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William A Poppen Jan 2021
Turn out the lights
catch the night’s bequest

Train your eyes on the horizon
sunrise is approaching

Notice how blue is shading
from deep to pale

There are no shadows
Cast by the moon
Hiding behind the clouds

Sounds reverberate from
an airplane drifting
to a landing

Morning’s quiet
regains the stage

Until a Robin chirps
a wake-up call

Sunrise is approaching
advancing from east to west
lighting the sky

Rocks whiten to become obvious
against the pallid grass of winter
robbed of nutrition by the cold of January

No orb announces today
the sun is rising although hidden
behind dense condensation

The orange orb of the sun
will not flood the skyline

The fever of night
has become the pale of the day
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
some say it's called dart-eyes, a kaleidoscopic venture
that might leave you myopic, oddly enough i know
that people say a lot of far fetched things,
   and the excuses are usually metaphors,
there's the literal cardinal,
the literal spanish inquisition,
  and metaphors of demons in the bible -
          i still want to experience a fully
theocratic world: where man's words come
forth from man, and god's words come from
the mouth of god... again: poetry without
a god is like biology without chlorophyll,
   no one even suggested a kneeling process and
ardent prayer to be invoked,
     all it took was a spare thought away from
the daily commute and the daily invigoration
from some sort of ethic, oddly enough it always
ends up being an ethic of work...
   i guess that's why in the west everyone is
nearing an addiction thoroughly apparent that's
named workaholism... once the relationships
fail, the only saving string of hope is work,
an absurd work ethic, because wouldn't you
take a syringe filled with ink and do shifts in an
office beyond the norm, thus entering the world
of night shifts and anything else antisocial?
   people can't really be friends, we're fired up
toward formal relationships and what's guiding us
to these relationships is hierarchy...
              oddly enough the Aztec or Mayan
pyramids don't have that sort of feel to them,
they don't prescribe interpretations of hierarchy,
quite the opposite,
     ask someone who doesn't have a conquistador
heritage to explain that they are:
  the gallows... guillotines... the tyrant is not
buried within, these aren't caves to entombing a
tyrant with all his riches...
      there are no chambers in these structures...
they were intended as architectural symbols of
common law... those presumptions European
*******... human sacrifice? a myth...
these were sights of capital punishment,
you stepped out of line: you'd get your heart
carved out and your body would drop from
the execution altar down the steps for
           the scavenger mob to tear you apart
even further: had you transgressed communal
consent... justice has to become overpowering
but that does not mean we carve a mount
Rushmore akin to the statues of the valley of
the kings of enthroned pharaohs...
  much of ancient Egypt lingers in what we
call "modernity"... esp. in America...
             and the world is currently establishing
itself into cold war ii (i said that once,
can't remember when)... and until this is firmly
established, that it's clearly accepted that we're
dealing in a cold / intellectual war, then
we'll pass all that intelligence and engage in a hot war /
and emotional war, as characteristic overflowing
of populism, which at present times: has
all the coordinates, but no proper vector to
allow a congregational march toward impeding
dangers... but better a second cold war than
a third world war... so much of ancient Egypt
in America... the washington memorial for one...
what's the other name for it? ah... obelisk;
or what the pagans built to counter the fear of
impotence: well... we've established a bountiful
supply of humans... can we do a floral pattern
now? oddly enough we embraced tomb-pyramid
builders from the north-eastern side of
Africa's brain-dead region, and trusted
conquistadors wiping out a people that used
pyramids to stress the importance of law:
i can't see no reason to think that those pyramids
were intended for human sacrifice...
capital punishment? well, d'uh... because wasn't
Golgotha so unspectacular as to be less
than what it was? had they crucified him in private,
in some back-alleyway crucified to a door,
would history open its doors to the advent of
Christianity? don't think so.
what i'd really love to see is people with
necklaces of silver, and the thing dangling on them
would be a different torture mechanism...
an iron maiden... it's like prescribing pain is
necessary... it's a dogmatic ruling on a once upon
a time
(even the briefest) chance of happiness...
but even then certain philosophers say:
why be happy, when you can be interesting?
how interesting do you have to be so many times over
to not even wish for a stillness of neither want
nor drive to go beyond what you already have?
i don't know if this is an adequate comparison,
but in terms of interesting...
   a movie (side effects, 2013) utilises only two songs
in its official title:
   the focal point of a ******
       is staged to a "sleepwalking" woman preparing
a dinner for three (only two people are in the apartment),
the song? thievery corporation's the forgotten people...
i knew the band prior, and i've seen the film
before... but i never bothered to watch the credits...
i remember the odd couple who'd sit in cinemas and
engage in watching the end-credits, always the one
odd bunch: as if saying thank you to all the people
involve... a quick stroll through a graveyard is probably
comparably akin....
   and the other song? Bach's
   orchestral suite no. 2 in B minor, bwv 1067 -
     but i can't remember whether it's actually featured
in the film, simply because there's no focal moment
in the film where it can be heard as prominently as
the first song... and then there's thomas newman in
between (no surprise);
but a film like that is a meditation...
             if only two songs are used, chances are
the dialogue will have many strengths, because there
will be a multiplicity of consistent reinterpretation,
a bit like talking into a Tate Modern and seeing
Rodin's the kiss statue (inspired by Dante's divine
comedy), sketching it from the northern perspective,
the southern, western and eastern perspectives...
    i've seen few films that accredit a very minimalistic
soundtrack... on that note, how songs could literally
be translated into film titles: side effects - the forgotten people,
  dead poets' society - carpe diem, american beauty -
any other name, are there others? there probably are.

but that's nothing compared to last night's antics...
   some people climb the Everest... clap clap clap...
some people design super-suction vacuum cleaners...
clap clap clap...
                    from time to time i solve sudoku drunk
(no clapping)... but there's a narrative involved,
the narrative goes when you try to map out solving
one of these 81 "rubic" squares... applause for
speed with these babies like applause for premature
*******... aren't they compatible?
   we all have limitations, mine came yesterday,
when i allocated superscript numbers to the journey,
quiet literally an optical tangle, i should have used
       things like ª ' “ ‘ ¨ † above the plotted line...
but it only takes one mistake to ground you
   and then you have to go back and make minute corrections,
as the notes themselves suggest (crazy eyed darting):

exhibit a.

0    0    0    0    0    2    7    0    0
0    0    0    0  ­  4    0    0    2    0
2    0    5    1    0    7    0    0    8
0    9    0    0    0 ­   0    2    0    1
7    0    0    8    0    0    0    6    0
0  ­  0    6    0    7    0    5    0    0
4    0    8    7    0    0­    1    0    0
0    1    0    0    0    5    0    0    0
0    0 ­   9    0    1    0    3    0    0

   exhibit b. html that doesn't allow subscript
            or superscript notation, hence the brackets
   denoting movement (pending)


9 (24)    0          3 (23)    0    8 (5)    2    7    1 (2)    0
1 (12)    8 (8)    7 (9)      0    4          0    0    2          0
2            0         5            1    0          7    0    3 (13)   8
8 (7)       9        4 (18)     0 5 (33) 0    2    7 (1)      1
7            5 (16) 1 (14)     8   2 (20)   0    0    6           3 (21)
3 (19)    2 (17)  6            0   7           1 (15)  5           8 (6)    0
4            3 (27)  8           7   0            0         1            5 (28)    2 (26)
6 (30)    1          2 (22)   4 (31)    3 (32)    5    8 (3)    0    7 (11)
5 (29)    7 (10)    9    2 (25)    1    8 (4)    3    0    0

      it is no surprise that the notation played a key part
in having failed to map out the route taken,
       when you're using numbers in a puzzle
  it's almost an inevitable path to failure,
since you're making superscript "bookmarks" at
high concentration, and without any distinction to
what the puzzle demands, hence you go "cross-eyed"
  in solving the puzzle, and superscripting your progress
using the same symbols that are required to solve it,
but given that the puzzle involves 81 slots
  with 9 x 9 identical components (only so rearranged
  to be not contradict the rule of the puzzle
i.e. 9 symbols in each square of the nine in total,
   with a 9 x 9 variation on all linear arrangements not
involving two similar symbols, i.e.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, rather than 1 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8) -
what became a hope to correct the mistake, but given
the intricacies of the progress, all the more harder to
recount steps and subsequently move forward with
   the spotted error...
hence a refresh, and the need for schematic,
given that there are 81 slots in total, with
     27 already in place, and given that there are 26
units of alphabet... how handy to actually persist in
using these characters, but adding diacritical variations
to make up 54 necessary, without invoking
      a 10 or a sz...

exhibit c.

0    0    0    0    0    2    7    1ą    0
0    0    0    0 ­   4    0    0    2    0
2    0    5    1    0    7    0    0    8
0    9    0    0    0 ­   0    2    7α    1
7    0    0    8    0    0    0    6    0
0 ­   0    6    0    7    0    5    0    0
4    0    8    7    0    ­0    1    0    0
0    1    0    0    0    5    0    0    0
0    0­    9    0    1    0    3    0    0

exhibit d.

nb. α = 1, ą (ogonek) = 2, á (acute) = 3, à (grave) = 4,
â (circumflex) = 5, ä (umlaut) = 6, cedilla missing,
   ã (tilde) = 7, b = 8, c = 9, ć = 10, č (caron) = 11,
ĉ (circumflex) = 12, ā (macron) = 13, ç (cedilla) = 14,
d = 15, e = 16, é = 17, è = 18, ê = 19, ě = 20, ë = 21,
f = 22, g = 23, ǧ = 24, ḡ = 25, ĝ = 26
         (now i figure, could have used Greek... d'uh!
ahh, i'll use it for the finishing touches),
        h = 27, i = 28, ı = 29, í = 30, î = 31, ï = 32, μ = 33
j = 34, δ = 35, k = 36, λ = 37, ł = 38, τ = 39, n = 40,
ń = 41, ñ = 42, o = 43, ō = 44, ø = 45, p = 46,
q = 47, r = 48, s = 49, γ = 50, φ = 51, χ = 52, ψ = 53, ω = 54.

before i begin the puzzle... there's a reason why a caron
g (ǧ) might exist, and why a grave z might not...
   and why there's a piquant difference between
an acute z (ź) and ż - depending on the aesthetician,
who decides to move away from the national linguistico-aesthetic
dogma... for example the name George,
orthodoxy states you must learn the aesthetic version
of Grze'gosz... but you would also be able to write
the alternative: Ǧegoš - given that rz is equivalent to ż,
    and given that there is no grave accenting of z,
but there is the acute (ź), perhaps you could consider
the dot a convergence point that could assimilate
sound, immediately over the caron g... of course none
of these remarks are intended for application: because
they would never reach a consideration in a learning
curriculum of any nation, a whimsical idea derived from
the remnants of the esperanto experiment...
  from what i can see, ǧ would equal grz, and
the reason that rz exists at all, and it equivalent to ż
is because a grave version of z is missing, and that
the acute z (ź) exists, and there is no point of balance
that otherwise is the foundation of the caron...
  i wouldn't have thought focusing on such "trivial"
signs above letters provided so much pecking-orders.

exhibit e. focal points in greek notation

9ǧ    4ñ    3g    6o    8â    2    7    1ą    5τ
1ĉ   ­ 8b    7c    5p    4    3q    6ń    2    9ł
2     6γ     5      1      9r    7    4n    3ā    8
8ã    9    4è    3s      5ψ   6ω    2    7α    1
7    5e    1ç    8      2ě    4ø    9ō    6    3ë
3ê    2é    6    9λ    7    1d      5    8ä    4k
4    3h     8    7     6χ    9φ    1    5i    2ĝ
6í    1    2f    4î     3ï      5     8á   9μ    7č
5ı    7ć    9    2ḡ    1     8à     3     4j     6δ

thus completed: there's a reason why the majority
of the narrative is done utilising diacritical marks,
i could have used many more distinct symbols,
but the point is: there are very few focal points
that can be ascribed distinct markings,
most of the puzzle is done on the basis of "crazy eyes",
i.e. darting eyes - focal points do emerge after
much darting about the squares, notably when
a linear sequence is completed, or whenever one of
the 9 squares is completed, or when all nine squares
contain nine 7s or 8s...
      or that's one way to go about not having any whiskey,
the rain pouring outside, and the night stretching
into a near eternity -
            
exhibit f. narrative of correction, actual excerpt

it began at h, i.e. labyrinth corner no. 27,
******* trainspotting! this is going to be like reading
the time for the next train to arrive at Waterloo!
  5(28), 5(33)?, 5(28),
  6(30), 4(31), 3(22), 5(33), 33? 9(38), 4(34),
  6(35), 4(36)...
6(41) < 4(40) < 5(39) < 9(38) < 9(37)....
       4(42) < 6(43) < 9(44) < 4(45) < 5(46) < 3(47) < 9(48) < 3(49) <...>
   6(58) > 9(51) < 6(52)...
        longest period spent on 3(13) / ā -
   and the notation that gave way to this spiral?
5(33), which actually ended up being 5(53) / ψ.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
it's etiquette, aesthetics in itself? a bit like: art for art in itself? who the hell minds calling etiquette an aesthetic movement, when etiquette only serves itself, rather than an aesthetic for others to observe an call for the: decor in oculus ex spectator... the concept of etiquette ***** sweaty salty ***** in the realm of aesthetics, it's principled for itself alone, and no one else... what it is is: absurd.

i don't understand why the english press
doesn't fathom polish nationalism -
i simply cannot fathom it -
  implying that polish nationalism is
tinged with neo-**** slurs is simply
unfathomable to me,
   might as well add:
at least the poles do not have the problem
to discuss ethnic-cocktails of
3/4 italian a quarter jew...
                   it's not out of bias -
i've lived in england for over 20 years,
i have not pledge a dual-national identity -
and i lean toward using english in
my cognitive realm more than i tend
to entertain using polish -
proof? i can't remember the months
alphabet in polish...
                    a week i can remember,
the nouns, but a year? **** me,
near impossible.
                     yet what bothers me is that
western journalism is afraid of:
not so much the nationalism -
          but the collectivism -
the uniform undisputed collective -
   what scares them is that in poland,
   there is no fringe movement -
   it's populist - they're actually afraid
of what an authentic nation looks like...
   this is not some ***-crack of an alt-right
movement, this is people coming together
without a dialectical impetus, or precursor,
it's a tsunami, an *******,
and for that: there's no chance to slander,
to pick out the weakest antelope,
the youngest, and apply the slander,
the naming, equating that person with
being neo-****... ironically in about 100
years they'll call them polish concentration
camps, rather than german concentration camps,
which is why i once suggested,
pull them apart, and ship them off to
germany...
                    neo-****** doesn't exist
in poland, what western cultures fear
is an actual *nation
- a collective -
not bothered whether there is a worthwhile
individualism to be catered for -
put twice simply:
  for all the care for individualism -
western individuals have produced
   a stock of, rather, unspectacular
individuals...
                          this abhorrent politico
of defending the mediocre expressions,
hopeful for the ******* "golden child"
is exhausting - in the anglophone world
i'm either living in an insane asylum,
or a nursery...
      can't decide which...
    but if you look at the most
mediocre person in a collective?
    can you see any mediocre, can you
actually see it? i can't:
because the people have gathered,
        and the tsunami doesn't dismember
you into an individual:
  it dismembers you to align you
into a collective, and as a collective:
     you are a force to be reckoned with.
neo-**** slurs will not work on these people,
you have to gravitate to this conclusion,
when people are united,
they do not feel intimidated...
esp. when there's no ethnic-cocktail
to mind, pick and choosing paternal or
maternal heritage...
                 western journalistic turnip-heads
can't tell the difference between
healthy, collective nationalism,
  and fringe groups in their own
countries...
don't you ******* get it?!
of all the countries in western europe,
what country in the amalgam took an
existential "hiatus" from the history books?
which one became incorporated in
the trinity of prussia, austro-hungary
and russian?
  waiting for a ******* answer...
answer? none!
                        can you at least entertain
the idea that people are celebrating
their nationalism, because they have
regained their nation?!
        no? wait till you lose yours,
            you'll be ******* jack ****-a-boo
         in a few years...
   slurring these people as neo-**** is like
typing out that typical psychiatric:
false regression technique...
                  were you occupied by the nazis?
wait, i thought you said the israelis were nazis...
no i'm confused with this whole
   trans omni movement that branches
into ***, skin and tears...
                   it's simple fear,
that the centre of warsaw can be lit up in red,
and be filled with a cloud of smoke...
       emerging from the flares -
and that similar attempts in the anglophone
world are equivalent to:
  poached oysters,
                            under cooked potatoes,
overcooked spaghetti...
      pointless as an umbrella opened,
when shoved up someone's ***.

p.s. guess what, i'm not afraid of an individual
opinion,
                individuals harass and
mongrel the idea of bullying by
collective consent -
                           they have none...
and don't you think that any sport,
most notably rugby, is a simulation
  of *******, and the travel through
the ******? i guess most sport is,
but rugby exemplifies the ***** journey -
notably: they're passing an egg-shaped
ball.
Ryan Z Ricciardi Jan 2013
Derived from the remnants of sacrificed thought
fragmented reminders of lessons taught
**** the device used to rose tint our sins
and shatter mirrors that sustain fake grins.
With self painted visions, we are pacified
Convinced...
Horrors inflicted have been indemnified.

Tied to past convictions we cannot shed
commitments that exist solely in our head.
Painstaking attempts to make justified
the pain that we've caused that cannot be denied.
Who are the victims of decisions we've made?
If given the chance...
Our suffering for theirs, could we bear to trade?

Whispered snickers hint at retribution
offer redemption but no solution.
Mistakes which drizzled in unspectacular drops
collected in pools and drowned cultivated crops.
Prisms of pain inflicted by selfish choices
Cut deeper...
When we ignored the pleas in our victim's voices.

Pointed fingers say all that needs to be said
our peers may believe us better off dead.
But the harder we try to fix our mistakes
the more ground we lose, that we cannot retake.
With guns to our heads, and a knife in our back
No weapons...
Us against the world, and we're under attack.

Weight of responsibility burdens our souls
sapping our strength and confusing our goals.
Stripped of our artillery, naked and exposed
inside we're screaming but appear composed.
The enemy looms larger with each of our errors
Weakened by defeat...
Realization strikes, We are the true terrors
i'm afraid of the dullness
the unspectacular scares me more than any cancer
more than any mortal wound
that thouest couldest ever inflict upon thine flesh
because it's telling me that i am not doing something to live life to the fullest.
it means that at some point, I made a decision that lead me to experience the dullness
the dark side of experience
and I don't know what to do in those moments
in those dreadful
never ending
frictionally enhanced
time stand still stanced
moments
i can choose to do something else where I'm truly "living"
or i can wallow in the mellow and live dangerously in imaginations sleeping quarters.
i'm such a rebel.
but there's no room for resting in the dormant ticks
that's the time for the treadmill
or rather the spinning wheel
for this hamster of a brain
to start running in circles
always leading me to think the same things
"i should be doing something more productive"
at which point lack of discipline
motivation
and my love for self loathing all barge in
wielding several large knives
and hold the poor little creature hostage
if only I could afford better locks...
Sunshineflowers May 2013
The tiny pebble swam along the path of the river,
Floating above the bed of colossal rocks,
Unsure of where the path might end.
The girl silently watched,
She felt like the pebble,
Not knowing where the river of life was taking her,
The only thing she was sure of was
Someday,
She would find another pebble.
As unspectacular as she,
To share the path with her.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
as any tactician, of any sort, there must be
an introduction into what becomes and expansion
that lasts the entire length of the night,
a liter of whiskey requires a decent amount
of hours to be drank in,
              ensuring that any moth that flies into my
"ivory tower" can loiter for the night,
imploring it: you better not be pregnant
with your moth larvae, otherwise...
     i will have to catch you with my hand,
and release you back into the night...

                        so... an atypical drinking session
begins with a few side orders or
sharpshooters (mix of 3:1 whiskey to ginger
ale)...
      and a few readings of, say,
             heidegger...
                       i already mentioned:
           dasein is more than an event,
          to me it's the equivalent of a crucifix...
it's a word associated to an object,
        rather than a recurring subject...
                  after all...
                          to objectify,
to work wonders in the objective world,
one still cannot escapes being a subject...
   esp. if one becomes a subject of one's own
subject-ive              experience...
     it must be such a boring, lame,
***** almost realism of object-object
          interaction...
                        to­ have:
       but to be unable to appreciate...
                i own about two dozens of vinyls...
but i don't really, really own them...
yes, i "own" them in the sense:
         but they might also be stolen...
        but i appreciate them more than i own
them...
              even if i "own" them,
and one day, do not...
        i owned something more than the object-reality
of the object per se,
       i appreciated them...
the ritual of the needle and the initial
scratching before the music would begin...
plus, not even a CD and esp. not
an MP3 file can give you the sort of ground
gravitational pull toward something
so physically exposing as...
   a... water-mill effect...

i digress...
              of all the three pillars of the mind:
thinking,
          memory and imagination?
i appreciate memory the most...
          you really know you have lived
a reasonably good life
   if your memory faculty is overtly present...
when you remember so much
of your, however mediocre / unspectacular
life...
           thinking can become scrambled,
you have to sometimes associate yourself
to writing when thinking is concerned...
no wonder so many philosophers after
socrates didn't have the patience to
resort to dialectics,
     to talk...
                     at least writing gives one
the capacity to organize, or rather...
devise plans for the labyrinth...

      imagination? plagued by images...
  i do not appreciate conjuring images in my mind,
thinking up dragons and demons...
imagination clouds the mind,
and the ability to concentrate on the skeleton
of man:
                    ⠇⠑⠞⠞⠑⠗⠎
plus, imagination promises and does conjure,
sketches of what an actual reality could
somehow provide...
    i'm not here, bothered about the nature
of "reality", i'll leave that whimsical notion
to english speaking physicists and neurologists...
but imagination clouds the pristine vision
of looking into the abyss,
   and by that, i also imply: looking through
the abyss back onto this world...

and should you think there's anything
profound about that statement?
there isn't...
         but memory...
     to be able to reclaim memory...
    to not seek relief / exodus / escape by
means of the imagination?
     i, frankly, would rather reclaim
the faculty of memory, above all else...
before it was stolen by the indocrination rubircs
of pedagogy...
before schooling set in...
     before, my years from the age of 8
through to the age of 21,
   the faculty of memory was made circumstanced
to "entertain" the bogus threats from
the education system...
             calculus: hardly used in everyday life...
you name it...
           what was the point of discussing
the ethics of abortion to children aged 15?
to scare them, if anything...
  euthanasia discussed aged 15? really?
the moral judgement regarding
   th "right" from the "wrong" was already
settled in the catholic school dogma...
maybe that's why i didn't want the seal
of being confirmed...
   what confirmation name would i have
chosen?
  at first i thought i would have chosen
Michael, as i made my not-to-be-"hope"
of a church wedding...
                 i would have settled on Lothar...
which would fit nicely with my already
second name, Conrad...
maybe even Otto... and dropped the hebrew
name Matthew...
          sure... reading heidegger...
like all philosophy: there's the reading
of a reflective prose, with the immediacy
of a reflexive poetics...
like the ancients: not confined to high school
curriculum of standard poetics:
rhyme and the etc. of techniques...
narrative: pure and simple...
    
              like when heidegger writes about
war (polemic / πoλεμoς)...
                 truth about either war,
or, peace (dialectic) is to chose between
what deserves our attention:
   either being (per se) - or beings...
                 and being (per se) isn't even relegated
to a subjugation to the self...
  a self-improvement, a self-help guru
mentality...
                   it's what the stoic doctor ordered...
there seems to be no fluidity with
an overt-association to a self,
                     self-worth is not exactly
akin to: the worth of being, is it?

        again: coming back to celebrating the faculty
of memory, above thought,
and certainly above imagination...
after all, i remember a period in my life
where i would have celebrated thinking per se
to be above memory and imagination,
when i attained some sort of synch.
   of a lived life of experiences,
that coincided with an equally fruitful
experience of thought that coincided with
the lived life...
            but not since a fateful event...
where memory became elevated above thinking...

so, memory? i have this one particular memory,
i was visiting Venice,
stayed in a hostel with about 15 women,
which, at times felt more intimidating
than sitting in a brothel with 9 bulgarian
prostitutes who i asked: one of you choose me,
one replied that i was not supposed to ask
them to choose, that they indeed were to be chosen,
so i said to her 'you talk a lot, you'll do!'
argentinian, australian girls, a swedish woman,
and two h'american girls...
leigh... and i can't remember the other girl's
name... visiting europe like any
h'american pair might do,
revising the ***** dancing stereotype of
finding "lost heritage"...
all over italy...

              the hostel was run by a h'american
girl and a h'americana boy...
first night? 15 women,
and you're the only man...
and one of them drops a bombshell:
well, as someone as handsome as you...
we took a group trip, via a ferry
to the Venice beach...
  we drank absinthe shots...
   don't ask me how,
but drunks have this GPS system built
into them when drunk... like bees...
i stumbled back to the hostel, alone,
on the ferry, and had a decent night of nod...
me, first time in Venice...
just like me stumbling back to
the hostel in Athens walking from
a strip-club... after having my fill
of smothering two strippers' bosoms...
having ****** my trousers prior,
tantalized by the fact that i was escorted
by a gorilla of a bouncer to the nearest
cash machine... since i ran out of money...
and then sneaking out of the hotel
that had a cash machine...
  first time in Athens... 5 ******* miles...
i made it back to the hostel...

i don't get it... drunks and in-built GPS...
navigated Venice, navigated Athens...
bee in me...

second day in Venice?
         of course... an argument between
the girls... leigh, the jewish girl wanted
to sight-see...
   a bunch of girls ganged up on her...
even her friend...
            so i said...
             well... **** me... if Solomon decided
to settle for the queen of sheba...
between me herding this quasi-tourist harem
of a bunch of australian girls...
   the argentinian etc.,
and this one h'american jewish girl leigh?
so i said: i'll do with you.

                      the numbers looked at me
like frankenstein jr.,
                        oh we had a hell of a time...
a few museums, getting lost in the Venetian
labyrinths, talked and talked...
explored the many flavours of gelato...
i think, i think i had the famous pistachio...
she had the capuccino in st. mark's sq.,
   and then she wanted to show me
the famous Venetian synagogue...
   so sure, we went there,
      but when we got there, it was closing...
boy, she was ******* that she couldn't
allow me to see it...
   instead... we saw the last tourist party
leave...
   and we huddled with some orthodox
students...
           one had a miniature shofar on him,
i told him to blow it, he blew it...
then i sat in a jewish cafe,
finding about the existence of the 613...
mitzvot...
             i wrote some of them down...
and then the weirdest ******* thing happened...
leigh started freaking out...
she was in such a hurry...
        she said she needed to get back,
she needed to get back...
          hell... she even paid of a Venetian taxi,
and Venetian taxis are not cheap,
motorboats on these rat canal aren't cheap...
i wanted to pay half the share...
she didn't want my money...
   next thing i know... she was booking
a flight out of Italy and on her way home...
she and her friend had still planned
another month touring Italy...
  phoom! off she went,
   then the quasi-tourist-harem of girls
came back from their day out...
leigh's friend inquired:
- where's leigh?
- oh, she decided to go home.
                   the next two days were weird...
it's not like i even pulled a ted bundy fast one...
but i remember the h'american girl
running the hostel...
  i ate the most amazing burgers which
she prepared... as if...
i staged some sort of neo-**** scare tactic
on poor leigh...
                rarely does a girl,
who planned this whole summer trip
with her friend, from h'america, all the way
to Europe... decide, on a whim...
to bail...

             Venice... oddly enough i was
not mesmerized...
           Stochholm didn't impress me either...
Amsterdam was just a cafe segment
and the chance to escape police-state
paranoia of England when i still smoked
marijuana... oh... and that one Dutch girl
who turned her head as she rode past me...
Cracow was a... eh... third time i went there?
just a transit point... London is too familiar...
Warsaw: again, transit hub...
Athens: squalor...
only two cities on this earth gave me
                 inspiration: Paris and Edinburgh...
mind you, Macedonia, amazing coach trip...
Belgrade looked stunning, imposing even,
during winter, seemingly a city on a hill...
on the flat-plains of Serbia...
but you need the snow,
   and ******* into it... and shaking from the cold,
because you're under-attired for the trip...

Katowice: but only at night.

   - and that is why i posit memory to
be superior to thinking these days,
  esp. imagination as a mental faculty...
memory has become a cinema to me...
        no wonder i'm bored with movies
these days...
         memory has become a form
of cinema for me...
            sure... it's not much...
but you can work around the "not much"
by fusing all the minor,
"insignificat" details of "skimming"
the narrative...
                       and thank god:
               i'm only given a cameo in all of it...
i'm not an over-bloated stage
actor with a protagonist role...
      in my cinema...
        i'm always the cameo!
                it's so liberating to have lived
a life that doesn't leave one feeling
ashamed...
                         it's hardly petty heroism...
but sure as ****...
     it's worth rememebering things
you can never be ashamed of.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
This Week, and Next Week Too*




Heroes come and go,
Some enshrined but really entombed,
Famed for momentary action,
Bronzed and interred, sentenced to life imprisonment
In "this was history" books.

Others simply a one night stand,
Newspaper front page today,
A homeless man's shoe stuffing, the next.

I like heroes plenty too,
My favorite kind are those who are heroic
Every day, in the small ways,
Plain vanilla, unspectacular, yet is not
Vanilla always first,
Above all?*

I lean toward toward those heroes
Who in every child a leaf do see,
Gently moving it along for just an instant,
A wind, a covering breeze,
Nourishing it briefly then sending it,
Floating, strengthened, onward bound.

I lean toward those heroes,
Who see a tree, a school,
Knowing that so many leaves need be apprehended,
Knowing that to all, one hero man, cannot attend.

Yet in his waking hours,
The despair of enormity
That limits most, with its peculiar powers,
The tired thoughts that would have us say,
Let some else be a hero today,
Clouds not his sight on which
We now rely,
A daily hero has a greater vision
That does not succumb,
This week or the next.

The man that seeks no glory,
But our world does glorify
By raising up the children
One dance step daily,
Is our hero, this week,
And the next, and the next...

June 23rd 2012
Inspired by and
Dedicated to Sidney Grant,
Dancer, teacher, poet, hero,
This week, and next week too.

Proud to be his friend and supporter.

http://www.ny1.com/content/features/nyer_of_the_week/163623/nyer-of-the-week--sidney-grant-uses-dance-to-teach-manners-to-youths


"and every leaf I look upon
tells me the wind has come and gone

so many leaves to apprehend
that to them all i can't attend

and so it is in waking hours
what limits our peculiar powers

the sight on which we duly rely
will greater vision truly belie."

By Sidney Grant
Elizabeth Feb 2014
I am what no one writes about-
I am pink lipstick and elbows
I am neither delicate nor passionate
I am clean socks and the lack of smell that television has, when compared to books

I am what no one writes about-
I am shirts which hang rather than draping over supple skin
I am walks on the beach cut short abruptly
I am the itch at the back of your neck
I am what no one writes about.

I am what no one writes about-
I am unrebellious but unsuccessful daughters
I am unpeculiar unspectacular and uninspiring
I am underappreciated when underdressed
I am unthought of and unspoken.
I am who no one writes about.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicki

Time unfolds ...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering ...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day ...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close ...
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
... a ****** yields herself, but no one knows.

Now time goes on ...
I have not seen you.
... within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged ...
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
... a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.

Seasons flow ...
A dream is dying.
... within parched clusters, life is taking form ...
You were honest;
I was angry.
... petals fling themselves before the storm.

Time is slowing ...
I am older.
... blossoms wither, closing one last time ...
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
... a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.

Time contracts ...
I cannot touch you.
... a solitary flower cries for warmth ...
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
... the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.

Keywords/Tagss: love, roses, petals, unfolding, lips, spring, ******, dreams, time, seasons, storms, summer, drought



Moore or Less
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.

But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!



The following translation is the speech of the Sibyl to Aeneas, after he has implored her to help him find his beloved father in the Afterlife, found in the sixth book of the Aeneid ...

The Descent into the Underworld
by Virgil
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The Sibyl began to speak:

“God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
descending into the Underworld’s easy
since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
Godsons have done it, the chosen few
whom welcoming Jupiter favored
and whose virtue merited heaven.
However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
immense woods barricade boggy bottomland
where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
and twice traversing Tartarus,
if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
listen closely to how you must proceed...”



Anna Akhmatova was a great Russian poet, and a personal favorite of mine...

The evening light is broad and yellow
by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The evening light is broad and yellow;
it glides in on an April rain.
You arrived years late,
yet I’m glad you came.

Please sit down here, beside me,
receive me with welcoming eyes.
Here is my blue notebook
with my childhood poems inside.

Forgive me if I lived in sorrow,
spent too little time rejoicing in the sun.
Forgive, forgive, me, if I mistook
others for you, when you were the One.



Our Sweet Ecologist
by Michael R. Burch

Our sweet ecologist —
what will she do with the ants
and the cockroaches, bedbugs and lice
when they want to live in her pants?



bachelorhoodwinked
by michael r. burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!

u
are
chic
as a sheikh’s
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom’s been overthrown!



The Bachelor Spectacular
by Michael R. Burch

One heart? Tossed aside.
The other? A bride’s.
In all his great wisdom, the bachelor decides.

Eeenie, mean-ie, mine-y, mo’,
one gal must stay and one must go.
If she hollers? That’s the show!

No heart can handle such despair!
But hearts get broken, hearts repair.
Next season? The treasoned will rule the air.

Originally published by Light



The Unspectacular Bachelor
by Michael R. Burch

The bachelor is back, he’s black,
and some fair-skinned gals sure want him in the sack!
And, yes, he’s a whole lot smarter
than the previous knights of that peculiar garter.

We can hear the white supremacists stewing:
What the hell are the screenwriters doing?
They know love requires a nice white spark,
and this apprentice is far too dark!



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...

But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



Cut Out the Bachelor Nonsense!
There's a bun in auntie's oven;
now soon you'll have a cousin!
―Michael R. Burch



Time Out
by Michael R. Burch

Time is running out,
no doubt.
Time is running out.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about,
since Time is running out, the Lout!,
and leaving me with gas and gout.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about;
still, it does no good to grouse or pout,
since Time is merely running out,
like quail before a native scout.

’Twill do no good to shout or flout:
Time’s running out,
I have no doubt,
though who knows what the LORD’s about?

No need for faith or even doubt,
since Time is merely running out,
like water from a rusty spout
or mucous from a leaky snout.

Yes, Time is merely running out,
and yet I feel inclined to pout
and truth be told, sometimes to doubt
just what the hell the LORD’s about.



Tr(end)y
by Michael R. Burch

Ain’t it funny how trendy
becomes so dead-endy?
Lava lamps and bell bottoms
soon became “never bought ‘ems.”
While that teenage tattoo
soon’ll have wrinkles too.



This was my first-ever dabble dactyl, my variation of the double dactyl.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #1
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
claiming upside is down!"

Donald Dabble Dactyls must begin with "Piggledy-Wiggledy" in homage to The Donald's oinkerishness and his 'do. References to clowns, gold-plated toilets and/or diapers are a plus but not required.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #2
by Michael R. Burch

Wond’ringly, blund’ringly
Ronald McDonald
asked, “Who the hell
is this strange orange clown?”

“Why should I try to be
funny as Donnie? He
gets all the laughs
from marks who should frown!”

I see that I violated my prime directive, so "never mind."

Donald Dabble Dactyl #3
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
45th president,
or erstwhile manse resident,
perched on a throne

of gold-plated porcelain
matching his orange “tan,”
bombing Iran
from his twittery phone?



Cowpoke
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Sleep, old man ...
your day has long since passed.
The endless plains,
cool midnight rains
and changeless ragged cows
alone remain
of what once was.

You cannot know
just how the Change
will **** the windswept plains
that you so loved ...
and so sleep now,
O yes, sleep now ...
before you see just how
the Change will come.

Sleep, old man ...
your dreams are not our dreams.
The Rio Grande,
stark silver sand
and every obscure brand
of steed and cow
are sure to pass away
as you do now.

I believe this poem was written around the same time as “Blue Cowboy,” perhaps on the same day. That was probably sometime around 1974, at age 16 or thereabouts.



Blue Cowboy
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

He slumps against the pommel,
a lonely, heartsick boy—
his horse his sole companion,
his gun his only toy
—and bitterly regretting
he ever came so far,
forsaking all home's comforts
to sleep beneath the stars,
he sighs.

He thinks about the lover
who awaits his kiss no more
till a tear anoints his lashes,
lit by uncaring stars.
He reaches to his aching breast,
withdraws a golden lock,
and kisses it in silence
as empty as his thoughts
while the wind sighs.

Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
between the earth and distant stars.
Do not fall; the fiends of hell
would leap to feast upon your heart.

Blue cowboy, sift the burnt-out sand
for a drop of water warm and brown.
Dream of streams like silver seams
even as you gulp it down.

Blue cowboy, sing defiant songs
to hide the weakness in your soul.
Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
and wish that you were going home
as the stars sigh.



Chixiao (“The Owl”)
by Duke Zhou
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Owl!
You've stolen my offspring,
Don't shatter my nest!
When with labors of love
I nurtured my fledglings.

Before the skies darkened
And the dark rains fell,
I gathered mulberry twigs
To thatch my nest,
Yet scoundrels now dare
Impugn my enterprise.

With fingers chafed rough
By the reeds I plucked
And the straw I threshed,
I now write these words,
Too hoarse to speak:
I am homeless!

My wings are withered,
My tail torn away,
My home toppled
And tossed into the rain,
My cry a distressed peep.



The Song of Roland
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

"for spring in retreat"

Rain down,
strange murmurous water...
no, summer is not yet nigh.

Cease your complaining,
for May is,
calling December a lie,
still rocking the high white sky.

Sleep now,
summer hours...
too soon your time shall come.

Softly straining,
the raining
spring begs, "Let me run
one more hour beneath the sun,
for soon I shall be gone."

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

Remember a pyre
of stars blazing higher
upon night’s immense dark sky
unsettling as her eyes,
unregretful, even as you died...

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

I believe I wrote “The Song of Roland” around age 16.



That Not-So-Mellow Fellow, Othello
by Michael R. Burch

Not sure ’bout that fellow, Othello,
was he a “hero” or merely **** yellow?
He killed his poor wife
over a handkerchief!
Thus Iago proved his heart Jello.



Time Out!
by Michael R. Burch

Time is at war with my body!
am i Time’s most diligent hobby?
for there’s never Time out
from my low-t and gout
and my once-brilliant mind has grown stodgy!



Waiting Game
by Michael R. Burch

Nothing much to live for,
yet no good reason to die:
life became
a waiting game...
Rain from a clear blue sky.



*******' Ripples
by Michael R. Burch

Men are scared of *******:
that’s why they can’t be seen.
For if they were,
we’d go to war
as in the days of Troy, I ween.



Untitled Epigrams

Teach me to love:
to fly beyond sterile Mars
to percolating Venus.
—Michael R. Burch

The LIV is LIVid:
livid with blood,
and full of egos larger
than continents.
—Michael R. Burch

Evil is as evil does.
Evil never needs a cause.
Evil loves amoral “laws,”
laughs and licks its blood-red claws
while kids are patched together with gauze.
— Michael R. Burch

Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



That Mella Fella
by Michael R. Burch

John Mella was the longtime editor of Light Quarterly.

There once was a fella
named Mella,
who, if you weren’t funny,
would tell ya.
But he was cool, clever, nice,
gave some splendid advice,
and if you did well,
he would sell ya.

Shakespeare had his patrons and publishers; John Mella was one of my favorites in the early going, along with Jean Mellichamp Milliken of The Lyric.



Chip Off the Block
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

In the fusion of poetry and drama,
Shakespeare rules! Jeremy’s a ham: a
chip off the block, like his father and mother.
Part poet? Part ham? Better run for cover!
Now he’s Benedick — most comical of lovers!

NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be.

Keywords/Tags: Shakespeare, poetry, drama, poet, light verse, humor, life, death, love, Mars, Venus, Othello, Iago, Duke Zhou, Owl, homeless, cowboy, bachelor, Richard Moore, Anna Akhmatova
Wk kortas Apr 2017
Oh, we’d talked of other lives in other places,
But where would we have gone, anyway?
(It was rural Pennsylvania in the thirties,
And being well-off meant you ate three times most days
And could afford meat every other Sunday)
So we carried on in anguish and guilt as old-maids-in-waiting
As there were dinners to cook and cows to strip out,
Fireplaces to stoke, any number of chores to do
While our mothers and fathers waited patiently for that day
When we would, each in our turn, don a grandmother’s wedding gown
And march steadfastly down some acceptably Protestant aisle
While Gert Bauer, default church organist
Though she was past eighty and nearly blind,
Tortured the wedding march, flubbing notes and stomping pedals
The tune lurching forward at an inconsistent
And unusually adagio fashion.

As it turns out, Tojo and Adolph Schicklgruber
Interceded on our behalf,
For, as the young and able-bodied men of Elk County went off to serve
(Farm boys from Wilcox and Kersey, pool sharps from Ridgway,
Fully half the production line from the paper mill in Johnsonburg)
Someone needed to man punch presses and die casters,
So we were able to find work making propellers
In a windowless and airless factory
Which didn’t have women’s rooms
Until we’d been there for three months
Allowing us to set up house together
(We told our parents
It would allow us to save up toward our weddings,
And still let us give them grocery money each couple of weeks.)
Eventually, Johnny came marching home again
And back into his old job,
Which left us somewhat at sixes and sevens,
But, like Blanche DuBois,
We came to depend on the kindness of strangers
Who believed in the value
Of strong backs or the primacy of civil service scores
And so with our steady if unspectacular incomes,
We were able to carry on keeping house, as it was said,
(Our parents sadly unpacking hope chests.
Sullenly gifting us the linens
They’d purchased for our marital bed at Larson’s,
The hand-made quilt stitched and fussed over
For nine months by Aunt Jenny)
And maintain an uneasy truce with the good people of the town;
Indeed, we were all about “don’t ask, don’t tell”
Long before it was somewhat fashionable.

When it became apparent that she would not carry on much longer,
Or, as she put it, Now I’ve got an expiration date,
Just like a can of soup,

It was as if the populace had decided, after some sixty years,
To take their revenge upon our ******* of the natural order,
As if they were a pack of wolves,
Having identified the lame and the sick among a herd of whitetail,
Tightening the circle before moving in for the ****.  
In truth, I shouldn’t have been surprised,
But the pettiness and the tight, self-satisfied smirks
Were no less painful in spite of that.
And what was your relationship to the deceased?
They would say with their half-knowing, half-offended smiles.
I’d wanted to shout at the top of my lungs that for fully six decades
She had been the love of my life,
Without question and without deviation,
Not like the banker who dallied with his fat secretary,
Or the claims rep who, taking a personal day when her pipes froze up,
******* the plumber right on the kitchen floor,
But years of secrecy and compromise exact a toll,
So I simply, quietly, matter-of-factly would reply
I am the executrix, thank you.

We had talked of perhaps heading west
To make honest women out of each other,
And, later still, of burying her in Paris or San Francisco,
But tight times and walkers and wheelchairs
Made such plans unworkable;
It’s only parchment and granite, she said,
What do they mean at the end of the day, anyhow,
And so when the time came
She asked me to take her ashes up to the top of Bootjack Hill
And scatter her to the wind.
Make sure to go all the way to the top, she insisted,
*I want to get good and clear of this place.
Kalon R Nov 2013
You need to watch
your mouth today

                                                          ­                                             You need to
                                                              ­                                         Wash yours

I never cuss ever!

                                                          ­                                  Except you called me
                                                              ­                              the b word

Now I know you're
thinking of someone else

                                                           ­                 I was lying
                                                           ­                 hoping
                                         ­                                   you would
                                                           ­                 just agree

Don't you have anything
better to do than lie
about me

                                                            Nope­
                                                            Caus­e you're all i think about

You just keep em coming
Don't ya
haha

                                                    Unfo­rtunately for you,
                                                    Yes I do

You'll run out
someday

                                            Eh, only when my passion for you
                                                             ­     fades

Ohh it will fade
very soon
I'm sure

                               mmm you don't know
                               me too well

But
I know me
and once you realize
I'm not that special
you'll move right along

                            You can be the most
                            unspectacular person ever
                            but I obviously find
                            something
                            special about you

It's ok
everyone makes mistakes

                                            I think you just want
                                            it to be one

Getting a little deep
over there
dontcha think

                                         Yeah that happens a lot,
                                         But what would you expect
                                         From a person who writes
                                         and studies poetry?

Ohh so you write poetry too,
I wanna hear something

                                                      ­                           No...

Well why not

                                                            ­                               I'm not that good and
                                                             ­                              two that's letting you
                                                             ­                              into a part of me that
                                                            ­                               you probably don't really
                                                          ­                                 want or need to know

I respect that
Text messages turned into a poem
Jeremy Betts May 12
Recklessly I cruise a plateaued plane
One I call memory lane
Which in hindsight was kind of insane
I'm not sure what I was looking to gain
There's not much other than pain in the ones I retain
I know this, it's beyond first hand eyewitness obvious,
Even prior to being forced to meticulously explain
Becoming increasingly familiar with that ruthless domain
Thankfully some truly cherished living snapshots remain
However, most have broken free from their neglected, rusty chain
And I'm left cursing the bane of my existence,
While, in plain sight, the flashbacks that cause my eyes to drain
Swerve in and out of my lane
Joy ridin' my misery or being metaphysically driven to the torture of the mind and soul,
Instigated by a fraction of a fractured brain
That to this day isn't clear on what's it's actually sayin'
Can not seem to refrain from immersing myself in self inflicted pain
Forgotten or slain?
What's it matter if the outcome will be the same;
Me, laying motionless in front of a raging train,
Leaving only a crime scene stain
One that'll go as unnoticed as it did when it flowed through a main artery vein
'Till any and all evidence of my unspectacular,
Super localized reign
Washes away in the rain
And I become nothing more than a name

©2024
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
learning to sip warm
                           ***** like a brute...
      nothing much: much of anything...
"social distancing"... in the graveyard of "new"...

a pick from my closet...
my forgotten drawer...
                if i'm not: if i haven't been
in a "prison" for the past
             better half of a decade...
then i guess i haven't been
anywhere...
      that's why... nothing is pretty much
new...
    i know my medicine...
     looking at others taste it is...
an understatement of forever...
                    the they in "they" couldn't really
stomach a heaven of a solipsistic god...
or a heaven as a labyrinth and a library...
and all the time... forever and all the miles
of no no no no...

so much for pretty faces with
pretty words...
  so much for thurston moore's
'we rearrange strange the rubble
to let a forest through'...

we strangely rearrange the rubble:
or...
we rearrange, strange, the rubble...
to let a forest through...
here's to the die-hard grammar
nazis and nothing nativist...

               everything i had to learn...
about anything...
i subsequently had to negate...
     integration:
   where are you: where i was from?
all that... unless it was
and forever will be the lesson:
1 + 1 = 2...

           a precedes b...
but not unless it's backed up...
  too many rules in grammar to produce
a simple 1 + 1 = 2 arithmetic...

past-participle... will the hyphen die?
and everything will turn to the remains
of this being the child of saxony
in the remnants of chemistry nouns?
you could insert a hyphen... into:

hydroxychloroquinesulfate    
like so, nurse! the scalpel...
hydroxy-chloro-quine-sulfate...
          if language and letters were
as simple as 1 + 1 = 2...

                  i was going to say:
     i be saying...
         am saying...
                          be not say much...
pigeons don't cuckoo-call...
         stressors when strolling
with an addition of break a neck
when the mammal higher-up is
head-banging or raving...

              goose-stepping never died
whenever the mandarins decided
to march... looks like they are not getting
any marching orders...

modern warfare requires... civilians...
target practice...
the mandarins are too peaceful a people
to do a genghis khan stampede across
the world...

              but if they can slide a sly bullet
that can procreate itself and
bring the shackles: for all the gold pillars,
blunder and slacking jockeys
of the four horses... to see the sand foundation
all this freedom was built on...

hey: spin me another one...
i'm still just drilling myself to ease
one of those: sober justification for...
what came of the bread and the circuses?

between a tweedle dee and a tweedle dum...
yes, hello, please join us...
a soar... thumb...
a plum mascara from a clenched fist:
over... pretty much nothing...
or as was the case: something frivolous...
obscure... a tryfle...
                              yes: that's Y(es)
   and not tree'knee'tee...

life as imitation of all manner of inorganic
"life"... the mountain that's eased by
the wind to take on a different theme
of the pivot toward the pinch of a sky
that could collapse...

          puffy clouds that want to be
marshmallows... marshmallows that would
love to be less... oozed when staging
a fire-rite of being sacrificed to the bite and
chew...

such an unspectacular end of the world
scenario... scared people...
because: there's none of that certainty
of an asteroid inevitable "hunch"...
which makes it a very ****** end of
the world scenario...
          nothing from ancient greece
**** galore...
                 nothing from the annals
of caligula's reign: for each and every man...

or wrestling to the death with
all those hallucinogenics and rushes
of sweat and testosterone...

         the current humanity: a death
of vermin... quiet: the angel of death is passing...
quiet...
it's not exactly about not taking
the prescription of the government's:
under full-proof guidance "precautions"...

but if all were dropped on a heads-or-tails
whim?
    like that... like so...
    so much for anything:
ahead of the other idiot in the race...
deconstructed hierarchies of man...
pyramids fizzying out into a sand-storm...

such an unspectacular event...
the fame of a madonna or a don mclean...
because there's no chance in heaven
or hell concerning the man who
discovered that fermenting grapes would
ever give us wine...
or that part of not making bread
and instead making beer...

      so... un-spec-ta-cu-lar...
       but of course i'm certain this is only a mild,
minor, scare, one of those precursors
that acts like a sieve...
hardly a siesmic event to give us dinosaur
grandeour... overstating any prior
to (it) egoism of a banker's *******-fuelled
***-riddle-and-rampage...

the guys with the biggest hard ons seem
to be suffering from a mollusk limp-on-drag...
i can't remember the last time i was touched
for a love of intimacy...
forever the basic darwin of:
"****"...

                      as any misnomer...
it's hardly the sort of *** you'd forgive if
she was still wearing socks...
or wanted to do it under the bed-sheets...
if a person was going to overcook
pasta prior... they will hardly learn to cook
it al dente "tomorrow"...

too many a posteriori: language evolves
to give a proper, a priori statement...
too many undisclosed parallels and "what ifs"...
not in language...
bad grammar aside...
    aside from: that's not a soft boiled egg!

besides: the vietnam war had the best soundtrack...
and fb's portal: look at you...
best keep together, no?
the best songs and the most ****** reasons
beside: proper meat for the butcher's market!
shouts the cockney slang improv for
one of those rare occassions of a: drama-
period piece...         -tized?

what in the capacity of words' axioms can
be synonymous with 1 + 1 = 2?
i can't find anything...
i'm... probably not speaking the language
of a universal incursion...
there aren't any beaches of normady
when infiltrating the third ***** abstract!

should have stuck to painting daffodils...
or something... or prescribing myself
to limit my "artistic endeavours"
to sending postcards and licking envelopes...

some shapes "conjured" remained
intact and became letters... the greek delta (Δ)...
      called it: down-right governing
a cascade or the vector: down without
a direct impetus to do so...

said A to 1... said B to 2... C to 3...
D to 4... E to 5... F to 6... G to 7... H to 8...
I to 9... J... i'm hanging on to...
   the deeds and the subsequent
extinction of cuneiform...
                           until... VI "+" IV "=" X....
the "+" and "=" had to be surds...
when using the abacus... some ancient roman
humming: singing in a shower analogy...
when you had... letters as used as
both letters... and numbers...
a bit like looking at braille...

if there's a number indicator (⠼)...
why is it presupposed that everything else
is a letter?
                 ⠼⠉                 3...
                               and then there's just ⠉...
which is that umlaut part of U that's
supposed to be C...

before anything intricate concerning the subject
could be uttered...
there was plenty of chess pieces
and spatial and temporal awarenss...

the consistency of retaining the primitive
nature: how this inexhausted stupor of numbers
just gives on giving...
before anyone might have suggest:
chisel a mountain... before building a pyramid!
well... no word to "describe" it...
or rather... infuriate any other alternative...
cull the forest... otherwise write:
  
111111111111111111111111111
    1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1111111111111111111111111111
   1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
11111111111111111111111111111
   1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
11111111111111111111111111
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
    1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1 1 1
1111111111111111111111111
                  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

a forest of pines... it doesn't matter
how much you peer into it...
no light will pass... just a segment of
a canvas that's either all brown...
or eyes closed... a juggling clown
worth of: would be entertainment...

i've been putting off seeing a dentist
for years...
i'm still putting it off...
i quiet like the pain...
the pain being... a consciousness
of a single tooth...
not part of the whole coronation
of either jaw or the skull's lining
of bite...
   i like the pain as much as i like
this pain of a loose filling
being my signature...

     "he" would have said: 100...
miles... before later suggesting:
by foot...      no... prior to the wheel
and whittle princes jumping onto
the bandwagon...
          100 as a concept of travel
came prior to: by foot...

                      0 - the original: multiplied by...
and the original: divided by...
at times when "x" and "÷" were surds of
the abacus... way prior to merely "+" and "-"...
before that ***** decided:
hyphen glue for words i are!
before all that...

                          we might as well not have:
mentioned a french man and the squeezed
omicron mirror...
or ∞... which is very much a surd...
an apostrophe...
   or a lazy 8...
                          a reclining venus...

we had numbers before we had letters...
well... before we had numbers...
we had to have had a nibble of inclination
regarding the O - the wheel -
and from that... 360°... which is 5 "°" short
of coming into the full perspective
of commencing and ending... a year...

4 "°" if you were to count the leap...
inter anno per quattuor...

      all of it, though...
                                     serious matters
need "readjusting" to...
                                most certainly... ice-cubes!
   i've heard and seen worse
scares in my time...
the mad cow disease...
                and in all this time:
wishing for death...
           is hardly going to be that much of
an easy affair...
                             you'll be bound to
gagging for it... like air...
existentially exhausted from that crux:
life... if so easy, or so hard...
could somehow mediate a transcendence
of the yawn...

    unlikely...
                                     i'm more likely
to keep my toothache... than be in want of relief...
for the sake of a tooth individuating
itself and ascribing to me
its individuated status as ailing...
from the firm grip concensus of the jaw...
and the congregation of all the other, teeth...
after all... a loose filling never did a Columbus...

it's hardly me and...
a ghost limb for a veteran's amputated arm...
scenario...
            if it were only an asteroid...
but it's not...
   it's a sneeze... a cough... a woozy day...
it's hardly the end of a creature
that made the colliseum spectacular...
or what was spectated therein...

           what it is... is...
                        a lapse in islamic terrorism...
i think that's a welcome break...
i'm tired of wondering about: not all muslims...
and the trucks of peace
ploughing through a street in
Nice... it's a welcome break...
         univeresally adequate...
         congesting the advent of...
                         and relationship between
landowner and the serf: not for long, though...

               too bad that it isn't an archetypical
fear to coincide with the classical
narrative of darwinism: a tiger... a snake...
a spider...
          it's quiet a modern ape story...
which does require us to have a notion
of a microscope...
   which makes it... m'eh... less seductive
in any attempts for: fire! huddle round!
tell stories!

                         the modern "ape" and
his... cough venom and predator lurking in:
a horror story told at noon!
again... boring the living daylights out of me!
Steve Page Jul 2016
And the Prophet stood before the people
(in his polo shirt and straight slim jeans)
And spoke, (and laughed, and sang)
and shared some of their Father’s dreams

“Step out and be unspectacular
Leave the weird behind
God selects right royal mess-ups
And then renews their minds

“Think God-thoughts, glimpse your destiny
But be willing to get it wrong
Father rewards the risk takers
Not those wanting perfection

“The Spirit searches all things
Even the deep thoughts of God
And we can grasp what God is saying
Because we have the Spirit of God”
Inspired by the teaching and example of Julian Adams.
Allison Myers Aug 2017
She had a pair of shoes for every purpose and every surface.

     There were her converse sneakers,
     mottled black and white, unspectacular but loved,
     worn away by city sidewalks and the kitchen floors of friends' houses.

     There were her high top hiking boots,
     their treads locked onto ***** ridges and pebbles,
     pulling her up the hills and mountains.

     There were her high heels,
     lifting her off of office carpets and escalators,
     elevating her to a higher place in the world.

     There were a dozen others,
     all of them still lined up in her closet,
     except the tennis shoes she was wearing
     when the accident happened.

     The funeral home called twice asking for shoes,
     but she had none that matched her casket's grey silk.

     “Let her go barefoot,” we replied.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2020
...the fewer that die: the more the chance to chirp-and-borrow... sparrows' crown... a grand avenue of image... some detail of narrative... no boarded-up thomas mann solipsism-esque: if i too had... a bedroom cork-lined... i'd post a request: in deviating from time, predictably "lost"... and keeping with a tradition of: space, less frequented - thereby not exactly harrowed with ownership... passed from one sentiment (ladder) to the next gluttonous serpent... as much as there was a "search" and a... "lost time"... missing the train... in search of that missed-timing and open spacing... a sober nuance... a drunk's circus... time regained: all that, which encompassed not reading the book - working from bribes... that narrative so compact... it would have to shame and shun an otherwise ideally eternal: stack of brick.

at a time when so few are dying in conflicts
of known iraq...
and... will this be one of those:
grandiosity statements that leaves
everyone exasperated?
yes... people seem to find their dog's tail
their tongue waggle so freely now:
when so much seems to have gone
so terribly wrong -
            compliance to: "the good of the people"...
when iraq was...
and what it was was also something
similar to libya -
           but i hardly think i need to
pepper my words with over-politicised
statements... i'd much prefer the use
of italics - if anything...
       yes... i am reading some horace i am
reading some ovid and i'm looking
for a memorable line - even a couplet
that's... d'uh... a couplet because it rhymes...
something akin to...
the basic categories of food:
sweet, sour, salty, bitter...
              umami...
                      i need some garnish...
i guess there might be: fudgy / doughy...
why dairy is not invoked?
  i hope to never know...
       i want to forget the point where
i find myself writing and not
eating -
i know i am missing a certain category -

i was in a park today... trying to walk off
a strained plantar fascia -
bench cigarette swedish cider...
a glory to the perfumes of autumn:
finally i can test my nose
on this fine fine palette...

       an old woman approached me
as i was gesticulating with my leg outstretched...
'i was almost assured to find you
being the owner of the dog
that ran across my path...
later the field... but then again: it was
a fox... i think...'
it wasn't a memorable conversation:
except for my reply...
'oh no... i wasn't the owner of this
said dog...
i have a shadow for a dog...'
and how politely she bid me farewell...

again: it's not bungee jumping...
it's this forever unspectacular everyday...
i like this unspectacular everyday
when one can exercise language
beyond mere formality / courtesy...

i have yet to crown myself with
relish with conversation -
that i always will staging an impromptu
that leaves the conversed with
either form of tornado or
butterfly -

            it's not a familiarity it's not
unlike a face that will be lost
under the random nature of memory
being too the erasure...
flaming 2 + 2 = 4 or some other
less mathematical and more
pronounced use of letters coming
to the fore: prominent...

my past time would be summed up
with looking approachable and
dwelling in the riddle of old age...
i know it will somehow catch up with me...
but not yet...
it's this sensibly non-oratory:
plagues of verbiage: how else
to fashion congesting the experiencce:
extracting the most of the essence
allowed...

                   like so... 'mein schatten
ist meine hund' -
   no evil cat ladies 'ere...
    no piquant scenting of feline ****...
i do admire the convenience
of having no purpose for
a leash or a muzzle...
                if i could pet a crow....
i wish i could...
but what good is (a) petting
of a crow: what good is a cage
or wings: for that matter?

       i have to return to a quasi-meditation:
to endear death with a personification:
even a consciousness where
i a *****: where i a foetus -
after all: mother dear...
       i will be born into a magic
act of mortality: i will cease to make
myself "relevant"...
perhaps that's how i musst see
death: come this faking of autumn drap...
autumn is probably...
no... nay... no... autumn is when
i arrive at: believably alife -
                                          livid: concern
with variation to the letter,
i leathered - worn and torn and
a *** life among bodies that
are amiable and dough-esque
and nothing of this tyranny of porcelain
beauty...
touched would: "someday"
decide upon... shattering into
a thousand little pieces...

        i like this testimony for
the marriage to the mediocre...
my little interlude on a bench
with a sore tendon... somehow has
to find graces among so much
abundance only a sniff's distance away...
i wish i invented the burning
colours of decay: i'd want
to bask in the colours of a dying light...
i'd want: to stand statue-esque
among the trees when
they start to imitate
forest vermin...
and begin their great adventure of
foraging....
                 such pristine economics
of nature such as these here presented:
i languish for a delight in summer...
the air is gushing with
  a thickness of indistinguishable allures:
most certainly the readily concerned
with footprints on a beach:
amnesia counter memory
counter all that pedagogy acid...

                 i open a can of synthetic
imitations of blackcurrant, raspberry...
it's swedish it's not...
accustomed to... an idea that...
synthetics' must! a pairing of apple
and mint... could be turned into a cider...
less a juggling act of two bold
statements of fully-bodied extracts...

well free lunch on me:
i can actually be somewhat poo-antic friendly
should drinking be invoked...
for the world to be this instilled -
i'd require... moi: imitation
araignée...
   the bench and its vicinity the web...
comfortably old passersby my
flies... out of no ill will:
dogs and the elders approach me:
i am yet to find myself having
said something formidable...
      
                but... if it isn't that...
i have to settle on creating something...
passable - pardonable - quirky to the point
of allowing the opposite party
no counter inclination:
there is no need to stipend an
obviousness / revoke-...

             i don't want to use a language
of either impetus or... categorical narratives...
oh look... shelter me from having
spent 3 years digesting... ah'ant(K)...
well... impetus or imperative...
jurisprudence is plagued / peppered
with synonym usage: through and thorough...

i'm still thinking: well... there's no colour
to this meagre body...
there is no shape for rummage among
dough of stone sorrow settled
for the eternity of rain: and rhyming...
a borrowed journalism of sort:
an extract at best... and that's what i must
settle for...

    it can't have accent of a certainty:
arrived at... it can't be a: denotation clarity:
hey! my name's a'bob!
no... but hardly a tactic to
exfoliate in pretentiousness -
i do have to stress that:
i somehow do... drift into this variant
of impromptu -
   i allow language its own ills
that are not befitting to a linear-ality of
topic...

                to think: this world so complex
would allow an individual to...
somehow not match it...
make synchronicity with it...
        that language has to borrow:
sharpened flints and all those base
equipment leverages to...
merely appease...
  it can't! it simply can't! be this...
celebration of: a language peacocked with
when thrown into the glorification
of tongue-tied of mediocracy...

    oddity... i am starting to grow fond
of... kæ tempest -
                  "europe is lost"...
                   unless looking for lithuania
unless looking for kosovo..
unless looking for poland ukraine
unless looking for moldova...
unless looking for: work ennobles...
work is the bone the drudgery...
unless looking for post-colonialism
unless having to make
******* tongue: poet the atlas...
the nugget treat of looking
through a microscope at society...
            unless you haven't...
woken up in a little ol' england
when having to settle for flee...
              
polar bears in poland? do these people
have access to sea?
the youth of england
come 1998 when i toyed with
the cheapest of cheap jokes...
but... there weren't any jokes:
just choking...
              i came here this tongue
is... i am arrival... an... arrival at...
bigger desires for
yet another picburger...
               пицбургэр
fake-burger... no not nothing-burger...
but most certainly not:
my tongue this: mine...
this will not belong to a zeitgeist...
this will not be scratched or later
sheltered with for:
a tongue that was used as shovel
to unearth the dead from:
the already sediment membrane
riddled clay o dough...
           custard blues no smart talking
from south london...
no need to shuffle to lay on
prompt...
              
to be this pulverised by word and image....
instilled in noir and summaging
whitey -
there's the same sterile prone to
state brick: beside those that crease
plumbing gifts and grit...
the in between us people that want
to itch with words and have
insomniac thinking -

          that i haven't stolen anything:
but acquired this tongue...
from no beside this little nostalgia for
an agony aunt...
      no... recantation from a hill-top
and a grave...
   i am not prone to speak an exhaustion
from a borrowed atlas pose...
  i have this little tongue o' me...
this little cravat sort of a pedantic
  detail...
                 i want to own the echo
and the footsteps...
              politicians have been saving
society with oratory-:
            at best: kept distance...
a byproduct of niche...
             a very local sort of extraction
process that hitched a ride on
the blues...
   and left the originators in a
stateless limbo-la-la-land...
               the thieves came and...
           by a vain-glory joke accumulation...
the readied smouldering
slab of pork... was left... untouched...
i beg to wonder:
         what was the intent
and the hunger...
                                it was oh so familiar
once upon a time.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
napierdala was prawda.
_______

marvin gaye - heard it through
the grapevine (remastered)...

         well...
                    i can listen to that ****
all day...

i don't even know what these
western supposed "communists"
are doing,

seems i've changed curtains,
came from under an iron curtain,
for a brief while surfaced,
gasped, and was forced below
the waters under the sicilon
curtain...

           it was fun, i have to admit...
what a little nieche we had
on youtube for over 10 years...
before we were taken seriously...

i won't translate those three words,
something else has crossed my attention,
namely regarding the subjects
of the British Raj...

          now... not many people are proud
of being subjegated to a colonial power,
akin to England...
          where did it all begin?
for the english speaking throng: africa...
mind you, i think life started in India...
but these indians and pakistanis in
current day England?
   i've never imagined to see a group
of people, so so proud in being
a formerly colonialißed people:

   why is there so much ****-****-hurt
ambition to "fit it", while keeping
up with selling a sari?
or a niqab?
                  i just imagine the times
relevant to lawrence of arabia...
  **** me, even the kenyans are like:
huh?!
      slave trade my ***...
blame the dutch *******...
        not the Idi Amin of Uganda...
the former kings of Africa who sold
their people into slavery...
you think a dutchman can outrun
a Usain Bolt on the African savannah?!
a lie was sold, by the African rulers...

   and the terrible deed: of picking cotton?
so... so i guess not confined
to mining coal among the leprechauns?!
picking cotton: hard work...
migrant workers from eastern europe
picking strawberries in sweden...
ooh... hard hard labour!

                    sorry, i'm not buying...
but these asians amaze me...
they are actually proud,
of being former colonial subjects...
  they are in full glee when associating
themselves with the, dead british empire,
when, "addressing" european migrants
to england: they actually think in terms
of post-racial superiority...
oh g-g be play cricket too
we drink tea with milk too!
english people eat our curry!
bud bud!

                picking cotton was such a bad
"deal": be thankful the white-boy-*******
were mining coal for you...
   and whaling...
           people are still employed picking
strawberries...
   and in that famous slavic proverb:
what the **** does a (piernik)
          lebkuchen have anything to do
with a windmill?!
   i.e.: what does a gingerbread
                 have to do with a windmill?!

no african slave trade to h'america:
no blues, now jazz, no pop music,
    me, still with a clarinet lodged up my ***...
oh yeah: all bad, b'ah b'ah b'ah bad...

still, back to the asians...
   i would have never come across a sort
of people who would celebrate their former
colonized status...
    so much so, that they would,
exfoliate... brag... and deem it fit to
bring other europeans to their heel...
oh sure... and it's not like the Raj didn't
coorporate with the British authorities...

   somewhere in between the collateral
damage brigade you'll find the righteous...
love the food...
          the Indian cuisine is superior to all
other cuisines in the world...
      m'eh... French or Itallian...
            sure... the French can bake...
an indian chapati is crude, aztec even...
but not even a French croissant can beat
an English crumpet...
           it's so good, that an ex-Russian girlfriend
wanted me to call her crumpet...
enough said...

              i would be the kakasha (little ****)
to her whittle crumpet...
        go figure...

and what an unspectacular life i had led...
and how i've managed to squeeze
as much juice from it,
having now found myself:
completing myself,
without the sort of stature of existential
fulfilment associated with fatherhood...
i'm calling for Kant to be the saint
of bachelors...
         after all...
            patience and rubric,
   discipline... really does pay off.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
belgium? miniature mongolia. who on earth thinks that "other" europeans respect the belgians? no one respects these political quasimodo(s)... i'd love to think the belgians as the atlases of the world, but, to be honest, they're merely a quasimodo, rather than an atlas; there's no weight upon their shoulders, unless it's called a stack of paperwork that goes down the route of what all toiletry goes down the route of: wipe your ***, flush it down.*

you know what we call the belgians?
melkenjungfrauen týp - the milking virgins...
don't know: worth the giggle
though... the belgians were unspectacular
with football... the bulgarians were aiming
vegetarians: said die tomorrow,
better have said tonight.
and the last i.r.a bandit would 'ave
asked:
better the gaelic, than an i.r.a. crust...
give us an X...
the gaelic bird freed...
let us sleep past tomorrow...
              you want the "aristocrat":
death undue the xia of the living...
                    he was more an i.r.a.
slave he was, with a tickle...
              the milk virgins of
  tibet flatanned...
                                   care how the compass
fathoms gravity...
                and what belgium
could ever be...
                         the most grand
inquisition is that of:
of a terrorism teaching gaelic...
                  you can blow up lazily a pub...
but when you teach enough gaelic...
god forbid the opposite side
is mishandling saxon anglo-doo...
            the welsh have this immunity surrounding
them, sooner penetrate a tortoise than
a welshman, with his two puckers up
alphabetical F U of the langebogenmann...
                 milk a cow, wait for a dozen
belgians...
            it's right we call them the
milking virgins...
half-wit would be congoease...
            **** on me, even i find the kenyan
gals syropy, coconut oiled,
           shiny in moonlight...
      i hate the weather though...
                  but even brown they are aiming
at shining ivory in moonlight is shimmy...
       týp? type...
                      oh, sorry, i didn't realise
that the belgians spoke better english than
the english...
                      like i said:
perfect pride parade of
the milking virgins...
           gotta be gay to realise the plotline...
mind you, black girls are all coconut oiled
in moonlight...
     caramel, ivory, quickened ice-cream melt
of skin in lunar sheen...
      skin so smooth it leaves you itchy...
polite what?
     polite i turn to new york finicky piglet
of nine to five?!
      god, i love my woman,
ms. amber has never stalled, never failed,
never curtailed...
      and i can continue a
reminiscence of the baltic sea...
                    **** me...
the milking virgins...
               seems to me that i'm an offshoot of congo,
and kenya could be my second home,
why did the european "union"
  begin with the belgians?
   who the **** likes the belgians in europe?!
i don't like belgian choc, why would i like
belgian politics?!
                  it's too late to even state:
i don't know / i don't care...
like my father: i'd still prefer to see japan than
america...
                   **** happens...
              las vegas can remain a judea's sphere
worth of influence in the next decade to come...
some people actually mind
the monochromatism of a differentiated
assertive paradigm...
                           some people will actually
choose manga over disney...
                             the milking virgins...
     our ideas are so far apart, that they deserve
the geographic placement of being:
so far apart.
only the japanese are asiatic in euro:
with their protruding nasal cartilage -
                               in frame: lateral...
elsewhere? squishy asiatic central + south /
   african / missing lateral cartilage...
  so much for calling me short on
          the occipitale part of the cranium.
Mayuri Jan 2018
One cold morning, I decided to go on a walk. Left technology and knowledge behind. All I took, was my gracious self.

I felt the wind on the skin of my bare arms, the hairs on my back stood up straight. The wind grew denser and denser until the fog spread all over.

As I strode along, I saw a vague image approaching my direction. Without noticing until I grew closer, I met a familiar face. One that I knew so long and well.

The distance continued to shrink further, until an inch was left between us. I looked up into his fiery eyes. He had the same golden tan, he had a year ago.

A sudden rush of hope, of joy, of pain, of life encircled me. I felt the flow of current between us. A heat half the sun could contain. I knew what was coming next. Oh yes I did!

He would hug me so tight, tell me he missed me. He still loves me. He needs me. He wouldn't leave me. He would fight for me. And he would still be hugging me. I would say I am sorry. I would say forgive me. I would say take me with you.

He stood there. He stepped back. He looked away. He sighed. He said he's sorry. I put my arm forward, and I said I am sorry too. He looked into my eyes. They mirrored mine. Eyes defeated. Touch most needed. Hearts shattered. Nothing mattered.

He said bye. I said bye. He reached home And so did I. He begged for one more meeting. For the one last time, he wished he could've fixed it. He grew the guts even after causing the breakage of my heart. He prepared to come over the next day. To ask for a lifetime of repentance with me by his side.

It was the next cold morning. All armoured for the glorious day. He drove off the merry lonesome streets, faster than the rays of beams. He arrived at my gateway. Astonished to see a grand decoration. He walked out of the car. Speeded over to the entrance. What he saw after that, was unspectacular.

I was seen as the prettiest lady in the hall. Next to a man, of medium built who stood up tall. I shot straight up, immediately I caught sight of him. I knew he was just in time, to make me whole.

He walked with a plastered smile across his face, right up to me. Handed me over the bouquet, asked for my hand, and put it into his. He congratulated me and watched me wed. Till this day, I've been ever so dead.
#justastepaway
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
and when you hear: watcha 'tinking? your reply? mostly concerning a ****, & a fudge factory, & a few brownies, topped with some custard goo, what's that to you?, you skivvy missus?

yes, we alcoholics sometimes get the jerks,
what the junkies call the nods,
notably via unconscious irritation
when solving sudoku puzzles -
you know, those japanese blindspots,
waiting for a wet ***** entry re-entry into
the garden of eden -
and without diacritic indicators
you will state *shania
-
                     i have lactose in my brain,
and the killer proteins are coming...
         alzheimer's:
     proteins       eating          fat;
i swear i swear i swear i was ready
with the dutch cheese sponge!
       holes? oh, nibbled through,
the blue cheese mouse trap didn't work...
oops...
           put the mice off,
as it would put off any known living thing...
**** making ice-cream with it to boogie
on the palette.
   a bit like mikey mouse replacing ol'
jack, in the box...
        hardly the ****** surprise;
what did you expect in the mousetrap,
a ******* cockroach?!
  wasabi irony... probably a bigger statement
of english than shakespeare,
added to the tongues of humanity.
now, the entry point of unessential aphorisms:

1. drinking does what ****** doesn't:
  keeps you focused,
and if you master the craft,
you get to sport a mid-day sun
with a lot of housewives...

2. **** it, whatever...

3. the led zeppelin vs. black sabbath debate
always misses the ****** of black purple...
  never learned to say the big o...

4. what a waste, being so lucky...

5. i might only make an incremental difference
in this world, but at least i still do not
disrupt the status quo totalis of humanity,
id est: at least people around me end up
living the boring reality of:
      the people around me...
kinda autistic, i admit, nonetheless true.

6. post scriptum of point V -
    a bit like a butterfly watching a tornado's
whirl, and then, unlike a fly incubated
in a spiderweb, watching the ballerina's twirl...

7. what's so poetic about philosophy in
english... i.e. the metaphor...
i.e. the " " membrane, the inverted
commas... commas?
    aren't they supposed to sit down
below, rather than be saintly halos of
the above? i'm guessing that's the source
of why the english tongue doesn't bother
diacritical indicators, inverted what?!
    commas? oh, so that's one citation
mark in a sentence?
      i'm getting really copernican confused...
smacker on the face for attempting
to be "smart": i know... never did anyone
any good...
                let's just call the " " encapsulation
of a word the poetic way...
that's called a metaphor...
   or it's really rather an ambiguity per se...
then again: i guess, no.

8. chinese, eh? as a language, everyone admires
it...

9. my grandfather always admired how
i rolled my tobacco,
making perfect rollies, and pretending
to be needle in hand,
  perfecting the rollie even further,
by warming up the tobacco in the roll-up,
my ex-gf always took the **** out of me
for not being able to roll the perfect
spliff, and then i did,
  and then, for some reason, she stopped
talking.

10. the chinese tongue in translation,
is the most unspectacular language in existence,
no wonder the origin of the haiku -
that's chinese for simple math (syllable
arithmetic) -
the chinese can only count up to a haiku -
and even though their phonetic encoding
is twice the spectacular endeavour of any man,
chinese in translation?
        about as spectacular as a cow's ****...
choo chow mein...
  chew chin mane?
                  i wouldn't even bother
trying to untangle that asiatic bowl of noodles...
rice crispy fortune cookies,
   a bowl of regurgitated maggots;
              cf. mongol!
    and what, arabic with its fiddly-squiddly
attempt at coherent, is not less an octopus
waving to imply hello?
  yeah, and i'm the next mary ******* poppins!
shim shimminy me away...
   oh right, forgot to mention,
you really wouldn't say the name shania twain
like that...
     you'd need syllable indicators,
hellfire / punctuation marks from above...
    hmm, how to cut up a lovely...
    sháníā -
       sha-nigh-ah:
   oh look, seems i'm an american linguist
after all...
   keeping the hyphen handy... turning into
a linguistic chemist...
  ever watchful of the electron migration diagrams...
pompous & sarcastic ****-wit i was
always supposed to be...
           which bring me to the final
observation:

11. i kinda figured that there's a law of prefix,
suffix & affix...
  but with tongues that prescribe their
phonetic units (i.e. letters) the status of names,
i figured it ought to be ease to understand
how they cut these names and leave the indicative
remaining stressor...
  akin to the hebrew, notably?
    via
yes yes, we know the caron on s (š) and the caron
on c (č) implies the english sh - and ch:
**** via cheap respectively -
  this amount of god is a sneaky ******:
loves to hide in punctuation marks,
whether from the godly diacritical perspective,
or the devilish rhetorically classical
punctuative.
point being... ehyeh...
                   yes, but how does the aleph
make it to be invoked in the word?
         א... aleph...
                      יה‎ה‎א -
and these names are burnt tattoos on my
psyche - i have enough raw bile to
do the opposite of dispersing the hebrews:
i have enough of the *******:
to make them congregate;
but tell me, how do you actually write
ehyeh (יה‎ה‎א) - by asking the prefix / suffix /
affix question? how do you cut upen
aleph, to extract the epsilon,
   disregarding the alpha the lambda or
the phi (φ)?
these ancient people are all the same...
the greeks are gay with their φ & θ -
   ε & η or o & ω...
         just like the hebrews with their gemini
zodiac orientation of ayin (ע) & aleph (א‎)...
sure, these languages are classic,
but they're also primitive,
which is why the "barbarians" brought
diacritical distinctions to rome,
                       enforcing it, stabilising it (it being
the latin, you can't even begin to imagine
how thankful they were to have
ditched the runic).

- i'm still fascinated by the geometry of language,
R actually does look like rolling...
   O is always going to be a wheel,
and Y will always remain a yew tree,
or the beginning of satan's entry into
the world of talk.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
i'm starting to think the chinese are good at numbers
only because of the complexity of their ideograms,
and the rather unspectacular phonetic result,
li chew - ******* inimpresionable given
the effort... li chow chewy chow mein -
   uncle benny doing his:
it's fwy wice you pwick!
                         letheal weapon no. 4,
   chris rock and leo getz exchange,
pomp, pwick,
                  perp... you get the idea,
zenith of: americana with not fear,
before the empire with its advancements,
shattered by the most barbaric antithesis,
in war, that's called: let's keep it simple,
those a.i. soldiers won't keep up,
they'll never spot a caveman running into
the cave...
    the idiots outsmarted the geniuses,
how's that evolution for you?
     working alright?!
               in every war, the idiots win,
because the all-powerful care to
      pretending power,
    better to fake being stupid,
as the socratic maxim states:
than pretend to be smart,
     there's no power in pretending to
almighty...
          god the idiot took the bus,
god the fake, bought a Ferrari.
                     you do the math.
     hence my fascination with
the asiatics' ability with math...
       did it really take so many
matchsticks to combine syllables?
they have no units of language,
they deal with syllables...
                     which makes numbers so simple...
to me sudoku is counting matchsticks,
i.e.:
                # / \ / / \ \ \ /  - | - |
                            - - | | | - | -
                            | | - -
              - - | | | - - | - | | -,
  i don't see numbers, i see that...
it's called spelling in anti-ideogram
formation... MMIX becomes 2009 -
  or: give or take
                       | | \ / / -
                      i know i'm missing parts,
but mathematics for the chinese is
like braille for the europeans,
less braille and more morse code...
it's called the 4/9 ratio...
         1, 2, 3, 5, 7 are skeletons of
the ideogram...
             0 doesn't count,
it's squished coded omicron,
akin to iota as 1...
                6 a b,
                                       7 gamma in mirror...
5 an S...
                    arab talking ****:
who said you inherited intventing
the numbers,
  your little las vegas in the desert,
that **** is gonna fail, big, time.
   you gonna get to keep your puppy
princes, and by god:
i hope to god that they drag you beyod
hades, into the recesses of tartarus.
          arabs belong in tartarus,
that special place in the unearthed
        thought: where things are
punishable for being, squandered.
leisure! man claimed leisure,
with gold he claimed blood,
   with oil man claimed leisure!
            i have as much allegiance
to this being, as i have to
recuperate for some d.n.a. stash of
obligations to: keeping up the hard-on...
the **** would it matter what i
take of my descendent half-wit
grandson does with his life?!
        who does these square-faced
investigations asking for generational
gaps being filled?
          am i really to be
asked for allegiance to a people after
death, in nota re viva?
  the **** is up with this
resurrection in scientific terms of
investing in the genes...
do genes have faces, personalities?
thought so, they don't!
      i hate, i hate empowering
humanists by popularising science...
     when i solve an ideogram i see
the opposite of the de-constructed ideogram
that is complex, but nothing more
than Li Po...
      ******* un-extravagant,
       caveman talk...
                 # / \ / / \ \ \ /  - | - |
                            - - | | | - | -
                            | | - -
              - - | | | - - | - | | -,

that's what i reconstruct numbers with in
a sudoku... by counting matchsticks and skews...

hey... look: 'ere's jack! it's pixel,
so hardly the lost wonky of
a spacing exacted to perfecting
   a sheet of cloth.

6    8    3    1    9    5    7    4    2  
7    1                2                3    9
2          9      ­    3          1          6
9                6    4    1         ­       5
5    7   6     3    8    2    4     9   1
1                5    7     9               8          
4         1           6          5        3
3   5                1               8    7
8   6    7    2    5     3    9  1    4

you want me to give you prove to you
that i'm not autistic?
  i'd **** your granny, and call her
Spencer, to simply prove my point
that i'm right-on the ibidem mark,
  as frequenting prostitutes originates from,
was i ever a man that would allow
darwinism to invoke a game
of mating by hunting mechanisation for
a supposed "thrill"?
         sure ****, there's thrill
in running after a football,
but is there any authentic thrill
  running around for a woman?
sports kinda killed the idea of having
to compete for woman,
  given that in other cultures women
will **** off any idea of competition,
congregating in harems;
unless i'm a cannibal i am about as
competitive about women as
i am "competitive" in replicating ****
*** with my hand,
  or imitating the alternative to deer
cannibalising a woman's body...
so... where's the competition?
darwinism became so self-assured that it
could only continue within the
theatre of comedy...
  no one takes it seriously these days,
only comedians,
  because there's no actual evolutionary
essential requirement for a coliseum -
there's the existential requirement to
become distracted from time to time...
but essentially: one can
become distracted as much by a blank
piece of paper, as one can be
distracted by a coliseum...
      to be honest whenever i watch
a football match life, i'm enthralled rather
than distracted...
               darwinism lost to pop culture,
since it became populist and anti
scientific...
                we understand more
of darwinism than the concept
of entropy...
                        it's easy
take a monkey, find a humanoid,
and then consider man...
i'm not saying it's wrong,
   all i'm saying is...
  imagine if the greeks or the roman
defined beauty by knowing they
could always mould statues of gorillas,
rather than the statues of their celebration
of beauty bound in man:
**** transit, rather than **** genesis...
would we be where we are with
transgender, anorexia, bulimia,
   objectification,
            gluttony,
had we not left the monkey on
the tree, and man originating in a cave?
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
.before i am done with this escapade, i will try to stick travis' - walking down the hill on repeat for a while... to settle for the mantra... something that needs a repetition in the background, before the final collage... and before... what settles as dust from burnt old father oak and my body too... or perhaps... the inter-connectivity that's shared between ethnic minorities: the kashubians, the sorbians, the navajo, the dene suline, the inupiaq, zuni hopa and the dogrib... the Łacinka & Łatynka (belarusian and ukranian) respectively... Łacina: Latin... as it is known on the vicinity of the old capital of Cracow... simply from a shared letter... no more a hello than a plain disregard for twitter poetics... or instagram: captions... sometimes you just want a chicken drum-stick of words... and the bone and the cartilege and the heads filled with marrow... which is more... than some toothpick escapade... well... Winchester is so old for anyone to remember... and London is so nuanced that even Warsaw makes the count... but Cracow sits... humbled... when snow falls... there's the actual snow... and there's the mistaken snow of the ash from auschwitz.

once - when i was much younger - and my voice
was but a crude and feeble whimper -
nothing that could compare itself to a butterfly
in haiku - i would be found trying to forcibly imitate
anything immediately read -
what a naive misadventure upon every turn...
every poem became: as if an act borrowed from
Macbeth - quiet simply - a young man's jealousy...

i can only now gratify myself and the audience that...
i have matured beyond that hot-headedness... former...
now? i rather simply translate the work -
as i am sure that something will be lost -
however good the translation might be...
or the original text...
here's my first attempt...

zbigniew herbert - kaligula (1st attempt
and the last ettempt)

/
          while reading old chronicles, poems and biographies
Mr Cogito sometimes experiences feelings
of a physical presence of the people long ago dead


Caligula (is speaking / speaks):

from among all the citizens of Rome
i loved only one
Incitatus - a horse

when he walked into the senate
the unblemished toga of his fur
shone immaculately among that of
the cowardly murderers' sitched with purple

Incitatus was full of advantages
he never spoke
a stoic's nature
i think that at night in the stables he read
philosophers

i loved his so much that one day i decided
to crucify him
but his noble anatomy objected to this

he accepted the dignity of consul indifferently
he held authority the best
in that he didn't hold any authority

attempts to persuade him to have permanent
****** relations with my dear wife Caesonia failed
therefore a line of caesars - centaurs
was never created

which is why Rome fell

i decided to appoint him as a god
yet on the ninth day prior to the days of February
(chaerea) cornelius sabinus and other fools
obstructed the intentions of this godly work...

he accepted the news of my death peacefully

he was thrown out of the palace
and sentenced to exile

he endured this blow with dignity

he died without any hiers
slaughtered by a thick-skinned butcher from the vicinity
of Anzio

Taticus is silent
about the posthumous fate of his meat
                                                                ­               /

perhaps looking at the original -
would help... oh more surely...
but prior to the original...
i can see that certain peoples of asia...
who have a culinary superiority complex...
who hide behind a spice grenade...
have an aversion to cabbage...
and it's like that irish love potatoes
and the slavic people love cabbage joke...
don't mind me morphed into a pawn...
the persians abhored and still abhor spicy
food from bengali bush monkey regions
of the raj...
persians have a palette for sour foods...
can you imagine eating a hot-dog...
without choked onions, chillies...
sauerkraut and some sweet gherkins...
mustard and ketchup?
i can't... then again: a cow is more than just
milk... mother goat...
but there comes a time when you can...
appreciate the culinary superiority of the blue indians...
then a minute later call it: a kitchen of black cardamom
stink!
believe me... black cardamom stinks...

but a problem with sauerkraut is a problem
with persian tastes...
sour... sooner rather than later i'll see...
sauerkraut added as the german delight...
in an ottoman kebab wrap...
the sourness could cut through the fatty mustang
of the lamb... somehow...
because the pickled chillies are not enough...
and the raw spanish onions do very little...
the blue indians throw "beef" around
an appreciation of sauerkraut... i just give them
the one-liner: black cardamom and...
the ultimate dye... turmeric...
it will stain, anything... plastic, metal,
ceramics: oddly enough no... and glass...
spice barons, eh?  

the original... but it's not exactly the original...
since... i do borrow from"elsewhere":
sound distinction that exfoliate in the meaning...

after all... i did graffiti the original with
some cyrilic...
sz = š = ш = (sh)ape ≠ ś = sie- prefix: if śιe
cz = č = ч = (ch)urn ≠ ć = cie- prefix: if ćιe
ż (= rz) = ž = ж ≠ ź
(also noted in french: via je suis...
   oddly enough... it sounds like жe swée...
but looks like: je suis ce et cette)...
ń ≈ ñ
ch = x
nonetheless...
or more importantly...
c = ц ≠ c = s = ç...
an no... there's no translation
of a cedilla A(ą) nor a cedilla E(ę)...
a bit easier when it comes to...
ł = w
            but... w = v...
so ł(h)en... the surd hatch...
eyes closed: mouth agape!
no "v" given how the greek upsilon (υ)
was sharpened into (ν):
i always thought: cute acute ó = ω: tool...
while omicron was more grave (ò)...
and up! upsilon! the u was first acute
before it became the ω in the german
umlaut (ü)...

otherwise: there's mOre to what's
later a mOvie... the elongation of:
tool... the distinction: thus pronounced...
wants to be recognißed -
the s to z to s to z interchange within
the ß: es'zett... yes... the apostrophe is "somehow"
necessary...

if the hebrews have their vowels in niqabs...
we can have our...
exfoliation of consonants and vowels...
fully exposed... nonetheless included!
with: details of the frontier!
and in them: i mark my finger in the sand
and skull among the cavern,
the rocks the... ghostly whispers that
shadows should profoundly speak...
but never do...
my shadow my ghost...
my first avenue turned should i be thinking
about a Hiroshima selfie... shadow glued
to the ******* wall... move it: chess-***...
bullet to the head...
and then two weeks... trying to die...
in a prison cell...
with one nightmare overtaking the previous
nightmare... in how...
your brain will never be:
the eyes-connected to the sponge:
mr. chikatilo...
the sponge: sorry... nothing but shrapnel...
perhaps some eyes...
but your eyes are consistently closed...
let's not mind them...

and what's because, what?
finnegans' wake: no diacritical markers...
because, what? low on ink?
if low on ink... can't help you...
but if not enough paper?
¶ (pilcrow) all the paragraphs! sardine words
onto the page!

the god awful truth was that i smoked
marijuana in england...
and... the ******* is free! upon the pretence
that you don't own a brothel...
elsewhere: namely Amsterdam...
while in Amsterdam i had a thought:
what about ******* a siamese twin
in some vacant... Tehran nightmare come true?
gang-bangers are treated better than i...
in terms of "treatment":
the best they ever gave me...
was to be left: to my own devices...
when i should have been learning german...
they sent me to the window-licker class
of c.v. writers anonymous...
because: m'ah hanging-leash of in and leash
was a bad, spotty E... with a tail!
devil's spawn... or something that would
always come from the warsaw pact...
or... coming from one: under the iron curtain...
would show... and cover the current brood...
with a change of element...
from under the iron curtain...
then unto: under the silicon curtain..

i'm sure the people have chosen their chess
pieces prior to this: *******-ramming
of the anger itching from the cranium
of a castrated bull...

mash up... no interludes...
let's keep it staccato... and... fits the purpose of...
how best lodged into form...

                   because the iota and the j are...
let's face it... forced diacritical cage-masters...
i graffitied the original...
because... it became obsolate to simply
translate and become overtly pedantic
as to why: ****** grammar was not going
to fit anglo-slav grammar...
never mind the anglo-ßaß grammar: "native"...

/ чytając stare kroniki, poematy i жywoty Pan Cogito
doświadчa czasem učucia fizyчnej obeцności
osób dawno zmarłych
(tampering with a lox ness)

mówi Kaligula

spośród wszystkich obywateli Rzymu
kochałem tylko jednego
Inцitatusa - konia

kiedy wшedł do senatu
nieskazitelna toga jego sierści
l'śniła niepokalanie wśród obшytyx purpurą
tchórzliwych morderцów

Inцitatus był pełen zalet
nie przemawiał nigdy
natura stoiцka
myśłe ze noцą w stajni čytał filozofów

kochałem go tak bardzo жe pewnego dnia
postanowiłem go ukrzyzować
ale sprzeciwiała się temu jego szla(ch)etna anatomia

obojetnie p(rz)yjął godność konsula
wła(dz)e sprawował najlepiej
to znaczy nie sprawował jej w'cale

nie udało sie nakłonić go to trwałych związków miłosnych
z drogą жoną moją Caesonią
więц nie powstała niestety linia cesa(rz)y - centaurów

dłatego Rzym runął

postanoviwem mianować go bogiem
lecz (dz)iewiątego dnia p(rz)ed kalendami lutowymi
(Ch)erea Korneliusz Sabinus i inni gwupcy p(rz)eшko(dz)ili
tym zboжnym zamiarom

spokojnie przyjął wiadomość o mojej śmierci

wyrzucono go z pałacu i skazano na wygnanie

zniósł ten cios z godnością

umarł bezpotomnie
zaшla(ch)towany przez gruboskórnego rzeźnika
z miejscowości Ancjum жшчčšц

o pośmiertnych losach jego mięsa
milчy Taцyt       /

no... no Helmut will help you with: dość! enough!
some casanova Nikita might - with:
szczypta: pinch - via... ш + ч = щ: vague - i know...

ah! the calendar's days of february...

already i see that this poem is "unspectacular" -
everything what was supposed to be lost
in translation is, lost -
the jealousy fizzles out and it's plain
as a shadow at noon on a sunny day
that it was never inteded to be there - to begin
with...

perhaps it's not the direct translation -
but how certain words just: sound more appealing -
and add toward the grandiosity...

i don't see how a poem can be translated
without something being lost...
after all: i want to lose: rather retain something
in / from a poem...
i want language to... freely...
"inter-racialiße" itself:
modus operandi - the lingua franca...
the l'ingelese of the modern chapter...
as the greeks would point out:
if the english tourists will not speak our tongue...
if the english tourists will not speak our tongue...
then we will speak their tongue...
and speak it was belgian speak it...
which is, better, than these nativistic half-breeds
of: 3/4 empire pride riddled...
1/4 rotherham bewildered...
we will not out-breed them...
we will: simply talk over them...
and their accents...
which we will learn and thereby:
insinuate over: via diacritical markers
and exceptional surd status reminders
of the raj: H...

i will claim that poetry is where i "paint"...
**** it. collage...
rude importune and most obscene...
a thesaurus cascade of synonyms!
impromptu one off...
it's not a hosonnah in the highest...
but a sitar in the bellowing detphs of the ebb...
it's a growling escapade...
something that ****** a yeti from
the carpathian mountains...
something that would require otherwise
to give it shackles, chains and a non-existent
lunatic asylum!

why dooes picking up... an alive cat...
make you succumb to an affair less...
bothersome... when you are indeed picking up /
handling a dead cat?
don't know...
a quasi-symbiotic affair between
matter and anti-matter?
borrowed terms.... outside of physics's disneyland
pretty irrelevant...
a corpse of a dead cat is always more
heavy than... the animated corpus of
a cat still outside the schrödinger
brackets:    cat[                            ];
what'­s death then? a colon, a semi-colon;
a hyphen or an apostrophe?
notably? an apostrophe without having
to be inclined to be used in a:
possessive article 's "scandal"?

i will escape with this language: i learned,
i acquired... i will leave the natives with
nothing but leather for skin:
that i will mark as an armchair...
i will entertain no more than
a genghis khan would have...
when the tanks started rolling...
and the luftwaffe was extinguished...
because... an invasion of an island...
no tanks, no bullets, no bombs...
diacritical markers... instead...

these letters are still: ROME!
came late to the party... had the vaguest notion
of coming late: but also becoming
the d.j.!

old mother: Cyrylica...
will and always helped...
the "natives"...
understand the reins and you can surely
translate... all the old paintings
with: we rode bulls into battle...
we didn't ride horses...
what does an army that that rides bulls
have as compensation compared
to an army that rides horses into battle?
well... a lance with a sharp point is...
replaced with the horns...
and a vector signature of red tied
to the end of a stick...
the horns replace the lance... the end...

somehow: and as the polytheistic gods
came as surprise material in:
goat-******* and bull-******* and swan-fiddling...
the monotheistic god came as...
the lowest of men...
because:
     Δ and... ∇: when nabla met delta:
the son of david was born:
which was called by surname: astar...
david astar...
       the phenomenon of...
when the father would become jealous
of the son: solomon...
or... rather... the son would never look up
toward the archetype of father...
because the father has his psalms...
while the son had the harem sonnets
of... sparrow-hoarding ****** of the onomatopoeia...

teach? teach? i am this close to...
correcting what has already been written...
however impossible...
claustrophobia and james joyce esque...

why not ж = rz...
and... ž = ż...                  half a caron: źrenica:
pupilla...
a back catalogue of a bilingual bank of vocab
is: the reason i "solve" and "crosswords"
on a blank canvas... like so...

and how do you think i learned a little bit
of greek: if... ovερλaππινγ?

remaining examples where: ц wasn't used...
well... the diacritical marker hovering above iota
like a halo: should it be used?
in a ciasto (dough) example...
well... debate: ćιasto... or ciasto?
in the confines of ciasto: the "c" is not a ц...
because of the proximity of the iota
as "suffix"... but not as a "prefix"...

    цerkiev... цytat... цытaт: citation...
sigh: tate modern is 20 years old...
but 20 years old will not be...
commemorated with the glass ceiling and:
Olafur Eliasson's 'the weather project' -
which is a great shame -
but who am i to judge?
let it be 'maman' by louise bourgeoise...

the same goes with the acute s...
even... imploring: prosić -
  otherwise... imploring: prośιć...

                   siano vs. śιano: hay
                   śnieg... snow...

i've been advocating the necessary guillotιne
for the iota... and the ȷazzy shιt ιn between...

and so much of my life could be deemed
simple... but how i can complicate it with a scrutiny
of language...
the best escape plan i can find -
and this is language: outside the realm of
academic rubrics - that it might borrow from
an international phonetic alphabet
of the linguistic dept. it will not...

it will consolidate two languages: dig two trenches...
and then borrow a third language or a fourth
to dig a tunnel or two between the two trenches...

well that's that for sharpening an arrow
and shoving it up cupid's ***...
to make him walk back smothered by knuckles
and recount to his parents:
Eros and Aphrodite... some of us would much
prefer uninterrupted work /
sifting through archaic words...
and leaving: the currency of vogue be:
something that only attracts:
panic is worse than fascism...
panic disorientates large crowds...
which... fascism is... unlikely to do...
so says the universal mantra of cheese grating:
smiles.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2018
i've been trying to purge myself from
having read a novel:
      at almost 1000 pages -
it's hard not to:
                 i was told: easier to watch
the movie-adaptation...
        but i'm reading a different book now
and i'm stuttering...
  i have to claim the fallacy
of philosophical literature as being riddled
with the competition of fictional
prose: i keep "stuttering" -
i.e. rereading what is obliviously
there to either absorb or accept -
           not in or with a high-mindedness
i write the following words:
i abhor a need to strutter reading
a work of philosophy...
               it's already painful encompassing
a paragraph, let alone rereading
        a single sentence -
         i assure you: you will not recite
a work of such kind with a belief that
doesn't allow me to question, whether you
are, or that you aren't an: actor.
             oh, sure - we write about what
we read, but there are so many out there who
write about: what they never read...
an uncomfortable word for me,
notably due to the past participle red -
   and to do so in the moment: reed...
         some sort of glitch in the grapheme
æ - ash - something truly gravitates a "soul"
to agitate a body into writing this...
for all the perfections of the modern world
there is a verbal anomaly...
       as pedant i am prone to spot a bulging
crevice... and the shrinking dreihundret...
    i know i will visit my grandfather's
house only once...
      as told to throw the rose into
the fresh burial ground of my great-grandmother
i said: NEIN...
  and later took it home,
put it under a candle inspection,
and gently burned the red into purple,
to later gnash and grind my teeth's
worth of chipping one of them,
just after the wake, sitting alone in a kitchen,
drinking *****...
               i have no germanic affiliation
but it pains me to see them this way,
this medieval masochistic...
                   so i sometimes utter
a few words in german: for no reason
and for no concern for posterity -
  no Berliner can assign me a lineage...
     prior to the chipping of the tooth
there was the laughter on the bus
while the priest did his: evading the status
of a common women who died -
   in the meantime, just recently i solved
what first appeared an unspectacular
"plagiarism" of a ***- puzzle...
  hyphen? forgot the spelling of the rest...
   and in the two number blocks:
  alternatively odd / even numbers, i.e.

3 | 4  1 | 5  6 | 2
2  1 | 6  3 | 4  5
4 | 6  5 | 2  3 | 1
5  2 | 3  4 | 1  6
1 | 3  2 | 6  5 | 4
6  5 | 4  1 | 2  3

just like the sudoku - although alternatively
even / odd in the brackets...
   i attempted it with a sense of failure:
there are three isolated instances:

3 |                       | 2
...................................
4 |                        | 1
...................................
1|                         | 4
..................................

     by comparison sudoku was easy...

+++ 3, 3, 3
++ 3, 3, 0
+ 3, 0, 0
- 3
                      or something like that:

plus the        | via _
                                             x x x
                                             x x x
                                             x x x...

and how many times i wished to be
H'eh-sooz from Barcelona -
        too many to count the number of springs
i already count to: 31...
     well then...
              
    does the following allow me manliness
or armour?

              ****'s a bit wonky...
   funky wonky... but still: dual-stirrup on
that eight legged donkey!
   apparently drinking doesn't allow you to:
"properly" count...
                        
           for if i had an apple i could
press ******* a key and not let go and
it wouldn't be a ctrl c cntrl p scenario
having to copy "eccentric" markings added
onto letters from the HTTP beast...

name an instance?

                 súdòkū -

well no, if i'm being deviant why establish
the study of orthography?

           yes, the -niece word can be contained
with a samurai blade sharpness
    mono-syllable...
            hai...
                      but slow it down?
this is what slow motion looks like...
slow motion in terms of applying
diacritical marks...
     you can almost be thankful that
the english-speaking world has
to only contend with:

                    a. punctuation marks
                    b. hyphenated words
                    as reconstruction of
                        a germanic genesis -
                       missing in chemistry...
                  
hydrochrloric acid is best condensed
and not left as shrapnel...

          -             -      so best to huddle
and count the space between your fingers
when waving like a... ******* idiot.

but i am still going to "stutter" when
reading a philosophy book -
    which is a BIG X (a ******* twist
of +) -
                 plus...
            because i've heard of women who
have reread entire books...
    well... **** two birds with one stone...
read a philosophy book:
     you'll be reading it twice in a single
sitting...
             no point rereading if you're
already rereading it already -
i.e. making cogito scriptums -
   mental notes...
                    
   and then when you get a chance
to hound a blank echo tunic worth of
a page? hell becomes: democratic -
       and each has his own: say...

        why wouldn't want to play around
with punctuation marks in a language
that has no diacritical precedence as bound
to Latin - with the only insinuation
being the lost artefact of carving graphemes?

     already pointed out:
    cheap and short -
   spot the graphemes!
             because, sure as ****,
     there's a difference in cattle heap
       and summer hornets...
                
to imagine: i've learned a language in order
to unlearn it, or better still: relearn it,
   and become a pedantic aesthetician...
  
wel... but if the germans can make S S
     into a ß - ah... the noun game -
   it's a digraph and not a grapheme because
the two letters are twins worth
merging and
not siamese akin to... worth cutting apart:
             is that not just a B, but also
nuanced as merely Zet?via
                      gro-z-es - vizier?
        where is that H to catch the O
   prior to anticipating the hyphen?
      back with god...
              i have to conceed a remark though:
something really made the jews smart
if what smart meant was: hiding vowels,
or rather making vowels into
diacritical marks akin...
       which i can't say the same about arabs...
  lucky the oil's there...
  
     this riddle will exhaust me
and i will never write a decent effort to
satisfy me...
     thus i rather leave it at that:
having exhausted, rather than abadoned
  this palace of a former blank space...
there are bound to be squatters ready
to inherit a peel of an orange for zest
of an orange i just ate.

   but i still manged to drink alone:
under the banner of to-ast!
    and that really is the distinguishable
desire to apply diacritical marks
when to and too are indistinguishable
    when otherwise: pool and pol(l)
are apparent -
         something is honestly wriggling
in english trying to get out...
maybe a death of a certain bilingualism.
(alternatively titled: tardy duff fender of assertiveness,
especially after adjusting following insanity clause
affixed with rubber baby-buggy bumpers)

Methinks I nearly got snookered
courtesy CVS employee at store number 7569
(address: 1206 North Gravel Pike,
Zieglerville, Pennsylvania 19492)
September ninth, two thousand and twenty.

Saleswoman rattled off spiel
regarding CVS Carepass program
the missus immediately
became suspicious of aforementioned deal
every month five dollars
debited from checking account,
figurative highway robbery,
and/or outright steal.

The above trifling
unspectacular wrought scenario
an exception to rule,
whereby yours truly usually
spurred Manichean inner duel
witnessed by guns ablazing
trampling outspokenness
giving Isaac Bashevis Singers,
Gimpel the fool

run for his in dove viz hubble money
now forced into dire straits,
where chicks free yea
how **** sapiens cruel
nasty, short and brutish beastly species
devises sadomasochistic tool
hankering, and hungering to starve
think also about anonymous
innocent tortured soul (me, ha)

kept in solitary confinement,
with no chance of parole
a convict for life i.e. hard skool
of knocks alum deceived
hired, and lobotomized
slave driven human mule
donkey *** tee (hee hee hee),
and fed diet of worms
in tandem with thin gruel.

Far to often annals
constituting mein kampf,
I experienced oblivious naiveté
undergoing blitzkrieg linkedin
with scapegoat honorific,
now sortie give snort against
mine passivity harrumph!

Dan D. yankee from Schwenksville,
Pennsylvania didst doodle and dawdle
planting feather in figurative cap - yay
perceptive sixth sense analogous to xray,
yours truly more wise

to the insidious mean way
dominant nasty, short
and brutish human beasts
Machiavellian bullies instill fear
for egoistic personal gain oye vey

immediately judging me as prime target
oh my dog... early in grade school
threatening hateful taunts got underway
I attest suffering verbal abuse
persists even today

offtime couched within feigned concern,
yet sinister motives at heart stay
anger toward able, eager and ready
poetic tactics launched courtesy shipshape quay
zee reasonably rhyming literary barbs to portray,

how creative poetic technique can outweigh
Norse (er horse) sense
scrawled by Lake Woebegone
bachelor farmers' guardian angels
originally harkening from Norway
deported to Normandy Farms,

including me nonagenarian papa,
cuz they (you decide who)
started to trumpet melee
predicated when power of attorney
given to a girl named Amélie,
dime a dozen teller (of tall tales)
at Wells Fargo Bank.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2020
I

for weeks prior to your death i sat with a premonition
of bad writing and a toothache -
not that i ever thought much about my writing -
or that i would have to think very little of it:
more on the lines of - id est quid est -
                                      mind you - i took my mind
off writing by working in the garden  -
the pergola had to be erected so an evergreen could
be cut down -
and the wisteria that was hugging it
could be cleaved from it and dropped onto the:
prior mentioned pergola...
there was some light cement work on the fence:
a little trench had to be dug so the neighbour's
weeds would not burrow beneath...
                all that since i last saw you -
come late july - most certainly - no... wait...
come to think of it... it was late august...
me and your son-in-law (my father) were driving
across all of europe -
and on the way back i remember the heat on
the belgium france border...
                 it was an immense sensation of
whale lung thrown onto a frying pan of a stoney
beach... or at least: the sensation of stickiness
is how it could be imagined -
                perhaps that's how you can ever
begin to read a bruno schulz's cinnamon shops -
immediately from the first sentence:
that barrage of ultra- something or other:
ubergrammar - no... just that necessary style i am
yet to accustomed myself to...

II

that was 3 months ago - and i'm still learning
that: we live by regrets and memories -
which are hardly sins -
just as i remember, you'd say...
'call me every month and check up on me,
call me up and say "hey grandpa! how's
it going?!" i know we both can't talk
on the telephone - to talk you need to see
hands move, you need a face to peer at...'
that is my regret...
although the last words we exchanged
were about you wanting to buy me the rest
of karl ove knausgaard's mein kampf...
which, 3 months later, i knew you would...

IIIa

i've finally sat down to scribble something
down - if i were using my right hand
and a pen on a piece of paper
you'd immediately recognise my hand-writting
and tell me how unrefined it is:
that i'm chicken-scratching -
that i write like: kura pazorem -
   and i'd tell you: precursor of the next
stage in the process: i'll be typing
through and through...

      you died on the 23rd of october
at 5:30am if i remember, 5:10am
sounds better - circa -
            your wife (grandma) called
circa 11am on the 22nd of october and left
a message - i was out walking
complaining: how i'm not alone enough,
premonition after premonition -
she called in a confused state although
i beg to differ - that you were heaving
your last pangs of life
in a hospice - or that she just placed you
there...
i had my ticket booked for the 24th hoping
to catch you: just yet...
on the 23rd i was told at 8am...
your daughter my mother told me
upon waking, then left the house to pretend
nothing had happened...
i got up, cleaned the house...
i begged a deity or simply ex nihil that
i might cry that i might be left with
a sinking sensation...
by evening i was sitting with a headache
worth a siamese twin and hardly
welcoming the next morning where
i would fly out...
    sketchy: barely any details...
and that's how sorrow, grief, anguish...
began to creep in...
the tears your daughter cried...
i would gentle waver in a pseudo-dance
with her in the bathroom
as she cried into my shoulder
and would later
blow her nose into my t-shirt...
it pained me that i was unable
to release my heart from these piles
of rock...

IIIb

it's the 1st of november: guy fawkes night...
i'm sitting sipping a 30% cherry *****
and pretending to chase it down with some pepsi...
3 months ago i told you i quit smoking,
i lied and i didn't lie:
i continued to smoke 2 a day -
when i wanted to write, when i pretended to write -
and on the odd occasion that i proved
to myself that i was writing: i smoked 3 per evening...
hardly the usual pack a day...
3 months ago when i last saw you
i didn't smoke a single one...
for the last 3 weeks i saw you...

IV

the most vivid image i have of you is you
picking up knausgaard's autumn and reading
an extract about eating apples -
how he never leaves apple cores -
just eats the whole apple so that there's
a pleasure and then a debt at the core:
of bitterness -
i pondered this twice on a walk...
if you leave enough flesh around the core...
three bites along the length of the apple...
and you fiddle the apples seeds
with your tongue and teeth...
there's hardly any bitterness of...
eating an apple like a magician...
hardly any lesson invoked concerning life...
but that wasn't our usual conversation:
you already exhausted your cameo cinema
of memory to the point where
i would remember the surnames /
names of the people in your life...

colonel zydaczek in your days
as a military gendarme...
on parade in warsaw...

V

the intricacy of the hell that is family...
i can't be fooled about how unhappy your marriage
was...
kept for reasons of propriety or some other:
safety mechanism or the best kept excuse imaginable...
what might have been preserved if...
say... if i were the sort of man that was born
into the 20th century -
                many years prior to 1986...
you would have been a great-grandfather for
at least 10 years...
it was hardly necessary to be the only grandchild
but that i was... and remained...

VI

you're dead and i'm still three-quarters alive:
how can i write some solace for myself:
how can death become this spectacular cut-off
point where i can no longer harvest
any memories of you...
you're dead and i'm lingering -
not completely debilitated:
just unsure whether a mountain is this
grand metaphor for something
that is:

today i tested whether grief is an aphrodisiac,
i ****** off to humbert humbert's
fantasy since it was already freely
available and felt no need to go beyond
what was already taboo...
then i took a shadow and i knew that
if on high: herr omni- c.c.t.v. cyclop eye
would not be looking at such details...

you're dead and i'm not going to beg
for rhymes and odes -
to write some miraculous epitaph -
beside cutting up onions today -
tears! finally! tears! i managed to cry
authentic tears once more!
it only took cutting up an onion to do so!
but, with such tears...
no softening of the heart -
heart's still a stone...
and brain is still... hardly a whirlwind of
disposed thoughts
and only: pickled with eye, ear and tongue
extensions:
pretty hoarding fungus chappie: sort of...

VII

i'm happy to tell you the world is still
"happening": whether by concerns for dasein
or a lack of thereof... but the mud / **** flinging has
never been greater...
you took the best of what autumn had to
offer...
a bouquet of bronzes and geld,
of frivolous yellows and burnt orange translating
itself into bold deepenings
of transcending prime artifacts of:
her gown of sweet scented rot: of(f) brown...
you should have seen the light
as it married itself to a fleeting of once
formerly amen of green...
the blistering sky as blue as a aristocracy of
angelic blood: formidable events took
place: i imagine you were in conversation
with someone...

VIII

the ceremony itself was unspectacular...
if the restrictions weren't in place:
i imagine many more people would have come...
three women stood out from
the rest, i imagined them to be your
former lovers...
i stood at the entrance of the church
not wanting to talk to anyone...
closing my eyes i moved from side to side
like a tree teased by the wind...
you were attired in prof. trim of navy
as i was... black can hardly be associated
with mourning or with a funeral...
i chanced upon navy...
grey was also visible...
but black is for paupers / plebs...
something more refined was in order...
navy or a darkening - charcoal grey...
we talked about this: or at least i imagine it
to be so: black is reserved for
priests and for crows...

IX

since your death i have found a return to england,
every time i left you, i left dear mother,
poland,
i guess not anymore...
since the headache of all the formalities:
and your son (my uncle) being so unbelievably
circa 50 years old...
never mind... and your wife (my grandmother)
i landed in england as i only landed
in her ***** only once prior:
the first time -
hardly excited like the first time -
but content that i... don't really have anything
to return to: that feral land...
for the first time i can become
so carelessly formal: expediently pressed
to poker my stay in those black-holes of
a land: you were dying like a patriarch
of former communism when
abortions rights were atheistically pronounced
and liberally secular...
the women came onto the streets
in protests of their rights being removed:
that they would have to give birth
to deformed foetuses...
notably? because by biological deficiency:
they would still have to be born...
since ****** or **** didn't play a role...

barbarous land of catholicism...
and all this time i was like:
so... what's it like then?
i ******* into a tissue and flush it along
with the crocodiles...
am i committing genocide?!
if i were given a fixed amount of *****!
perhaps... but this ***** comes
like glue or salt in the oceans!

Xa

in the prosektorium...
             the dissecting-room... the morgue...
after all... i knew that walking around town
and putting up the necrologue would be easy...
3 x 100ml of ***** bravado and i was:
pirate-chested hairy!
my long coat and all the your pearls of beauty
would start calling me gwandp'ah...
the bureaucratic details of your death:
someone had to identify you in the coffin...
i was expecting something: completely different...
i'm not sure someone can prepare
you: prepare you seeing a dead body...
esp... a dead body attired for a ceremony...
hell... i've seen a roadkill before:
a fox... i kept feeding a fox for a month...
seen a fox up-close...
i imagine a dead body "by accident" is a lot different
to... i've seen a  man knock another man
dead - one blow to the head
and a pancake on the street...
it's a bit different... seeing someone...
so well presented: for: the ceremony...

Xb

upon entry i remember the colour of the tiles:
what a bewildering window-shopping
reference, a sponge of a waiting room,
i don't really knew what it was that it was
supposed to be waited for:
identifying you:
you adamant to not get new porcelain worth
of teeth: milkshake baron you...
slurp up the rest of your meals...
i supposed... you and your missing
prosthetic teeth...
but first came into view your shoe:
which wasn't yours...
but as an extension of your feet
i guess it was...
it was "just there"...
             NUR DA...
                     peeping from above
the horizon of the coffin...
teasing me before i would come
antlitz zu antlitz...

arms folded: immaculately cut fingernails...
a bruise from the igrawka
of dryp dryp dryp...
your sunken cheeks...
your lips stitched together:
yet your sunken cheeks...
your inability to borrow a jaw... strong enough:
that pearl of a pear of your chin...
your frivolous last expectation
of the already lost hair...
of course i couldn't be a pure
atheistic / materialist -
i was a child again: i wouldn't call it
a soul: i would call it
the sigma-of-animation...
the sum-of-animation...
obviously this was missing...
that detail that essence was lost:
the earth implored for the body to be
paid as ransom...

but there you were: face somehow
recognizable: yet returned to the generic
project of the dead, the babes
and all those daddy-long-legs
anorexic models parading exhausted
beauty on catwalks of:
skin a leopard... dress a skeleton etc.

now we have conceived that:
i want to drink to tell the truth...
i will not revise this like some comedy
sketch:
it's not the best i can do:
it's all i can...
let's not pander to critique or a lack
or audience...

Xc

i do remember a "little" detail concerning
you...
you were a philately enthusiast, weren't you?
no wonder only i among the closest kin
wanted to sleep in the room
where you least heaved:
spewed some blood and were
surrounded by books...
and there be postage stamps!
i "stole" 4 albums with a collection of
them... i hardly think of selling them
to pay for electricity...
believe me: sooner i dead in belgian
euros or swiss franks at a dignitas clinic
since i'll be left completely solo
than have to...
sell them to sustain myself...
but as it happens... your wife...
my grandmother... was furiously tasked:
well... tasked me...
with withdrawing the 500zl per day
of all you 7000zl worth...

money money money:
i do wonder what grandma will spend all that
money on...
i don't think i'll want to inherit:
but these stamps are...
well... i have photographs of you from
1965 when you were still a young man...
but you were my grandfather:
i own your identity card...
with a photograph taken circa 15 years ago...

the circus / the church already stated:
you have died you are relieved from
all things temporal...
why the spatial details at all matter:
coordinates "hier" coordinates "da"...
and "sein" and "abwesend"...

you became a brother at the funeral...
you were no longer hierarchal with contest
for power broking future and past...
my brother: not my grandfather...
the priest: father, said so...
       *******' load of hierarchy:
fiddling sputnik violins from kindergarten...
roman catholicism...

grandmother still stresses her upbringing
ever-more...
she still thinks we are vermin-people
and that ****** should have started
with us rather than with the hebrews...
you and i know that's
a ceremony of: no comment...

how would you have detailed this approach:
i know how you would have:
it's not even worth mentioning since
we would already graze upon a superiority
complex with an inability to brush it off
with a laugh...
because we wouldn't laugh...
it would be a a headache to detail:
and i was born with this "other" half
included...

XI

look! we're nearing the devil's dozen...
which comes to the clue:
13: as jesus the hey-zeus!
       proto-paul and the propaganda
of how the hebrews and the wounded greeks
overthrew the romans...
ruled for a bit... and then...
come... the ottoman turks...
sort of... gave head....

XII

we could joke: ich: the plural ownership of they,
ich: haben - that deutsche and i,
one might always expect a dog to bark
come the night...
no no... this all too much detail for all:
the necropolis of poland that's nuanced
egypt - they have to buy up lease
for their graves...
carve out graves without dates of death:
they buy out 2nd mortgages of pyramid
democracy and crux...
the hebrews left pretended to giggle:
hard torn with the ashes...
me buying up history which could
never compete with an anglo-1960s
detail: snippet...

XIII

that i find an oyster wriggling in
the shell that's a skull that's somehow
a chewing gum's worth of a tongue...
this phantom of ***** white that's white
that's also stained with burgundian lashes
of agony of sipping wine
while spilling it over the cranium
of golgotha...
scalped...
learn to detail this new graffiti....

XIV

i talked to Paul before i took toward
the darkness and two ****** pretending
to be virgins upon the mt. of Kierkut...
he asked me how tall i was...
then he stood a step one above the tally
of my count, above me...
to measure up...
  and as he talked i had no face:
he would only concentrate on the region
that was supposed to be an ownership of
my heart...
once... i talked to a nurse on defeaning
tube train...
i was lip-reading...
but this thief: he told me... Piccadilly Gardens
of Manchester...
in the prisons with
the russians... and those that punched above
their weight... would inject vaseline or
whatever might... cushion a "sudden"
disappearance of knuckles to
make a full-fat-pouch of a fist...

poluse... not ******...
this guillotine measured "short" would bemoan
his luck with women...
around us... women walked like
sacred cows...
any old mongol would have... would have...
soud-hampton high on Herra...
this is just after your funeral...
i had to take a walk and pretend to
breathe and own a dog...
my list of excuses writing you
are drying up...
what with the promises of the islamic
republic of the world...
all these untouched all these
unloved virgins of the wriggling harem...

XV

arktyka - antarktyka -
antarktyka - arktyka -
             sąd - sad -
  sad - sąd -
      judgement - orchard -
           arctic - antarctic...

XVI

an... AFFOGATO...
well... that's 30ml of espresso...
and... a scoop of ice-cream...

XVII

what daughters-in-law there could have been:
if... bread was skimmed...
and the milk was...
trickling down from heaving...
stones instead of believing oneself
to be a courtesan of cows...
what promises governed the hebrews...
when... for what was their lot:
and subsequent loot...
the qurun drilled a blackening portal...
the arabs celebrated...
the russians would always inherit
siberia...
estonia was given  snippet
of the baltic sea curated by the danes...
lithuania shrunk into memory and beyond...
germany frau benß fur immer merz...
the huns / gargoyles in southern greece:
i.e. and northern macedonia...
balkan pirouettes of detail:
regained pride...

ah! ya!
ß = "z"
s = s
c = k
z = "c"                 jawohl!

XVIII

herrbittebonbon!
and your finger sticky from all that
SS-toffee...
translation: herr! bitte! bonbon!
which you always were...
the 1939 prior to the "adventures"
of the 20th century...
which sedated the grand yawn
of the british empire come
the zenith last exhaustion of
the 1960s and then some
"tremor christ" quasi canadian
for the finicky "end-of" summary
of a ******* football match-up...

the ottoman Janissaries vs.
the egyptian Mamluks!
   vs. the Mongolian horde!
                 in german it must sound
universal:
ist der straße gerad(e)?
to hell with asking in one's native
spreschen... future bent... nuanced got...
this returned alt vater spreschen...
i come with a shadow that
king arthur combated...

XIX

i would be writing a wriggle of russian:
if i were also writing enough finesse of
diacritical detail(s)
but given this diacritical blank:
dyslexia prone pro-latin english
UMPIRE stutter EMEMEM EM...
i would be: but apps don't work
with cyrillic or ancient turkic...
chopper
čopper... wait... what use is that...
extra P?
            çopper?
hiding the "jew" the god... the mammon...
H - one leg one arm of
the tetragrammaton...

        i don't actually mind...
it's not a conspiracy low i.q. "theory":
the dictates of rhyme and fact...
best posit a revision of
punctuation:
the hyper-stressed: newly arrived at
jerusalem kippah brethren are:
insomniac: "somehow"!

it's more a: huh?!
"they" missed the poetry train
and the hyper-cultural-reinvention
of the 1960s... still stricken-blind by
what... erik lehnsherr (henry hillside)
had to endure...
what are these puffs of blistering
a pyramid a sight... these halves?!

like we'd had to total: amost...
a crew of party poopers...
we were we are... these shadow-deafness
"equipment" best excusing:
           für immer fortschritt!

     tsukunft: in ergets nit...

  so much for hebreq married to germanic...
and not to the neighbour... zunge...
yiddish wasn't born from ****** tonguing
long: oi! oi! lithuanian spears!
the last remains of paganism...
by prior to moscow... blah ah ha ha...

it's not like the jews married themselves
to ****** or russian...
they said their jingle-bells with
pseudo-germanic:
yiddish... didn't they?

**

i've just seen a corpse readied for a funeral...
coffin and all...
walking through a graveyard
at night is... all too easy...
come to think of it...
i want to sleep in one...
my mortal democratic oath:
i can wait...
no matter...
give me two sponges and enough of them
soaked in acid to wait...
allow my tongue to get drunk...
my ears to succumb to deafness...

how you could deviate from german
with a spice of the odd 'ebrew...
you could...
yeah... i'm one part convinced this
secular niqab tactic does work:
as long as the arabs own
all the yachts and the air-conditioning
and all the camel milk and leather...
but... once they show...
entry points for disgruntled
mongolians...
        
        my corpse is waiting
for the 22nd century for all this to become
a promethenian platitude worth
of yawn as any... prior:
or future:
but thank god...
i'll be left without having made
any genetic investment...
perhaps an idea of mine...
perhaps some artifact that i allowed
myself to keep for a transition
period...

der ende!
as it happens... the world is...
my grandfather died...
i have little concern for the better half of it...
i'm cradling a wound of a quarter...
i guess that's how you
contest things passing guised in
matters of a temporal inquest...
however it goes...

drunk this night...
sober... two nights solid tamed with...
the worst kind of sober:
a socially expected sort of horrid;
a 14 day self-isolation presccription;
otherwise? me?
jog-friendly... whiskey and cat's whiskers!
*******! birth of h'america come
november!

empires die in afghanistan:
among the pashtun women.
oh yeah... lived for being fed the soul
of Karen and Mr. Surprise: a Gein Mommy's
Lover Boy -
butz the baconz iz oh soz sizzlez! ya?!
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
a common standard of comparison:
women are more aggressive
   in relationships -
                            while men do more
harm if taunted -
       which is why the smaller dogs
tend to bark the most -
while the larger dogs bypass the bark
and are prone to bite.
then there's always the:
if the ***** isn't  willing to give -
                 a mutt knows not to take,
after all, there are other things to
be concerned with...
       however bachelor-esque,
                               and unspectacular.
kain Nov 2018
Big brother
Where art thou?
In the coiling mess of confusion
Bloodied wrists and sunsets
Have you already forgotten?

Big brother
Feel my pain
Set me free to roam
Bathe me in ecstasy
Or let me fall

Big brother
Love your neighbor as you love yourself
Give
Give your life
Why do you hide from them?

Big brother
What is the veil you wear?
Dancing where I cannot see
Where I cannot roam
Scattered across the globe

Big brother
Forgive me for I have
Lost all hope and direction
Gotten swept away in the current
There is no love

Big brother
Hold her close with starry arms
And metaphysical limbs
Love her in the pages
Spread like a seed

Big brother
I do not love you
The leaves on the trees come to the ground
Is that the last bow of nature?
Or an unspectacular event?
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2019
i can't exactly call myself a recovering alcoholic,
that would be too obvious,
too: well boxed...

                                 a recovery...
an alcoholism, what would that be?
would it look like something from
the movie la mécanique de l'ombre?

it could look like something of the sort,
at least: the less spicy parts of
the plot...

       what is missing is the pangs of
conscience, what remains?
       silly thinking: and apparently...
too many hours in a day.

a recovery...
              i've encountered these periods
of "recovery"
  before...
                   spending a month caring
for old people (family, sure,
but sometimes strangers would be
better)...

                      i'm still scattered brained
when it comes to writing
dialogue:
     short-attention span on my behalf?
count me as a monk
in a monestary of a novel if
you get a chance:

    i fooled myself in thinking that
i'd be able to appreciate a Dickensian
novel...

                - becauase there is always
something to add
- a persistent juxtaposition
of the narrative...

    - hence this; imitation of
telegraphic bro - k - en
      li- / -ne- / -s... <dash dash>...

the 13th rule for life:
to counter the 12th -
pet a cat when you encounter
one on the street...

ha!
             and does the doctor
think that's that easy?
     not all cats will want to be petted...
yes... it's possible...
but not all cats want to be petted...
unless the cat is very naive...
paradox:
    those posters on lamp-posts...
now: a missing dog?
  i can understand a missing
dog...
    but what cat can ever become:
"lost"?

             13th rule for life:
wear pajamas...
    to bed...

                          revolutionary....
for over 3 years i slept
****-naked...
   i woke up and...
i always missed the lazy-slot...
the lounge existentialist
hour or so...
with a coffee and a cigarette...

13th rule for life...
    wear pajamas to bed...

(i don't know... some people might
think to wear pajamas to
the shop...
          a very prominent pasttime
for english women
jumping to the shops
wearing onesies...)

that is: you can wake up
and take a snooze session from
bed and make it stand-up...
sleeping ****-naked?
you have to dress in day clothes...
and that's...
simply shocking...

          a recovering alcoholic...
it's not like going to an a.a.
meeting would do me any good...
group therapy is not for me:
taming my farcical ego
   requires me: working against
some third person puppeteering...

spot what?
   if i'll start drinking i'll be back
to base one, something equivalent
to today...
   i don't remember drinking
and throwing tantrums...
    i do remember being under
the delusion of:
   the general grandiosity of
writing anything under an influence...
which probably began
with reading some of
Bukowski's manuscripts...
  the pedant in me opened up:

  immaculate writing -
  typographic...
               i.e. very few typos:
if any...
  but sure...
                 i'll use the term: "recovering"...
what scares me now is:
there are so many hours in
a day, and there are so many times
you must turn in bed,
scratch yourself,
   get up and drink some water...
wrestle with yourself...
when it came to going to sleep
it came as easy as throwing
a sack of potatoes off
   a roof, or asking to sparr with
a prof. boxer:
                       one-hit knock-outs...

- mind you: the scent of the room
in the morning is less brewery and more...
warm...
   it's less choking...

now... about the weight-gain...
****... that's going to be a problem...
even i have to admit:
   2 meals during the day
can't exactly be 2000 calories...
but... having looked at the empty bottle
of whiskey...

   55kcal in 25ml of whiskey...
     so that's...
    55 x 4 = 200kcal x 10 = 2000kcal
per night, per bottle,
for roughly 3 years... **** me!

and what sort of kcal are we talking
about? well... sure as ****
it's not protein, it's not fat...
    carbohydrates?
   how do you burn off 2000kcal
                  of alcohol? buy a diesel hybrid?

group think in alcoholics anonymous:
concentrated with feelings
of shame...
                       i don't know,
         i'm guessing that's the scenario...

sure: sobering up
and i'll have to the reality of:
'you really did write some
mundane verses...
   no, they weren't that great...
   any drunk could think they were
great...
remember those pangs of
       fear when you woke up
the next afternoon after an all-night
session?
   yeah... that's called:
  a moral hangover: stemming from
a delusion of grandiosity...'

i don't do shame:
         self-critique is much better...
nonetheless:

there are so, so, so many hours in a day!
there are too many!
   what do people do with all
these hours?!
      i'm going to grow crazy just thinking:
was that hour wasted,
wasn't it?

/
              and in terms of finding
a "proper" job other than pursuing
   this... "hobby" of having scribbled for
the past 3 years...
  
   well... i like walking...
oh... right... the profession of being
a postman is about to fizzle out...
street-cleaner?
    they don't exactly advertise that
job for the "respectable" people:
not in a job-search-engine-website...
    i the odd occassion,
sure, i looked at these websites... /

 /     yeah: as many options out there
as there are hairs on my head...
hell... some people just stream themselves
playing video games...
what's a "proper" job what
isn't a "proper" job...
   just prior to the great technological
update...
             but i'm jumping ahead
of myself... /

  /                                    laboratory work...
well... that's a start...
sober thinking and no...
   crippling desperation and:
                        thinking oneself limbless... /

/ so i had to go and suss things out:
    the whole job market
on a level of the street...

      last time i heard: poetry is not exactly
an endeavor worthy of a competitive
streak of: employee of the month...

   and, mind you: always the spare parts,
missing nuts and bolts,
screws and sharpened hammers...

mantras like: self-worth and...
   a profession makes a man...
   yes: if he's good at it:
   no one exactly needs a ****** plumber
inspecting a burst pipe...
   unless: he be looking for
             a loch ness sized puddle... /

and no, it's not from a demaning
perspective:
   when i was a child i wanted to be
a bus driver at first...
                     so... something against
an administrator of a medical building
at the reception?
    no... nothing against that...

    a street-cleaner?
                     why would i have a problem
with that?
   so... why the hell is poetry such
                  a baggage of: inadequacies?
i'm no dog:
but i feel it like a collar
   with inverted spikes around my neck...

- but yes: some people do over-compensate
their job with an over-bearing balance
of self-worth...
                              didn't i sometime ago
(in this verse), not mentioned my own
claims of over-bloated grandeour?

          can't win...
                      either the egoistic route or...
the depressed: crushed by the mass
route...
                            or: some vague middle... /

my... any more of these sober afternoons
and i actually might do something
spectacular...
                           at the moment...
          one month, sober...
                a hiccup interlude...
a complete brain-drain of a day or two
returning to the same pattern of
                         getting ****-faced at night...
and then, now:                                            /

very much akin to no. 9
from cinema calendar of the abstract
heart
(tristan tzara)...

              i.e. 'but the dance of round
tables shuts in the shock
                of the marble shudder

   new sober'.
                                                                     /

i wasn't going to make use of these
idle fingers, while returning to the old ways:
and the old ways are...
hardly a maturing tenure of:
never in my previous engagements
a worthwhile sober observation...
   but: as of today:

a sober observation -
i never thought i'd say this,
but on a double decker bus...
  listening to queen's of the stone age
album rated r...
         this sober "thing"?
it's not too bad...

                                           it's...
refreshing...
                           it's... well: there i was
thinking it would be mind-numbing...
                                                                             /

walked up to the bank machine
to check the balance...
                     well... isn't that something?
who would have thought...

   if having bought a gramaphone
and kind of blue vinyl is to "save me"...
might as well promise myself:
    hell, here's to my variety of AA...
using vinyls...
                        i need some sort of outlet...
conversations wouldn't have
solved the problem...

                               wooden shjips: V... /

well... better think i write unspectacular
verse: sober...
than think i write spectacular
verse: drunk...

                           there's nothing else to it...
- but there's something else to mind...
- Dickens...

            Dickens didn't write anything
spectacular: hear me out...
                       i mean like Beckett "spectacular"?
yes, like pretentious,
    difficult literature: to read...
                   but he did write with
a relish for a reader's sense of comfort...
   maybe that's possibly worth
                     imitating?

                                                                  /

/a view ascance: side notes of -
          how efficiency is lost
within the confines of prescribing a
burdensome effectiveness;
            like:
                being constapitated
in an elevator:
               and being claustrophobic.../

/alternatively: a hypothetical conveyor
belt...
                 archaic notice
  in the form of: arbeit macht frei...
                                    althought with
less sadistic irony of the SS
   completed upon finishing
harold norse's
  a memoir of a ******* angel:

seems that what one deems one's
own "poetry" is exactly that: "poetry"...
   and what becomes poetry
is equivalent to: giving a generous
portion of one's **** to a publisher:
in the literal sense...
    
                             but hell...
if Dada can see print...
                         oh... out of the blue:
for no other purpose other than
                a count of syllables,
                     from the count of words,
from the count of sentences,
from the count of punctuation marks
   (inter-syllables),
    and then back into:
   the count of vowels through
to the count of consonants...

                 to arrive at some meaningful:
v:c ratio... /

                             by god:
new sober is indeed spewing your mind
like placing imaginary accounts
of the number of matchsticks per tree:
in the rough estimate,
                             akin to:

brain damaged:
                       Σ: the involuntary compact
for the understudy of man...
      less: anima / soul
           and more: vox / voice -
  as ever: partially brain damanged...
yet still perusing the body and,
yes, the total (sum) -
                       where thought originates
and: with the duly departed /

                         x/σ (the algebra fraction of
a sore thumb of the sum of man)
                                                                         /
   y/σ (the algebra fraction
of a missing finger of the sum of man) / / / / /

it appears i can do much
more havoc being sober, than being drunk...
from this:
     what was once blanc is
    but an acne riddled crease in the fabric of:
till the next blanc becomes
more than such a creased indentation:
and more...
                 akin to the fields surrounding
Ypre - at that certain moment in whatever
time...

                           just let me absolve myself
from citing stereotypes.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2018
mea culpa* said thrice does not
             suffice...
with that abhorring
imitation
   of a heartbeat
of a fist thumping
against the chest
in the catholic creed
recitation...
       all it takes
is to disarm, completely!

mea culpa,
       cor meum
:

       my fault,
                  my heart
.

oh, and the heart is
an iron maiden, heavier
than any cross to carry
onto Golgotha...

    not as frivolous as
escaping into a soul
and then into an eternity...

the heart feeds upon
the now and ever
infringing present...

           you are not allowed
to take your heart into
the grave,
                  but of course
you can take your soul...

            marble missionaries
of the parable of the camel,
seeking a needle in a haystack?

the heart remains among
the living, before the last heartbeat
beats its last...
           the soul can escape
into air,
      the body into either earth
or fire,
         but i see no reason
as to why a heart must drown
succumbing to water...
        it has to return to anima...
even if that be a shadow
  moving in c.c.t.v. example:
with no body...
          a para-reality expression
of the anima...

         some call it the "dumb"
mute of animals...

let them take up their crosses
as if they were swords,
   i know a ***** little secret
anyway...
              the heart is but an *****
with a shadow in
the shape of an iron maiden...
           point being:
              will you be able to clench
your teeth
             when among others,
sensing, a murdering solitude
that encompasses their
fear of the cliff edge?
        
     once the armies of the world
attacked civilians,
   civilians morphed into armies...
the same discipline applies
to soldiers, as it does to civilians...
which so many of the current
wars, are so unspectacular...
       to be a citizent is akin
to the same rigorous training
as any solider...
         rigour discipline,
   obedience, allegiance,
    otherwise known as as: work ethic.

modern soldiers are ronin,
outcasts...
          why is the modern civilian
to pity a veteran?
  when there is a civilian army
that needs persuading?
  
  terrible things have happened when
armies stopped
    playing by the laws of the sport
of war,
               akin to football...
          and took to dropping their
shields and swords, picking
up bodies, calling their once mighty
tools of the sport, nothing as noble
as excalibur, but? collateral damage.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2017
every day i check the date of a programme,
right at the end of the credits it appears,
and even though i'm not so tough
when it comes to doing modern
mathematics using roman numerals
i spot the oddity, or the blazing truth
of it all...
                   what year are we in nearing
its closure? MMXVII - that's what i thought
two thousand seventeen...
   but i'm sitting in zombie mode watching
a main-stream show, beginning at
5pm and ending with an hour,
and the credits read MMXVI...
2016?! you have to be kidding me!
i'm watching bulimia of culture?
    regurgitated rerun crap?!
              why would you even be demanded
to pay a t.v. license,
when the shows you're watching are
provided by a corporation that's,
frankly... bankrupt?
   maybe it was once the correct
acronym b.b.c. (british broadcasting
corporation)... these days though?
  more like bankrupt broadcasting corporation...
so you get to keep the b.b. after all...
   t.v., a fascinating object these days,
i do enjoy the ketaminesque numbness
of with glued eyes to it...
     and i'll only trust you when you
say you don't watch t.v. if you have one
of two replacements...
a fireplace... or a ******* aquarium!
      i have to turn into a zombie for at least
an hour, or watch a football match to
get my bearings and not turn into
a flamboyant mix between Sid Vicious,
Herb Hancock, David Bowie, Marc Bolan
and a Charlie Chaplin cuckoo!
the b.b.c. is broke...
  it's bankrupt!
              the only money they do have
is bound to fuelling that farcical affair
of trying to revive dancing, not in a nightclub
but at some charity ball,
and not high on ecstasy... good, luck!
    *** died when people stopped dancing
like some imitation of kuru...
              and thanks to freud,
i can safely say... shove that blue pill right
up your **** and tell me if you start
to feel a ****** johnny jr. after a while...
the madonna-***** complex was always
going to be a problem...
i checked, seen about 5+ prostitutes
about it, and each time i see skyscrapers!
            and the strangest bouncing fever ever
ascribed to ****** parts that look
like two octopuses *******...
      so who needs the via, the via...
          gr'ah?
                         please show the gentlemen
to the prozzie and i'll show you
a dysfunctional woman...
               all that sweat talk in the bedroom
comes around like cough medicine...
    there really are female doctors in
this world, obviously unorthodox,
but as ancient as shamans...
        i pay for an hour,
i don't have to deliberate paying for a meal...
well... it is a meal technically...
but you know what i mean.
              is it slavery?
                             really?
i pay, where's the slave aspect of:
             not being paid?
   at one hundred & ten quid an hour?!
you'd get lucky earning more than a tenner
in your usual knuckle-grinding factory!
          besides the point...
the b.b.c. is bankrupt!
            and since when did journalists deviate
from the ethos as depicted by
hoffman & redford in
     all the president's men?
                     sure, there are still the bastion
keepers, but generally speaking,
journalism has become the equivalent
of ******* words...
                   i know i don't trust politicians
because: Simon says - Brutus said it first...
but a distrust of journalism?!
       once the noble, ambitious prospect...
now... ditto-heads and...
there's a big difference between being
offended and being annoyed...
   eastern european brood, "collective" -
politically it's deemed "east" when in fact
it's central -
                       you want east you head
as far back as the Ural Mountains...
then it's east...
                            and pathos of island
dwelling people...
                           they're all alike,
the mentality of: we can do it by ourselves!
and we'll be the ones singing at our own
funeral, too!
                   well... better start singing...
               it's not unique in that it is unique
concerning people living on islands...
                 they are predisposed to isolationism...
which is why the fiasco that is brexit is,
well... to put it mildly... unspectacular.
                 still,
i know i have to distrust a politician,
much harder to have to distrust a journalists,
but, so it seems,
                     i have to distrust journalists
more than politicians these these days...
                because at least i know what i'll
get with the latter... not so much with the former...
with one i'm the mob, with the other:
a dumb witted so-and-so...
    and that's much harder to orientate myself
into... shame, really...
     my distrust must have originated in
the milly dowler case -
                  tabloid still means toilet paper,
doesn't it?
                 and to think, toilet paper costs
more than a tabloid newspaper.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
.i count alright... taking cerberus for a walk: my shadow, a beer and some music; thank god i don't own a car and i can walk with headphone cushions in my ears - not stuck in some sardine canned heat... headphones and walking until the legs do the walking, the heart does the beating rhythm and the mind... forgets itself with any origins of a prefixed self-, or any other constable lieutenant colonel or a major major - of pop self-help cries-for-a-guru pseuchology...

it really has been a music-lover's gehenna...
imagine:
not having an mp3 - attached to your frame
of body - for four months walking
the street without music -
esp. at night -
four months - until i finally succumbed
and had someone buy me a steal of
a 16GB supereye M3 for 20 quid...
once more... magic returned...
if only those cars made the sound of horse hooves
on cobblestones -
mind you: there are no chirping sounds of
birds come night - sometimes the barking
dog - but that's truly rare on the more frequented
streets...
because i had this routine -
3 beers approx. 1 hour and catching a 2 mile
radius... circa...
something to get me away from the current
soap-opera trash of youtube central...
and again the magic... this unspectacular poo'em
for one...
but a walk down a subway beneath the eastern
avenue...
a crime scene - on my way to the petrol station
for the third beer -
a crime scene... an unopened can of baked beans
in tomato sauce...
and a book... with blood over it...
the miracle on the river kwai -
by ernest gordon - the synopsis still reads...
since 1955 has been dean of the chapel of princeton
university. he is married, with a son and daughter.
- and all it was a life content - a lesson in -
this is hardly venice - this is hardly paris -
this is hardly a place of grand expectations -
which also implies that one can bloom, blossom
and ride a white tiger to the zenith -
and no one will interrupt anyone -
because life is best served as a simple
carbonara... when it needs to be fancy...
hell... it can be...
20 quid... and a former love of mine... missing
for over 4 months...
beer, shadow and music... and the night...
why shadow?
i found myself admiring the shadow whenever
i took a walk at night...
the anti-narcissus focus point -
through beer and music on headphones into
the mix... and a scene like that in the subway...
i'm a terrible tourist...
sometimes i go places and forget to send
postcards... or take photographs...
i'm merely there to absorb a sensation...
the lost: almost art - of having enough patience
for someone to take a photograph
of you without you asking for one -
while in the vicinity of home -
eyes darting from my own shadow -
the moon - less the trees and more when
my shadow passes and fuses itself with
the shadows of these trees -
walking on the pavement while also sliding across
walls - enlarging - shrinking under
the streetlamps -
and there's only the ability to glug,
walk and listen: or rather not listen -
as i almost would have wasted the 30 quid on
an oeuvre of kenneth koch...
that's 20 quid on a new mp3 player...
and 10 quid on a new pair of shoes...
the concept of money:
well... if i ever sink into a state of having to write
cliche rhymes - on thank you notes,
on greeting cards...
on... the dross and drool of where words sometimes
go to: look hippopotamus ugly -
scortched and on holiday - mud dripping -
when words do that: to frighten the pelicans.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2021
nothing's going to happen tonight... i'm already thinking what i'm going to be eating for breakfast, how much time it's going to take me complete that NVQ English & Mathematics assessments, the first module... for that role as steward at venues... i'd love to rethink writing, this writing, as: something more than what tabloid newspapers & magazines employ people for... no matter... i don't think i have the stomach to even begin to care what people want to digest... let the people be people: it becomes much easier thus, to become yourself... wholly... but i won't be up to much tonight... why, just because, see below:

there's not much to write about this night...
absolutely nothing:
i'm only scribbling because:
it would be a complete waste: to simply,
to merely drink...
i can't just drink, just: drink...
   waste of a good bourbon if i'm not bleeding
any ink...
the highlight? one of my maine *****
decided to investigate the windowsill
i was perching on... with one foot folded
sitting on it...
so he jumped onto the windowsill
and started toying with: truth or dare with
his reflection... i took a few photographs...
because, as someone once said:
spending time around cats is never
a wasted moment...
it possibly can't be...
       freedom from the leash... from taking
the animal for a walk...
but beside this zenith: of a cat peering into
glass: when glass becomes a mirror in
the night, source of light on the inside...
complete darkness outside...
hell... he managed to sit so excited that
i stood up & took a picture of myself with him...
i stroke my beard...
i scratch my head... if there was a glass
of milk available: i'd probably drink it...
i stroke my beard:
god, i miss fidgeting with my chin
& jaw-line...
        i sometimes wish i was 18 again
and had my long hair done-up into
a French braid...
then i wish i wasn't...
   i like being this indecisive...
        stretched over time... yet composed
to a little bit of space...
- such unspectacular writing...
anyone could do it with enough
focus for keeping up with the rigours
of grammar & spelling...
yet for me... merely an interlude...
winter has come and cycling has become
a chore... extra clothing... gloves...
when speeding even if the recorded
temp. is only hovering above one degrees Celsius...
the felt temp. when riding a bicycle:
with the wind "impediment" drops to below 0...
but winter comforts my thought(s)...
the almost eternal night sooths...
all colours on the ground: dimmed...
everything is more: sketched...
rather than painted...
        i always adored winter...
all that's missing is the snow...
why will the snow never come?
warum werden der schnee, nie kommen?
will the snow never come? why?
come night... when: as it falls...
pirouettes of ghostly ballerinas...
that's how i remember it...
standing in the middle of a graveyard
at night... looking up...
as the flakes fell on my face...
i have never... experienced a tender kiss...
not by a mother, not by a girlfriend...

ich vermissen... dies, nur freude:
komme(n) die lange nacht...

    schneeflocke... schneeflocke...
   kuss mich, nur eine: letzte zeit.
Yenson Sep 2020
made like flimsy vapid foams
ghosts uncored and spineless un forms
in the softness of loose debacles is the norm
resident pale flats and lean-tos huddle in dorms

identikits with no original songs
foundations absent flops that do not conform
buoyed and joined rootless union with hearts not warm
weak and indulgent the fickle wraiths unspectacular in storms

never an edifice or renowned in tomes
the vacuous dwellers worshipping in minds torn
screeching in listless malaise they fizz like cheap plonk
feeble incomplete albino mutants jailed in twisted platforms

— The End —