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Adam Latham May 2017
Atop the blanched plume of a pampas grass stem,
Overlooking a sea of white daisies
Stretching out to the edge of a wild flower lea
Where the forget-me-not bumblebee lazes,
Is the grandiose house of the butterfly king
Filled with treasures and precious excesses,
With a bright yellow spire built from pollen ball bricks
Home to three rather lovely princesses.

The fairest of all in that field and beyond
Their beauty was famed and fought over
By the slow sliding slug sheiks of blackberry nook
And the ladybird lords camped in clover.
Each one with wide eyes firmly fixed on a prize
That made shy spiders scurry and scutter,
To see those red painted yet delicate wings
Underneath sun kissed skies gently flutter.

Lovesick and besotted with hearts beating fast
Each suitor petitioned for marriage,
To win for themselves a sweet butterfly bride
To parade in a crab apple carriage.
But the majestic monarch alongside his queen,
Both filled with parental devotion,
Wished for their three daughters to choose for themselves
And would not entertain such a notion.
bitter winds bite
a desperate heart

as early darkness
unsheathes winter's
slivering moon

the perfect
celestial sickle
threatens to thresh
exposed digits

wayward trundlers
heaving bulky
sacks of woe

scutter down
the city's
darkest
side streets

making haste
to the only
lighted room
that still
welcomes them

cots boast
lumpy clots
of errant springs
and jagged hooks

grappling the lodger
atop a mattress
in bumpy knots of
institutional green

coughs and snores
cusses and laughter
sighs and tears
all ceaseless
prayers

some mumbled
some shouted
some thought
some roared
some farted
some cried
some sung

speaking mutely of
the weighty day

resenting new
hard memories

hoping for a
dreamless sleep


Friends Shelter
NYC
12/31/08
jbm

Music Selection: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
.metallica, manchester 2019... master to whos mastery: whos puppets to whos puppeteering... i have to admire the fact that you have to play the standards... its not like even plagiarism comes into the play, but it must be tiresome to have to continue to play the crowd favorites... no compensation for what's expected as new.... if i were stuck in the rut of replica upon replica... regurgitation upon regurgitation... doesn't this art form tire so easily... who was that poet, who went to bed crying after listening to liszt play? matthew arnold... god i'm freed... all the fame and fortune and also not enough time to make your shadow a friend... one inherited temptation is enough to succumb to facing the subsequent ones... come playing a guitar staged before a horde... or fiddling with my beard in the background without malicious intention... but the poverty of lyricism... sure... blues players and their incessant rhymes... but these modern lyrics? to hell with it: i'm no better... but how can you fathom the stamina to replay, to replay, to replay the horde's echoing boom boom mantra fantaticism? i couldn't do music... rememebering words, contonuing a course for replay of the greatest hits... even if expanding into unwritten new territory was a farce... so what... come the bad with the good and the tabloid quality... but having to "love" your work in order to erode your memory like your standard pedagogy manual... i don't want or would't want to remember my words: half if not a third is hardly worth remembering... to a verbatim suited & booted closure and an opening for poet turned entertainer... i don't see how these people cling onto their nostalgia performances... well: to please the crowd is to please the crowd... ilona (former russian "gif") reminded me when james hetfield opened his mouth: he's such a redneck with that accent... god, this russian loved how i appropriated the english shropshire accent... what was that word she called me? ah.... i was a.... yuppie! then the moscow crowd took out their cigarette lighters and we snogged... god i miss relationships, being in that state of vulnerability... i really miss being vowed to a woman and free-falling into a grace of competent trust without question... now here's me calling out the lost trill surrounding the R in both the snake-bitten english numb "R" (without the trill) and the hark of the Francians... i miss being vulnerable... which is what love feels like... being assured a safety when staging a dangerous theatre scene of... say... free-falling before the parachute... that's love: the ability to feel vulnerable... love is and never was some ******* poetic ideal... of perfecting the "art" of loving... to love was always to feel vulnerable... i really miss that... to love was to trust, it wasn't ever about spewing out amour cliché after another amour cliché... sad news being, i will (probably) ever experience that softness of the heart, always the anchor of the weight of a marble slab... never the emotions derived from the heart, forever bound to the bowels... gut-sensations and the reflexes... never a mind to compensate incompassing reflections and the expansion of time to a fixed space... i once loved... is it better to have loved than to have no loved at all? that's questionable, riddle with... is it better to have lived and died, without the knowledge of pain associated to a brain haemorrhage or with: said knowledge? any man can claim the same: it's horrifying to have to live the rest of your life without the cushion, the bed, the feathers of love where you throw yourself icarus-esque, head-first, as a vulnerable babe... shedding the wolf's mane and softening your heart to escape the rational, reflexive array of emotions derived from the bowels.

guess who's diacritical abstaining from the prose...
      kurwy codzienne
czy te kuchenne... a raczej
               zbyt?
no churrah w mnie i horongiew
       wapnia i kurczu -
i tyle to, by gadać tchu!
pięć łatwych utworów -
you made my mind up to counter...
    i said no to the niqab,
so i said yo- to the -gurt...
and let me franchise it babe....
because when i do i won't be
the Franklin as the heavy heave to a scutter
and rat bound
smartease of a Jefferson's lighbulb...
you get boring
more so with the season...
***** and the farthing: quick-change
to quicken your step,
spelled Tokyo... takes two with reminders:
now pay and wait and pastry-size to
concubine the shadow....
                        of hiding cassette and
the lung to breathe through to gorgon enterprise
of the three-headed alcatraz.
i said score ***** harry
     i said i said it twice... 7070 film...
                  i said it thrice...
i said it a fourth time...
the fifth time i was left the overs,
and america r.i.p.,
and i said: god: just let me be!
you were the 20st century fake in the project act
and it was named kevin spacey....
           and you said drive-by
bygone shoot-out... and i said: hamburger
        tattoo and other things worth
the same idea of gluing **** together...
                         and then the toad's hiccup...
rhapsody of burps...
and then that...
  and then i want to be: martin luther king jr.
and a national holiday icon,
and when i want it... and i gag for it....
and then i die for it...
   and then i hate dying for it.... and
so i earn my living as a plumber....
    and then the nation goes for iraq...
and then i am president and face a q & a...
and i'm like: happy are those
who come with applause...
    because i'm the sole one battered with
with the qualm that might translate
as america bound...
well ye-ha! aren't we the lucky living *******!
then i'm about to pludge-****-and-poach-the-*******-yankees
into a question of: a horn brigade to toll the folding bridge;
scatter skew the next new coercion for a parade...
infantile french be the said: long gone...
germanic kinder less a rhyme,
and more a gas... just gaß... or governor:
that should have been gaś or gaš... but then you're
so ******* boring, it makes sense that you're rič...
because you didn't actually get that part...
to be: clint the runner in western and not
***** 'arry...
say you laugh, you don't say clint eastwood
when you actaully watch al pacino in
dog day afternoon... and 1970s america makes
sense...
             and you won't be able to replay
1960s america... because you can't... and it makes
sense why it all feels filthy and dry these days....
that you believe in recitation as you might
believe in the word regurgitate....
and all you want is horror and a.i.,
    and you will never wake from that dream again...
because there were those not lazing in learning
english, that you were left, so glutton coerced
into learning more anagram of english than french
wasn't...
and sure: you created these games of a language
for the sole reason that you wanted to avoid learning
french or german...
you created games from language
because you felt superior... and you created
these games from language because you said
it wasn't worth saying anything in french...
LAZY, OBSOLETE, MOTHER... *******!
but i say: it would have been easier to learn
german than to invoke the game of anagram...
   but then again... who am i to judge?
              who cares, when there are over a billion
chinese and we are but a case of ****
in asking for the perfumed number?
             i say thank god for the indus and the chinese
with their billionth marking...
    it makes no matter if i'm white
and speak english or german or swede or *******...
     it took just one of us to be as lazy as we were
to leave the rest of us happy in tuning toward
becoming extinct. ha ha... ha ha ha ha ha ha!
well, d'uh! you ******* dodo!
squirrels and opossums and birds of paradise
because im screaming
profanity into the trees
they can hear me scratching my sores
flaking scabs onto the crumbly floor
to integrate myself with the remains
of generations past
they can all hear me
crack the first beer of the morning
and pour it out for my love
no longer here
they can hear me all
repeat myself and pace
atop the pecan shells crunching
but the cap of the bottle spins
whirling around its rings
for a glug
and they all scutter, scamper, and waggle off
only proving my point
a terrible mood to be around
wow...lol?
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
it became such a mess, such a spontaneous persistence to change the subject and involve too many, that it just had to be cut up into four sections.

i

it really wasn't enough to create diacritical distinctions
for the letters of the Latin men,
Christianity had to come along too,
a mixture of what Russell described as
Platonic and Neoplatonic populism, derivatives
of Judaism and the cults of the near east,
notably Orphism - as a way to pacify i guess,
the ardent spirits into submission -
the only success story being in Scandinavia;
but it wasn't enough to introduce diacritical marks
to the Latin alphabet so that barbarians could retain
their uniqueness of tongued-stress,
so too the emergence of the linguistic topsy turvy alphabet,
like the upside down omega - a natural born congestion
of the educated class, they weren't satisfied with memorising
the alphabetical atoms as the specified sounds,
even when given revisions of c (ć), n (ń), s (ś), z (ź) -
this second revision of the alphabet like ˌɒnəˌmætəˈpiːə,  
or the trans-atlantic version:
on-u
h-mat-uh-***-uh, ‐mah-tuh* -
and already i can see the tetragrammaton working
intricacies in this pronunciation - italicised,
but barely pronounced, or in Essex: 'it's 'appening'.

ii

indeed the aesthetics of excess, orthographic,
the alter: in polish u and ó - same sound - knock knock,
the latter ruled as prettier in certain spellings
than the other, a bit like fashion, a blue turtle-neck
sweater with a long purple skirt - or some other
dalton misunderstanding: translated into greek it's
the same with ε (epsilon) and η (eta), depends which
looks prettier, but why are there rules concerning
what's correct? none, of course one looks aesthetically
pleasing, but why bother schooling children in
rigid aesthetics, even joke about it on news channels
when both are correct, you end up saying the intended
sound: i can accept the handwritten argument,
namely which letter best suited compounding letters
into a smooth connectivity, but in this digitalised
world, my hand writing was already based on the
principle of typing rather than handwriting, i.e.
no letter was joined up in a word, all of them looked
like this, i guess that's why 'αδης spelling wins
given that you'd connect the longer leg of η to the tail
of the ς, which is where the french ç (s) in the word
garçon comes from, the greek sigma (used only
at the end of words); never in school where we taught
french in units, these distinctions were never explained
to us, they fed us the language like turkeys, entire words,
not explaining the distinctions of units, hence my tongue
broke and never learnt anything.

iii

Hades, the sole greek god who had no temple:
as with the vastness of the universe -
that great dawn of thought in man,
and subsequent ratty scutter, hardly the admirable
sloth of a centipede, out of panic first
man's religious organisation into ranks -
out of fear - where too the barbaric bewilderment
of the talk of soul - a breath in wintry conditions
seemed less bewildering concerning proving
unseen things - or writing, hearing unsaid things.

iv

you hear this from journalism, you hear it from
historians, enough time passes, and real events
became labelled: non-existent, famous people back
then end up labelled non-existent - esp. now given
the omni-literate populace, writing something these days
isn't as significant as it was with quills and papyrus.
i don't think it's as easy to outright deny something's
existence, the modern journalistic onslaught and
relentlessness over-feeding us world events
is hardly worth a history other than in itself, a day,
the journalistic onslaught and relentlessness,
it's history on αmφeτaμiνeς - so much passes through
the mouth of time, so much is recycled, regurgitated, lost,
forgotten, it's no longer that if enough time passes,
historical events become mythological events, that's
natural, that after enough history has been recorded,
lived, remembered - the Grand Logos (abstracted god)
enters and utilises the logic of changing history into
myth... hence it's logical to have myths, since there's
an applicable logic involved, when history becomes strained
by too much time, mythology enters, after all the
contemporaries die from a specific event, people are
prone to forgetfulness, as is natural and therefore require
mythology, to retain some memory of the event
or person - mythology isn't necessarily about denying
something's existence prior, it's the blood timespan,
too much time, history becomes mythology given a certain
number of centuries necessarily having to pass,
epochs - not centuries, epochs - enter the realm of aeons
and you enter astrological domain of the zodiac 12.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i don't know, maybe my writing has overtones
of begun conversatioin, never finished...
or maybe conversation is all my writing ever
invokes...
              it's almost as if want to talk...
but never muster enough will for it to take place...
   i could reread Kant's transcendental methodolgy
over and over again,
       i don't know, maybe because i'm european?
and i feel no allegiance toward feeling bereft
in dealing with a colonial past?
         european-centralism is nothing western...
it's not even muskovite, so what the hell is it?!
           when i read kraszewski is didn't beg for
Dickens....
              England was a marr bruise, 1 thousand
miles off from Reykjavík...
a lost cause...
                    dead in the artcic, alongside the scutter
of: the tales of the beheading monk...
          should he ever arise: and make Diana
the patron saint: as is her due...
             whenever i spent three weeks
starved from the medium of defeat,
                                 i did read Kraszewski as antidote toward
the fluke that's: paweł jasienica & sienkiewicz...
                    if ever poszukiwana, poszukiwany, (1973),
czy tem myś, czy tem: **** misja!
riplej! riplej! oh! nie dadzy ripleja!
   o **** to pytać: kurwe z amsterdamu.
ty? ty to huja dawny o zzadźwi zakonice w chomoncie
     nabić krojem: w babylonskie obietnice...
   szomota kryju skarg...
and this the end-trip of polish culture,
and me scold, that rubric of a wish to forget china-town!
you just savor that phrase: designed in California...
manufactured in Beijing!
         Mao-Tse chung-fowl kung-fu chop!
hrabia Ezzex...
                            fat-ma-gil turkczynka wiodle:
chóra! brak Arraba! tak, ten spustoszały
                        zagwizd smroden pełny, czworakim,
  obgadany w kodym: Lałrancja blondaßa!
                 anglischen: murgrabiaschen bach!
                          obejmać: wielbłąda, też mu pisano!
cycor wydajny... pierś też nie brak!
   cycek to też twój idol... ziarno maku zjem...
piasku: wpluje ci w oko i powiem: pieprz!
  sfędzi? czyli: trafiony: zatopiony... u-zbek u-bjojten.
jak tylko mu to Bóg zapisze...
tak zaklęty pismem: jak i czołem wyryty!
w swej mądrej czuwości! w bidzie będzie cytaty wtedy...
   czoło jego wyryć da kilo czerni wydobytej:
bo bendzie mógł mówić: szmacznie: stolec kwit!
i to straty: tak naprawde pragne.
                   at tu sra, sra sra: wielbłądzą flegmą:
by tej nie-wyparzonej gębie nadać nowy czyn
takiej to samej orgii pewności, jak zza wieku począt 2, 1.
                    to ja też go: o pardom: krawatem i
kajtanem obuznajm spytam... i co on mnie wtedy
nie powi! o jo jo jo joj! asz: sie boje.... boże boże:
   daj mi tchu: by w tą arabską morde
   na pluć co zwe: żyć z tobą nie łatwo...
  ale trza...
   pokajrze mordzine my bratku...
                                     daj! wszyje ci uśmiech
                poza granice policzek! tak na zbyt,
tak na gwarancje...
                               bo może i zapomne,
co kiedyś na mej, twarzy, nadać słowo zakwitu:
                       słać raz jeszcsze, szęst; czuwam więc, onajmić szeście
tym statkiem: to konieczne, spartańskie: wzbudzenie,
                    o to zór wojenny! nawet ten
ostatni angol... będzie pierdolił mi smutki
                       o swym: wzbogaceniu na wichurach
              zdobycia: koron i grzbietów pochyłych
w skraj kolonii... opłoczynnach: morgrabia szczoch...
teraz raptem: revolt... ha ha...
niby marionetka i światem poczytna znaleźli sie:
                           niewiasta narodzin absurdalnych wiar!
   no kurwa! w bieli syta! ja cie kręce!
    takich to wymówek to mi naprawde, za mało!
Ray Jordan Aug 2019
I often find my posits dreadful,
Happiness flies merely fleet,
So much compounds, accosts a headful
Angry, gnawing, awful heat!
In joyful sorrow I must live
For truest joy is not to be
And frightened by, as laws decree,
A final debt, a life to give.
(Then summons me, my last repose,
To Heavens Gate, that some suppose.)

I cannot shed this melanchol’,
So Viper-like time’s turbulence,
Nor sally forth ‘pon brevet fall,
Conning self in feckless hence
When plaintiff Hell wraths from my lips,
“O’ Fie! Ye craven Viper! Fie!
Why should it be that I must die?”,
By fevered brain’s convulsive flips.
(As if a Viper’s state be blamed
For thus which gives me abject pain.)

And in these throes of torrid temper
Comes a hummingbird in flight,
Engaged in moments: basic, simpler,
Perfect-formed wee aero-sprite!
So happily he flits about
When seeking nectar, bloom-by-bloom,
In flowers bright as peacock plumes
And worries not of Earthly doubts.
(For hummingbirds have innate sense
Of urbane thoughts and true pretense.)

His playful flight in mayful flutter
Sagely parries ‘**** the trees
Through ev’ry leaf he flies a’scutter
Daring, as his heart will please!
My dearth, it seems, I now forget;
A tiny smile claims my face
And grows to full by levied grace
To pause my Earthly-borne regret!
(This newly forged respite from woe
Has cast away my pitied trow!)

What revelation rids my sadness
(All those worries disappear)
And what was anguish turns to gladness
Gone, the nagging mortal fears.
O’ they’ll return, I have no doubt,
To wrest my contemplative mind
But now assured that I can find
A joyful thought to fight such bout
I will forever carry near.
And to the hummingbird in flight
I’ll cherish how you drew my sight
To rid a foolish mortal’s tears.
(As hummingbirds will understand
The foibles taken by our hand.)
My writ of death and life by love of hummingbirds.
Isabel Jun 2019
So much above
So many shapes and textures
So many shades of green
I cannot tell
How steep the *****
How high the bank
How far above the - manyness -
So much above
          me
While here I stand
Looking at the underneath

I could, if course, go up
Mount this hill
And stride the ridge
Within the birdsong and the freer air
Look down on all the little people
With their little lives
And me above
          them
Looking at the underneath

But here I stand
Admiring the reverse of each new leaf
Unturned
Where bugs crawl
And small creatures scutter
And only the occasional purple flower
Reaches down for a kiss
The green, the glory, the multitude
Is all above
Me
And I am here
Looking at the underneath
This might be about life and stuff. Or it might just be about standing at the bottom of a steep green bank covered with growing things. I'm not sure, I just found it when I went for a walk.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2017
sūdokú is a drunkards version of events, while peering into a kaleidoscope: sūdokú is a drunkard's kaleidoscope.

                                  no, no aquarium eyes,
    no 10 beers in and she's a stunner...
none of that...
                    it's hyperbolic square geometry,
it's an implosive square,
              it's actually a square that somehow
turn into a cube... funny thing that,
that it actually ends up being
    a three dimensional object,
    while retaining its essence of being
merely 2 D.
               maybe that's why i don't
play video games...
    crosswords? oh **** me, i'm **** at
that...
     crosswords are deductive reasoning,
meaning? i'd rather read a thesaurus...
   sūdokú? that's inductive reasoning,
you scutter like a rat to find patterns.
   i never liked crosswords,
   i always felt they were a way to curb
someone's vocabulary potential...
       a bit like gasping for air /
               thinking of the right word...
language is god.
              prior to the poetry of the book
of genesis? egyptian hieroglyphics?
   void; ******* owls, sparrows,
                    nothing resembling x-ray,
i.e. skeletal linguistic artefacts...
          *****, gonna penetrate these things;
sure, the romans invented curves
   and 15th century fetish for plump ladies...
never mind.
             ah, yes...
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh
   (catcher in the rye)
haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
       (the joker)
the two hands of god, in the framework
that the tetragrammaton,
               and then of course Y, i.e.
gamma-reality, three-dimensions...
    and W? the wriggly bits of flux,
  that begins with god: cosine,
   and in the image of god, man, also
wriggly: M, sine;
                                  trigs the buster.
H
the jews approve of there being two vowels
to be regarded as consonants (the ****... ******
  adams א ע‎)
but the hands of god H  ׂ ָ  ֵ  ִ  H catch all the vowels...
  and of course the u, the *shurek
within ו‎ (vav).
  cholam (o), kametz (a), tzere (e), chirek (i) -
said, with regards to conventional greek
       prefix cutting off from a name ascribed
to a letter: i.e. alpha = a-, or beta = b-,
      which later became the roman
                            song, whereupon letters
   no longer had names, but where
                     musicologically ready for a choir.
saying that, hebrews treat vowels
  like post-romans might treat diacritical marks...
  diacritical marks are really supra-punctuation
markings, or rather: indicators of required breaths
to usher in the proper syllable scalpel of a word,
   a word,    rather than what conventional
  punctuation marks provide, a scalpel for a sentence.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2018
you'd think, that the least the english
could ever be, or rather become,
was a people agile in perfecting
bilingualism...
  with their history
         of colonial endeavours...
             but as we already know:
******* mono-lingual they
                             attest to remain;
hence the tease...
                      via papa deutsche;
kleinsaxon...
                whittle scutter...
                son, my art,
       and your take on
intellectual *******...
               yard's thought culminating
in: well done.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2019
i have died the number
of deaths that:
the few scout in
making name,
to assert a "plagiarism"
of number in
what constitutes
a duplicate...
to: enlarge...
scatter aloof and
all that whispers...
  the bubble &
the bumblebee...
   i scutter
to master the frevor
for the feud...
and all that is...
is a swarm's worth
of a day:
without a tomorrow.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2018
you took a ****
where i'm
"supposed"
to eat?
      *******
and **** eating
a toe-nail...
you...
    frivolous
tongue-tied
            hair-do;
whoop-see-
     scutter
     brain;
twice
  the anonymity
of
paying the  skyve
rent boo...
of owning
       a notion.

— The End —