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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.
onlylovepoetry May 2016
wondrous words,
shades of colorations,
this pain,
artfully slow, steady stalking,
finale staking into
my hardened heart

with tireless twinges
of loss and constant regret,
painstakingly plinking away,
leaving pockmarks of bullets shot
at the concrete ring-fencing,
failing to protect me from just another,

oh god not again,
have no mo' time

for jes one mo' time

love's aftermath regret,
bitter acid wash,
that cleanses nothing,
for you are already nothing
when love loss wrenches/rents your
soul's garments with knotholes of
unfashionable distressed
distress

better not to have loved,
better, better, better,

than this battering silent hurricane
invisible thunderstorm internally,
than respects no seasonality,
for which the meteorologists
can predict neither its path or its
final cessation

painstakingly,
did I build my walled shelter,
only to fail-fall to the siege machines
of beauty and desire,
and
once conquered,
with fire and heat,
they burnt me
from the outward edges inward,
and I am not a
Phoenix


see the stooped slow white walker
more than dead, yet alive enough
existing to be witness to
his own devouring,
his hands wrapped round
the stake in his chest stuck,
painstakingly
protecting it,
lest its removal
be one more undoing of the
painstaking man
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
given the study of benzene, you get the inner electron dynamic, which later expanded into a non-conformity with electron orbits of atoms, benzene gave us the clue as to how electrons behaved, nothing on the atomic scale would ever be given planetary scales of orbiting a nucleus, benzene encapsulating a ring of electrons, gave way to an atomic cloud of electrons, meaning that beside the Higg's Boson, what's more important is not finding the mass-universal, but gravity on an atomic scale, not the sort of Newtonian gravity of Voltaire's anecdote-metaphor... unlike philosophers who with a framework of methodology use a constricted vocabulary, i'm bashing a single word... metaphor... which evolved into benzene, and subsequently into benzene attachments, in the respective ortho- para- and meta- positioning... hence metaphor revised with unfashionable variations of orthophor and paraphor... i don't have the time and space (patience) to invent meanings for these yet-to-exist words, but they're there... i want to understand gravity on an atomic scale, another form of gravity must exist here, not the gravity of apples, trees and autumn harvests for cider... i mean quantum gravity, it must... and this wouldn't be a universal gravity as that of apples falling from trees at g = 9.80665 m/s2, i'm guessing it would have to be cubic, i.e. metres per cubic second... also known as an existential stasis - on the atomic level, where the eyes are futile another form of gravity has to exist, a lot of will have to do with the relativity dip / parabola where time and space create space-time - but as the study of benzene showed in comparison with the atom: electrons do not have orbits, they're like clouds of people and morality, the most famous trick of them all: now you see me... now you don't... the study of benzene taught us that electrons behave in a cloudy formation and not in a Simpsons' logo of a nuclear factory... if i had the money and the equipment i'd be looking for atomic gravity / glue, given the already stated gravity of bigger things... fair enough to Higgs for proposing a constant of mass universal in all things... i want to differentiate the gravity of large things from the gravity of small things... given the proton + essence and the electron - essence, there's still the neutron ÷: the dividing / non-differential equator of debate, where both sparring partners of those favouring + and those favouring - are given dot-revisions as starting platforms, because, after all, magnets do not exist on an atomic scale, and saying that protons are north and electrons are south will not explain very much... in neutral territory we will debate the point of the second form of gravity, without the idea of magnets and the over-simplification of plus and minus on the atomic scale behaving like due opposites; another explanation of gravity must exist on the atomic level, given the ridiculous notion of Copernican north and Copernican south or east or west, i.e. on the atomic scale we're talking spiders in a spider-web and flies caught in it; the notion of Copernican north is funny given the preservation of nautical language.*

for every rational secular noun,
there's an irrational religious metaphor:
a compound noun-verb sort of speak,
a noun that does irrational things
with our minds when the tongue is applied,
(metaphors are complex grammatical
vectors, nouns are simple grammatical
vectors, so to avoid confusion):
for every rational secular noun,
there's an irrational religious metaphor.
Gemma Sep 2010
I am using my red headphones
to block out the sounds coming from the bunk
above me

I can still hear the word
like
over
and over
again


I shared a bench with a stranger
waiting for a train
why did she get up before
the doors opened?
Was I moving
or were the windows passing by?


Whose life did rock n roll save again?


I was walking on the same street
as I walked on the day before

I have begun to recognize the cracks
and the blue house with the wicker chairs
and the corner where someone is always laughing

There are some words
in some lines
in some songs
that I want to drink
till I'm thirsty again

I met someone today
he was like the someone
I met the day before

How many times can you make the same conversation?

I don't want to lie
but the truth is strange and
unfashionable

I don't want to make
a lucid argument
words can drift and find each other
whenever they get lonely


I really just want
to taste silence for a while.
Two almost done, just ten more to go.
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2013
Shouldn't we all be studying?

dedicated to M M Jones from Montana,
where I guess big skies make people think
about big questions and young poets thrive.



the butterflies of child-awakening
to the certainty
that school and
shame and embarrassment
were only minutes away,
once again,
is as fresh as
the flowers my love
buys every Friday,
fifty plus year later.

I would awake,
climb into bed with my mother,
telling her I did not feel well,
that my
stomach felt gray.  

I could not tell her that
the mocking I received by
my richer classmates at the
multiple lines in the fabric
of my corduroy pants
where she let my pants down
made me cannon fodder
for what we call now
bullying.

I could not tell her
of the heartbreak
when somehow the parents
of my supposed suburban friends
forgot to
pick me up for the weekly swim,
leaving me to watch
the sunset fall as I sat
on the stoop of our old house,
tucked away in an out of the way,
unfashionable street,
the shame still wet.

I could not tell her
of how two bothers tortured me
as I sat in the back seat
of their station wagon,
spitting seeds
on me like curses.  

Their older brother died of cancer
when that was still unusual,
and the mother wrote
a beautiful book
about his life.

I still hate them, those two,
fifty years later and it gives me
unusually great pleasure to
announce it to the world.

So I studied.  

Not my schoolbooks,
but lovely and ***** literature.
Friday afternoons, three children,
me the baby brother,
(anonymous, for they nicknamed me
brother as if  I was nothing but
checked off category)
to the library went.

Five, five was the max
they the austere librarians
and their coda of holy silence,
would let me withdraw.
(god I can see my library card still).  

By Friday night,
I had finished one or two,
ruining my eyes in
the lousy lamp light
in the living room,
falling asleep on the couch.  

this, reading addiction,
which afflicted the entire family,
I did well into my teens.

I have stopped reading
which amazes the very few
who know and care.

do let us re-pose,
let us repose,
the question:

Shouldn't we all be studying?

the answer of course is
yes and no.

my studying blue period
is long since ended.
now, my biographer,
will call this my red period.

for red are the memories that my remembrances
come back to me.
crystal is the clarity
of the indignities
I recall, though red,
is the anger
at the shame and
abuse I took.

now I can write what I have always held in my heart.  

those two awful brothers,
who loved to torture me,
I was glad their
wonderful brother died.

so this is my red writing period,
when the studying of a kind,
has long since ended
but the smell,
the memory of
fresh textbooks still can
make me nauseous.

Yet, I still study life around me,
as I clean countertops,
walk deserted beach isles
in early September...
this studying,
is the product of years
of studying the inside out
of me, and turning that study
fruitful into poetry.

why?
why am I writing this at 2:00 am on a Sunday morning?

I did not pose the question.

but it posed me,
and the dialogue in my mind came
sugarcane fresh and tumbling out
and will be both
recorded and recoded
("in the truth will out eventually" file)
after a fashion.

these days I sometimes study
my older poems,
whose titles I recognize,
but whose content
I cannot recall.  

so double digit delight
when I
meet again old words,
wondrous and trite,
that make believe
that all my studying
somehow paid off after all.
When I stumble on a young poet on this site, whose poems delight me, I will bring them to your attention. When you discovered me,  they forgot to tell you about this bonus feature, I guess.
THE GYRES! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;
Things thought too long can be no longer thought,
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.
What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?
What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,
A-greater, a more gracious time has gone;
For painted forms or boxes of make-up
In ancient tombs I sighed, but not again;
What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,
And all it knows is that one word "Rejoice!'
Conduct and work grow coarse, and coarse the soul,
What matter? Those that Rocky Face holds dear,
Lovers of horses and of women, shall,
From marble of a broken sepulchre,
Or dark betwixt the polecat and the owl,
Or any rich, dark nothing disinter
The workman, noble and saint, and all things run
On that unfashionable gyre again.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
i find that the only time it's permissible to think
is at acute times, when something turns
heroism awry -
  we live in times when toiling in a field of
potatoes would be considered a heroism -
     because something has soured our attempts
at heroism...
    and i can't stress enough how modernity  
has nibbled at ancient feats of heroism
                       with such a bravado and inactivity,
    yes: tautology is the curse awaiting us all...
       what is revelatory about ontology?
some would say that oncology says much more
concerning man with a doubly impeding
temporality than ontology could ever fashion
a man with prescription: dogmatism -
    for one can only ask: can philosophy ever
contain a medical property?
can philosophy be medicine? i ask because i dare
not believe that writing per se is universally adequate
in being prescribed -
                      well... biology compared to medicine
is a feeble argument, its blunder was attracting
a theological posit for an argument to be practised
because: it found itself feeble before medicine.
the "thinkers" of biology attacked theology
after realising biology (a specified conglomerate
of words with the vector indicating a
                  depersonalisation of a biography) -
but both biology and theology are entrenched
with their respective vocabulary caging -
   no one would win the debate...
                     it became a comparative scenario of
first world war trench-warfare on the Belgian plateau...
    this was an attack on medicine...
    or what's useful given that biology can be rather
useless... i've never seen such desperation
               of a field of interest: that didn't simultaneously
argue from the perspective of jealousy...
         biology cannot replace theology -
   but that's beside the point... philosophy is more
akin to medicine than any -logy compound specifying
limits... auto-suggestive of the convenience that
says: man is born stupid, he dies stupid, and he "thinks"
   he knows everything that's happening in-between.
and no... i would never write a populist celebration
of war or Achilles... had i not engaged with an actual
conflict, i'd write nothing of this sort...
           and there is a crisis in heroism these days,
   hardly a reason to equate thinking as a heroic act...
  but compared with modern heroism,
namely what's defined by losing weight and gaining
protruding muscular patterns...
     what's nothing more than paying the gas bill
or simply: bringing home the bacon...
                 thinking has become a heroic act in a way,
eased to such a conclusion with
        stalinist obstruction of thought in the first place...
we call it political correctness and to be heroic
these days means: transcending what is but zoological
humanism...         because the counterpart of heroism
in the purely physical realm is but running a marathon,
rather than walking one...
       attracting bothersome flies of charity,
                 gluttony's reversal...
             what sort of heroics are these? what's to be
celebrated by such feats... if it all culminates into
nothing but a pat-on-the-back and not a statue?
            and by god... don't you think that people
who still rummage in language and can't see trilling
the R as unfashionable require a diacritical distinction
to be added to the letter? but of course, German
can sound soft too... but given the English hollowed-out
the R and lost the trill, or that the French hark the ******
letter... i'm thinking of how to represent the trill
   of the R... as the rolling and ravaging roulettes
                 embedded in the comparison of enacted
damage, with the stiletto shoe doing more damage than
an elephant's stomp.
Ikimi Festus Jan 2019
Life,
A path diverged, splitting in two,
And alas, my beloved, you cannot tread both.
Choose one journey, yearn to endure,
It's an intimate voyage, a solo race to embrace,
Gaze far ahead,
Where it curved amidst the foliage, and witness how
Mortal society ebbs and flows,
Amidst an unchanging factor.
The masses conform to the transient norm,
Beloved,
Many sorrows arise from faith's inertia,
Idle and hopeful, they bear consequence.
Do not play the assigned role, for conformity persists,
As humans, we mimic one another,
Pride precedes ruin,
And arrogance leads to downfall.
They are shackled by their lack of freedom,
Drawn to those who flaunt their fluidity and uniqueness.
Beloved,
Tell this tale with a wistful sigh,
Somewhere in distant ages to come: that
Once, it was unfashionable to be rebellious,
Yet as multitudes assumed the rebel's guise,
It lost its distinctiveness, its defiance faded,
But two paths diverged, and you,
You chose the one less traveled,
And that choice has made all the difference.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
the form might be that of a poem, but to be honest,
it has nothing poetic to it -
                  i wanted to feel angry -
to vent anger out,    i drank during the daytime:
daytime and drinking?
                                                       ­         bad idea.
                               daytime drinking
and fasting and smoking
and coffee? a doubled-up bad idea...
         but i wanted to feel
a wrathful voice... i got bored of my otherwise
gentlemanly attire and what not,
i wanted to waste my tongue into
anger... best propeller of the act?
drink during daytime...
                          when night falls,
the lazy one comes out.
                   consider this -
some use language to encrypt, not
to to simply memorise rhyming and
bounce bounce the bubbly pink ball
on stage...
                    Pavlov's lapping tongue
of a dog overheating -
             philosophy deals with
double phonetic encryption,
                  that's a psychological reevaluation
of what language is, from the standard
of the three tier cake:      consciousness,
                                      s­ub-  " and un- "    -
again Christianity plays a great deal with
the point of a trinity -
                               that's the secular version,
a populist version for each individual
regardless of the church's credo -
                    but as i was saying:
philosophy deals with a doubled variation
of phonetic encoding:
                      primarily for one reason:
this is primer for idea forming -
               isn't it?
                             the first level is that of
being able to read the encoding -
   like a music score...
                                   to write a s k
              and then say the word: ask.
but the second tier of encoding sound is
to translate it into optics -
                   the basis of idea forming -
not the basis of making sounds, but to peer
more deeply into any sort of narrative -
sometimes a single word can pull
the gravity of thought
                                 away from the narrator
ego, and into the realm of the id:
        which doesn't narrated, but
    conjures up ideas: to me the source of
all "magic" formulae -
                          here again, a classic plagiarism
working on the basis of a trinity -
          i dare say dualism is so unfashionable
to most people, as is monism -
             people prefer triangles to explain
their psychological life,
          and circles to explain the physical life...
   dualism is out of fashion that
it would seem to be more (dangerously) fashionable
to be of split-mind - but never mind that -
romanticising any medical condition is
a faux pas.
                                i was spurred on
by reading a review of O'Hara's poetry,
namely the poem sardines -
                  the reviewer writes how the poet
'actually writes his poem by breaking down
language into its most basic units - words.'
well... technically this is where the other point
of phonetic encoding comes in, the third tier...
words aren't as basic as you might think -
they reside in the realm of meaning,
but also a realm of being bound to a thesaurus -
(apologies, i'm not trying to be pedantic,
  you might see where this might be going,
in terms of sharpening the point of
               what's language and
the basics of language - yes, a niche topic,
as usual, pedants ahoy)
                          words are components
(or compounds)... letters are units, akin to
mathematical digits...
                          but then again,
kilometres are units -
                                 as are miles and hours...
surely then if worded
                   the representation would be that
of a/z                             rather than
                                   p/o/r/r/i/d/g/e          
      a/z seems like a better basis for unitary
conceptualisation of language
                        using a, b, c... z as the basic
units of language... yes... much more so than words...
            because the third tier of encoding
is based primarily on letters,
                                       yes, we know the
plight of the Palestinians, but the Jews have something
i want, and use, quiet frequently,
although with variation - there's no
              toying about with gematria -
i don't accept this method of investigation -
              i find absolute futility in it -
not that i can't grasp it, but i find it useless -
         it's this third tier where ideas are formed
without any distinct orthodoxy -
                           so:
tier 1. phonetically encoding a s k to say: ask
tier 2. phonetically encoding a s k to think:
                                      what am i going to ask for?
tier 3. phonetically encoding a s k to then
            (primarily) venture into encoding
                                              a s k i n g f o r p a t i e n c e.
we're not dealing with Chinese ideograms,
    we're dealing with a linear juxtaposition encoding
   e.g.
     a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p (q r s t u v w x y z)
the bracket? i first learned the English alphabet
as a sing-along... to my memory i forgot the rhythm
of the song (i was 7 at the time) and subsequently
             the rest of the sequence... but that doesn't
necessarily mean my vocabulary suffered because of it...
still linear juxtaposition encoding, as above, only
         n y m p h  (x y s t)
                             a b c d e f g i j k l o q r s t u v w x z
                   (a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r u v w z)
                                           e x o t i c s (friz)
          a b d f g j k l q r u v w x z
                              (a b c d e g h j k l m n o p q u v w)
                 ...
                                    
     ...
                         (b c e g
                                                            - interlude -
   well, technically, you could say that diacritical
marks are used for the purpose of dissecting
words into syllables, that's not to say
          latin compound fixations on meaningful
  prefixes, such as: aqua-        or omni-
                   (yes, the etymological section
of the dictionary is the most interesting part
of that book - as counter to Darwinism,
                     or something less intrinsic with
visuals, and focused more on a shorter history
of mankind, the less ridiculous time-frame,
         or history without Alexanders and Socrates -
                  SS... the English hasn't fixed
the notation of pluralism here...
            something akin to ß      or σ          or     ς
                    is begging to come out of this problem...
lets just say the ending variation of sigma denotes
the plural, so, etymology, or history without
       Alexanders and Socrateς / cruder or more
masculine Socrateç... Tess' - as in: it belongs to Theresa)
        as Plato noted, i too, like Socrates
are investigating how my name ought to be written,
by the looks of it, from what i discovered
               i apply diacritics as syllable identifiers,
or: how to cut words up -
   ergo? even though this is not orthodox,
my name, should be written as
                   Máteuš -
                                               the acute a
stresses the cutting up of the word, i.e. the first
syllable is identified, primarily because diacritics
stress non-prefixes, i.e. simpler variations of
what a prefix is (a loan word), or a sound that
has an ancient meaning, for example pre-
or pro-, meaning the word was forced into the shackles
of being accompanied by a hyphen
when the ancient tongue disintegrated and its grammar
was no longer adequate to accommodate
the barbarian tongues of the north...  
so it has come to this: diacritical marks are not
exactly aesthetic concerns where not writing an
acute o but rather u is displeasing to the eyes...
      it's about seeing where the syllable incision has
been made... shame the English never adopted it...
but then again: the Empire blah blah blah, Star Wars
blah blah blah... special relationship with America
blah blah blah... that old chestnut -
                  or can anyone forget their eccentricity
of doth and         all that Canterbury *******?
   or even Shakespeare's English?
                                  i'm on it... well,
apologies... internet encrypting, acronyms and
eight and L8 for late. it was never adopted -
        and never will be... ****-naked Charlie
and ****-floral-naked Angie...
              sitting in a tree, one two, one two three.

  - post-interlude -

              (b c e g...
                                           i really can't be bothered
   trying to finish this little scrabble -
           i mean, looking up words
                       so i'm left with the last possible letter,
or no letter at all...
                                  what with
    the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, (y)
                                                  nymph as a word (though)
is the closest you'll get to the pronunciation of
     y (why)               in                   Polish...
                            ny-                 or -ymph
                                 obviously cut off the μ and φ...
but if you're really bored...
                  you could probably finish that
little game... for no reason, whatsoever -
        as already stated i'm more interested in things
contained in the interlude, but then again games like
this provide the capacity to abstract and return
with actual application of an idea.
Sam Temple May 2016
Thinking back to Thomas creek and sneaking a peak at the freaky little tweaker
in blown out sneakers a toothless mistress second guessing ******
thrift dressed house guest ******* up my speakers blown out woofer
wolfing down dinner mad slurping curry a beginner at twister
her sister, disaster, got caught ******* the Doberman.. unable to find sobriety
got gang ***** at the sorority doing an impression of Brad Dougherty
shoes to tall falling all wobbly knees knocking hostilely like a rasta in Montgomery
racially outcast Big Boi with a skin tare lash with passion unfashionable bastions
with rashes wear red sashes like Communist fascists I‘m a pacifist with a speeding fist
ready to dis any resistor to this transistor radio I eat filet-minion with boxers on
my mind be gone, like, no one’s home and this body roams all alone
with a *****, I’m a stoner, a postponer, ***** donor, out on loan
bought and paid for, caught with a lawnmower, impersonating a horn blower
like I was Gillespie at the Filmore, or Apollo theatre as a greater Walmart style
wearing a wife beater, not a reader, sort of a ******* not like Kim, more like
a mosquit-er drinking blood like it’s from a hummingbird feeder.
Jordan Kit Oct 2010
Where are
The ecstatic saxophones that
Slung forth swank slurs of
Beauty,
The ***, ***, ***
Bass lines,
The snaps and snares and the
Sweet rhythm of the Night?

Music had character
And minds followed, in following
Soared.
There were no glittery vampires,
No prepubescent
Brother boy bands.
Soulful crooners never
Warbled over Alejandro,
Or the boots with the fur, with the fur.
We wrote letters and shared thoughts and ideas
And convictions.
There was no need for the techno
Middleman
To wrap our
Real thoughts in LOLs
To make opening
Up to another
More efficient.
Mass media
Gluttony drowns
America till I strain and struggle
Only to barely stay afloat
In this sea of apathy.

But you won't buy and sell my soul.
I'm not going to
Be your
Consumptive,
Quiet,
Couldn't-care-less,
I won't get in the way,
And I won't raise my voice,
Good American,
2.5 children,
Christian,
Conserva-libera-publi-crat,
Self-centered, Illiterate, Ignorant
Sheep
Only to follow the power.

**** no,
I'm mad as hell;
I want to leave the next generation
A world where
You can confess your
Love and be a man or
Love another man and have
Basic human rights, and it all
Starts in your
Mind
And your
Expression thereof.
It's the saccharine pop
Culture that has
Made free-thought unfashionable, a crime.

Art is
Revolution.
Hang
Up,
Log
Out,
Unplug and just look
At what you've let the
World become in
Letting yourself be
Little more than
A faceless source
Of merciless dollars.
Wrest free our
Culture from the
Calamitous and indifferent
Claws of rampant capitalism.

Express yourself or submit,
Stand up for a free America.

I will not be sold.
I finished writing this on October 23 at 4:12 AM, scrawled in dry erase marker on my dorm room window.
Marshal Gebbie Aug 2013
Here I sit amidst the ruin of a white winters' day
Convulsive rain and harsh wind outside, contribute tumult.
And in here, in this small shelter, there is a tension in the air.

We two sit apart, uncommunicative, remote and quite detached.
Not for any reason other than the fact that we are strangers,
We have never met, nor are we ever likely to.
She has an elegance and a stylish angularity whilst I am bald, bearded, unfashionable and somewhat overweight.
She is singularly indifferent to my presence, whilst I am uncomfortable with the circumstance that placed us in this small proximity.
We would, in truth, rather both be elsewhere.

I break the ice in throwing her a small smile and complain about the weather,
Her eyes flick across my face and immediately resume their distant focus on the rain,
She adjusts her seating to face,ever so slightly, askance.
Her choice of course, to assume an air of indifference or superiority...or adopt a measure of defence..or perhaps a combination of a bit all three.  
Regardless... I wipe my backside in exactly the same manner as does she, I  am definitely no less a person for my dumpy demeanour and friendly overture
And I really feel that I don't have to share my space with coldness and impertinance,
Better, I think, to be wet and content with my own company
..So, donning my cap and jacket, I stride out into the deluge to leave the remote and uncommunicative young woman alone and dry with her thoughts.

And then....
Howling rain and shards of wind
Pelt me as I walk
Along the foreshore wild and white
As hovered seagulls squark.
When all at once she's by my side
Walking pace for pace,
Her linen suit a sodden mess
Hair plastered to her face.

"Thought I ought to make it right"
She told me with a smile
I threw my coat upon her back
And walked another mile.
We called into a coffee shop
And sat down by the fire
And sipped a steaming latte
As she told her story dire,

"The cancer's all but killed me
My husband's left the home,
The baby's gone to mother
And I'm facing death alone."
We quietly spoke for ages
I held her hand in mine
Then suddenly she stood to leave
And thanked me for my time.

I sat there in a stupor
Recalling how it played
And felt the guilt impact on me
For judgements I had made.
Those callow, shallow judgements
Made in ignorance, my friend,
Will haunt me as she girds herself
To boldly meet her end.


Marshalg
On a bleak and blustery cold winters day.
Titirangi
5th September 2010
Catrina Sparrow Nov 2012
the snow falls sincerely sorry,
like a pale yellow skirt at the foot of your bed-
i always said, "i didn't mean it".
but i meant it.
it's that time of the year,
where you'll wrap yourself in wool and leathers,
in hopes no one will feel just how cold you truly are,
but i can feel it.
you drink your whiskey straight,
yet feel too inhumane to rest your lips on the same bottle
as the only people who've ever loved you drink from.
your glass gets frosty.
you blow hot, pungent air between your teeth like steam,
in hopes we'll see you as some frightening machine,
instead of how you really are when you forget
that you should be holding up your fashionably unfashionable walls.
you're just another washed up actor,
who somehow lost the ability to differentiate between being on-set,
and being alive.
so you lie.
frantically,
frivolously,
and frusterated,
that nobody you trust can trust you to be you.
the scenes that you build get muddled and confused,
rendered too busy by your lack of attention
and over-use of the exact same hues.
you used to seem so beautiful,
until i found your pallet
under your worn-down mattress...
you only paint with grey.
oh, how you tried
to hide the colors that i am under a tweed cloak of comfort ability,
but i don't fade,
and i most certainly do not run.
i change every day,
and when i begin to hate the direction that my masterpiece is heading in,
i change course entirely.
i abandon the compass,
and the guide books,
and stampede across the pages,
until i become the new and improved version of who i was yesterday.
stop pretending,
and just be.
you wear your "fight" face everyday,
as if you may have to chase a pride of giggling hyenas away
at any given moment.
put down your knife and act right,
no one here wants to hurt you.
you hurt me,
you tried to hide me,
and you lied to me.
still, 
all i want to do is teach you.
teach you to let go of your charade,
to embrace the life you've made,
and how to paint the sunset as a sunset-
not a eulogy.
MBishop Sep 2015
This right here, this exact situation is the reason I keep my hopes down low. Why I practically walk over them, keep them dragging under my heels. I didn't want to end up like this. If you don't expect anything, you are contented with what you knew was inevitably going to happen. You can go about it in an I-told-you-so pessimistic manner.

But when you have even a slight hope of improvement, the reality drags you lower than where your hopes should've been. It's the lesson they give.
Now, things are complicated with too many loose ends. Too many people. People are loose ends. Too many appearances to unwillingly keep up.
Things would be so much simpler if there was no one.  I would spend my days blissfully alone, maybe even get done what I need to.
But now there are bridges that would be burned if I let loose the hermit inside me.
Lousy excuses for bridges, more like strewn pieces of driftwood in a creek, but passage nonetheless.
And however feeble they may be, they're still there, and destruction always leaves an aftertaste.
A smell of ashes in the air clogging your lungs when you come near.
Not to mention the other bridges that whisper about the fallen and create gated barriers of words.
Soon enough you're not in blissful solitude, but rather isolated speculation. You don't go unnoticed, but rather alone under watch.
Well, consider my lesson learned. Never make ties out of hope. Both with be weak and unfashionable. A fallacy at the very least. And you?
You'll end up being water under the bridge.
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Jottings from David Bagerow's "Quickie"

Shame on she, the selfless *****
Who caused your temperature to fire,
caressed your sandy, sweated brow
To rivers of desire,
Tho she fled at poignant time
To leave you in the lurch.
Best you weave your magic touch
And promise her, the church.
Then woo her and caress her
In your happy, carefree way
Then at that moment of exultance,
Laugh and run away.

David Lessar's "To an Unread Poet"

Dave, You are right ,of course, once committed you raise an expectation and once that expectation is released to the world you are obliged to maintain face...but that damnable thing called "Life" intervenes and totally stuffs up the programme. Take the current interlude of coronavirus...the whole world has been taken by the scruff of the neck and jammed, inconveniently and complaining, into seclusion, all systems ground to a halt, production lines vacated, malls and city centres deserted, blown newspaper cascading across the deserted pavement...a testament to mans ultimate frailty when his house of cards collapses, without a whimper.
So you see, as life intervenes...we are excused from maintaining face.
But fear not, like McArthur, we shall return.
Cheers mate M.

Fawn's "Happy Trails"

Were it not the touch profound
That doth caress my feathered ear
Would thou wish a thousandfold
That I should shed a tear?

A glistened tear suspended there
in iridescent light,
While you, my love, with parted lips
Await, the ruby night.

Victoria's "Wherefore Art Thou"

Strides, he does, through corridors of lust bound lessers,
through forests of small penised dwarfs, through canyons of would be's who could be.....just to countenance the promise within your words....Dear Vix!

Terry O'Leary's "Sweet Butterfly"

You enter the portals of entomology where bugs, flies,butterflies and moths are the true rulers of the planet.
A world vastly magnified by compound eyes, of lightening lifetimes and vivid, saturated colour. A world where life and death are synonomous with the culmination of a single ****** union and the reproduction of a batch of precious pearly eggs. Yea Brother thee hath entered the portal...rejoice!
M.

Fun with Terry O'Leary

"Buried in the Sand" by Terry O’Leary

A beggar clump adorns a dump, his pencil box in hand -
With sightless eyes upon the skies he’s lying there unmanned.

He’s fallen down in Shantytown, his knees too weak to stand,
With no relief and bitter grief too dark to understand.

The Bowery blight is hid from sight, it’s covered up and bland,
And Robin Hood and Brother Hood lie buried in the sand.

"A Rebuttal" by Marshalg

So Hood lied low, despite the show ensueing without help,
One would have thought a British sort would spring forth with a yelp!

Would spring ***** to help deflect contusions which occurred
When beggar Clump adorned the dump confusing all deferred.

Whilst sister Ant, attired in scant, ran forth on spindly legs
And brother Frog with shaggy dog said "****" and drank the dregs.

It all became too much, as such, a meelee did ensue,
So all called HALT and as one did BOLT...to the local for a brew!

Phew...that was FUN & hard work!
M.

Singing the Devil's Song*

There is no Makers formula
This life depends on chance,
The way you play your given cards
Depicts your daily dance.

Oh dogma flows in utterance
From pulpits far and wide
From those who claim to understand
Eternity's vast hide.
From those who hold damnation
As a weapon from on high,
From those who claim a judgement
As their finger points to sky.
The good, the bad are absolute,
The right bedevils wrong,
Redeemed shall live eternally
The bad shall singe for long.

Old men stand in pulpits
Across this Sunday's land
To threaten with damnation
If you should cross God's hand.
"Belief" is now their catchword
Abomination's wrong
Is to seek to proffer proof of claim
....to Sing the Devil's Song.

So gather all ye faithfull
Go listen to your man,
Sing the Gospel loud and long
And pay your tithe, as planned.
...But should you find you're dying
From cancer's frozen claw
And the the Godly fail to sweep you
To eternity's gold door?
Remember my clear message
Your life depends on chance,
You live within your own good sphere
....There is no Maker's Dance.

Marshalg
After an overdose of Pulpit hogwash.
10 March 2013

Singing the Song of Angels:
A Response to Marshal Gebbie's "Singing the Devil's Song"
By Luca Anselm
There’s a church in the city with pillars of stone
And windows like sea-glass, still and alone,
A fountain, and cloisters of ivy, away
From the noise of the street, and the hum of the day.
There my father would tell me of Christ, how he died
Surrounded by soldiers and thieves, crucified,
How he wept for the women, and fell in the sands,
And loved those who hammered the nails in his hands.  

Marshal, dear poet, you have heard the priests tell
Of a god who left heaven to walk into hell?
Of a god who wept softly for men he had known?
Of a god who dripped blood in a garden alone?
Of a god who sent men with book and with sword
With eyes bright as fire for love of their Lord,
With limbs dressed in black, on altars of stone
By windows of sea-glass, still and alone?

So they give up their lives for a lie, as we say,
And toiled for centuries, long as each day--
And our money built palaces, lofty and tall
With frescoes and candlesticks, gold on the wall--
They preach with words awful and deadly and free,
Of gorgons and hell-fire, worms and the sea,
Of the last day of judgment, and mankind amassed
By the wailing of angels and bright trumpet blasts…

But Marshal, they preach something sweeter and kind--
Of a mother’s soft love, of a father resigned,
Of a still, soft voice, that comes with a light,
And gives hope to the hopeless, and conquers the night.
Of charity, piety, sweetness and love
Like fiery ***-cakes, but soft as a dove,
Spicy as Christmas, solemn and grand--
(Like throne-rooms or magic or the roar of the strand)
Then you wake, and the house smells of peppermint-pine,
And a child is laid in the crèche, now a shrine.  

And all that I long for, dear Marshal, you see,
Are the gold-blooming gardens that soar by the sea,
The mountains and dragons, the prophets and kings
And Icarus falling with fire-fraught wings,
The grey-shifting sea-lanes, the flutter of sails,
Temples on mountaintops, graves in the vales,
And Dido who bleeds from her breast as she cries
For her Love, and stares helplessly into the skies.
But more than the shadows of worlds that might be
Of fairies or phantoms or rocks by the sea,
Dear Marshal, I long for who made me a man.
And would love and give glory as best as I can.

But these days oh! sad days, the loss and the shame
In which all of my loveliness falls into flame--
Where gardens have withered, and sails have been furled,
And kings plodded off in the dust of the world.
Our cities rise higher, and burn through the night
And rear into heaven with noise and with light,
The palisades echo with horns and sound
And the churches with voices and quarrels resound.
But the statues sit silent, and some say they cry
For the shame of the sins against children. Oh! My God, Why?

And those old men—well—they taught me the loveliest things
Of my gardens of gold, and the sunsets of things,
They told me of kindness, and honor, a way
That winds to the West, where the end of the day
Breaks bright like fresh bread, and crimson like wine,
And the sun sets to purple and green in the brine.

And still I remember their words and their songs
And the churches which taught me so well and so long--
Though I’ve turned my head, to the lands where the sun
Will rise again brighter when starlight is spun,
Somewhere fresher and pale, where the cold and the air
Spreads the dew like a lawn paved of crystal, and there,
In the meadows of silver, with light in my eyes,
I will honor my god in the dome of the skies.

Marshal Gebbie's poem "Singing the Devil's Song" inspired this. It's in anapestic tetrameter, for you metric buffs. If you haven't, you should absolutely check out Marshal's stuff--it's awesome and poetry-inspiring--seriously amazing. Thanks again, Marshal!

Sepia Sown

Sepia sown as best it can
Where you and I, as one, once ran
Across, beyond a savored sea
Where lust became reality.
Where spiraled lust, entwined, entrenched
Left you gasping, pale, en benched...
a figment of a thought, now lost
Forever..at what cost, what cost?
M.

Addenum to "obituary" by V

So no one notices, at all
When golden greys of aged fall?
Except perhaps, for those who stay
To blend with every ordinary day

Plus you and I as time flies by
And too, those starlings flocking high.
That old man loitering in street,
Who eyes the million passing feet.
And she too at corner store,
Toothless face and wrinkled maw,
Exchanging cigarettes for coin
(With surreptitious scratch of groin).
Mailman, fat, long, loop mustache
Complaining long and rather harsh,
That they, gone, without a word,
Should vanish into air...absurd!

Someone in their every day
Feels the absence in the way
Details don't fall into place
And warmth is absent from the face.
M.

The Kraken Arises

From blue tranquillity where turquoise waters wash white golden sand, where brilliant fish school in myriad colour and shape, where magnificent squadrons of sleek tarpon and barracuda dash in perfect formation, grazing schools of silver mackeral through diamond flecked deep green shallows, to plunge vertically down to the depths of the black abyss and security.

Calm tropical waters which shimmer like aqua blue glass in the mid day heat and turn to simmering,red fire at the setting of the enormous, ovate, orange sun.

Sea birds flock above wind blown waves, their sharp cries a symphony of the sea, to suddenly wheel and dive en mass, to dine amidst teeming schools of flashing, shiny minnows.

The idyllic picture of a calm blue infinity of ocean framed, in brilliant sunshine, by white sands and gracefully bowed coconut palms.....and suddenly, at the horizon, a thin black line appears, It approaches with steadily, mounting speed, the coastline surf recedes dramatically seaward leaving exposed coral, mountains of seaweed and frantic flapping, beached fish everywhere. A sudden, oppressive silence becomes a distant roar. The sea birds, as one, take panicked flight... and a massive wall of water rears up and rises like a giant beast, to rush headlong, raging, at the coastline.

What once was blue and serene is now a huge cascade of violent black death and destruction, gigantically it destroys the coast, snapping huge trees like twigs, surging ashore, a tsunami of unimaginable violence it obliterates, housing, streets, bridges, vehicles, shipping, aircraft and people, thousands of panicked, helpless, struggling people, killed in a titanic, black, swirling maelstrom of inexorable violence. The wave is followed by another...and another, extending right along the coastline and beyond. Each wave larger and more violent than the last...surging inland for miles  until defeated by the accident of gravity in rising land.

Those who have survived, on high land, on tall buildings, in treetops....cling to each other and look on in horror and utter helplessness. They can only wait, in fear, for the monster to retreat before venturing down to the devastation below to render help where ever they possibly can.

Twice in the space of the last forty thousand years the Kraken has awaken and risen from the depths of the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand. It has risen to gigantic proportions and driven right across the Auckland isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. It has twice flattened gigantic primeval Kauri forests laying them waste, all lying in one direction, each time beneath twenty feet of debris and black mud.

Born in innocence from a natural tectonic adjustment of the earth plates, the Kraken doth arise at any time, in any place to wreak it's dreadful work upon we, who reside in our comfortable, seemingly secure and beautiful coastal idylls.

Marshalg
Dedicated to all the coastal population exposed to the threat of inevitable tectonic induced tsunami.
JAPAN. WEST COAST, USA. WEST COAST, SOUTH AMERICA. ALL PACIFIC ISLANDS. NEW ZEALAND. INDONESIA. AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AFRICA. EAST COAST, CHINA. MALAYSIA.
KOREA. THAILAND. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VIETNAM. PHILIPPINES. TAIWAN. BURMA.

Part of My Job (A love Poem) by Nat Lipstadt

A little embarrassed by all the attention but great to hear from you Sweetheart...all fine and dandy, here...except for being forbidden to go to the beach and the park..and anywhere else except in cases of dire need..(And on punishment of prison time if caught out!)...but hey, I'm not really complaining...All for he common good, aint that right?
M.

Bridges Burnt....

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Holds a saddened felt refrain,
Holds a touch of muted horn
Blown in passion unadorned.
Blown away in errant winds
Where no truthlessness rescinds,
Where a lie begat the night
Interceding lost love's plight.

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Sacraments of loss remain,
Sacraments fragmented drift
Redemption clad in bloodied shift,
Redemption worn as wrong slays right
Till wrongfulness blots out the night,
Till no return this path can be
Until they torch eternity.

M.
SE Reimer's words float before me in his impassioned poem "Bridges"
allowing me to wallow in this, my own dark tangential refrain.
M.

Perchance, in a Bus Shelter

Here I sit amidst the ruin of a white winters' day
Convulsive rain and harsh wind outside, contribute tumult.
And in here, in this small shelter, there is a tension in the air.

We two sit apart, uncommunicative, remote and quite detached.
Not for any reason other than the fact that we are strangers,
We have never met, nor are we ever likely to.
She has an elegance and a stylish angularity whilst I am bald, bearded, unfashionable and somewhat overweight.
She is singularly indifferent to my presence, whilst I am uncomfortable with the circumstance that placed us in this small proximity.
We would, in truth, rather both be elsewhere.

I break the ice in throwing her a small smile and complain about the weather,
Her eyes flick across my face and immediately resume their distant focus on the rain,
She adjusts her seating to face,ever so slightly, askance.
Her choice of course, to assume an air of indifference or superiority...or adopt a measure of defense..or perhaps a combination of a bit all three.  
Regardless... I wipe my backside in exactly the same manner as does she, I  am definitely no less a person for my dumpy demeanor and friendly overture
And I really feel that I don't have to share my space with coldness and impertinence,
Better, I think, to be wet and content with my own company
..So, donning my cap and jacket, I stride out into the deluge to leave the remote and uncommunicative young woman alone and dry with her thoughts.

And then....
Howling rain and shards of wind
Pelt me as I walk
Along the foreshore wild and white
As hovered seagulls squark.
When all at once she's by my side
Walking pace for pace,
Her linen suit a sodden mess
Hair plastered to her face.

"Thought I ought to make it right"
She told me with a smile
I threw my coat upon her back
And walked another mile.
We called into a coffee shop
And sat down by the fire
And sipped a steaming latte
As she told her story dire,

"The cancer's all but killed me
My husband's left the home,
The baby's gone to mother
And I'm facing death alone."
We quietly spoke for ages
I held her hand in mine
Then suddenly she stood to leave
And thanked me for my time.

I sat there in a stupor
Recalling how it played
And felt the guilt impact on me
For judgements I had made.
Those callow, shallow judgements
Made in ignorance, my friend,
Will haunt me as she girds herself
To boldly meet her end.

Marshalg
On a bleak and blustery cold winters day.
Titirangi
5th September 2010

The Old Café by Steve Yocum

It's my go to place,
has been for years,
The Wildwood Café,
an eclectic tiny place
with a mix of old dinette
tables and mismatched chairs.
the cutlery also unmatched
and well used, old photos
and signs adorn the walls
and there is usually a line
of people waiting patiently
on benches outside.

Best of all there is this pleasant
girl, always wearing a welcoming
smile, who seems to know us all.
She knows my order by heart,
Ham and eggs over medium,
a half ration of potatoes, home baked
slice of bread, well toasted, well buttered,
home made salsa on the side, a cup of
"hot" Black English Tea. Tall water no ice.

If I arrive between the busy times, she may
sit down at my table and we talk a while,
It's not a big thing, just chitchat, I'm old
enough to be her grandfather, it's the
dessert before my meal served with genuine
friendliness and unforced civility, not often
encountered in these strange days and times, it's a slice of small town America at it's purest best, she and folks like her help sustain my belief that basic human decency is far from dead.

The food is always good, but it's the comforting embrace of familiarity and
simple warm kindness that assures my frequent return.
It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those.
written by Steve Yocum

It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those

Marshal Gebbie
  That old world touch suits you Stevo,
When I come visit your beautiful state of Oregon, We shall partake this delightful repast in the company of your fair maid.... and we shall tip her well!
M.

Scoot the Streak
One must believe in something be he misanthrope or gambler
In tomorrows omniscience or the future proof of God
The penance in a drunk's decay sets self destruct's imposer
Wether speaker phone's on disconnect or cellphone's in the bog.

Conveyance of a threat to adherents of St Selfwise
Show atheist's are proof here, in belief of disbelief,
Haunted by the images painting painful retribution
Picture sympathetic **** star's allocated hand relief.

A moments allocation of a syllogist abstraction
Shows perspective of the caliber we now reserve for Saints
A paradox regarded as autistic fascination
In a one act play of living disregarding all restraints.

Deliberately indicative of fraternal heat's expression
Notebook at the ready and deep frowning at the brow,
Question definition's collage of confusion's contribution
Do we sit it out pretending or just catch the late bus now?

Marshalg
13 February 2014
© 2014 Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie
Written by

victoria  Intriguing work...so I search the comments for help... Ah
0
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary  Marshal, I kinda like this (I read it several times since yesterday)... but I'm still not sure what it says... maybe I'll down a shot tonight and try again... ;-)) Terry
0

3 replies

Feb 2014
Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie   A confession Terrance.. I was half cut when I wrote it!
I have no idea what it means.
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   :-)) Great... I'll be back in a bit... T
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   Well, in the meantime I've had a few shots... now I think I know what it means... hic°°.... hope I remember in the morning... ;-)) Terry
Feb 2014

Pradip Chattopadhyay
Residues
By the night one long dark road
the houses are deep in slumber.

Lucky I'm alive and awake,
can see the stars
in their vast magnitude of silence
gentle and not drunk
have love to count upon
filled with a will to live
feeling I'm almost done.

Having a life is a great reward
and with the residues
gets more valuable.

I won't cry over the lost years
would rather think
have been blessed with enough.

The stars grow blurry dots
as I slip into dreams.

I had a once upon place
and I'm grateful.

With dewy eyes
I hurry to the warmest space
beside her.

You slip into your years well, Pradip.
Your woman must relish your peace, your contentment.
Cheers mate
M.


Tony Grannell
Autumn's Sonneteer
Behold, upon yon ivy bunch, my darling blackbird sings;
I know not why nor shall I try to understand such things.
For born this morning on a song, pray hark, her sweet refrain;
to chance a sigh, oh, dare not I, for this is God's domain.

Out of the night the art of song in tuning in the day;
unknowed afore or evermore such music on display.
'Tis love begad, a lover's song, a diva, I declare,
in soaring o'er both vale and moor, this morning's love affair.

In wonder's charm, this precious bird in song to comfort me.
Alone I stroll, no proffered soul to share my company.
Yet rare this morn, in splendours all, true love like none afore;
let passions roll, in song extol, in verse the morn's rapport.

Be succour in such music found for autumn ails me so,
when summer's run, the harvest done, to rest my scythe and ***.
Of idle lands and nowt ado, to wait without employ.
Yet, hail the sun, my kingdom won, when sings that bird of joy.

Behold her charm and charmed, I am while autumn leaves still fall.
'Tis life anew, a sweeter brew when hear the songstress call.
Though winter’s nigh, with strength and will, we’ll bear our pain and fear;
'tis all to do, good hearts and true, sings autumn's sonneteer.

Written by
Tony Grannell  62/M/Spain

Marshal Gebbie  I stood out at the rock wall and gazed at the splendour of Autumn in Taranaki, as I read, aloud, your sonnet.
...and my heart sang.
M.

Dr Peter Lim
When?
When is the when
of when?  
rampant still is the ravage
which will not relent-

the claustrophobic shut-in
hearts toward gloomy moods they bend
no happy voices of kids heard outdoors
the green fields do not comfort lend-

the downcast look, the sinking feeling
are the joys and delights of yesterday years all spent?
the spectre of pain brings bitterest tears
in the faces of every continent-

oh, when is the when
of when?
such a wash-down
we could never comprehend.

Marshal Gebbie:  But isn't that the way, Dr Pete? Mankind builds his castles in the air, thrusts out his chest and proclaims himself, King of all!
...to be decimated, in an instant, by a microbe of infinitesimal stature. Oh! the fragility of it all.
Life cometh, life goeth....but somewhere, down the track, life shall come again.
M.


Al Drood
The Merman of Orford Ness

So long ago in King Hal’s time, our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.

Entangled ‘midst our dripping catch, with eyes that stared all hellish green,
enscaléd like some creature deep, a Merman writhed as one obscene.

All webbéd were his hands and feet, his body dripped with ocean bile;
upon his head the ****-wrack grew, green-bearded was this demon vile.

Fast to the shore with awful haste we sped before the wind and tide;
Lord Glanville for to summon forth, the Merman’s fate all to decide.

Upon the quay his Lordship stood with men at arms and shriven priest,
and all did cross themselves in fear before this strange unholy beast.

“Enchain it,” cried Lord Glanville loud, “then to God’s Kirk with all good speed!”
The shriven priest prayed long and hard as to the church we did proceed.

With Holy Water, cross of gold, with candle and with testament,
the priest then exorcised the beast, who knew not what was done nor meant.

To all’s dismay he would not bow before the Host on bended knee;
and so to dungeon was he dragged to dwell upon his blasphemy!

The silent Merman beaten was, and hung in chains in for seven weeks,
and fed was he on fish and shells, yet never did he sleep nor speak.

And so at length his Lordship said, “Across the harbour tie a net,
and we shall see how he shall swim, but by his ankles chainéd, yet!”

The net a-fixed, the village folk came down to see the Merman’s plight;
into the sea they threw him then, with foam and wavelet flashing white.

He vanished ‘neath the waters like some seabird in pursuit of prey,
then surfaced laughing, chain in hand, and to his Lordship he did say;

“You thought to make me such as you, who walk in blindness o’er the land!
You’d punish me for difference!  You thought to treat me like a Man!”

So long ago in King Hal’s time our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.
Al Drood
Written by
Al Drood  M/North Yorkshire

Marshal Gebbie:  Tones here of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
An original work in time honoured rhyme and metre.
I devoured every syllable..Bravo!
M.

G Alan Johnson
Kafka's Bug

When I shed the last skin
last year
there was left a hardened shell
protecting a patched up heart
and a petrified husk
of a soul.

You can throw your bombs
if you wish
and they will hurt inside
but I will just eat them
and **** them out
flushed and forgotten.

Sometimes my antennae
come out in a social setting
and people look at me
with an odd expression
or look off into space
a kind of awkward acceptance,
(the ones that know me).

My mandibles will at times
spit out a divine stupidity
a slacker kind of opinion
and no amount of saliva
can dissolve it
so it sits in the heavy air
stinking like a butterfly corpse.

It was an attempt
at transformation
that failed
(I'm too weak with ego),
and I'm glad that I tried
otherwise I would always wonder.

Vincent Price in a cheap suit
and a lost puppy daydream
a world full of flies, wasps and failed caterpillars
patient spiders and polished leeches...
and all I can do is write.
Written by
G Alan Johnson  65/M/USA

Response by Marshal Gebbie

Pelting rain adheres to soil
As spiders sprint and earthworms roil,
World in turmoil stinkbugs, stink
And Satan beetles disgorge ink
But thee, my budding, sodden flea,
Hath entertained quiescent....me.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
Pandemic Poems: Unclaimed bodies, There’s ain’t no anonymity in heaven.

There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more.  The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.

Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th.  Rarely do I walk there.

The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.

I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.  In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^

Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya.  Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.

Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding!  Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”          

He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”

There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.

Written by
Nat Lipstadt

Marshal Gebbie
God! It's harrowing to feel the raw spirit in a New York City man's soul.

You speak for the dead, the ailing and the fearful.

You speak for beggar in the street, the broker, quaking in his plenty, imprisoned on the 14th floor.

You speak for the cop, in face mask, on 24th and Vine, doing, as always what he must, with authority.

And you speak for the White Clad Angels who carry the dead to Hart Island and who forgive you, your fear and safer seclusion.

You speak also for we, who watch and sorrow from afar your agony, in our own fear and seclusion.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
raw is the word, oft need to lie down midday to escape the the viral infection of every outlet we use to pass these days. don’t know when i’ll go outside again, because the virus kills and wounds in horrible ways... thank u MG for the kind appreciation natty

Sally A Bayan
Conduits
In distance and in proximity...in despair
and joy...in existing and in dying...in the
bliss of love reciprocated, and in the pain
of love unrequitted...verses dance and call,
awaiting......

poetry has its own pulse, its own heartbeat,
it calls, taps the shoulders any moment,
awake, or adrift, it just can't be ignored...
even in a tangled, or weird circumstance,
it sparks like a bulb or a comet, curving
in a rainbow...riotous some days, teasing, fleeing,
then, turning up at unexpected times and places.

in every bit and breath of life, in every seed,
in every drop of dew, in every ember burning,
there is poetry birthing, growing...

deep within us flows green, purple, red,
glum gray, darkened inspirations...fleeting,
but, when time is ripe, they linger long,
giving us time to capture them all
.............................................
we sense them...we give space
we speak them, or we write them,
:::::::we are conduits:::::::


Sally

©Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
February 11, 2020

Marshal Gebbie

  A touch, so light,
So sensitively slight
As to be caress,
In dead of night


Don Bouchard
And then
We become old men
And old women, and

We look back wistfully, and
We look forward hopefully, and

We wonder....


Written by
Don Bouchard  60/M/Minnesota

Marshal Gebbie
  Slipped betwixt the then and now
Methinks, with finger on the brow,
Thee needs a shot of earthy ***
And a wanton ****, to rub your tum.
Thee needs a cheery pick me up,
Some hairy mates to help you sup
Elixir from the joy of life
To salve tomorrows' threat of strife.
Cheers mate M.
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Tommy Randell
From a young man's parlance, tripping from an old man's tongue; Right On, brother, Right On!
MereCat Dec 2014
I write poems like they are going out of fashion.
topaz oreilly Nov 2012
Stay put Owner occupiers  are now envied
corners of smudged wealth,
suburbian renters isotope
brandish new England
more the continental model.
In derelict public houses
inside weightless Box Rooms
every blade of concrete counts.
I shall play in once Lavender fields
and usher questions.
How many times
do we render our knowledge?
ghost town forms are in submission,
again recession chimes
more than a lack of opportunities,
but who are these  newcomers arriving en masse
to once bespoke areas
with money earned
from former unfashionable abodes ?
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2010
Here I sit amidst the ruin of a white winters' day
Convulsive rain and harsh wind outside, contribute tumult.
And in here, in this small shelter, there is a tension in the air.

We two sit apart, uncommunicative, remote and quite detached.
Not for any reason other than the fact that we are strangers,
We have never met, nor are we ever likely to.
She has an elegance and a stylish angularity whilst I am bald, bearded, unfashionable and somewhat overweight.
She is singularly indifferent to my presence, whilst I am uncomfortable with the circumstance that placed us in this small proximity.
We would, in truth, rather both be elsewhere.

I break the ice in throwing her a small smile and complain about the weather,
Her eyes flick across my face and immediately resume their distant focus on the rain,
She adjusts her seating to face,ever so slightly, askance.
Her choice of course, to assume an air of indifference or superiority...or adopt a measure of defence..or perhaps a combination of a bit all three.  
Regardless... I wipe my backside in exactly the same manner as does she, I  am definitely no less a person for my dumpy demeanour and friendly overture
And I really feel that I don't have to share my space with coldness and impertinance,
Better, I think, to be wet and content with my own company
..So, donning my cap and jacket, I stride out into the deluge to leave the remote and uncommunicative young woman alone and dry with her thoughts.

And then....
Howling rain and shards of wind
Pelt me as I walk
Along the foreshore wild and white
As hovered seagulls squark.
When all at once she's by my side
Walking pace for pace,
Her linen suit a sodden mess
Hair plastered to her face.

"Thought I ought to make it right"
She told me with a smile
I threw my coat upon her back
And walked another mile.
We called into a coffee shop
And sat down by the fire
And sipped a steaming latte
As she told her story dire,

"The cancer's all but killed me
My husband's left the home,
The baby's gone to mother
And I'm facing death alone."
We quietly spoke for ages
I held her hand in mine
Then suddenly she stood to leave
And thanked me for my time.

I sat there in a stupor
Recalling how it played
And felt the guilt impact on me
For judgements I had made.
Those callow, shallow judgements
Made in ignorance, my friend,
Will haunt me as she girds herself
To boldly meet her end.

Marshalg
On a bleak and blustery cold winters day.
Titirangi
5th September 2010
Austin Heath Oct 2016
I didn’t know it’s
unfashionable to wear
Your heart on your sleeve.

I didn’t catch that
lying was part of a game
that we’ve been playing.

It’s just a story
we tell with our bodies and
wash with our bedsheets.
Sparrow Oct 2012
You could dance to the word “lovely”
slip into a spin around “beautiful”
cascade giggles to “cute”
and freeze in the presence of “pretty”

but never once
have we thought that “ugly” was worth a second glance
or considered the power of “scary”
respected the thought of “terrible”
or rejoiced at the feet of “unfashionable”

no.

we have forgotten to pay our dues to the murky edges
of sweet serendipity's serenade
to take a slow dance with melancholy,
our inability to stop skipping heart beats
has thrown this whole song
just a little off key

So I propose a toast to all of imperfect
and don't call it any greater
because in the end

that’s all it needed to be.
David Ehrgott Sep 2016
The soap dish behaves as though
she has cancer
Her openly unfashionable drug habit
has gifted her with eleven other
life threatening illnesses
  
Tobacco has been outlawed
Finally we become a society of progress
  
Disease remains...
fittingly for a diva
  
It was a rough go for a while
but, she's better now
  
Waiting for the day, that they outlaw
high fructose corn syrup
Tony Luxton Oct 2015
There it stands modelling a fine coat of dust
covering the rim chips that cheapen it.
This vase stood for more than I can understand.
In earthenware fashioned from English clay
by English hands, but unfashionable now
a small squat *** of Dalton blue and brown.
Two necklaces of tiny beads clasp its neck
like corsets holding open its cornet mouth.
But we no longer hear its tunes or read its runes.

When I hold it in my hands I see Great Grandma's room
with highland cattle in a Scottish mountain scene.
The long-case clock of fear and fascination
where mother was threatened with incarceration
but never ******. Its rustic case reached down
to Earth's grim brimstone and fiery domains.
'There,' Mother said, 'lie Grandma's tortured remains.'
When you start to dig beneath the surface things begin to show
Things you never thought of nor ever seen before
Big things, little things, questionable things
Like placid smiles that you've been pushed beyond
An agreeable Yes that life has ripped you from
A loving touch you once embraced
Now sliced and shaved all the way down
To where the Ahhas lay

Childish trust, blind faith now blown asunder
For something more urgent as you dig further under
Layers of fluff and squiggly stuff
Unfashionable stuff, freaky stuff, fabulous stuff
More mystery undone, more digging to come
Is it ever done?
There is no final word, no failure, no success
No chisel that can carve away what's etched
Deeper than your flesh
Another winter's here and stubborn leaves
Still linger
The apple crumble's ready
And for now it shall appease your hunger
You bow your head and say
Namaste
A thousand times
Namaste
Namaste
Terry Collett Nov 2013
He first notice Elaine
as she waited
for the school bus
standing there

in the pouring rain
with her younger sister
and other kids
from the village

he noticed
how drowned she looked
her spectacles so wet
she couldn’t see out

her dark hair
hanging limp
about her face
and she looked down

not up
as she climbed
aboard the bus
making her way

down the aisle
of the bus
like some female Crucified
and sat in the seat

by the window
and peered out
her sister sat
next to her

equally as wet
yet unperturbed
laughing at another
who jested

at her state
but Elaine's
was a separate state
a lesser one's fate

knowing other eyes
gazed and sniggered
and whispered
into their hands

but not John
he saw her through  
his own eyes
pushed away

the sneers
and sighs
and sniggering japes
and saw a deeper soul

within peering out
through the window glass
that showed
the falling rain

he looked away
taking note of her hair
and eyes
and glasses smeared

and how she pushed
her wet hands
between the caresses
of her knees

and dampened skirt
how by the look
of her face
revealed

her inner hurt
and as the bus
moved off and on
the radio blaring

some Mike Sarne song
the voices of children
competing for the space
and John half listening

to Trevor talk
some such of fishing
with a friend
at pond or river

he did not discern
or Trevor’s sister
across the aisle
chatting of some dress

her mother bought
not the fashion
she complained
but John held close

the image of the girl
who sat behind
across the aisle
whose dampened

state of dress
and soul
had moved his mind
and touched his heart

but said nothing
to either Trevor
with talk of fish
and rod

or Monica's dress
or clothes whatever
it had been
unfashionable or such

as undesired
he looked out
at the passing scene
as the bus raced by

thinking of Elaine
sitting a little way
behind
wiping the raindrops

from glasses
so she could see
and not be
half blind.
SET IN 1962 ON SCHOOL BUS.
Samuel Mar 2012
since when is it unfashionable to
be a gentleman?
that a bold romantic, stifled by nothing
and free in spirit should struggle at matters
the ignorant find laughable is
tiresome to say the least
Wk kortas Dec 2016
Oh, there is light in such places:
The galleries of Soho, the catwalks of Milan,
The boardwalks of Blackpool,
But it exists to flatter, to obfuscate, to tell alluring lies,
A trompe l’oeil of a family picnic
Etched on the wall of an abandoned orphanage,
The siren song crooned by a spider
To the enraptured and wholly credulous fly.

Ah, but the illumination here!
The sun reflecting off the roofs
On those Bob Evans and Shoney’s you would shun,
The starlight backed by a host of owls, a symphony of crickets,
All serving to peel away the layers of artifice and cunning,
To be shucked away like so many cornhusks,
Allowing the secrets of the universe to be whispered to you,
Faintly yet unmistakably, and once moved by these epiphanies
What is to stop you from running along the narrow, unlined streets
And green open spaces in mad, unfashionable celebration,
Exempt from the clucking of the chic and the congnoscenti?
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
language has become so primitive, so overly verb
associative - as if doing things was cool -
some cool that ended up to be - ~eloquent use of language,
the civilised formality always bogs  down to nouns -
and how many you can remember - usually depicted
by teatime quizzing - you dare to remember as many nouns
as possible, because by remembering enough nouns you're
limiting  the chances of unfashionable verbs
taking hold of you (celibacy being one of them) -
it's the immobility that holds sway -
you're tongue tied more than Kentucky's
knuckle express against Virginia - also a woman's name -
see a therapist, a *******, your chances of feeling jealousy
feeds the atypical woman's libido - that's how i see feeling
jealousy, feed the ultimate resentment of woman,
see a *******, i swear to god,
you won't feel resentment because of a woman
in a dating culture, ever more...
oh forget the perfect photograph snappers -
they're solid material waiting to fail...
i mean, see a *******, learn to love
that way, learn to not be jealous -
once you treat her as a girlfriend
you won't treat your girlfriends like ******...
ha... oddly enough: you'll let them
walk away, into the great unknown,
and, subsequently, you'll feel less angry
after having masturbated and having said:
well, wanking myself feels better than ******* her;
if you're not a Jew, you'd agree,
you have two choices,
the sleeve of skin pulled up during
******* with a woman, and the sleeve
pulled down to exhale all mental irritation
you can't share with a woman.
yep, i'm variation prone to excuse
the passing down of knowledge with " "
brackets, and simply saying:
             well, sorta, approximately so,
e.g. " ~eloquent, and English is fertile
ground to say: Burgundy-red, flirting
with lost Saxon - hence hyphen -,
              and the approx. kindred tilde:
which is classified with ensuring ditto
is translated into )                and (     -
i.e. bracket, well... if such a profanity took place,
that dittoing was known as bracketing -
then the hyphen had to resort to availing
the compound usage, and, to unique words,
gave the pass of Thesaurus saying: ambiguity!
ambiguity and not past judgement being preserved.
parenthesis - parent thesis, male, a ***** donor -
then colour-red: red coloured -
                    but what orthodoxy of mathematics
would have said in terms of punctuation -
and what was't said:        never a punctuation
inquiry, should this appear ~
                                     unless prefixed to a word
to replace dittoing out, or passing on the genes,
but simply: ambiguity, language inclusive of
the knowledge of a Thesaurus -
              e.g. it doesn't matter what you ~know...
v. all that matters is ~who you know...
thus stated: well, knowledge versus many contacts,
you don't know anything, and the people you
think you know, you really don't either.
but the process is so miniature in terms of worth
that it's surprising that i'm making it...
my best guess is that people are really bored
of each other - which is why i'm making these
pedantic gestures that will have no chance of
generating improvement of using the liberated medium
that once solely belonged to priests and politicians;
it's ****** ridiculous making these points,
most of the books read by the majority of people
are written by those who can't spell,
let alone punctuate, or even theorise punctuation
to deviate from orthodoxy - so much for ghost writers;
so said, king pedant, who left the squabbles to
spectacle-donning-bow-tie-Marxist-allusion.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
i kept but one name-given namesake -
finally!
now it has become clear:
the german definite article -
die: implies definite article plural -
der: implies definite article singular -

i've become prone to german songs -
more than i'd like -
but i'd sooner die than have to recount
'hej hej sokoły' -
as the only folk song my ear was lent to...

an hour well spent:
a sudoku puzzle and some workhorse
germanic folk -
or listening the pearls and wisdom
of shane macgowan:
point being: the words come from
the tooth -
but only the french and the irish girls
can pull off... wearing short hair like
she'd be a boy...
perhaps those physiognomy details
of shy and porcelain:
faces that were only ever kissed
by the moon - the hair was was only
ever combed by the wind -
and she can come among the brothers
as a amber nectar gem ruffian in disguise...

sinead o'connor, alizée jacotey -
how the hell does tuba büyüküstün come
into the mix? ever so slyly...

bbc4 : 'when it was unpolular and unfashionable
to be irish in england'...
"unfashionable"? the drunken paddy -
the respectable ireland and its own...

conrad - conrad of masovia -
perhaps i just liked the names given unto me
that i chose not to be confirmed
at the brentwood diocees -
all whole lot of it: with a bishop clad in thistle -
the surname was always insignificant:
paperwork -
but at least the names allow you derive
meaning -

poor you alexander -
no minor roles to attach yourself to -
beside the glaring obvious...
st. levi: my former...

- i have only met one woman who ever
wanted to fiddle with my beard -
does it matter that she's my grandmother?
itchy fingers reach in and
pluck out a quartet of violins...

lie eines tambours:
die toten, die toten des regiments
(the dead, the dead of the regiment)

der tod in flandern:
der tod reit't auf einen kohlschwarzen rappe
(death rides on a coalblack horse)
in flandern reitet der tod
(in flanders death rides)
der tod reit't auf einem lichten schimmel
(death rides a pale horse)

teutonic marching party hum:
no wagner! murmurs and mumbling of disgruntled
baritone:
rataplan don diri don!
back from the east and there was
no cleavage to the british ways...
there was always the old one,
the alles vater of germanic roots and rot...
even in multicultural Loon'don...

but now know of the definite article distinction
in german:
der tod: definite singular...
die tod: definite plural... ja! jetzt isch sehen!

fa'lalala... fa'lalala... tamtaradej! tamtaradej!
niemec norweg duńczyk szwed!

a television - a phone no one rings -
all the blessings of the age -
better still - ghost in a skeleton suckling off
flesh - or staging: no soul welcome...
congested and freed from the loitering of
labour -

i would hardly imitate the irish as the dogs
of the british - sinking teeth into gaelic -
i would -
but since i do not have to...
i'd lend my ear toward speaking:
father german - of what this british brat
is worth...
father... alt-vater ßaß!
tease him, or tickle him...
give him a peacock as a gift for the missing
eye...
watch the crow zeppelins come knowing
how to knock...

i very much believe in a linguistic integrity
of a people - a language is beside the waving of
the flag - perhaps i am inclined
to skin of the supposed irish that do not
speak a word of gaelic: more so...
if they have tatoos on their skin?

the welsh have been given a strict overlord -
even though the english claim they
are the one *****-slap shy of donning
a gimp suit...
loud mouths from scotland...
but nothing in their native spreschen!
exfoliating "orthography" glaswegian...

oh but i would be willing to succumb to
this leprechaun sing-alongs...
i'm a workhorse of folk -
i need the drums and the vocals will do the rest -
no need for bagpipes -
or fiddling or dread the banjo...
old continent yawns...

who is the father of the english?
when the english start to... become too over-confident...
arrogant and atypical islander mentality that
doesn't borrow anything from the isolationism
of the Faroe Island people?
the forbidden fruit of the same language
being spoken "across the pond"...
unlike island dwelling people...
who want to be left alone...
strange... that so much media attention must
be given to a people:
that clearly do not want to be left alone!
who said the british didn't just generate
4 years of journalistic pay-cheques for
newspapers and other outlets?
stalling tactics... feeding tactics...
feed the propaganda hogs who will
gobble down anything and regurgitate with
an alistair cambell at the fore...

i was expecting to read some keneth koch,
listening to something beside german folk songs...
solving a sudoku...
and finally deciding... it would be worthwhile
to invest almost 30 quid in a complete works
of this poet...
one thing i've noticed...
the price of books has gone up dractically!
i once thought: paying 30 quid for heidegger's
ponderings VII - XI and II - VI is a bit steep...
but not all the poetry books i want to buy
cost just as much!

30 quid... em... that's almost a carton
of cigarettes...
and i've been hoping to save up to visit a brothel
and forget something:
of no immediate concern...
but poetry books were never this dear to buy...
i was rather spontaneous when
making a recommendation: kenneth koch...
perhaps i should read some more
before i buy this kilogram's worth
of compressed forest of a book...

but that's all the way into a tomorrow's
sitting before: this will never become
a Balzac 14 coffee work-ethic output...
writing: making sure the reader
has no chance to reflect -
nothing to introspect with or for...
then again:
what's any of this supposed to do
with: beside the reflexive?

man's transcendental love will never compensate
for the pragmatic love of a woman
in need for a, kettle...

shady lots of the unforgiving blue-snippet
of jazz and all the better:
that could happen that didn't originate
with british punk...
1960s screaming girls -
1970s and the boys could come around...

yeah, i've been to Ypres - where as pseudo-children
we played hide-and-seek trade-offs
in the trenches...
where the anglo-spreschen graveyards
have signatures: names -
and individual graves...
the german graves? the german graves
of 1st world war?
wilhelm! are you listening?!
apparently the jews were also
trafficed into the slaughter camps...

i have stood in the graveyards
of the germans - the en masse graves sites -
i have witnessed the silence of these graves...
camaraderie of the dead...
nothing of which the english
would ever learn...
in the graveyards
of a "communal"...

the mass graves of the fallen german
"hitlerjunge"... alles im schwarz...
keiner im khaki: senf hinter abendessen!

i stood in the graveyard of the world war
german en masse graveyards...
no sparrow will sing: when the dead sing among
each other...
i will not visit the slaughterhouse
of auschwitz... the cow-towing...
i will not bow before those that were naive...
but i will nonetheless...
succumb to the idiots...

and the Helmut: die eisenhelmkopf: knock-knock...
echo? echo?
among the english...
one is supposed to reach toward
loving the german
(then again one isn't);
feeling indifferent to this lot...
not being quiet the h'american expatriates
they could have been...
old father sax...

the world can heave: settle for the concentration
camps...
i must savor the bounty found in
german en masse graveyards from
the first world world war
if any slaughterhouse is willing to open
its gates to an esque auschwitz...
so be it... but the graveyard
to the youth of germany, wilhelm youth...
camaraderie: freundschaft-im-tod

mutter-tod!
i need not see the concentration camps,
i've seen the graveyards of germany from
the first world war...
if you've seen one sardaine crammed closure
ground...
and the silence...
what does it matter, regarding the people
so naive?

vier! 4th! alternatively: fear!
the mass graves of the youth under Wilhelm
in the vicinity of Ypres...
that acidic silence...
piquant...
and i am supposed to visit the concentration
camp the slaughterhouse?
what will always die
with being naive... trust... and love...
and disinhibition and...
lingua franca ergonomics of
selling stale wood in the form
of antiques...

i know one way of failing to integrate
into english society...
look down... learn some german...
learn what the old father spoke when
he started to brew these unforgiving children
of the chandelier maze...

i'll be singing these germanic folk songs...
x-ray flag of cornwall -
teutonic - black cross upon the white flag...
muslims nearing jerusalem -
old pagans of lithuania
remnants of the golden horde having settled
in ukraine's crimea -

best felt: of what it feels to be alive,
in england...
tinging the old ****** with a dalmation specker
full blodied worth of:
zee ols: germanicus inhibutus -
because there's not need for *****...
as far as the british go...
in... ***** first: welcome! the conquering
par'tayh!

******* soft-ball dodgers and ****-*******
pinzetteblödsinnausweichmanöver:
ease a coming... you *******
weiser herr misers!
lovecraftian video vermont
aenemic *****-liquor...

poetryfoundation.org poet:
is he / she dead?!
they're dead? they're dead?!
oh thank god there's a dead...
and body worthwhile to **** with...
because safety... safety...
and no bit of h. h. holmes
will ever grace the pish-poor pasrty...
party... oops...
******* yankies...

horror is a fetish...
poor croat poor yugoslav...
unless you mention
the serbs and the balkan "muslims"...
high-brow expectation -
until i am willing to meet
not meat...
my fore-bride... death...
honk honk!
i am more than willing top die
via the swizz affair than all this,
******* fawty towers agony...
pristine and puritanical...
the living better excused to live...
enough to buy them life insurance...
and, otherwise... the remains of
dead willing to pop the cork...

the sane always have their: two pence shave
worth of flip: they know-it-how...
the sane will alway know what to write
about insanity...
problem? when the insane write about sanity...
and the mole-hills and whatever it left
becomes the windowlicker down-dyndrome
chop-suey "oops"?
retro-****: or simply: re-...
the sane have authority over the insane...
what happens when the insane have a crab-bite
on the concept of "sanity"...
people elsewhere also die... no?

sanity that requires grey-matter peep-show
peoples to run miles for:
the dying auntie and her cancerous loved-up
"french"...
the sane speak of the insane
i almost forget: the insane would never
speak about the sane... because...
it's nostalgia: papa roach:
between angels and insects...
as dostoyevsky said:
for angels... the sight of god's throne...
for insects... something associated with
succumbing to soap opera and itchy ***
disinhibitions...

why would i visit these concentration camps?
living in western europe first world war
was more important than the 2nd world war...
i've visited a german world war I mass grave...
why would i subsequently visit
the remains of a concentration camp?
a site near Ypres where no sparrow
will cling to branch or to song...

for no reason: don't tease... stop teasing...
if you life is all mud and mediocre and
soap opera... stop teasing!
i will not visit a concentration camp...
appeasing the hebrew...
only when... the graveyard of the en masse
dead of german youth is visited from
the 1st world war...
where... bullet, mud...
fingerprints not welcome...
citizens non-anon...
auschwitz and death the addressee...

the sane and their stipends concerning insanity!
but then one diagnosis falls foul...
and the straitjacket jack starts speaking...
oh! oh then!
the usual story...
the usual *******-become-bells-and-church-uvulas...
and the rest is just a cry, a sigh,
a boring reminder of the british raj...

learn some german...
the peasants will retain theirs with some velsh...
and that's how you
react to be... "leisured with a caption
of being measured via
the focus of having a father"...

liebe: zu nicht lassen gehen...
liebe: das alles ich können behalten!

i rather speak some german on these isles...
this is not ******* h'america...
this is the old continent..
england serves for *******'s worth of nothing
when it is excused to speak german...
while english is relegated for chinese tourists...
and... the faroe island farmers of sheeps' **** and wool...

it's not like you'd expect to become welcome
these days, or any other days...
as a tourist or as a ******* trader...
of "goods"...
made in chine is the broker's deal to begin with...
on the broken bone signature...

i too thought the english were prized on
giving stipends on how:
how to best keep things cordial...
champagne, oysters... the eton mess...
a good round of polo and ******* wacking...
no?

i do admire the early exits of the suicide prone...
i would too...
but i do crave... for the platic 20 quid banknote...
and what would become of charles III
should he chose a different name...
and i really wish that lizzie lives her most...
but then... her current grin is already
tombstone... and she...
well... she's bothersome in that she's pradictable...
and that's boring and bongo-bongo boorish...

****'s sake: two popes teamed up to try
and topple her off the throne and play snooker
into a dead-8 with her crown...
better speak some german: for jokes...
among... the british... that did live through
the 60s of the 20th century...
but... will never relive the same cushioning
of history to somehow "compensate"
the rolling stones dinosaur of the:
most welcome pensioner rock & zimmer framers...
roll with that sort of shaky stephens
park-on-eire-n-son?

just drop the delayed nuke...
we're all done and b.b.q. readied
recounting what's interpreted as "trauma"...
superiority / the messiah complex
of the english...
but you speak a word of german...
you think a word of german and...

do these people care, to, remember,
their, natural, neighbourly...
competitive streaks with the fwench?
it's just like "us"... the polacks with the russians...
with the germans...
i too thought that the ukranians were
better represented by competing with
leftover mongols of crimea.
Moomin Apr 2020
Some people lead, and decide what we need, they are sure and decisive and proud
Others tag along, in a compliant throng, they have to be part of the crowd
But there are those who are staid, because they are afraid, of the prospect of being despised
And so they withdraw, behind a safe door, and live in the shade all their lives    

She's alone and so tense, when school days commence, enduring the chaos she sees
The object of jest, ignored by the best, chosen last in the sporting decrees
She knows she's no belle and the spots really tell, as she stoops low to appear less tall
They see freckles and glass, they see a clumsy outcast, and an unfashionable scruff at the ball

Yet, away from the crowd, she sings sweetly and loud, tends animals in her kind way
She is loyal and wise, and does not despise, those less fortunate and in dismay
She is zealous and funny, and her smile always sunny, and her failings she does not try to hide
And if they cared to pry, and look into her eyes, they would see she is beautiful inside

There was another young girl, whose flame was unfurled, when she became woman at first
From pain of the past, to smashed looking glass, and the thought of a small breasted curse
With the world she contended, those she loved, she offended, till their love was exhausted and spent
Once lost from its sight, she could not do right, and spiralled, and twisted and bent

Yet, some could recall, when she was still small, and eager and funny and sweet,
when she used to run, to please everyone, and joyfully cuddle and greet
For this girl was true, and genuine through, and barren of pretense and pride
Yet most could not see, that, always was she, so innocent and beautiful inside    

This lad is not strong, and he has never belonged, to a gang or a club or a team
For stammer and blush, are easily crushed, by the boys who are considered the cream  
No sport and no game, no President's name, but the task of retrieving the ball
Dismissed and derided, by those that decided, that a man should be seven feet tall

But his mind is a place, where wonders take place, and brilliance comes to the fore
Pouring out words, and music unfurled, which causes the spirit to soar
When he sings, he's not slow, and his closest ones know, that his rare gift cannot be denied                
Though hidden away from the world's selfish gaze, his voice is so beautiful inside

And another is she, a mother of three, who's fleeting love has long disappeared
Yet the blame she will take, and guilt she can't shake, as she pauses her dreams for some years
Mistakes, she has made, and her children will pay, and gratitude she is denied
And she must run with the crowd, and pretend she is proud, when she really is dying inside

Had they known her, before sadness occurred, they would have seen trust and a friend
Unselfish and wise, swift to empathize, and never would her principles bend  
For she would have shone, a rare companion, one that would stand by their side
Through danger and despair, she'd always be there, because she is so beautiful inside  

He now lives alone, since his beloved passed on, taking with her his passion and pride
He still rises at dawn, though his work is long gone, and his home is so cluttered inside    
He dreads stepping out, where the young taunters shout, of his baldness, his stoop and his skin
In a world that thinks age, is a lonely dark cage, where you go when you're ready to give in

Yet stored in his mind, is a library in kind, that holds so much wisdom and lore
He found joy, and true love, searched for God up above, knowing peace, yet enduring a war
A father, a son, a hero when young, supporting the poor and the tired
Once loved and adored, by many who saw, the man who is beautiful inside

When we think of our friends, and what drew us to them, was it their job, their hobbies, their smile?
Or the music they chose, their hair or their clothes, or was it something we could not define?
Because we need to be sure, it was something more pure, something worth the investment of you
Cos, Good looks don't mean kind, and pretty fades with time, but loyalty will always hold true

For a good sense of fashion doesn't breed compassion, and a hot date can often cause burns
Bravado is fleeting, and self-confidence self defeating, and sarcasm often returns
Do we want fun, and affairs on the run, or are we really looking for more?
If not, then dig deep, and be ready to weep, for calamity stands at your door

For, when all's said and done, we fear being alone, and we fight for the souls that we choose
Whether kindness or cruel, the wise or the fool, with them we will win or we lose
And hope  settles down, and wanders around, searching for one who'll be kind
So don't settle for less, but administer this test, and see if they are beautiful inside
In loving memory of my sweet niece, Toni, who took her own life
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
you know Philip Larkin was the king of the selfie - the contrast a painter would have made with a self-portrait, a fascination we all inhibit or exhibit - how about a selfie to end all selfies, open hangman style?!

- ᚹᚨᚱᛞᚱᚢᚾᚨ son ᚻᛖᛚᚹᛖᚷᛖᚾ -
chisel in timber is nothing compared to ornamental marble
on the streets of Rome; the Coliseum god's chosen architecture
above pyramid by far, and temple prior -
as care worded: let man be entertained, even with the man
dead the entertainment exists to be furthered - athletes instead
of gladiators, less blood, more chemistry and cheats
who are asking for the full capacity, otherwise chemists
are extensions of dentist and fluoride pushers via pastes* -
the runes though - chicken scratches - etching -
i too croaked while the Barbarossa prophesy
resounded in my birth-town: the return
of the horde of nachtklappe -
me chasing a night butterfly in my bedroom:
in the glass eye you go; in!
fed the tarantula with you! but that's affirming
origin in the equatorial axis - dear moth,
my woollen jumper bemoans your larvae trims.
with me a Woad ****** tattoo -
with that song, hangover i preyed on misery
with a gratifying cascade of tear -
how some men strive for popular beliefs in their
coordinates outside their chosen realm of expertise,
a soldier outside of war, a gladiator outside a
coliseum, an artist without paint and canvas,
while the so called mediocre's search is done ever
so quickly with a shop selling necessary goods...
travesty transcendental or travesty simply necessary?
it takes trans-generational interest to become
a Turkish shop-owner in the medium of art,
it literally takes St. Samael (angel of death) to get involved,
you're writing poems, you're not selling tomatoes,
to become recognised while living, for your art
is, well, some would just utter the word: unfashionable.
unless of course you write utter drivel...
then the stage is yours - for the most part we're not
aiming to write oration pre, but aim to write echo -
capturing aquatic vibrations, waves, sine or cosine.
but i still wonder: given the lazy diacritic above iota
(and jasmine) - ι - i.e. dotty rather than comatose -
why is it necessary to have a Buckingham Palace royal
flag waver from í to ì via ι / concretely i but no
straight comma stress as necessary involvement pin-point
usage as rather the simply visible ιota without the dot?
no wind or simply a camera zoom to pinpoint
the tourists' fascination?
whatever the answer, punctuation marks
added to letters reveal: outside of letter-attachment: timing,
invoked with letters: stressing - shame no semicolon
made it to be added to a letter: thankfully we have ;) -
wink wink smiley - this is me,
reminiscent of Wittgenstein bedazzled by Copernicus'
late entry with the heliocentric system, later to be
replaced with an egocentric system - whatever good
that did to improve the geocentric beginning -
and the horizontal colon (:), the hyphen added / macron,
comma, full-stop, the approximate ~, but no semi-colon -
the Adam of emoticons - the reason most banker Jason
Fritzes don't use punctuation is because they don't
use diacritics.
Mateuš Conrad May 2017
drinking *** allows you to
spots things.... the like of insects crawling
on glasss... the oddity being:
inside a room... i call it a misguide
between glass and air...
    and then there's evanescne's
my immortal...
           and why i can forge
a need for a tear...
              that sense of
a gratifying gulp of snot...
    the pass on asking being
demanding....
  like wolverine asking jane / phoenix
out on a date... but being rejected....
because she's seeing
cyclopse;
**** me, a woman's take on scent...
and then cleaning up cat's ****...
     well done....
   to satiate the brute...
           you have to be the brute...
and what of a need for
a callous call to make amends?
          well, merely answered by a:
                                    hush;
and that's outside the domain
            of saying growl...
     when an actual growl was neccesary;
and was, a verb, rather than a noun...
          oh the freeing feeling
                of the much adored sadness!
god, with it, i am, nowhere closer than
to you, in that i am... "claustrophobic",
yes, res locus;
yes, res locus... it's something that gives
a historicity of the cartesian argument...
a temporal and a spatial guise-cocnern
    for temperaments that avoids
         fabrics, and that said, generally:
fashion; esp. to give vogue to cognition!
it really can be "unfashionable"
to think someone's argument...
        e.g. kant? unfashionable.
  nietszche? very much fashionable...
it's called hegel's lecture notes + marx's critique...
   cogntive vogue...
i like that term...
it sounds so much more astute to be said,
than say, cultural marxism...
      so much easier to state:
  well... given the year 2017, the cognitive vogue
is... a, b, c...
     than ascribe some definitves /
                             post-scripts of an ideology,
like darwinism, that's become as rigid
                            as the geometry of a triangle;
and **** me! the theaory won't budge!
it won't budge into a yawn! degraded as library
material!
   it had to compete with marxism
                      as having, a culutral status!
M Jul 2014
Who are you to advise who I should be?
Why have I been told to not be who I am?

Do not pursue teaching, you'll work a luckless and poor career. You'll devote your life to an occupation that won't put food on your table, you better marry rich Megan.

Do not love like you do, it's is overwhelming. It is too intense, too encompassing. It is the ocean- unpredictable and vast. Do not love me like that, I can't handle your love. Do not cry oceans, do not have streams down your cheeks. Do not feel, do not express yourself. Please don't.

Do not love who you want to love. It is too difficult to explain, accept and live with the fact that you may love someone with the same chromosomes as you.

Do not dance at your leisure, you cannot hold the beat or sway to the rhythm. There is a time and place for expressing your joys, remember that.

Do not cut your hair for it was so beautiful when in cascaded down your back.

Do not pierces your nose, people don't like metal in your nostril and god forbid you puncture a hole and stick a diamond in your pretty face.

Do not wear the short shorts, the baggy tshirts, the sandals with socks, the buns on the sides of your head, the face make up. You know those all mean you want it, you're lazy, you're unfashionable, you're a wanna-be, you're a try-hard who cares too much.

Who decided one day I couldn't be who I was born to be? Who decided I wasn't able to being myself and being okay as is?

Today I decided I will be the high school English teacher and I will change lives with my big heart and encompassing love. I will inspire through my educating hands and words. I will love who I love with all I have in my soul. I will dance in dead silence, in the rain and in the middle of a song. I cut my hair and it'll grow back. It always does. Metal in my nose made me no less beautiful, I was beautiful before it and I can be beautiful without it. I will wear the ******* shorts and let my thighs shake, I will do my hair as I please, I will wear the baggy tshirts because they are comfortable, I will wear and say and do and be whoever I want to be.

I am a combination of atoms and particles made from stardust and centuries before me. I am made of hope, acceptance, knowledge and ultimate love for myself and others. I am made of spontaneity and the daring risk to be who I am meant to be, I am infinite and you cannot bottle up stardust. You cannot contain me with your mere words.

Who are you to tell me who to be? Who am I to accept that? Who am I to let you tell me anything about my bones and brain, my mind and soul? Who am I?

You only wish you knew.
The most daring and brave thing you can ever do is love yourself with every ounce of your being, honestly and whole-heartedly.
Jami Samson Jun 2014
If you wore a suit of expression
Forged out of iron words
On the anvil of explanation,
One that comes out strong
And fits like your own skin
To armor up for introduction,
It would only cover more
Of what you already show
So instead you wear your heart
On your sleeves
Your perhaps unfashionable,
However durable sleeves
Made from the fabric of feeling
Woven by threads of thoughts
As if what you have on
Is yourself inside-out.

If you came out as a loud noise
Solid and sharp
Bringing only auditory effect
And no message to transmit
To the sympathetic nerves,
Not of beats but a mere blast,
And what's a sound
When it's not music?
So instead you come out as a song
Fingertips on guitar strings,
Soul in the playing
And story in the lyrics
A voice calling out,
Serenading,
Hoping to be an anthem
Or at least a playlist item.
#54, June.18.14
Dedicated to my Kuya Arvin
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
i own this language, you only own 1966... and that's about it; not in the tier of fisherman, but in the tier of the salon ladies who find marxism unfashionable... and, but to no end, are unfashionable in their unrest of rekindling the linguo artefact of: what's to be edible / what's to be a fashionista's artefact.

whoever said the said truth,
never managed to
unsay the said lie;
we all know that lying
is the innocence of evil -
  and that truth
is the innocence of god -
for good knows that
uttering a lie,
is the foremost deviance
worth considering,
before mobilising a trajectory
toward a forwarding
of said, example,
toward a nowhere,
  with nothing: as the prime intent;
abiding in the hive
of leisurely "discontent"
                     fake macabre -
                 only a lie
is an innocence encrusted in evil -
as is truth,
an innocence encrusted in good -
what we call *choice
is
       nothing but: a failure of will.
Some unfashionable fear
Repels me from the blinding light of
The moment
Knowing full well that to bask in that glow
Brings the only peace I'm destined to know
My flesh sinning against the Spirit in the conviction
That it isn't enough
Grasping ahold of all I've come to hate
With one hand
With the other all I thought I loved
All that is before me
All that is within me
It all belongs to the moment
Even as I belong to the moment
Though my stubborn will won't admit it

— The End —