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http://youtu.be/RGFytiWwsRo
(this is a link to a video that I created for this poem)
Ridgewood (Where We Wait)
We take the most delicious train
to the Queens-Brooklyn border to get here
Where everything is liminal, uncertain, undecided
Even the foundation, Arbitration Rock, at the house on Onderdonk
Was buried for centuries, dug up, and chucked on another imaginary line
The streets are on a grid, and the border on a diagonal
making a stair-stepping hypotenuse of the confused
A challenge to put your time to good use
even on the oz-like yellow brick road on Stockholm
You hear Poles on the street muttering “Marnowanie mojego
czasu tutaj” through the bachata dripping
from the apartments above the stores on Fresh Pond Road

Two of the best restaurants in the boroughs
Rosa’s pizza and Zum Stammtisch mark
the north and south borders of the hill where we wait  
During the seventy-seven riots, Ridgewood
seceded from her stepsister, broke from Boswijk and Breuckelen
-
There’s racism here like carbon monoxide smoke:
at the Ridgewood Y, a man sweats through his shirt
revealing swastikas pierced through the skin underneath
and the Romanian dentist down the street drilling
says “Cred ca am pierd timpul meu aici”
through the machinery scream and burning enamel
she won’t say this if you understand what she means

Walking past the 99 cent stores and the pharmacies,
remembering that there is good, fast, and cheap
But you can only have two of them at the same time,
Crazy Loretta, under her navy knit woolen hat
in her pink sweatsuit and winter coat, smokes
her shaking hand-rolled cigarettes below the train
trestle grinning with her jaw-jutting through
her inch thick specs.  She waggles her chicken bone fingers
saying, “Hiya honey” when you walk by.
If you are brave enough to stop and talk to her,
she’ll tell you that her nephew plays
for the Texas Rangers and her daughter
is a doctor and she’ll probably give you bedbugs
She’ll tell you, fascinated, like a child: “when you squish them - the blood comes out”
She’ll tell you the same thing tomorrow - Loretta forgets.  
In her mind, a phrase like green smoke from her youth
Ich glaube, ich bin meine Zeit hier

The playgrounds are packed with children
practicing how to swear, the girls huddled
reading Twilight like the Bible, and the boys
huddled reading the girls like the Bible
A woman yells to her son to come home a third time
and mutters “Creo que estoy perdiendo mi tiempo aquí”

Buried in Machpelah Cemetary less than a mile from my house,
is the place Houdini is still staging his greatest escape
He has a wide audience.  Sometimes I think there are more dead
residents of Ridgewood than living ones.  The cemeteries stretch
the borders of the appropriate spilling into Christ
the King high school’s front lawn.  Driving Cypress Hills street,
the Manhattan skyscrapers rise looking tomb-toothed parallaxed and
blurry through ephemeral sepulchres, stones, and cement angels pointing at the sky

On one of the stones it says simply: Videor perdo temporis hic
I think we are wasting our time here.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
i can only recommend that, when reading a piece of journalism, you have a book of poetry handy... gathas & sophia are in no conflict, but sure as well the resentment between gathas & diurn is best settled by reading a newspaper, with a book of poetry at hand.

i never drink to anticipate a precipitation of
words -
  i write in a non-anticipatory air -
   just like i believe in an impersonal god -
so sieve the madmen from the madmen,
and arrive at the authentic man.
              i drink, that's no surprise -
the surprise is:
    give me something worth reading
written by a sober man...
         hell, you find a dozen, you have yourself
a little party akin to christianity.
     i know that in a drinking session i'll
have a few words gushing from my silence,
i don't write these observations from
the heart: i pull them, right out, from my ***...
   as i usually compliment a day,
looking at the **** just excused from my body,
lucky for me to note:
red wine does wonders for digestion -
        the plump **** akin to just enough
fibre being digested...
  who would have thought that red wine
does miracles to a **** about to be ******* out.
one worthwhile observation thought,
in the chaos of language that is god,
the first child - gathas -
       the second child - sophia -
    the twins - vera & simi -
           and the 5th child - *diurn
...
it only takes the the child named
diurn to bypass the squabbling of
ancient pleads for affection between
gathas & sophia -
          just have a book of poetry handy
when reading a newspaper article...
  philosophy is akin to poetry,
with a standard of paragraph -
          let's just say that poetry is:
philosophy - without a claustrophobia
and leisurely allowing enough
            space, to make no man myopic.
what came after diurn is best believed
as offshoot strands of *******...
         most likely encompassing
   dei: sine septem, sine mensis,
  sine annus, sine decas, sine vivo.

after all, diurn married the nymph
oblivi -
               you only learn to forget
a day, when someone decides that you
must remember it...
                deliberately...
       to remember such a day is to
enlarge its purpose, its importance...
as they say -
     videor est plus quam actum per se
ex fide dignus,
    plus nihil decipio, curo statera,
    quando curo id, alibi
-
to appear is more than being an act in
      itself, out of authenticity: nothing more
than a deception worth minding,
             when minding it, elsewhere;
yes, i know, it's pig latin -
   then again, pig latin is what you get -
i still have the right to complain -
educated in a roman catholic school,
   that was too lazy to teach its students latin?!
so much for the so called "roman catholic"
school teaching the mother tongue -
   maybe that's why i never took
confirmation -
hey, baptism i was a babe,
   by first communion i was somewhat unaware
of things, but when confirmation came?
technically i was "born" a catholic,
but unlike richard dawkins...
                       i haven't been confirmed...
that book by the german author
about the gnostics -
                    that book: hooked me...
after all, the most interesting people in
christianity are the gnostics -
            i love that: surd-g 'nostics -
        'nomes whenever i grind the grr and
manage to be a linguo heretic and do add
the G - Gnome...
            Gnostic -      dia 'nostic? what's
the diagnosis on this chap, dr. hauzer?!
like i said, i know i will drink and write a poem,
obviously the quality is debatable -
but i never pull a poem out from my heart,
i prefer the ***...
           as a recurrent thought occurred -
  i'm still trying to smuggle in diacritical marks
into english, seems it would be easier
to smuggle in a dozen or so afghani sardines
or a tonne of tobacco from the ukraine -
     i first tried it with the german eszett -
   to be fused at the beginning of an english
word:
   e.g. not soma, when in fact ßtatic -
         not seemingly, when in fact ßmouldering -
     not satire, when in fact ßtrict...
not supposedly, when in fact ßpam...
          not sister, when in fact ßquare -
          but the english won't buy smuggling
diacritical marks, like i said,
sooner to smuggle a dozen afghani sardines
than a single diacritical mark.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
.in the back of my mind...
           gyöngyhajú lány -
                  the huns have finally
succumbed to the "pastor's"
                   castrato harem of the choir?!
wow!
                but i will still have
to "steal" from shakespeare's take
on macbeth, in pig latin...
    by... someone known as apemantus...
what other worth is there beside
citing macbeth?
  thus and the prayer:

              hell... let's give it a spin,
english, latin, scottish gaelic...

  immortal gods, i crave no self;
i pray for no man, but myself.
grant i may never prove so fond,
   to trust man on his oath or bond;
or a harlot for her weeping;
or a dog that seems a-sleeping;
or a keeper with my freedom;
or my friends, if i should need'em.
amen. so fall to 't:
rich men sin, and i eat root.

     immortalem superi, ego rogo nullus sese;
ego tandem enim nullus ****,
sed memet.
     tribuo ego licet numquam
demonstro sic amans,
     ut confido **** super
          suus sacramentum vel vinculum;
   uel scortum quia sua ploratus;
ut canis quod videor soporatus;
ut custor *** mea libertas;
ut mea amici, si ego postulo illis.
amen. ita cado to id:
    **** dives peccare,
                ut ego pappo radix.

again, this is pig latin...
the gaelic version will not be much
better...
                       who the hell can even envision
speaking ancient latin,
without succumbing to modern
english grammar? so much for the
current gaelic...

neo-bhàsmhor diathan, mi miann chan eil fèin;
mi ùrnaigh airson chan eil duine,
                       ach mi fhìn.
tabhartas mi a'chèit(ean) a-chaoidh
                          tha measail,
    gu earbsa duine air an bòid no bann;
no ah clàrsach airson í    a ’caoineadh;
no ah cù sin a ’chadal;
    no ah neach-glèidhidh còmhla ris
                                  mo saorsa;
no mo caraidean, ma tha mi bu chòir
                                            feum air iad.
amen. tha tuiteam gu e:
    beairt fir (sin), agus mi ith freumh.


i really don't see the "problem",
with, the, "problem"
containing itself...
          there's a *******
concern...
  but the paedophiles are
self-reforming?
  so... there's a problem?
               oh sure sure....
there's a problem...
gay pride parades...
      to "me": that's a real *******
problem...
          gas the jews...
casanova just ate a rat...
what's your problem,
*****?!
         the eternal law of man...
ever see a former
convicted paedophiles
get kicked in the face,
and take it,
                like a hulk brute?
**** happens:
at least the heritage
of the slave trade /
the holocaust survivors
also learned...
god will take it,
he made gravity
a jurisprudence stasis...
because he knew...
man, for all the jurisprudnce
worth? not worth that
much...
                "sorry"...
i'm not defending,
but i get them...
when grown women become
so nauseating,
limitating, so... "off-limits"...
you know what
a male mating pig's name
is in a porky harem
in poland?
        knur / knout...
that word alone lets me
to remember ******...
          gg... ******: swim...
down the deep-end...
             you were gagging for
this to become apparent,
this enforced egg-shell
walk *******...
      and i was called vermin...
and there came the mongol,
the **** and the communist...
now i'm watching
these bulging african hulks
and i'm looking at my body...
and... there really isn't
much to think of!
             pressing the right buttons...
i like that, now i get to press
the "wrong" buttons
on behalf of me...
      come on...
kinh john of england
wed a bride aged...
   isabella of angoulême
                 (lem) no "extra" e...
there's the ian watkins
example...
         of the lostprophets...
no baby-****** is
given you the jitters
when it comes to teenage girls...
i'm sorry...
     i remember being a teenager...
what's wrong with
teenager sexuality?
there's something wrong with
it?
    oh... there was always
something wrong with it...
sexuality matures,
legally...
when a woman reaches
her prime age
of 40, and she's crazy not having
frozen her ovaries...
wow!
             no, really, wow!
she's not a baby,
she's in her teens...
talk about an elevated
stance on m.g.m.
(male genital mutilation)...
it's like:
harem, ******, strap-ons
are not enough!
the mere thought is evil!
some more pharmacological
revisionists actions, yes?
so the simple process
of castration won't help?
we'll need the pharmacological
amnesia procedure?
cool cool!
         sign me up...
i already have a hard-on
for the experiment...
  if these people want to see
a baboon in a cage
riddled by haemorrhoids...
sign me up
for this "judo chop" sat on.

see... i see a big difference
when it comes to honesty
and outright shaming...
   when someone says they have
these kind of urges,
but is nontheless able
to suppress them?
       that's a ******* diamond...
that's worth keeping...
  i like this sort of honesty...
what i don't like is scheming
and shaming these unique
examples...

             between male to male...
it's the one resort's worth of
a cognitive ****** that serves
its purpose...
again... how old was
isabella of angoulême
when she was wedded to
king john of england?

          plus... all the teens look alike...
maybe that's the problems
facing these *******
reasoning type inhibitors of
the urge...

     mind you...
   lars von trier's take on
paedophilia in nymphomaniac...
at least some had
the ***** to commit
             to the deviant taboo...
but all the children look alike...
    what is it?
the fetish for "everything"
looking alike?
     generic fetish?

to reiterate:            

in the end...
     like all babies...
they just have the faces
of clones...
           non-distinguishable...

the difference between me
and your common folk...
well...
   kicking someone in the head...
on parole...
for distributing leaflets
in a new employment...
    whatever they did...
i suppose
the guillotine would be
a more humane eventuality
to provide justice on the part
of the victim...

       sexuality is odd...
to make homosexuality norm...
but paedophilia a taboo...
  feels like "someone" is being
excluded...
can't exactly make one
the norm and leave the other
one in the tribunal
of the nomads;
                          how is it fair?

in no desence,
   but i gather: what i have written,
will never reach the pop
majority that is usually associated
with a pop backlash,
just like: psychology made philosophy
popular in the 19th century,
by shortening it,
by sticking to schematic explanations...
like this,
   this will not reach the regurgitators
of pop culture, those twitter
sycophancy *****...
        unless, i'm, dead!
            i'll be left with drying
my jeans on the bed, with a cat sleeping
on the same bed i've decided to treat
as a rack...
      even now...
              try reading a Marcel Proust
2 vol. edition...
                    go to the gym, bro.,
       believe me: go to the gym, bro.
              
me? i love it...
it's like i can put on a godhead of either
rat or a fox, and manoeuvre my way
past all these jimmy... ****...
all these jeremy clarksons...
    and jeremy kyles...
                         another whiskey bottle
for me, another obscure prog rock album...
another night...
         and the world can just pass
me by, while i return to enjoying
skipping onto a double-decker from romford
to stratford, through to oxford st.,

some bad latin, even worse scottish gaelic...
these days you're not even famous
for 15 minutes, as, according to the andy warhol
prediction...
no one is famous these days,
not even for 15 minutes...
             the 15 minute window is over...
now? if you want to be "famous"...
sorry...
             infamy doesn't work
in 15 minute slots...
      when you're "famous" these days?
you're infamous forever...
         these days any publicity:
is bad publicity...
           i'll curse the day when i become
relevant to a large enough
number of people...
      that's the day i will learn
that i have lost the respect of the few
i managed to enthral.

— The End —