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Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
and what a difference a clock brings, two clock stand
on a shelf already, both of them with dead batteries -
a third is brought in, and it ticks,
and it Tokajs - and up rise the zemplén
mountains where Attila was laid to rest...
and after a night of drinking -
the ticking clock gives out an energy:
that makes you wake up early,
the alarm is set 15 minutes prior noon,
but you wake up earlier than that:
a nervous energy surrounds the clock
like a bomb, you actually are the bomb,
going off early - otherwise?
what Sartre said about 3 p.m., that
the day is laid to rest by that time,
and if ever from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. in
the land of Noddy you dreamt a void
of pristine calm, then after 3 p.m.
the t.n.t. in you is wet, and there's no
spark, the ultimate existential angst -
as with any synthetic approach of creating
sleep, you are sometimes powerless to
the cure, hardly any analysis of the day's
dignified toils, in biblical jargon:
to live by the sweat of the brow -
some would claim this to be an aristocratic
pastoral - and it could very well be:
a decadent with a ***** room with whips
and handcuffs - but also a decadent with
a personal library... who would have thought
the two are so akin, even with their
seismic polarity. so on a day like this,
two coffees in, four cigarettes later,
a minor literary feat, as ever a poem -
with an approach of: get me out of these
straitjackets of conformity, according
to genres and proven techniques akin to
the sigma opus (or, oeuvre) of an Agatha
Christie... or as fellow men said: eat, ****, repeat...
the true art: how to find the eye of the storm,
the centre, away from the pulverising
strobe lighting of this realm: find me a straight
line off this ****** roundabout - if to infinity
then all the better: away from the re re re re
of res (the repetition of a thing) - be is summer,
be it spring, and the countless admirers of
such idle pursuits as said: shall i compare you
to a summer's day blah blah -
or start stiff, a corpse stiff in writing: mere
warm-up - then loosen the joints (conjunctions
prepositions et al.) and let us butter those
nouns - and change a few nouns into verbs
as already stated - a real ******* moment in
writing: haphazard here, unexplained mutations
here... let us return the same frenzied favour
that this hellish carousel imposed on us;
and as ever, a day that begins prior to 3 p.m.
will usually yield a daylight poem,
the sun is to bright, a vampire like myself
cannot stand the seemingly ultra-violet tinge
to things: a real phosphorescent sheen to all
things oily, whether my lipid skin, or the aloe
of leaves - then to the massive stumbling
block of the dictionary and all principles of
a priori entitled with that fiendish book -
as with every mind: algorithms never provide
the answers, if you haven't already experienced
the word said, by someone else.
so with a day prior to 3 p.m., you wake and wait
till the "natural crumbs in eyes after sleeping"
(rheum) dissolves - the radio is turned on,
the empty bottle of coca cola is ****** into and
the waiting for the alarm to ring - but it doesn't,
you're up already, and take up dietary reading
snippets of ivan bunin's memoir about
the civil war in Russia: cursed day (some could
say, one of the most enduring books concerned
with pleasurable reading while lying in bed,
flat out) - and this poem? all because of the
following snippet from a narrative:
            the Odessa Alarm is requesting information
about the fate of these missing people:
     Valya Zloy (zloi, i.e. evil, alter. in polish?
        zło, alter. in ~english? "zwo'h");
   Misha Mrachny (mrachnyi, i.e. gloomy, alter.
in polish? mroczny, alter in ~english?
             a dried out y, a hollowed out y,
                                   cz via ch, dependent
    of the exclusiveness of independent elocution);
  Furmanchika (furman, i.e. driver...
              an etymological mirror -
           a driver who transports goods using
    a horse and carriage, this is 1918, after all);
  Muravchika (muravei, i.e. ant, alter. in polish?
   mruwka - orthography as rigid aesthetics?
welcome to the army son... but it's actually mrówka,
    i call it personal preferences sometimes,
  not necessary rules, there's no limit to this anarchism,
and there's also another word: murawa (thick grass,
akin to earth, and ants burrowing) -
but you don't see ó at the beginning there, do you?
  the aesthete says: further in, mostly when
   congested with consonants, the alter. to what
the Chinese call: the great wall - or defence against
Mongolian invaders: doubled up with ideograms
that put the Egyptian ideograms to shame,
   is that necessary classification? owl pigeon palm,
less skeletal, then necessarily not ideograms:
hieroglyphics: it gets funnier when phonetic approximates
come across meaning approximates,
   you get ~etymological something or other,
e.g. mirror, you hear shouting: misnomer!
          and you're like: well, you have surd lettering
   and i have ~thedesiredword, so ~exact -
nonetheless, intricacies of a polymer with a benzene
ring at some point.
               i was lying though: this poem actually
came from a very English peculiarity -
name the word aunt, and how i'm sometimes
tongue tied on it: not ant when the English say
auntie - i.e. antee - or how the tongue is less
tied to a Sisyphus stone with the word augment:
so i guess i have to practice augmenting
the word aunt - so it sounds similarly good as
auntie - and that's the prickly feeling there,
a syringe on the tongue and less of a tongue-tie
but more a tongue-numbing - liked to a dentist's
request: open wide and say ah - not a - ah -
                     ah choo!               and many chopstick
dances later: the sound of pain, a shortened version
of aww (which is intended for babies and puppies,
but not all things small) - as in cute -
thus this au grapheme (no Latin variation akin to
æ or œ) - which is acute in comparison to
the two examples çited - ash and eðel / eθel -
                meaningful enough to drop a unit from
the couplet - as the English already do,
                            as explained already - ouch -
and many more theories can be revelled in -
   when looking for handwriting smoothness
of wave weaving stylistics - given now the hand
no longer writes, but the digits dent in grooves onto
    a much smoother surface (in terms of fluidity).
Valya Sep 2021
I am Rain
I am unwavering
Sometimes overwhelming
I come and go as I please
I'll calm you down on dreary nights
And then I'll be gone in a glimpse
All I leave behind is a reminder
A warm rainbow to remember me by
But I am also Valya
I am struggling beyond belief
I am avoiding everyone
I cry as night comes
And I wake up with tears each morning
Yet I still smile throughout the day
I never stay in one mood
One moment I'll be as happy as can be
The next I'll be on the brink of death
Which one of these versions am I truly
Am I the one who brings joy, but leaves
Or am I the one who lives in sorrow, but pretend to be ok
Or am I both
Am I just someone who wishes to bring to others
Trying to bring them a happiness that will stay
Something I have not been able to fully achieve
Or am I something else
Because if I am what I say
Why do I hurt them by leaving
Why do I leave after I give them those memories
Why not bless them with more
Am I just afraid of ruining their day once more
I have no sense of self anymore
Only different fragments of a soul that is lost
I just wish I knew who I was better I'm so lost

— The End —