct
the entire monster rather than creating this
shattered Pandora's box... left in pieces and in
some realisation of a Copernican West...
in a Copernican East... Copernican "west"?
there's a "west" without a setting sun?!
up in outer space?
                         capitalism all fine and dandy:
but not outside the realm of a couple worrying about
how many kettle and toasters sets they will
have to buy during the year or even the wardrobe
needs revisions, or whether it might be worthwile
to change the wallpaper in the living room,
or what movie to watch on a date night at the cinema...
all of that is gone when the free market made
us profile ourselves... with some of us being pushed
so far as to fake cubist like pictures of ourselves
and subsequently implement plastic surgery to
double-fake ourselves...

the shrapnel-shelving-of-self...
it's like people are a library with no alphabetical order:
free market on psychology, morphed beyond
any concern for dreams: if there were any
as the luxury of the Freudian rich...
this... what happened to historiology in the modern
sense as stressed by Heidegger?
a study of history of the people by the people
or at least by individuals... morphed into this grotesque
pop psychology: archeological mapping back
to the primordial Pharisee of Ape and Aping...
farce: Darwin's Curtain of History...
   will we ever remember the beauties and horrors
of centuries from the 16th to the 19th?
no... everything of said years is nil: null...
because the ape's origins quickly morphed into
the man hunched over a microwave adamant in his
belief that... the carbon footprint of producing
a kilogram of chicken meat somehow, somehow would
"save the planet" than producing a kilogram
of tomatoes... given that a kilogram of tomatoes would
only yield a fraction of the necessary calories
than a kilogram of meat... and still the growing
of one kilogram of chicken would cost the planet
less than growing a kilogram of tomatoes...
who needs tomatoes in winter?!
eat, your, ******* root vegetables! carrots boyo! carrots!
but chickens don't need solar energy, nor suntans,
nor greenhouses... chickens cluck just as much
in winter as in summer... and eggs are a year round
product... plus you only need a barn in winter
to keep chicken!
tomatoes rot... chickens? they grow old and die...
until they grow old they still produce eggs...
and when they die? you eat them...
you can't exactly call a chicken rotten if it isn't already
days X already dead, can you?
it might not be as fresh... but...
ugh... no wonder

Zbigniew Herbert: from mythology (of Rome) -

   in the end only the superstitious
neurasthenics carried in their pocket a little figurine
made from salt, resembling the god of irony;
since then there wasn't a greater god.

then the barbarians came, they too greatly prized
the idol of irony.
           they pounded it with their heels and sprinkled
it into their dishes.

no clay-monster of the Levant can intimidate
me now!
not armed with these words:
let us witness the great divorce of man from woman!
let us watch!
pray... let us be brothers and friends and
secretly wishing we were lovers:
in the thinning air... let us talk about the strange
glow above the Thames hanging over Kew Gardens
as if: as i said to him:
as if the sunset still claiming an eye
in the night...
      what woman? what woman could i share
this romantic conversation with?
my interaction with women is so blatant so cold
so forced to claim the male in me and the woman
in her that it's only ******...
oh sure... i was going to the brothel...
but i was coming home already late...
i had two pairs of socks on, drawers, trousers...
a tank-top a shirt gloves and a thick coat...
by the time i would get out of all those layers
and have a quick shower...
half an hour i would have paid for would have become
nothing more than 15 minutes...
not enough time to get a hard-on
of being in the mood...
i already had more than ***...
a conversation... and no woman has yet to actually
provide me with one...
perhaps we are not in the trenches...
but men have always managed without women...
for as long as time knows...

a shift prior... at West Ham... ******* guy with a bald
head and a face as endearing as a plump baby
we great with a handshake that turns into
a thumb against thumb contest and a hug
tells me that i should come and find him at Cavern Cottage
and he'll sort me out with some free food...
hey presto i go and find him
i get a free steak and ale pie...
i know it's a one off...
    we already get discounts for burgers from the burger
van... but it's nice to give a reminder when
being invited...

     we do our rounds in the park...
among the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshi who at first
thought i was British when asked:
oh no... i'm not British... an Anglo-Slav at best...
from that lineage of Anglo-Saxons...
the Saxons who came among post-Rome rule
Britain and mingled or not mingled
with the local Celtic and Welsh and Britton populace...
i'm the second wave that didn't make it
because the British Empire collapsed
and the eastern Europeans were not too dearly minded
in the history of the British Empire...
but they know that i'm from Poland
so when asked: where are you from? there...
and "there"... but i've been living here since i was
7 so there's no "born and bred" argumentation
with me and those in your ethnic stratum
concerning any anti-Pakistani villification
of those in the "upper-castes"... blah blah...
they know... while the three of us walked around
this 40 year old Yugoslav woman
who escaped the Yugoslavian collapse of
circa 1992... starts talking as i switch her around
so she can have a walk with us to warm up her legs
from standing stiff still...
where are you from? oh... here...
i'm not going to tell her what i told the boys...
not after she deflects my attraction to her
by paying more attention to the Pakistani boy
of 20... i'm closer to her age...
but... then she does this sick thing of asking
me to hold her empty cups of tea that
have an unused teabag in it and some dried milk...
oh... right? i'm going to be your waiting boy?

******* testing women... this woman is past her prime...
i know it she thinks she can "test" my patience
by me being her ******* pet-shop-boy?!
fine! fine...
the more and more i talk to women
the more i find them diametrically opposed
to any sort of psychologically asexual universalism of:
ecce ****...
                 women have: and will have to...
sexualize everything from Aristotle to Zeno...
there was once a maybe female version of Aristotle if
only the: give me the drill... i need a bigger hole to see through:
these eyes aren't large enough...
if only there wasn't an oppressive patriarchy...
the oppressive "patriarchy" of autistic geniuses?!
oh... that one... the sort of men cowering
from female sexuality?
  wow! how oppressive!
                    magnificently oppressive!
we all should be so magnificently oppressed by the man
who discovered the wheel by meditating
the O(micron) - what came first?
the wheel or the omega, or was it the sun?
if Prometheus brought down fire... by teaching man
that scratching flint against flint could illuminate
the cave and give man a second womb of poison-fire...
before the forests turned to ash...
before Pompeii's negative of a whiplash of history...

i tried loving women... i loved them for:
the many months i would rather not use
the fingers of both my hands for...
    absolutely un-relate-able creatures...
what *** beside that of female would whisper in
man's heart to leave their minds without
reason to stage the Trojan War
                        or bring architecture to kneel:
like Xerxes: but the madness of Xerxes was rather
beautiful wanting to lash the Aegean into submission
rather than that little Pharaoh ***** who might
have said: best to chisel down a rock face
and glue together sand with egg-whites and spit
into bricks and polish up a craggy mountain:
lest we forget: from a lineage of a people
that once said: let us "reinterpret" the mountains!
pyramids...
                at least the South American tribes invented
the pyramid as an altar... not a tomb...
but we're no smarter than they were dumber:
the myopic-vision strategy of the vantage point
of: what came prior... with hindsight...
but hindsight only works in reverse...
the unmistakeably irreversible past
within the confines of the motto: the terrible
has already happened!
  
                       and some variation of the historically
terrible isn't already happening,
on some microscopic level?
                           not if / not yet?!
                                             hardly...

poetry is air and not the prose of water...
i am stranded between wanting to breathe air
and at the same time more in need to drink water:
no wonder i cannot rest with merely breathing air...
if only i were to breathe air and leave my efforts
with so much nuance as to allow others to breathe
the same air... alas i am like that saying of Heraclitus...
i'll pour you a glass of water
i have prior to drank... leave it for you to drink a day
later: it will not be the same water that i have drank...
i wish i could write like these words might be air...
but it's... aqua post scriptum et plus aqua
post scriptum ad fluenta...

                    verschließen dein augen:
    sehen wieder... immer wieder:
                               bis: es gibt
                             nicht freude:
noch aufschub träumen...
                              kalt silber-rasierer
                                 schneiden auf
mondklären... nacht als auch wirklichkeitstoff.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2022
as someone who used to fall asleep listening to Christopher Young's soundtrack for Hellrasier II: hellbound each night for almost a year... i've spiced it up a little... le chant des templiers - chant of the templars... unless it's raining... then falling asleep to the sound of rain... i sort of allowed myself to focus on something i'd best call an: agreeable veneer... each single time i try to avoid banter with colleagues: yeah, i know i sort of must but the mere thought of banter makes me feel ill... i'm not here to make friends, i'm not here to get into a relationship with someone i'm working with... well sorry... so much for a woman's excuse when dealing with football hooligans: oh but you wouldn't talk to your mother, your sister or your grandmother like that... well i'm all three of those things... yeah... sure... and like there aren't men who would *****-slap a "steward" on a ******* whim... while i have the whole 6ft2 and 100kg worth of defense... i'm not here to make friends... we used to have friends in high school, tightly knit friendships, very idiosyncratic in-group / out-group preference... i don't think i had any friends at university: perhaps one Japanese guy, Tomikuni... but by then superficiality kicked in and people were branching into hierarchies and chances of seeking out nepotism... now? again: an agreeable veneer, but deep down i'd rather speak a robotic hello how are, enjoy the match to a crowd of 200 strangers than pretend to be friendly with colleagues... even today i was *******... sure, there was a shortage of stewards, so instead of initially patrolling the crowd upon entry via the park we were spontaneously put on the turnstiles, great! an adrenaline rush... then after we finished that task we were allowed to go back to our original designation... i radioed the control room: control, control, park 3 returning to designated position... copy... the park had 6 stewards designated to patrol it... for a good 40 minutes? who was there? me! and only me... **** it... came 9:30pm and a demented Quasimodo was ringing the bells like there was no tomorrow, i sat on a bench in the graveyard, took off my right shoe and readdressed the situation of a folding sock on my sweaty foot... if these sub-Saharan pseudo-Arabs are thinking about work as: loiter... listen... they once spinned the narrative the narrative that Covid was a "racist" virus... you know how many of these copper-necks i've watched... go into the toilet... do their either no. 1 or no. 2 deed and walk out without washing their hands?! too many... that's how many... pretty much all of them... at least the blacks are actively willing to integrate... imagine if the blacks didn't integrate... would they be singing in the Baptist choirs?! would these blacks even sing, if they remained chained to their African tongues?! and? oh my god, the blacks are the cleanest, most pedantic ******* out there, they can almost compete with white neuroticisms... that's how good they are... but some of these *******... so i sat there for a while drinking too much coffee listening to the bells of All Saints' Church... footsteps: my own... the moon, almost full... alle das ist die nacht! all that is the night! the forever hardly any flow of the Thames... is the Thames a river, or a makeshift: pond?! oh sure, i'm agreeable, at face-value... what i've learned from the English is the double-edged sword psychology... being two-faced... at least a Russian might tell me outright: oi! ****! oh, no no, not among the English... polite comes first, anything else comes second and of note: with dire consequences you were never going to expect... see: flimsy ****... an agreeable veneer... i'm actually gagging for the moment of confrontation where i roll my eyes back, hide my pupil and iris and merely show my eyes as fully sclera entombed before grieving an over-hyped teen... tensing my muscles... over-sizing myself... that's yet to come... i'm currently leaving each shift slightly disappointed... not enough adrenaline... i want, more! but to hell with the current whereabouts of the action... even if i were raised a catholic.... don't protestants get confirmed? sorry, i "missed" being confirmed... i was reading some Gnostic literature... i "forgot" to get get church "approval" or, "disapproval"... whichever... do i care? my current top three tier "guys" to emulate... Jason, Michael... Pinhead... i abhor people that are satisfied with being safe... i hate weakness as much as a **** might abhor keeping to a standard of germs... i abhor, weakness... a lag in responsibility... in drives me nuts! i could almost **** for a thrill of knowing that i'm killing something; lesser... i'd be killing it by also inquiring into myself as... paradoxically being: kind... it... yeah.... oddly enough... "it"... i abhor weakness in people... which is why i am a face of an agreeable veneer...so many ******* are just weak... pencil-pushers... hierarchy-minders... the weak might have inherited the earth... but what "earth" are we speaking off? this, *******?! oh, wow! dementia prone bollocking, right, this one? i need to sleep, i need to remind myself of my romance with the night...

nights like these are so rare... i drink more than i write,
i don't actually care about writing,
sometimes i just want life to sink in...
i left the house after doing some minor chores:
preparing a mushroom soup - oh, not creamy,
none of that English cream soup *******...
clear... a dollop of cream can be added later,
the mushrooms were not blitzed up, sliced... floating...
the broth was based on extracting as much from
a carrot, a parsley root, some celery...
a leek... if only the local shop sold some celeriac...
a bay leaf, allspice, a pinch of cinnamon
some paprika... one or two cloves... fresh leaf parsley...
a mushroom and a chicken stock cube to counter
the need to salt: i still salted the broth a little...
black pepper... obviously i also had to cook some pasta
to later float in and around the mushrooms...
garlic... with its skin on... oh... about three teeth's worth...
all rounded up on a decent amount of butter:
after all... if it's a clear soup... you want some oomph!
since no protein is being used, you need to counter
that lack with some fatty lubricant...
ha... the commute... if i'm lucky an catch an express
train from Southend Victoria into central London
it takes me about 8 minutes to travel from Romford
to Stratford... then the central line to Victoria...
then the victoria line to... ****... two stops... oh...
right... to Victoria station, then the district line to Putney Bridge...
today i had to get a district line to Earl's Court
so i could catch a district line from Edgware Rd.
toward Wimbledon...
just this once i wasn't feeling it...
all afternoon i was exhausting myself while thinking
of Gemma...
******* butterflies, didn't eat anything, drank a little
whiskey... and to think: i used to love coffee with cream
or milk... now? always black... with the added dollop
of whiskey, two sugars...
i saw her again... but **** me... the butterflies weren't
there... i fall in love easily...
but i fall out of love even more easily...
reality kicks in these days... i think i have aged:
falling in love with the idea of love...
reality is bound to disappoint me...
to think that i might be with a woman - earn money...
in order to pay for unnecessary **** is... giving me a limp ****...
that women are the prime instigators of any economy:
what would a man spend money on?
whiskey? bicycles, spare parts... the odd shoe...
some socks?
capitalism is not going to survive the onslaught
of emerging bachelors... skint *******... i know:
i'm one myself... no wonder women need to be propped up...
paid more... why? they'll spend the money!
men won't spend jack-**** on... jack-****...
i still have a mother, i'll sometimes buy her flowers...
but to hell with buying a birthday card...
a kiss on the cheek and a few words...
why would i buy flowers? when i can have daffodils
randomly spurting up in my garden some February?!
am i... going to chew on vinyl: that licorice plastic?
- first time i came across Gemma she was so giddy...
flirty... and that was only on Saturday...
on the ride home she would rest her elbow on my leg...
get a headache... stare at me when i pretended
to not be looking through the side of my eyes...
i mean: for a 39 year old... most 20 year olds don't look
at pretty...
today she was so reserved... cold...
oh... right... well... thank god i had an ideal in my head
rather than what could possibly come...
a sort of scenario was playing out in my head
from the movie: As Good As It Gets...
a single mum will always put her offspring first...
regardless of whether the offspring was conceived by
an abusive alcoholic ex that beat the kid and choked her...
sure, sure, i'll allow all people to have that *******
luxury of being existentially filled by having children
they can subsequently ****-up...
me? i'm just happy when i grab the eyes and full attention
of a 4 year old girl looking at a glowing marble /
fluorescent squid that i become momentarily...
at least in their eyes... perhaps this current job i'm doing
really is a stepping stone to becoming a secondary school
chemistry teacher... oh **** me... if i got into a primary
school environment: i'd have my fun...
it's also good that i have an underground sort of mindset...
to the brothel i go: eerily 'appy oh oh...
- since Saturday after first meeting Gemma
i sort of forgot to ******* - oh, none of that only-fans
crap, scented candles, ****** or streaming...
like i once noted: on the throne of thrones...
take a **** which oddly enough is always predicated
by ******* while sitting down...
*******? i sometimes need to relax the **** muscles...
******* helps... and then a quickie in the shower...
yeah: but after our second encounter today:
with so much reservation...
it was going to be either Kendra Lust or Samantha Saint
on my mind...
why do all the pretty ones always go down
the route of ******* or prostitution?
is it the sort of mentality that beauty ought to be shared?!
i mean: **** me... an oak tree is beautiful...
it can / has to be seen by almost anyone...
is that the same with women?
- so we stood there talking *******... me...
one lesbian (if i were a Don  Juan... she could perhaps be
a nun... but a lesbian? "conquering" that?
eh... not exactly ugly... but a butch mentality...
slap some make-up on, close my eyes... most definitely
****-able) - we ended up talking about bones...
where are the smallest bones located...
i suggested the wrists... the parts of the body most
flexible... Gemma retorted... no... the smallest
bone in the body is in the ear...
now i'm going to google that... to see... ****...
she was right... the smallest bones in the body are
the: malleus (hammer), incus (anvil) and the stapes (stirrup)
and they are located in the ear...
then onto the turnstiles... oh god... the turnstiles at
Fulham are like a century ahead of the turnstiles at
Oxford... ******* Brummies... lovely folk...
almost if not more lovable than... Scousers...
GEORDIES / MANCUNIANS are not SCOTS!
   don't even get me started on those south western
***** from Bristol...
yeah... well that was great... i felt like a teenage boy for
about two days and now my honeymoon period
is over... reality bit back...
   all my dreams and fantasies crumbled...
                  whatever initial attraction she gave me...
she now was fulfilling her role,
she had a job to do... i was reduced to a status of:
less the person to initiate her, to comfort her to someone
on her plateau, hardly any "superior"...
it's nice to be sober up on this reality-juice...
it makes all the more sense to seek ideals like:
that's a bottle of whiskey that i'm calling ms. amber...
fraulein bernstein etc.
there are always the prostitutes...
it's not like i was going to play a good uncle Caesar
and profane myself with surrogacy of a child that isn't my own...
i don't have the sort of resources.

— The End —