Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
SophiaAtlas Mar 2019
It happened in the dead of night while I was slicing bread for a guilty snack.
My attention was caught by the scuttering of a raccoon outside my window.
That was, I believe, the first time I noticed my strange tendencies as an unusual
human.
I gave the raccoon a piece of bread, my subconscious well aware of the consequences.
Well aware that a raccoon that is fed will always come back for more.
The enticing beauty of my cutting knife was the symptom.
The bread, my hungry curiosity.
The raccoon, an urge.

The moon increments its phase and reflects that much more light off of my cutting
knife.
The very same light that glistens in the eyes of my raccoon friend.
I slice the bread, fresh and soft. The raccoon becomes excited.
or perhaps I'm merely projecting my emotions onto the newly-satisfied animal.

The raccoon has taken to following me.
You could say that we've gotten quite used to each other.
The raccoon becomes hungry more and more frequently, so my bread is always handy.
Every time I brandish my cutting knife the raccoon shows me its excitement.
A rush of blood. Classic Pavlovian conditioning. I slice the bread.
And I feed myself again.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
that's 3 weeks without a keyboard,
that's 3 weeks on a dual-detox -
         that's that: roughly: antagonism
of: once upon a time...
           there can only be one Hans Andersen,
and as the story goes: ol' granny
   passed on the tales, without which:
no talk of posterity, and seances at
the theatre; alternatively: what if Kierkegård
opted for opera, rather than theatre?
    well: horrid is the task of dropping names,
as if being a village idiot, in that
capacity: giving directions... no such thing!
  nonetheless: a horrid task...
3 weeks... without this horrid world-entanglement...
amphetamines in the wild west,
                   and yet... everything slows down...
that's 3 weeks without such ''luxury''...
    and would you believe it?
3 weeks went by: in a blink of an eye.
             strange, or what 21st century writers
fail to recognise: the ******* canvas has changed!
any-single-one-of-them bothered to scrutinise
this new canvas? anyone?
     ah yes, it's still in its adolescence -
it's still: Dostoyevsky, scuttering in the grand
dungeon: that's the Moscow underground.
             the canvas! the canvas!
                             and indeed, if this be some
bellowing horn, from the depths of some forsaken
place... i'll go into the street, and sabotage
civilisation with graffiti...
                     then again: i have the least
expectations, such that capitalism works...
poetry... and what investment have you made?
nil, or almost nil... evidently: zilch!
      ah, but to have invested in canvases,
a studio, paints, brushes... see... no one sees
investment in poetry: primarily because the poet
has done the minimal...
            unless of course it turns out to ****
with a hot poker something once resembling
nations... which now resides in the insane asylum
(even though those, have been abolished)
                           , nation - ooh! what a ***** word!
the left irksome sometimes uses it:
in theory: the nation-state...
                        and then there's the resurgence of
ancient Greece... in a sing-along:
maybe 'cos i'm a Londoner... brother! brother!
Athenian! Athenian!
                                       but we are born into
a Spartan wedlock... no one really bothers to
**** our gob with Shakespeare...
    then again that is the schizophrenia (alias
dualism) in humanity... thus, to be frank,
psychiatry can be congratulated, it has provided
one useful term... and i will use it, over and over again,
in a non-symptomatic way, because, i find,
it stands, as if the Olympic Graeae (Zeus, Poseidon
and Hades) eating the carcass of some inhabitant
of Tartarus...
                               evidently: tartar steak...
doubly evident: tartars, or the remnants of mongols,
settled in crimea, and elsewhere in the Ukraine...
   tartar                      tra-ta-ta-ta... ku ku ryku!
a ja fu! krecha! a ja znow... fu!       radowitą
uprzejmość... skłaniam...  
    or what i call: rising spontaneously from the depths...
polymaths applauded, the tribunal resides in
bilingualism... trenches... history... perspectives
and current affairs... wicker man media...
                        so... an example of pedantry?
ó....               that's an orthographic dignitary -
        an aesthetic muddle... as is
c-ha                               contending with samo-ha...
     ch                            came from antagonism of
cz                                   which was later antagonised
by č               in česka.... say that: hen party
bound to Prague... in the Czech republic...
                                          ch      k..­.
i am, quiet frankly... standing at the feet of the tower
of babel... and i'm looking up, and i see
correlations, and i see decimal marks,
which, when given enough geography,
can seem like England and the isles,
       and central Europe...
    Iberia? phantom of Seneca...
  eureka! let's begin, once again...
  why is there a continuum beginning with
Plato and Aristotle?
                                           we could become
reasonable people... told to deal with madmen...
we could claim beginnings with Seneca...
and Cicero...
                      and why? the Romans loved poetry...
the Greeks antagonised Homer...
            the Romans loved Horace, Virgil,
                           Ovid... perhaps we should really forget
beginning with Plato and Aristotle...
       the former has become a church,
the latter a dentist's assistant (minus the ancients'
concept of a joke).
                      evidently i have to finish off reading
Seneca... his educational letters to Lucilius....
      moralising ******* that he was, thus, perhaps
a nibble at Cicero? but i must say:
                           it has to begin somewhere,
so not necessarily in stale-bread Athens...
                      and having such perspectives helps
in claiming casual conversation?
   assuredly - if it doesn't involve talking about
the weather...
                                which is always a great mystery
   if it's given enough aurora.
   onto the mystery of dialectics,
as discovered by Alfred Jarry in his Faustroll
Pataphysics contraband...
                                                nag­ging agreement...
nodding without approval... (chapter 10) -
beginning with αληθη λεγεις εφη
        (you speak the truth, he replies) -
   and ending with ως δoκεì
                              (how true that seems)...
and then some dub-step...
        know nothing dROP! boom! jiggy jiggy,
get the rhythm.
   as i always find it hard to look at
    diacritical arithmetic...
                                  given the following
represent a prolonging: hangman:
       å, ā and ä...
                             esp. in Finnish -
stratum: hedningarna täss on nainen.
                        rolling yarn, plateau, two dips;
and i will never say something profound...
i'll just say something no one else has said,
benefit of the doubt? somewhere, someone,
                                      kneels at the same altar.
  such are the distinction - invaders from the
north, and invaders from the south...
                                           even with
crusading Golgotha mann -
the times? many bats, supers, spiders,
but not enough readings of thomas mann...
                              easily befallen into prune-nosed
high-airs... it comes with the diet of literature...
   unfortunately.
                              and with yet another book:
i have burried yet another living person
i could have had a beer with, and conversed.
it always happens, every time i read a book
i have to attend a funeral... by reading a book
i have burried someone alive...
                          shame, in all frankness...
    i will sit in a congested train, touch a breathing
body, and consecrate the touch with
a warring genuflect - harbringer of a Teutonic
passion for initiation: a komtur's slap across the cheek.
   chequers played with passions...
           and some have to be approached like
caged animals, their vocabulary as cages,
                and the whole world before them:
cageless!
             some have indeed become so encrusted in
their daily: routine, that it would take a zoologist
(thrice oh, begs some sort of diacritical marking)
rather than a psychologist to understand them...
    like the darting dupes they are, enshrined in
20% gratis! smile! have a nice day! boxing day sales!
all but pleasantries, fathoming the grave.
   stiff vocab and all other kinds of perfume...
                           a king and his charlatan knights,
who are merely ditto-heads.
                  and not of this world, afresh -
among the nimble hands prior to birth -
surely there is: more grandeour in birth
   that entry via a ******...
                            the greatest pain of ****...
and when the ancient treaty was signed
under the name: Augustus Cesarean - or
recommended for a need of aristocracy -
    it was, for a time, the mana magnetism:
and such was the rule of poetry:
rather than a crown, donned the laurel leaves...
donned the laurel leaves...
    and such was the covenant from ancient
foes when trying to assimilate the Jew...
three kings from Babylon,
                         the child in Egypt...
          no good tides from Nazareth...
         a crown of myrrh - later overshadowed
by dogmatic sprechen, simpler: thorns...
yella things... or rzepak, Essex is filled with it...
rzepak... so why bother adding a dot above
the z, when you get capricious and use rz to
denote the same?! thus a science:
voiced retroflex fricative... Stalingrad!
                       can you really stomach this kind
of jargon? if it wasn't for science fiction:
science would be twice removed from gott ist tot,
*******' worth of pondering, given the close
proximity rhyme... nothing that rhymes should
ever be taken seriously, it should be hymnal!
                         Horatio! mein lyre!
   mein Guinness leier! rabbi krähe -
     and they deem that ****** white when talking:
thinking? i'd prefer Cezanne in real life -
   maggot wriggling and all...
                                          as much eroticism
as bound to a dog slobbering its testicles:
which means ****-all in an almighty stance
   for a dollop of halleluyah in Nepal.
well: pretty talk, pretty pretty pretty: i feel pretty,
oh so butter-fly-e.
                                    2 week stance,
***** in autumn... but so many Swiss hues
coming from the same concentration of decay!
shweet!  zeit-ser!        and that's me talking
kindergarten german: innovation begins with
a fork and a spoon, should the tongue come to it...
            i see a poem,
i see something worth bugging... c.i.a.,
f.b.i., hannibal's lecture in Florence, Venice for
the rats... bugging... shoving...
  shovelling... necro grounding, rattling...
    windy via north... Icelandic...
drums along incisors of abstract gallop:
violins... fringes of the mustang... airy airy...
all regresses toward the Vulgate...
         like ****, like said, and the only pristine
stress comes with vanilla ice-cream,
or a medium-rare beef ****! hmph!
                         fa fa fa excesses with that hurling
puff...
                      and i did finish Kant's
critique of pure reason... minus two calendars...
but, so help me god, the 2nd volume was hiding
under some corner...
                           thus, from transcendental methodology
came plump apricots, plums and pears...
             sweet decay fruit baron...
              and it's called sugars in the intricacy of pulp...
lazily grown, dangling on that caricature of
a formerly known: full crop of wheat-crude fringe.
    2 years... honest to god!
         but so many books in between...
i was given a recommendation...
i cited it already... kraszewski's magnum opus...
29 books...
                       although that's history fictionalised...
but nonetheless, it really was about
     the cossack uprising in the 17th century...
   and it was, as i once said, something i can forgive
sienkiewicz - the film version,
as in: i will not read a book once it has been adapted
to a movie... it's self-evident that too many
people have read a piece of work and are gagging
for a conversation... but where's the playground?
           ******* cherades!
  chinese whispers and a Manchurian candidate!
  i thought as much.
                          and whenever it's not a preplaned
escapade, what becomes of the day?
     was it always about a stance for carpe diem?
  syllables: di                em.
                            carpe is said with more lubricant.
corpus diem. well, that's an alternative, however
you care to think about it.
                and whenever you care to think about,
the proof is there: mishandling misnomers:
poets as tattoo artists... although no one sees the ink,
signatures on a reader's brian (purposively altered,
toward a Michael Jackon he-he, and other:
albino castratos the church venerates!)...
   that's 3 weeks in a catholic country...
  3 weeks... if only the football was better,
      i'd be called Juan Sanchez...
               but, evidently, the football is bad...
     so it's catholicism on par with a sleeping inquisition...
no one really expected Monty Python to conjure
that one... because it never really took place,
not until a trans-generational exodus
postscript 2004... once western brothels were exhausted,
and the Arab started ******* a hippo...
              then it was all about lakes and rivers
and Las Vegas 2.0 in Dubai!
                     you say quack... i say:
                                                    easy target.
and they did receive a blessing from Allah...
enough ink to write out Dante's revision of the Koran,
and some Al-Sha'ke'pir to write a play called:
the Merchant of Mecca.
  last time i heard, when the reformation was
plauging Christendom, no one invited the Arabs...
these days i think the little Lutherans of Islam
watched too many historical movies...
me? pick up a crucifix and march to Jerusalem?
  and is that going to translate into:
   blame the populists! blame the nationalists!
it's like watching a circus... why is the Islamic
reformation asking for third party associates?
                  i was happy listening to
the klinik... albums: eat your heart out...
time + plague...
                             once again: the world narrative
gags for enough people to conjure up
     a placebo solipsism... and that's placebo
with a squiggly prefix (meaning? how far
that ambiguity will take you) - ~placebo...
well: since existentialists were bores...
it's about time to head for Scandinavia
   and ask: is that " ''                 for passing on
an inheritance, or better still: ripe for
acknowledging ambiguity?
                          and if you can shove this
  into your daily narrative... you better be
a connaisseur of chinese antiques...
                frailty... then again, theres: ******;
well hell yeah *****'h, it's a murky underwold
after all.
                     and yes: that's called a petting word...
some say hombre, and we'll all be amigos
and muskateers at the end of the story.
                                    finally... i feel like i'm writing
a poem that i'll never end...
              why? it was supposed to be about
how John Casimir of Sweden championed
  the crown away from his brother Prince Charles
(volume 1)...
                      the bishop of Breslau...
a recluse... couldn't ride a horse...
    then again: nothing worthy imitation...
beginning with a donkey...
                               the transfiguration of palms
into whips... 2000 years later
talk of Hercules is madness... that other bit?
complete sanity.
                              well... if that be the case...
the book is there... i signed it, 2nd volume of
Kant's critique...
  
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Y| | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

        an oak... in a forest of pine...
an oak in pine wood...

then onto the wood of sighs:

aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
          (somehow the surd escapes,
and later morphs into, but prior to)

a short script: variation on MW...

      pears' worth of blunting runes:
opulance s and ᛋ - versus z,
    congregation minor: the interchange, ß,
buttocks and *****, minus phantoms of erotica.
yet, taking into account trigonometry...
sine (genesis 0), and cosine (genesis 1),
or            M                                   W
(no Jew would dare believe the Latins have
the second 'alf of the proof: that loophole of all
things qab-cannibal-mystic - cravat donning
mystique - a flit's worth of sharpening,
or dental grit... flappy tongue,
flabby oyster, lazing for a crab's palette)...
so?

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

of course there's an
Emma Aug 2018
I am hearing rain for the first time
Like soft hurried footsteps,
The sounds of mice scuttering,
The creaking of an old house.

I am crying again in the darkness
Caressing my true self,
Feeling her ****** fur
As she flinches from my careful fingers

Her eyes are endless black pools
Her thin legs are injured
Curled up, she whimpers
And cowers in pain

I get too close and she scurries away
Into a shadow,
Leaving me alone with the rain
Nikita Jan 2022
Seeping through the walls,
Slamming open doors,
Her past haunts her.

Her mouth is taped shut,
With a growling gut,
Shadows taunt her.

She knows that she's here,
With nothing to fear,
Her heart ignores her.

Her lungs force air,
Trying not to stare,
She's in control now.

Scuttering away,
The shadows decay,
Back into memory.
Battling psychosis with PTSD is terrifying but not impossible.
Shay Ruth Feb 2015
Papa, how long will you sit there?
Cavities, or trophies of wilder days. Keep kids off drugs, right?
Remnants of teeth rot between hills of lifeless grey flesh
Moist as the dust that stood to search (unsuccessfully) for fresh light

Nothing moves anymore
Except for the 41, Guyanese invertebrates scuttering around unfinished floors
All dirt, more like home than yours. They learned you long ago.
They wait for your chair to lift and continuously tire

Sometimes before the hours tip I hear you, or try to
You play the dances in your head
Just like swallowed tangos and serenades for mama
She always said you could sing

I fought for the top of your feet
My place, where my toes hold on tightly so I’d never slip away
Just like I gripped wrinkles in your smile, pulling me down
Down past moonless flights. No such pedestal stood.

Mid-yawn, we breathed in springtime
I left a piece for you, buried in an injection
I lost my crown that day. Pads of my hands warmed as I sunk my
Head lower into the crook of my elbow, waiting for melted snow.

I'd cover furrowed brows in blue ink, sometimes black
Grinning under the blotting recipes for tomorrow.
“I’ll love you always, princess! Love, Papa”
Later, words I’d beg to forget
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
it happens all the time, that feeling of reading a saturday newspaper supplement; had i mentioned that i find the journalistic medium of writing, the most obnoxious? the most tiresome, the most wearisome, the most, how should i say: *******? i don't which i detest more, the politicians, or the journalists... i never seem to ever pick the "right" choice... it's the politicians with their lies, but it's also the journalists with their social-media "attention" to detail that bugs me... who are these people, who are they?

and it only comes in the shape of an article
you're never too old. or are you?
who are these cardinals, bishops and monks
of the "writing" class fooling?
      i ****** well hope there's an inquisition
coming...
   i'm just tired of a culture that only celebrates
but *one
form of torture / execution...
crosses have become so unimaginative that
they had to become necklaces...
              yawn...
                     but these (cliche) bourgeoise opinions
are worse than torture...
         women: bare legs, provocative dancing,
zara, bouncy hair, selfies, macron age-gap bf,
getting drunk, hats (ascot esp.),
                    sheepskin car coats,
             slogan t-shirts;
men: hassling d.j.s, messy hair,
              trainers,
                                ear­rings,
     earphones, live gigs, the "mate",
                           flirting, visible *******...
who, are, these, people?
      i don't begin to think that a rebellion against
the bourgeoisie came from this sort
of laziness, this sort of "attention to detail",
but then again, hyacinth bucket could
annoy anyone with a stern armour of metal...
who are these people?
              i've just been watching clouds at night
with the hazel coated sheen of the moon
scuttering the intruding mountains of
quicksilver sheen cauliflower...
listening to some trafficking moral debate
while in amsterdam everyone partied...
and thinking: you know, i might have seen
my psychiatrist for free, a world renowned
(can't remember her name) -
    but i found that seeing a ******* to be
much more effective...
slave? was she a slave to me?
  frankly, more like a psychiatrist...
         after all, i'm no quasimodo in posture...
and yet the biggest idiot in our company would
get a ****, and i: supposedly the type
that got off on conversation...
   seems i was never dumb enough for a casual
****** encounter...
      pity? what pity, what self-wallowing
could i ever be up to? it's the perfectly sighted
comic affair...
               it's no conspiracy that the feminists
have become so undesirable they imported
a load of north african ****...
            what?!
            that's not the case, who else would ****
'em if not the ***** replacement machines
of nigra flesh? someone has to,
                   overwise everyone goes ballistic!
i already have to ladies by my side,
ms. amber, a scotch fiery red head,
  and sophia, a dark maiden from rhodes,
with curly hair...
                      and it's not so much what they
do with my nether regions, as what they do
with my ego... that other phallus...
                    it always aims at a north korean
army march... prompt, intact,
  with nicely ironed shirts, trousers and
other aspects of the uniform...
          then again, it was never a case of limp
when drunk and with the transcendental
experience passing the madonna-***** complex
with a *******...
     always that glorified one-dimensional
experience of corpus (ad) dare corpus...
            i have no qualms, no inhibitions,
you'd be surprised at the notion of un-inhibiting
certain receptors of quickened gratification,
walking into a room with about 12 of them,
staring at you like they might just circumcise you
with their lips, and eat your liver while
selling your kidneys on the blackmarket...
  and yes, i like my latin,
but latin as the cliche reminds us: is not dead...
latin is not dead, it's simply derived from
the vulgate,
     lingua latina est vivus, in plebei, ergo
   est non mort
; and that's the usual ****-it you
apply to reviving the origins of:
               still writing in a latin alphabet!
         if latin was dead, i'd be writing in runic!
dead my ***... ever seen a baboon with
haemorrhoids try to sit still?
           had about four ****-cheeks on him,
****** decided to hang upside-down from
a tree... and no, two weeks in kenya were not great,
i don't know how those whiteys did it,
i spent most of the time in a shade,
  4 hours in an air conditioned room,
          3 hours prior to falling asleep on the balcony,
and probably drank my bodyweight of liquids...
so yes, i have a "moral" conundrum regarding
prostitution, esp. after visiting amsterdam...
**** me, beats sessions with a psychiatrist...
my mental illness? christianity,
  and how i found it hard to mantra mea culpa
+ quia propitius ero iniquitatibus eorum et
       peccatorum illorum iam non memorabo
...
which is a staggering combination
  of... "symptoms".
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
There is a silence.

A silence snaking through the empty paths in my head.

Someone turned the radio to mute.

A static signal, but I’m far

too numb to notice.


Take a white pill.

Let it coat your insides;

thick paint washing you out in white.

I’m numb again, riding a wave that doesn’t

meet the beach.

Suspended in a still ocean;

can you imagine waves never breaking?

A vast ocean that never rolls or tumbles?

That’s me on the inside.

I’m regulated and monitored to the second;

my body ticks over into offence.

Prevent the storm.

Be still.

Please.


Make sure you take that white pill.

Let it soothe that restless turning;

cogs sparking and running;

stop the thoughts from chasing you.

People notice more about me than I do.

‘You seem happier’.

Do I?

I don’t notice a thing; pins and needles aren’t

pinpricks stabbing up my leg,

but a dull ebb.

You think I seem better, less anxious;

less on edge, waiting for a collapse to override my system.

But I don’t feel a thing.

They keep me from having to worry about a feeling.


Is that white pill making your horrors fade away?

Are your demons drifting to some other realm?

Are they scuttering along stained walls;

colonising the deepest shadows on the inside;

hiding in fright?

I don’t know if they are running scared. I don’t feel anything to

tell me they are still here or there.

I can’t remember.

I’m just drifting along plain sands; I know I should sense the heat of the

desert, but I don’t. It’s just coarse sand under my feet.

I’m stable. For now. Drifting through listless,

silent voids with myself.

Life and people I can still react and sense and speak with.

But you have become a distant echo, distorted through space;

muffled and hollow tones behind a vacant door.


I sense you. I know you. I can tell you I care for you.

But I can’t do the same for myself.

I simply don’t know.

Tick, tick, tick,

each second monitored and regulated.

I feel the pulse as that little white pill surges along my streams and rivers.

Helping me. Helping you stay beside me.

But I don’t feel I thing.

I’m grateful I can escape like this;

but I also despise the necessity of escape, in this way.

Alone.

Floating.

I don’t feel a thing.
Sanjali Feb 2020
There are monsters crawling up my back.
Sit up straight, cut off the slack!
You never hear their whispering buzz,
Their silent bites. They don’t know ‘enough’.

Do you ever wonder what they speak?
Why do they stay behind where you can’t see?
Do you know how they survive?
These people say “they’re in your mind.”

That would be funny, don’t you agree?
If they were on my back and under seams.
Crawling up my spine behind my eyes
Nibbling away on nerves at night.

There are monsters crawling up my back.
Don’t look away, they might attack.
Scuttering from sight just as you move.
Luckily, there’s nothing you could lose.

— The End —