a minor amnesia - nonetheless it happens,
there's another word for it...
skleroza: spontaneous forgetfulness...
this fickle creature that's memory...
thankfully i have a stash of about 5 major memories
that i like to revisit...
play them over and over in my head...
since... i'm not on the crux of death...
well... since i'm not...
i have become more prone to exercise
the freedom of memory than i might want
to watch a movie...
trouble comes when i'm not my own d.j.,
in a car... heading toward... ******* IKEA...
in Enfield... where the phlegmatic crew of
dodo are this close | | to learning the arithmetic
of time...
a song on the radio... Belinda Carlisle...
circle in the sand...
in between talking with my father...
                  nothing metaphorical about that...
- so you know how old bob marley was
when he died? 36...
- you think he would still be touring?
well... he wouldn't need the money...
**** jagger does it for the joy...
          
i can't write narratives...
it's not like we're estranged...
but... it's complicated...
i think this is one area of my life i will keep
off-limits when writing...
i can be as honest about ******
as i can be about horses...
the narrative never took place...
believe me...
we talked about a range of things...
morgage

then when we came home an hour
later than expected...
she (dearest mother)
was probably drinking alone...
throwing little tantrums of me and father
alone time...
well... not to mention he was absent
from the most crucial years of my life...
from 4 till 8...
how does the ugly side of immigration
look like? brain-drain...
we: the diaspora members...
away from the motherland...
for the "better life"...
i too am playing catch-up...
how did ol' Leo frame it?
every happy family is the same...
but every sad family is sad uniquely:
in it's own unique way...

   get Wittgenstein to sort this
tautology... i'm not going to bother...
come to think of it... it's not even
a tautology... a tautology would be more
focused on thesaurus rex...

we had a conversation about football
and music... re-mortgaging...
even Bowie remained true to music...
he probably didn't tour...
but still made new content...
singing about mortality and ****...
i think i'm having this playback moment
in my head...

but then this song came on the radio...
magic fm... belinda carlisle...
circle in the sand...
all of a sudden i had this urge to listen
to a song, that song reminded me off...
oh hell... exactly: what was it?
the search began with: 'the message'...
mc-****-fartery...
      round and round...
jokes aside... i had to listen to belinda's
song on earphones once more
before the "revelation"...

  it seems obvious... "now"...

nik ******* kershaw - the riddle...

exactly... how did i get "the message" wrong?
two strong arms... blessings of Babylon...
blah blah: toe-tying-riddle...
almost like good luck is expected...

come to "think" of it...
a revelation... even though there's that monotheistic
focus on the patriarch...
puppet... strings...
missing *******...
i'm having a hard time not thinking
that ha-shem... the nameless father of hey-zeus
and the ha-ha-mighty blah-lah-al
are not... primarily... feminine gods...
well... conjured up from a ****
rather than a working 'ed...

they're irrational... and can be reduced down
to... the three heads of Cerberus...
they are never really depicted...
worded sleuth pulp fiction harlequin traps...
most artists?
oh **** me... even the ****'ites would agree...
get your eyes to focus on something...
that's how much i dare to admire Islam...
from the ****'ite perspective...

what ******* topic is this?
i was about to pour myself another drink
and this thought like a blitzkrieg came
flushed from a ******* in the universe
where all the gods and nothings
congregate from indigestion and
constipation...
a ******* miracle: a diarrhoea moment...
of sorts...
the monotheistic veneer... of "patriarchy"...

what?! she wants a ring of gold
and my ******* too?
how about a tent's worth of a kippah
on my ******* tonsure?
a man would require a screwdriver...
a hammer... nails... screws...
it would make sense to have many
involved... than this pressure of solipsism...
vampire... succubus... leech...
a ****** hail mary...

**** speak...
                    so great... the technological advances...
atheistic secularism...
but there's a ******* grid-lock to mind too...
no a ****** dam...
a rich cognitive custard...
it's just that: a cognitive custard...
like Moses rekindling a belonging concept
along the lines of being lied to:

monotheism hardly serves man...
i can find appeals to the illusion it presents...
but... hardly...
looks like the "plenty of fish in the sea"
metaphor is drying up the concept
of a "catch"...

the conversation with my father are
off-limits in my purpose of writing in the first
place... unlike a Knausgaard...
i'm the drinker... he's the teetotaller...
he's the workhorse i'm the... chicken-scratcher:
if i had ink...
but i'm also probably ten beaks pecking
resounding at this... grand... oh my god...
******* piano of QWERTY...

genius idea... what?
qwerty... because the orthodox memory erosion
of the alphabet is of any use?
suddenly everything has to **** me off...
it has to be dipped in still water...
it has to be believable...
monotheism is concretely a religion
designated for the preservation of women...
why my *******?
oh... because if you don't have it...
i can... ******* at a leisurely pace?

that a woman can ******* without inhibitions...
while i have to be shamed?
*******, *******...
i don't even have enough slander to express
what my heart reacts to these days...
i don't have "hurt" feels...
i have... agitated feelings...
thank you for waking me up from my numb...
apathy...
but what do i hear? "hurt feels"...
****'s sake... those people don't even recognise
what feeling is supposed to feel like!
they're all french footballers... "hurt" all of a sudden...
wow! so...
"hurt" is translated into the parameters of:
feeling per se?
imagine my shock finding out that
apathy has dulled "i.q." to so little that...
you must be hurt to feel...
you can't be spontaneously agitated...
you must be hurt...

bring out the hot horseshoes...
let's have some fun branding these *******-waggling-
***** aside...

just wait for the breeders to wake up
to having children that turn into freely-arranged
agents of will...
i'm passing through a decade where there's
boasting...
but sooner rather than later...
there will be some hidden mention
of those... pickled-cabbage:
why do the 'indus find pickled cabbage
"funny"?
not eating beef sounds pretty funny...
or like that "proverb" from Morocco:
there's no water, in the desert...
then... what... the... ****... are... you...
"doing" in this, here... land of replenished
roots?!

******* camel jockeys...
what do "they" call them, proper?
sand-*******...
it would take a Bengladesi to get
smart notes on the caste "system"....
Aryan has no origin in Europe...
it probably originated in Indian when
they first came across Persians...
who are... oddly... "pale"...
but have not bartablondine aspects
of their ****** expressions...

ivory skinned like an Iranian or a ***-
without a suntan?
"you" wanted trenches...
here's my designated plot...
"you" wanted ******* to overshadow
real.. culprit-esque concerns...
the jealousy of a woman
knows not bounds...
most especially when a father-son
privacy is engaged with...

   if i ever encountered male jealousy...
it was always rare...
almost never...
         but female jealousy? anything...
everything to belittle the opposing "authority"...
ha-shem... the jealous deity of women...
blah-lah-al of...kept secrets stashed in the niqab...
allure of the ******* eyes...
come on...

****** ******* mary:
that matriarch of sold foetuses and
walking abortions...
at least there was something adventerous
in conceiving the existence of Loki...
of Thor...
there's nothing... original about the point
of monotheistic gods...
that there are three...
is Islam the truest of religions?!
they had a Sunni ****'ite schism... didn't they?
once again:
i want to believe in something:
to give me momentum...
give be a willing acceptance to excuse...
an overarching stressor of incredulity...
and a... "what life"?

well... existence is...
out of every instance: a persistence to:
instance... a persistence...
that's... existence... ex-
out of...
and stance...
dis-ease... a negation of ease...

there will be plenty more of those car
journey listening to magic fm...

an "original": whether mind, or thinker...
that mythology of evil that the Nazis provided...
******* Armani suits and boots...
or whoever designed them... Hugo Boss...
what are we left with,
to mind matters of collectivism?
the evil of censorship instigated by...
halfwits and ******* haemophiliacs?

a myth of evil that could be...
galvanised... momentum and emblem...
what's on offer... currently?
grey-suits and...
expectations: that it's the "21st century"
something magical is about to happen...
what's the difference between the 20th century
and the 18th century?
the 19th century...
so what's the difference between
a pebble, a cliff edge and a mountain?
don't know... a river? a lake?

that same **** different cover excuse
like some wonderful was going to happen
in the 21st century...
like there was a promise...
where is this **** coming from?!
oh yeah... but it's the 21st century...
i was hoping for gravity to ******* and turn all:
short-circuit awry...

i can pretend... for a while...
but after that while passes... i turn into a real mystery
of a door **** gone berserker...
are there these societal expectations
to simply **** **** the next...
blow the next... ******* origami of OXFAM
purple-fest whimpering "dead-doughnut":
although i'd cry... if it was a stray dog
from the streets of Seville...
******* camel-jockeys...

  it's not even a inhibited play on pronouns:
there's no: "they"...
i thought the trans-lobbyist covered the plug-hole
of cognitive-****...
there is not "us" or "them":
gender neutral is me...
armed with a strap-on ***** on my ******* forehead...
a bit like... that hebrew practice of...

so i had me a "friend: a fwend...
maybe that's cornish for something in velsh...
you know how word salad sounds?
on a persistence?
sure... a son of divorce...
what am i? his ******* uncle?
his mother undermined the concept
of al dente spaghetti...
we're talking fractions of people...

people eat ****... leave the universal utility
of pork aside...
mind you: not water in the desert...
and not piggy too...
the leather shoe... the belt...
it's not exactly kosher... is it?
i have this backlog of a peoples...
at least a priest only attracts confessions...
i'm not at knife point
easy... for this triad to work?

if my fwend mentioned cognitive custard...
but the concensus of word salad
is socially broke on the norm...
so blah blah boo'yah assortment...
enriched strawberries...
juicing much later...
i can understand cognitive custard... pie...
but a word salad?
that's.... what doesn't deviate from
solipsism... this solo "project"
of "you and i"...

                       psychiatry is persisting to be
deemed a branch of
the Hippocratic oath....
but it's not...it's pseudo-"medicinal"...
it's hyped-up... idon't remember
that junction in a life...
hardly worth lived... just lived...
of my 20s... what mea culpa stressor of
those psychopaths?
currents under the broken wheel of...
attempts at supressing..
momentum? this whole ******* "flake"
of barrage?

by word salad you're implying i
have, speak... low i.q....
    non-hieroglyphic suede...
non-answerable... past replica...
woe wow salad...
but how i understand it...
a cognitive custard...
well... thinking is messy:
you ******* dim-wits!
        ought-i: thought...
i don't like being ridiculed...
or expected to her a less i.q. than what's...
nuanced at a ****** favouritism... Balkan-esque...
seriously... *******: before i ****** someone...
ugh attached to that: wind... now there's a purpose...

yeah... so what's what?
this is the least of my "concern"?
well... as they say in the west...
as long as the brain-drain happens...
we can forget about keeping the native 9 to 5ams...
sort of... but hardly... justifiably...
less than expectedly...
capitalistically boast: not exhausted...
sort of...

i can understand cognitive custard...
meddle some more...
word salad?
your ******* ****- nig-
of sorts is speaking your language better than me?
******* sour crass of a native's ***!
*******...  and you deserve it.

You probably saw her sometime, but
Didn't spare her more than a second look,
Demure girl, purple kurta-white salwar,
Quite routine, nothing out of the books.

Oh but I saw her, the true her,
Slender hands controlling a sturdy Enfield,
Salwar flapping wildly, freely against the wind.
Must admit, I couldn't stop looking!

why is everyone so ******* sensitive these days? Brine Kaiser? die Norden Kaiser? well, Tsar and Fuhrer taught them well... the Brits want to smoke the Poles out in providing a narrative... the empire is gone... gone gone gone... i'm just curious... why is everyone so sensitive these days? personally? i obstruct any point of monotheistic orthodoxy with the Malachi heresy of the concept of reincarnation... Christianity doesn't and Islam doesn't really bother me... Harry Enfield said enough to counter: said as much; if ever you were looking for the perfect cloning mechanics, i'd look at Christianity and Islam... god... using these words in any rational discussion can make anyone and everyone seem so ****** barbaric.

you already heard of the Hebraic version
of democracy *ecce **** - in Christ, and thus said:
in the outer-Roman conquerors or Yiddish
and Holocaust -
the twisted Hindu doctrine -
thus the crowd bellowed -
and thus, the crowd, received -
to what waking hour are
we to be woken to in fear?
as this fear, perpetrates to be
heard and resound in profoundness?
or hath no Jew a clue
as to weave an answer?
                       except that concerning
Palestine?! then so be said: as
it would be done -
                         or keeping
to a polytheistic doctrine
at its centre Malachi's reincarnation mantra -
then too spat on,
rejected,               admonished -
             then by equal cure: also
done unto by equating measure;
for i have no cherry to cherish
in the suburbs of Jerusalem,
as i have no figs to break Ramadan with
to suit a Muslim -
            both to me both are deservedly walled in -
and inclined to take each other's lives -
                 and should be entombed
in their jealousy of heated dispute -
both are worth the wall,
with one wall the Jews built to encode
an exclusion of Arabs, then i, with a second,
exclude the Jew with Arab,
and a second wall, beginning with
the Ottoman and ending with the Saudi -
there: each rat to eat his own...
and learn monotheism as if he were learning
cannibalism;
anyone with other lessons reside here: and the future
of that region is spared in retaining the present...
leave 'em to it, like rat eating rat in
a tomb of awaited death...
                  leave them, to it:
just so i can hear the peasant eat the rabbis
of quickened-tongues when they start dressing-up
    to a spectacle: authority of dress from imam
and rabbi... authority of dressing up,
never, never, the learning curvatures of what
expansion: in the beginning was the word: reason -
   or the one who didn't dress-up
              in fancy dress, but made eloquent
his reasons, and the impersonal god -
                       the pepper in the arses of the crowd:
as said: ants in my pants and i was about to say: termites:
'cos i was woody Allen and a full-bloodied ****...
        come north, come north,
they came north... what attacked the Romans
they thought wouldn't attack them; oh gee... it did.
brick them up together, them along with the Palestinians,
i want the Saudi reaction... they're rich enough
to give me one; if they don't? i'll ask the Bangladeshi
slaves who built the Dubai tower about how one fares
in the desert.

Qui Transtulit Sustinet

There sat CONNECTICUT, a twit
blue nanny-state, and doomed to sit
on welfare-warrens of the ******
her social service on demand.
She withers on NEW ENGLAND‘s vine
a bygone has-been, and a sign
of democratic overkill
where her once-dear and verdant rill
now stagnant flows: polluted stream
a moribund New England dream.
The richest state with poorest heart:
the Northeast’s saddest story. Part
of history’s renowned revival,
now irrelevant. Survival
chains her children in dependence
keeping back the state’s ascendance.
Apostate Puritan, grown old—
for LIBERTY, no longer bold;
a slave to Man, where once God’s WORD
awakened greatness. Souls were stirred
in ENFIELD (of all strange places),
Christ beheld in radiant faces . . .
Edwards held their spellbound souls
like spiders over flaming coals,
in gratitude for Gospel grace
renewing thus both town and race.
But I digress. Connecticut
is what I came to speak about:
forgotten dull colonial matron
yoked in failure, plebe as patron
nostalgic for her Charter Oak
whose deadwood limbs went up in smoke
along with dark tobacco wrap
while the plantation took a nap.
Her social programs overgrowth
pose forest fire-risk. Under oath
her public servants signal virtue;
sign which really should alert you
to the democrat-machine’s
impending failure (ways and means).
Nutmeg-addled Tax-and-spenders,
dollar drunks on welfare benders
widen economic rifts;
force single moms toward double shifts
while Latin Kings hold court in prison
waiting out their royal season:
fiscally unsustainable—
yet totally explainable
(nutmeg is a drug for witches
spendthrift warlocks, bankrupt *******).
Oh HARTFORD, city of the dead
which dies at five, then home to bed,
insurance once assured your rise;
but now your ghosts haunt sadder skies.
Your life displaced, outsourced, out-dated;
so, it seems, your fall was fated.
Meanwhile, close to New York City,
fairer fields are growing pretty
long on corporate commutes.
Data-driven growth computes
as data-drivers flood the roads
and enter by Manhattan-loads
from golden coasts’ Atlantic shores
and posh patrician golden doors
to bite the apple of our time:
a number-cruncher built on crime.
New England’s puritannic granny
(data-driven tyrant ******)
seeks to harbor tropic isles
with blandly bureaucratic smiles.
Your poor dear heart cannot afford
to welcome every island lord
who looks to better his estate
and so decides to emigrate.
Displaced Jamaicans outta yard
compel the soft verse to get hard.
Boricua separatists, dispersed
show nationalities reversed
and dwell between two foreign lands
in Spanglish no one understands.
Such nutmeg gets the covens high
to soar the stormy Liberal sky.
It’s Yankee hubris: condescension
taxing plebes for such dissension.
Though you connect, there I would cut,
excising from New England’s gut
metastasizing social tumors:
clueless and obese consumers,
teenage moms, pajama-clad
whose nenes wait in vain for dad.
QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET—truth . . .
but that was was in our nation’s youth.
She’s gotten worse with passing years
confirming citizens’ worst fears;
showing her colors every vote
her monotone, a droning note
on which the blue-bloods hang their hue
when hope and change are overdue.
Her atheist zeal meets Yankee pride:
a most progressive broomstick ride;
oblivious to her Christian past,
an enemy of God at last.

I will ignore all concepts of adherence and maybe, just this once,
be blunt about my fear;

I’m a stuck oriole in a window.
I’m a pedestrian somewhere in VV Soliven underneath the pouring rain
with my parasol jammed, won’t spread out.
The petrichor from the ground rises and like dust,
I settle and cave in, like an unsuspecting dagger making its slow crawl
towards the back of the next face I see in this deadlock.

They say when you stick it to the man,
stick it good, and whatever beating or punishment may follow,
face it like a man.

but what is a man to do to the higher man
when he has his guts spread on the floor like an inkblot
from a shattered glass?
this working classman status isn’t for the weak,
and it sure isn’t for the brave either – what will become of the fools
sitting atop our heads when we have learned to outgrow them?

Sooner than it is later, I will go back to the pit like some soldier
cleaning his Lee-Enfield in the endless snow.
I will be faced by inbreds, imbeciles, rebels,
dilettantes, proletariats who have their necks leashed, their arms
puppeteered and their voices mellowed down by some defunct ventriloquism.
I will crank open the mailbox of my home and see that there
are notices: some from the bank, the loans, and the bills – all of them screaming
pecuniary, all of them bludgeoning soul.

If this is what a man has to deal with when he comes to
learn that life’s no downtown street promenade, then I’m willing
to slit the throat of the next child that’s giddy enough and filled with life
to search meaning through the bleared image in front of him.
I see high-stake rollers and proletariats, bigshots, and darling boys
roll down their car windows and flick the smoke out in the **** freeway

while I am here, watching myself slowly rot in the cubicle mirror next door
wary of my somber entrails. I think of a pub somewhere in Magallanes, and I dream
heavily when I am awake. The beaded body of the Hefeweizen is waiting for me
like a paramour, but I have to clock-punch my way out first before I can reach
some sort of truce: as long as I have myself sign these contracts, as far as my freedom is
concerned, what keeps the ball rolling for me might be something I would
despise as long as I breathe in this disgustingly thick air of deceit and consummation.
There is no life in here. All of us are dead.
Buying things we do not need, doing things we don’t want, fooling ourselves
in the complete process, marry wives and husbands and breed children
who will do the same in this cyclically deadening circus. My god is filled with
cotton and the streets scream ****** ****** against the spring.
There are enough violence in the thoroughfares to cast me back to my
home and coil, fraught with unrelenting demand.

There’s no other way to look at it rather than simplifying the equation.
Some do it for worth, that’s your tonic.
Some do it for fun, that’s your senseless beating.
Some do it because they have no other choice: they are not looking far enough.
As long as you have yourself beaten to slave-bone and driven mad with
downtime, then you have yourself laid down on a silver-platter catching
the swill of such riotous rigor: to be shaken out of sleep and shove
meat down your throat and thank the Gods for a wonderful day when all I see
outside are streets blackened to the teeth with distortion and the automobiles
like limbless children leaving no trace.

Some take the easiest way out, but I am not crazy enough to bring
myself to sanity. I have other caprices to go with.
This is enough a suicide than it is on the other side.
Whenever I look at my superior, I see nothing,
and whenever I gaze at the surrounding scenes I see people
sticking knives at each other when backs are turned.
I see people swallow everything that is given to them without
the slightest inch of askance: to complain is the inability to withstand
the current situation – but I am no fool to close my eyes.
I have still the guts to face everyday like some old friend, death, in my arms,
singing blues from the 1980s. When this is done,
I will go back to where it usually does not hurt: in the silence.

where no faces bid me hello – they do well in their own discomfiture,
and I do not wish to see them any longer.
where no automobiles tear the streets and cleave the moon farewell.
where there are no sparrows outside, where there are no laughing children,
where there are no hollow men and women greeting each other tenderly
and blighting each other safe in the resignation of some dull home.

if I am mad, then what does this make you? better? privileged?
I’ve had other people look deep into me like some deepwell without
water and they tell me, “there’s something about you, something about you.”
and when I turn my back to search for some sameness,
I figure there is nothing else to find but the same trapping fate in this
burning cylinder of a home.

Waking up and filling in shoes and dressing up for nothing,
earning money and throwing it all at our own expense,
buying thrills and wasting away as time lounges like a cat
at the foot of the Victorian. If there’s better enough a fall than this,
I will sign myself to have my bones broken, my ribs opened

to let go of my famished soul while all the others
keep themselves clean, putrefying themselves viscerally.

As the night drifts away into the night of its day
and the dues have been paid
to the Devil's handmaiden
when the birds start to sing to bring normality back
and I lacking foresight am trapped in the still night
an explosion occurs.
Boom
and the room that I'm in starts to spin
and my head comes apart at the sound of the din when my body wanders off and does not let me back in to control where it goes.
At the end of my nose which is as far as I can see.
I can see this is not good for me.

The night always wins
always spins me around
sometimes in explosions
sometimes with no sound
I never can tell what horrors born of hell will waylay me as I try to sleep like an innocent baby(fat chance of that)

Scratched by the quill because if it wants to it will
I have no choice but to bend, words are written and I send them to all that would read, then I send them once more
words are the clothing I wore yesterday
before night made its play and tomorrow,today I will write anyway to escape from the twilight where words become the only light and shadows dance across,
I might start to dance too
night gets through to me
invades and seduces me
whispering it reduces me to a quivering wreck.

I seek what is there but where that is I don't know
the night does not show nor give up secrets,
I know there is much I could find if I could find that my mind controls my body
resignedly I halt
slip the bolt on my lee enfield
and yield to that temptation
to reach my destination without calling at any stations on the way.
Night has its way with me
trips me up and then slays me
once again.

I pick up what is left of me.
All day I’ve cut myself and bled.
Suddenly the world is at war:
Everywhere I step is a mine-field,
Everything is wrapped in barbed wires.

I sit in front of my window, pause.
The trenches have taken their toll.
The skirmish has gone too long.
My old Enfield has proved useless,
And I could never use the bayonet.

In my pocket beats your letter.
I have carried it all day, knowing.
It rests, like a grenade, against my heart.
You said nothing: but the dusk spoke
With a sadness akin to your voice;

I know what it says, but I wait.
One last long puff… I pull the pin.

Diptesh Ghosh

Affixed to the Lee–Enfield,
this blade, this trigger point,
stricken by ambush,
enters the melee
along the false edge,
cuts to the core,
like sympathizers of
William of Orange.

There are no daggers
apart from war,
just an ocean of
death and defeat,
its water,
its ever rising water,
swallows us whole.

There’s no arguing that idealism has its place,
For if it does not flower, bloom, and spread its seeds
As the dying dandelion casts downy remnants hither and yon,
Then we have wept our tears and trodden in funereal processions
In pursuit of nothing more tangible than the wind itself.
That said, my boys, we shan’t live out our days
In some misty fairyland where the streams run with single-malt
And the trees are heavy with lamb and rashers;
This world can be a bitter, unpleasant place
(The unconditional love of mankind
Being the sole province of Our Saviour)
Where a man will give his wife a quick peck goodbye,
Then give a swift kick to a limping puppy sitting on the stoop,
Or the kindly veterinary will raise a lovely mouse
Just below his missus’ right eye
Upon returning from his local on a Friday night.

That ‘s the game as it’s played on this pitch,
And injury time has a whole new meaning here, lads,
For many’s the striker who is carried off
With pennies over his eyes.
Again, we have no quibble with Locke, Voltaire,
And the rights of man,
But know this: your leaflets will tear and blow away,
And speeches which roll through Parliament and trade union halls
Like great thunderstorms which blow in from the North Sea
Shall fade into the silence of minutes bound and shelved away
In some corner of the vast library of the forgotten.
You may shun the handwork of Messrs. Lee and Enfield,
Simpering that the rifle is the gavel of the coward,
That the garrote plays the music of the ******.
Tell us, then, where the bravery lies in scribbling crimson prose
While ensconced in the warmth and safety of your rooms,
What dignity is gained by meekly dropping your gaze
When confronted by the stare of the Black and Tans?
There is no valor in sighting down windmills.

Enfield punches the ground, wheels throw up muddy rainbows
from where they sank with the rain. The rider, some fresh young college thing,
flinches as it ricochets off his goggles, then unsteadily pulls away
wrestling with this strange machine. The old blokes laugh
with their propane cookers and badger-stripe beards, slick
with bacon grease and spit. Outside the beer tent
a kid fingers an old blues tune on a scarred and beaten acoustic.
Coins thrown into an old railway cap, her grandfather’s
smile golden in the sunrise.

At Gordon Hill
I climbed aboard
A lazy day
For being bored

Enfield sweltered
Beneath the sun
Then I saw her
She looked like fun

Her torn blue jeans
Showed sun-brown thigh
As Hertfordshire
Slipped quickly by

An English miss
Of that no doubt
My usual type
Is short and stout

But on that train
Just her and I
Her slender form
Did keep my eye

Both Welwyn bound
A summer's day
I fantasised
Us in the hay

That kept the shade
Of her fair hair
They put her there
For me to stare

A poster girl
She was you see
On British Rail's
Class Three One Three.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                      Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

                     “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

                             -Holmes’ first words to Watson in
                                     A Study in Scarlet, 1887

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings of more young men:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull


From The Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com

“Afghanistan, graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.

as published in LogoSophia

Gave up trying to remedy the formatting...

“The Result was Silence”

“Today I initiated a telephone conversation with the President of the Russian Federation. The result was silence.” -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

There is no silence in Kiev this dawn
Morning commutes, intermittent news feeds
Explosions. Power failures. How many will die
Without finishing their WORDLE today

Old men rattle their dentures in outrage
Sky News reports a couple of police officers
In the street below, smoking cigarettes
Which makes more sense than most things just now

Kharkov’s air-raid sirens are deeper than Kiev’s
There is no silence in Kiev this dawn

A Few Kind Thoughts for Roman Soldiers

If you have stood your watch throughout the night
To guard a clothesline of national importance
Dug foxholes only to fill them up again
And then patrolled through long days in the heat

If you have enjoyed Cinderella Liberty
And talking about poetry and girls
With a few mates down at the coffee shop
Because that’s all your poor pay can afford

You will then understand the conscript guards
Posted to keep order on Calvary

Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

(First published in The Road to Magdalena, 2012)

We Have No Enemies Among the Dead
For the Young Crew of the Moskva
14 April 2022

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave…
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea -The Navy Hymn

Proud admirals and presidents rattle their medals

The young – in screams among burst steam lines die
Explosions and darkness and seawater and hatches sealed
The bulkheads blown, there is no up, no down
Only pain and horror and throat-torn shrieks

Proud admirals and presidents jing-aling their medals

Training manuals, pocketknives, and comic books
Naughty pinups, letters from Mom, wrenches, and boots
Toolboxes, ball-point pens, and coffee cups
Fall with the young deep down into the sea

Proud admirals and presidents dazzle the room with their medals

Mothers and fathers grieve in emptiness
Our Leaders caution them to mind their attitude

Proud admirals and presidents – to Hell with their medals

Crazy Old Men with Rockets ‘n’ Bombs

When you read to your brother or sister
A go-to-sleep book about bunnies and stars
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing along with the washing machine
And help your MeeMaw up those tricky stairs
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sit on the steps late at night
And watch a pirate ship sail close by the moon
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you pray for the bombed-out refugees
And put a little extra in the collection plate
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing a song to the universe
It remains in the heavens forever

Because

You helped heal a wound in Creation

No Bombers Over Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic School in 1958:
A Brief Discussion of a Successful Cold War Tactic

from an idea suggested by Kirk Briggs

Some have scoffed about hiding under our tables
As protection from the Soviets’ nuclear strikes
But scorn not this truth of those factual fables:
It worked! No bombers! Post that as one of our “likes!”

it was around 2001, i.e. circa 2001 (tautology,
but not for rhetorical purposes, not as tool of the sophists)
when the mad cow disease spread across
England: that beef and hoof and moo genocide
when the cows got their "geriatric" wobblies
their Parkinson's shake-a-doodle-do's -
frenzied like Elvis finding gravity in the knees
and the pelvis with suede and blue dogs...
music before drug affirmative mantras...
yes... then... around that time...
i was still one year short of sitting my GCSEs...
me and this rascal, Peter, Richardson(?) -
we used to roam the streets on the weekend...
climbing trees, throwing glass bottles into the air
waiting for them to shatter... going up multistorey
car parks and spitting on people...
well... i did have an agenda about spitting on people:
another time when i was much younger
i was taken to Chessington World of Adventures
theme park by my father... there we were minding
our own business watching seals
when a ride passed us... one of those train rides on
stilts - a group of boys in a carriage decided it was
fun to spit on people... one massive phlegm landed
on my father's head... i was furious!
i wanted to get my own back... as it happens...
karma can be blind... there are always collaterals,
innocent bystanders while karma is allowed to sentence
some sort of compensation...
karma is hardly personal: or rather people THINK
that karma obeys personal qualms,
you can't harness karma for your own sake...
but people always cite karma like so, especially in the west...
well i did get my own back...
i managed to land a juicy phlegm hark on a collateral's
head from about 20m high up in a parking lot
with Peter one beautiful Saturday afternoon in Ilford...
so i was supposed to go to this outdoors resort
centre for "poor" and "disadvantaged" kids in Wales,
Glasbury (see it? now say it... the Welsh say it
as Glaze-Bury: it's not Glass-Bury, more on that in
a minute)...
          i didn't go with Peter that year because said X...
bad moo moo...
          but the P.E. (physical education) teacher was kind
enough to offer me a chance to go again
two years later... but then i was sitting my A-levels
but by then Peter was long gone:
deciding to finish his education at 16 and go into tattooing,
getting his teeth knocked out in pub brawls,
ending up working in a carpet retailer
(although, much later i found him shacked up with
this honey and i thought to myself: ****...)
so i went to this retreat...
                    we did horse-riding, caving,
canoeing...
                         but one day we were told to do this exercise...
split into two groups...
one group: older boys with younger girls...
group two: older girls with younger boys...
   we were given a map (topographic to be more exact)...
we were driven out into the countryside away
from the resort...
group two (older girls with younger boys) was
dropped off first...
we were explicitly told... you can follow the road
from where you came... or...
so the first group was dropped off first...
our lot (older boys with younger girls) was dropped
off way way further afield...
to this day i'm wondering if i cheated...
when our lot were dropped off... map in hand...
i asked the driver... so... where are we?
a creazione di adamo finger hovered over the map
and pinpointed our starting position
(don't all public maps ref WHERE YOU ARE
on a map? YOU ARE HERE... so i wasn't cheating,
was i? you need to know where you are on
a map before you can start reading it and then
translating it onto the environment, no?)
so as Michelangelo pointed and then drove off
i took charge... ah! i spotted a short-cut through
a little grove, forest(?) and a cow field...
so as the boys in the group were busy trying to chat
up the girls i ended up (unconsciously or otherwise)
the leader of the group, taking responsibility,
being accountable (**** me, this NVQ3 in spectator
safety is really brainwashing me into being an upstanding
citizen)...
          and so... we managed to beat the other
group... so much so that once we reached the retreat
house we were already busy doing physical exercises
in the yard to **** time while the bewildered group
were coming down the hill with that HUH?! expression...
point being:
now i find myself in a similar situation...
if not a physical intervention dynamic then at least
an insinuation at... dialectical-sophistry...
because you don't have time you don't have
a Platonic leisurely for dialectics per se...
therefore in conflict situations you need
a dialectical-sophistry dynamic: to become quickly
persuasive...
like in my last shift at Tottenham Hotspur...
operating a human cordon at the entrance of
the Seven Sisters tube station entrance...
           the Pareto Principle:
        in terms of crowd control...
         20% of people will cause you 80% of problems...
how did i manage the massive queue of people
with only 6 SIAs (security industry authority operatives)?
i left them to it while i studied the crowd
and listened to their complaints
in order to spread my point of view INTO the crowd
for the crowd to hear my own constraints...
constipations... concerns... whatever...
talk to one person and then word-of-mouth
will do your bidding...
"yes sir, i agree with you, but it is not the football
club's fault, Enfield council should have started
making logistical improvements to the area,
they knew for well over 5 years that
the original stadium would be demolished,
from a 30,000 capacity to a 60,000 capacity...
the infrastructure of the area should have been
updated to accommodate for a strain in egress..."
boom bara boom... talk to one person and then
that person talks to another person in the queue
and you contain the disgruntlement...
you also add the empathetic:
"well sir, every single shift i finish as Wembley,
even though the staff leave at least 2h after an
event, i still have to end up queueing with the spectators,
yes, i too feel like i'm cattle and i'm being herded,
but please appreciate the fact that
when these transport hubs, stations, were built,
there was no incentive for a coliseum culture
revitalisation, football stadiums weren't even remotely
near the capacities they are at the moment,
so how would you begin to increase train station
capacities, would you think that double-decker
trains could be envisioned to accommodate more
people in transit?"
i might not be a police officer... but i'm second best...
my mother always wanted me to be:
either a police officer or a teacher...
well **** that... but it turns out: if i do this security
job and write sly poems on the side...
i might have eventually become both... in an informal
sense of the word...
not that i'm thinking about pleasing my mother's
ambitions for me...
i have my own ambitions... or call them dreams...
only today i sent a picture of a note i crafted
upon waking... first thing that popped into my head...
to my girlfriend... in ******* Hawaii...
go figure... but technology has made such relationships
possible, bearable even...
yes i'm going to have hiccups: i'm a man in my
30s... i wasn't a flirt in my teen years or my 20s...
now i'm a natural flirt... and that's my bad...
i've gained enough confidence over the years that
it's hard for me to not be a flirt...
but a flirt is a game without actually wanting women
a flirt is a way of studying women...
i have one i don't need a harem...
    if girls used to tease boys in their teens...
see... girls play a game of tease...
boys play a game of flirt...
tease for flirt... tease for flirt...
but only once you reach a certain age can you start
to flirt proper... and it's usually with the younger
girls in their 20s... who you have absolutely...
respect(?) - no... interest for...
         but then again: is that neurotypical given how
many instances there are of clucky men
wanting to settle down with younger women?
me... ha ha... am i neurotypical?
                    so i woke up... wrote a note...
took a picture... sent it to HER...
and it read as follows:

                        Groß = Groz
                                         (the same Z in Polish and English)
                 Since Zeit = Cajt (not z'igh 't
                                                 but (tseit - in English
                                                   of ****** phoneticism
                                                as above, cajt)
                ∴ - the one time that Braille influenced
          mathematics, not really, but that's
            therefore:
                      ß = Z                 not Ś or Š
              ß = Z (proper, the Polish and English Z,
          which is not the Deutsche Z which is
           the Polish C and the English TSE)
          
obviously i could have looked this up in a dictionary:
but it's so much more rewarding
when you wake up and have an epiphany...
it's better than waking up with a memory
of a dream... because you wake up with a memory
of a dream rather than the dream itself... no?
well that's what memory is to begin with:
the blurred line with the unconscious
and dreaming... obviously when memory is stripped
of this airy fairy day-dreaming construct
of relaxation and utilised proper for: arithmetic
and spelling... well... that's another matter...

scharf: spitz (spits slavic C)...
Aglican X - kss...
sharf Es stumpf Zee             dead Ed... living Dee
for the three K'appa sounds:
                                "
Cat Quip K' (potassium)         'alium

i had this Spaniard called Jorge... everyone
English called him just that... George (not gorge)
Joerge...
so when i asked him i sort of knew what
he would say: written Jorge...
but in Spanish... d'uh J and G are... H...
Horhe...
                        and yes i could have learned this
from books...
but then... people write books...
so...          why not skip the books and read people?

(A lone voice whispers)

Like grey smoke slowly rising in London's old Southgate

Each morning as I slowly open my tired red eyes in here

Filled with dark thoughts and whispers of the past

I still think of places in Enfield

I used to visit

Or people who’ve died who I’ve lost in an unholy war

Good friends who have now entered God's gates

Now I'm forever 27

I always wake up with a body and soul inside that’s slowly crying

With tears that don’t dry on their own

Here in my own dark painful version of Heaven

Will you still love me
My old friends and lovers
Tomorrow

Even though you all once knew deep down inside

I was so addictive but really no good

Hey little rich girl
I once heard you say

But what is it about men who just like to play

When you still wake up all alone

Rich but still so poor in Camden

Wearing your deep depression like a familiar loved cherished

Old coat of darkened dreams

In tandem

Which still sing but silently screams

I now know there is no greater love
Than the Almighty

For to know him is to love him even more

My day will come though
Like me and Mrs Jones

Love is maybe a losing game

Where you pull in do me black heels and white pumps

Where your soul is love-drunk on cheap *****

From long lines of so tempting *******

I now watch in silence at all those subtle moments

As my life on this big screen in here

Flows

Forever tumbling like forgotten red and golden Autumn leaves

As I stand close to the front of this barrier in The Great In-Between

You may be all wondering if as a historic ghost

I still visit London or my beloved Enfield

My answer is always
Yes

For my reflection in gilded silver mirrors

I still see in passing posters or shop windows

As whispers of doubts slowly still

Swim on the molten surfaces of my mind

Seeking out all my hidden kingdoms

As me, they always stalk and follow

Looking for lost shores to walk and run upon and remain there

Haunting me forever

In some of my vintage old clothes

Especially through this half-time

When the black cockerel crows

And the Great Golden Horn blows

Some say I was always doomed

Just another ill-fated singer simply eating and drinking

New and old pharmaceutical and alcoholic treasures

Walking the long mirage filled ancient winding roads

Towards a certain death or salvation

But still a winding road to the very end

Filled and overflowing with such strands of darkness

That I thought foolishly were just there for my own intense pleasure

But through the blurred white lines

And the distorted visions
I speak this

My life’s story is simply a sad song for just you

For I truly believe my soul will soar again

In time
My inner faith will create a silver bridge

To leave this dark pathway to self-destruction

And instead, lead to my own spiritual resurrection

For I believe Jesus died on the cross for me

And all I can do to repay his sacred belief

His sacrifice

Is to conquer all my hidden demons

And share my inner dreams in these words I used to bury

So deeply hidden within me

Before I am called back
By he who always calls

To fade forever into the Black

Before I go
Can I ask a question of you

Swear on your body and soul in the middle of this dark night

Standing between all those you still love but also those

Who you know still might cheat

Does my memory still stand beside you, and we'll always be best friends

Right

For fame and love is such a losing game and I need you

To always remember my name

I was simply thrown under the Freedom Train as I couldn’t hold on any longer

Due to my everlasting mental pain

Remember me
My name is Amy

(C)
Copyright John Duffy

today:

i've sort of quit smoking...
but as you: or don't...
watching the eurovision song contest
results come in
while drinking some southern comfort
admiring the moon while the clothes drier
was wheezing it's last r.p.m.

i thought: well... at least a session with
in a dentistry chair can become
more pleasurable...
i saw more cringe than fringes...
when culture dies there's
that... added shock of:
i wouldn't call it an itch...
it's not a case of goose-bumps...
it's a sickly sweet sensation...
it's "something" that makes you want
to *****, trouble is:
you did some 50+ stomach crunches
and have eaten bad
blueberry ravioli...

so... there's not much in the tank
to... so you're basically forcing up bile...
but i cycled into central London today...
i passed Soho plenty of times...
i never bothered to venture in...
i was looking for a look of reciprocation...
from a gay-lord...
otherwise i was there eyeing up
some *******...

because: obviously i wasn't scouting
for comic books...
comic characters... perhaps...
capes? not so much...
a ******* ****-storm of....
marching for Palestine... congregated
at Hyde Park...
i did my usual round around that
bloated space of green...
on my way back into Essex
i had to cut through the swelling of the vein
of bodies...

i was almost tempted...
i wish i would have been...
it would be silly to shout obscenities...
although i did manage to build up
this toothache on my way back...
like i was given this evil-eye for being:
the usual suspect...

how much did i want to laugh while
passing this protest with the words:
gott! mit! uns!
  looking for an itch... looking for some
manna...
like the protest of homeless men on
oxford street among all the shoppers,
atheists... materialists...
i was almost... enraged by a seed of jealousy...
of not being... part of something...
wouldn't you?
i almost wished to don a kippah
or the star of david cycling into this throng...
this river of people...
gott! mit uns!

łamany łbem:
            broken with a head....
divided by a head...
and When i think about it...
i don't... i think about not thinking...
designated orientation concering
a "lost narrative" of res vanus...

głowa (gwova)...
        doubled down dutch privy to Welsh...
with a head...
        z głową...
which implies a neck... shoulders...
a balancing act worth of spine...

      łeb: for the animal... pysk: the snout...
canines...
  łbem: stressing the point of forehead...
hammer...
with a head, hardly absent...

yesterday:

a minor amnesia - nonetheless it happens,
there's another word for it...
skleroza: spontaneous forgetfulness...
this fickle creature that's memory...
thankfully i have a stash of about 5 major memories
that i like to revisit...
play them over and over in my head...
since... i'm not on the crux of death...
well... since i'm not...
i have become more prone to exercise
the freedom of memory than i might want
to watch a movie...
trouble comes when i'm not my own d.j.,
in a car... heading toward... ******* IKEA...
in Enfield... where the phlegmatic crew of
dodo are this close | | to learning the arithmetic
of time...
a song on the radio... Belinda Carlisle...
circle in the sand...
in between talking with my father...
                  nothing metaphorical about that...
- so you know how old bob marley was
when he died? 36...
- you think he would still be touring?
well... he wouldn't need the money...
**** jagger does it for the joy...
        
i can't write narratives...
it's not like we're estranged...
but... it's complicated...
i think this is one area of my life i will keep
off-limits when writing...
i can be as honest about ******
as i can be about horses...
the narrative never took place...
believe me...
we talked about a range of things...
morgage

then when we came home an hour
later than expected...
she (dearest mother)
was probably drinking alone...
throwing little tantrums of me and father
alone time...
well... not to mention he was absent
from the most crucial years of my life...
from 4 till 8...
how does the ugly side of immigration
look like? brain-drain...
we: the diaspora members...
away from the motherland...
for the "better life"...
i too am playing catch-up...
how did ol' Leo frame it?
every happy family is the same...
but every sad family is sad uniquely:
in it's own unique way...

  get Wittgenstein to sort this
tautology... i'm not going to bother...
come to think of it... it's not even
a tautology... a tautology would be more
focused on thesaurus rex...

we had a conversation about football
and music... re-mortgaging...
even Bowie remained true to music...
he probably didn't tour...
but still made new content...
singing about mortality and ****...
i think i'm having this playback moment
in my head...

but then this song came on the radio...
magic fm... belinda carlisle...
circle in the sand...
all of a sudden i had this urge to listen
to a song, that song reminded me off...
oh hell... exactly: what was it?
the search began with: 'the message'...
mc-****-fartery...
      round and round...
jokes aside... i had to listen to belinda's
song on earphones once more
before the "revelation"...

  it seems obvious... "now"...

nik ******* kershaw - the riddle...

exactly... how did i get "the message" wrong?
two strong arms... blessings of Babylon...
blah blah: toe-tying-riddle...
almost like good luck is expected...

come to "think" of it...
a revelation... even though there's that monotheistic
focus on the patriarch...
puppet... strings...
missing *******...
i'm having a hard time not thinking
that ha-shem... the nameless father of hey-zeus
and the ha-ha-mighty blah-lah-al
are not... primarily... feminine gods...
well... conjured up from a ****
rather than a working 'ed...

they're irrational... and can be reduced down
to... the three heads of Cerberus...
they are never really depicted...
worded sleuth pulp fiction harlequin traps...
most artists?
oh **** me... even the ****'ites would agree...
get your eyes to focus on something...
that's how much i dare to admire Islam...
from the ****'ite perspective...

what ******* topic is this?
i was about to pour myself another drink
and this thought like a blitzkrieg came
flushed from a ******* in the universe
where all the gods and nothings
congregate from indigestion and
constipation...
a ******* miracle: a diarrhoea moment...
of sorts...
the monotheistic veneer... of "patriarchy"...

what?! she wants a ring of gold
and my ******* too?
how about a tent's worth of a kippah
on my ******* tonsure?
a man would require a screwdriver...
a hammer... nails... screws...
it would make sense to have many
involved... than this pressure of solipsism...
vampire... succubus... leech...
a ****** hail mary...

**** speak...
                    so great... the technological advances...
atheistic secularism...
but there's a ******* grid-lock to mind too...
no a ****** dam...
a rich cognitive custard...
it's just that: a cognitive custard...
like Moses rekindling a belonging concept
along the lines of being lied to:

monotheism hardly serves man...
i can find appeals to the illusion it presents...
but... hardly...
looks like the "plenty of fish in the sea"
metaphor is drying up the concept
of a "catch"...

the conversation with my father are
off-limits in my purpose of writing in the first
place... unlike a Knausgaard...
i'm the drinker... he's the teetotaller...
he's the workhorse i'm the... chicken-scratcher:
if i had ink...
but i'm also probably ten beaks pecking
resounding at this... grand... oh my god...
******* piano of QWERTY...

genius idea... what?
qwerty... because the orthodox memory erosion
of the alphabet is of any use?
suddenly everything has to **** me off...
it has to be dipped in still water...
it has to be believable...
monotheism is concretely a religion
designated for the preservation of women...
why my *******?
oh... because if you don't have it...
i can... ******* at a leisurely pace?

that a woman can ******* without inhibitions...
while i have to be shamed?
*******, *******...
i don't even have enough slander to express
what my heart reacts to these days...
i don't have "hurt" feels...
i have... agitated feelings...
thank you for waking me up from my numb...
apathy...
but what do i hear? "hurt feels"...
****'s sake... those people don't even recognise
what feeling is supposed to feel like!
they're all french footballers... "hurt" all of a sudden...
wow! so...
"hurt" is translated into the parameters of:
feeling per se?
imagine my shock finding out that
apathy has dulled "i.q." to so little that...
you must be hurt to feel...
you can't be spontaneously agitated...
you must be hurt...

bring out the hot horseshoes...
let's have some fun branding these *******-waggling-
***** aside...

just wait for the breeders to wake up
to having children that turn into freely-arranged
agents of will...
i'm passing through a decade where there's
boasting...
but sooner rather than later...
there will be some hidden mention
of those... pickled-cabbage:
why do the 'indus find pickled cabbage
"funny"?
not eating beef sounds pretty funny...
or like that "proverb" from Morocco:
there's no water, in the desert...
then... what... the... ****... are... you...
"doing" in this, here... land of replenished
roots?!

******* camel jockeys...
what do "they" call them, proper?
sand-*******...
it would take a Bengladesi to get
smart notes on the caste "system"....
Aryan has no origin in Europe...
it probably originated in Indian when
they first came across Persians...
who are... oddly... "pale"...
but have not bartablondine aspects
of their ****** expressions...

ivory skinned like an Iranian or a ***-
without a suntan?
"you" wanted trenches...
here's my designated plot...
"you" wanted ******* to overshadow
real.. culprit-esque concerns...
the jealousy of a woman
knows not bounds...
most especially when a father-son
privacy is engaged with...

  if i ever encountered male jealousy...
it was always rare...
almost never...
        but female jealousy? anything...
everything to belittle the opposing "authority"...
ha-shem... the jealous deity of women...
blah-lah-al of...kept secrets stashed in the niqab...
allure of the ******* eyes...
come on...

****** ******* mary:
that matriarch of sold foetuses and
walking abortions...
at least there was something adventerous
in conceiving the existence of Loki...
of Thor...
there's nothing... original about the point
of monotheistic gods...
that there are three...
is Islam the truest of religions?!
they had a Sunni ****'ite schism... didn't they?
once again:
i want to believe in something:
to give me momentum...
give be a willing acceptance to excuse...
an overarching stressor of incredulity...
and a... "what life"?

well... existence is...
out of every instance: a persistence to:
instance... a persistence...
that's... existence... ex-
out of...
and stance...
dis-ease... a negation of ease...

there will be plenty more of those car
journey listening to magic fm...

an "original": whether mind, or thinker...
that mythology of evil that the Nazis provided...
******* Armani suits and boots...
or whoever designed them... Hugo Boss...
what are we left with,
to mind matters of collectivism?
the evil of censorship instigated by...
halfwits and ******* haemophiliacs?

a myth of evil that could be...
galvanised... momentum and emblem...
what's on offer... currently?
grey-suits and...
expectations: that it's the "21st century"
something magical is about to happen...
what's the difference between the 20th century
and the 18th century?
the 19th century...
so what's the difference between
a pebble, a cliff edge and a mountain?
don't know... a river? a lake?

that same **** different cover excuse
like some wonderful was going to happen
in the 21st century...
like there was a promise...
where is this **** coming from?!
oh yeah... but it's the 21st century...
i was hoping for gravity to ******* and turn all:
short-circuit awry...

i can pretend... for a while...
but after that while passes... i turn into a real mystery
of a door **** gone berserker...
are there these societal expectations
to simply **** **** the next...
blow the next... ******* origami of OXFAM
purple-fest whimpering "dead-doughnut":
although i'd cry... if it was a stray dog
from the streets of Seville...
******* camel-jockeys...

  it's not even a inhibited play on pronouns:
there's no: "they"...
i thought the trans-lobbyist covered the plug-hole
of cognitive-****...
there is not "us" or "them":
gender neutral is me...
armed with a strap-on ***** on my ******* forehead...
a bit like... that hebrew practice of...

so i had me a "friend: a fwend...
maybe that's cornish for something in velsh...
you know how word salad sounds?
on a persistence?
sure... a son of divorce...
what am i? his ******* uncle?
his mother undermined the concept
of al dente spaghetti...
we're talking fractions of people...

people eat ****... leave the universal utility
of pork aside...
mind you: not water in the desert...
and not piggy too...
the leather shoe... the belt...
it's not exactly kosher... is it?
i have this backlog of a peoples...
at least a priest only attracts confessions...
i'm not at knife point
easy... for this triad to work?

if my fwend mentioned cognitive custard...
but the concensus of word salad
is socially broke on the norm...
so blah blah boo'yah assortment...
enriched strawberries...
juicing much later...
i can understand cognitive custard... pie...
but a word salad?
that's.... what doesn't deviate from
solipsism... this solo "project"
of "you and i"...

                      psychiatry is persisting to be
deemed a branch of
the Hippocratic oath....
but it's not...it's pseudo-"medicinal"...
it's hyped-up... idon't remember
that junction in a life...
hardly worth lived... just lived...
of my 20s... what mea culpa stressor of
those psychopaths?
currents under the broken wheel of...
attempts at supressing..
momentum? this whole ******* "flake"
of barrage?

by word salad you're implying i
have, speak... low i.q....
    non-hieroglyphic suede...
non-answerable... past replica...
woe wow salad...
but how i understand it...
a cognitive custard...
well... thinking is messy:
you ******* dim-wits!
        ought-i: thought...
i don't like being ridiculed...
or expected to her a less i.q. than what's...
nuanced at a ****** favouritism... Balkan-esque...
seriously... *******: before i ****** someone...
ugh attached to that: wind... now there's a purpose...

yeah... so what's what?
this is the least of my "concern"?
well... as they say in the west...
as long as the brain-drain happens...
we can forget about keeping the native 9 to 5ams...
sort of... but hardly... justifiably...
less than expectedly...
capitalistically boast: not exhausted...
sort of...

i can understand cognitive custard...
meddle some more...
word salad?
your ******* ****- nig-
of sorts is speaking your language better than me?
******* sour crass of a native's ***!
*******...  and you deserve it.

힣 jitto appersoote:

a little bit of nonsense
until punched into
a search button
of google
   retaining only 1 result...

i'm so glad that i don't
have to love someone
with the sort of love
baggage that one loves
someone and their
in-laws...

how i will never be a father
is a little bit "demeaning"
but almost all of existence per se
is a bit like that...
but i will also not be
a failure a waste of air
a short-coming
    someone with an unhappy wife...

i'll continue to pet a cat
dreaming of enough
    money to own a german shepherd
or: god send a Rottweiler...
72 of 'em...
    
   when love was something that
a mind and heart of a teenager
occupied itself with...
a 21 year old exacted
with a few months of leech-suckling
****... between Edinburgh,
London and St. Petersburg...

in between i know that i was
always alone...
it doesn't matter more and more...
it's become an affair of
an armchair
when there's the body towing
the feet into a marathon distance
circa 7hours...
for the mind, though:
i'm alone and aloof...
teasing solipsism -
                   as a St. Augustine
teased with his soliloquies...

    but so much comfort to not idealise
love like one might:
prior to first contact with
one's own imperfection...

an armchair in the mind:
frozen and almost breathing with
all that's leather...
so possibly everything
not being in love: in love
and for all those divisions
of enterprise, expectation:
metaphysical labours...

this almost faux pas
of investing in breeding children to
somehow find oneself
surrounded by "loved ones"
on a deathbed -
dozing off on opiates in pain
and drizzle...

as Caesar is to be cited:
a sudden death - all others are tedium
upon tedium upon too much...
yes...
it's becoming comforting:
comfortable is not enough
to say what it feels like:

to not be in love to not be divided
to not be spare
to not be living under
scrutiny of expectations
and failings, ambitions and what not...

placebo solipsism has made
its mark: the sort of movies that
depicted what happened to people
in England in the 1990s
are no longer made...

it just so happens i write this
almost too lazily: like i don't want
to write it:
of course i don't...
but sometimes an exercise in
the realm of res extensa
         away from thinking cannot
be helped: writing is sometimes
more than speaking is
and as such: i don't have to orate
i don't have to peacock or want
to be understood
with formal standards of
communication that need to
kept when interacting with...
supermarket attendees...

a carrot is a carrot is what's
before a donkey's horizon
when dangling on a stick...

currently i am willing to leave
behind Hangul & Katakana...
i want to escape these phonetic
encodings with all my will & joy...
harder to escape
            タオ (tao)

or... how geometry was "refined"
with ロ (rho)
                        and
                         Δ i.e. d(elta)...    
i also abhor exasperated social-commentary
poetics...
i don't have enough worries
to worry others with
(them) - being absentee...

  but not being in love:
not being claustrophobic and this limited
by a Noah's pairing...
i'll have to return to English, purely,
and leave all other languages
where i found them...

that i remember this teenager who
would catch the bus
and wanted to be seen
by the Ursuline girls from Gants Hill
to Ilford....
what a waste of time
to want to be strategically
focused in third-person narration
with a c.c.t.v. scrutiny for
an android limb attached
to one's shoulder...

  O that's most certainly rolled...
from top to tool and whatever
diacritical distinction
you might want to add...

Argentinian red:
a Trivento malbec...
a solo project a solo concern...
it's so still persistently well curated
this little scrap of heaving
a heaven of purpose...

but it's not going to be a celebration:
outright...
i don't want a sphinx jinx nibbling
at my toes when they start
to turn all twinkly...

it's enough...
  it truly is... enough...
i don't have to love
from some enforced demand,
some expectation...
something lubricated
something prone to succumb
to a predictability:
i can be a boredom on my own
terms and i can simply be
bored, too... also on my own
*****-nilly choicest of
festivities...

i can forget my birthday
and Christmas Eve -
i can accustom myself to a freedom
that only solo endeavours can
ever disclose...
i can find some variation
of solace...
  it's almost mesmerizing...
                it's zingy it's zesty
it's the "metaphor" associated
with mountain air,
or a perfume akin to freshly washed
bed linen...

in bed today i came across one redeeming
passage in Knausgaard's
my struggle vol. 4 -
an encounter with his friend
on a bus... Jan Vidar...
and talk of how blues is ******* etc.

       the redeeming passage
about bicycles, and a purposive pointlessness
of... a devalued attention toward
attitude...      aardvark...
verbiage but not teasing
peacocking...
     i'm not tired i'm exasperated
and i know this is plain ****** silly...

like Mozart's last words
(which were not an epitaph):
this is for me...
that i have the "right"
to showcase these words
to adamant voyeurs is another
barrel of herrings...

it's not like i'll stash them somewhere
where they might become more valuable:
given my death and enough
patience on everyone's behalf...
i also don't want to drink too
much: but of course it's not
what one might expect from
a paragraph of prose...

nor wanting a lyric or a rhyme...
as it stands:
black boys in *****
and in the riots...
i'm also tired of everything
cream-cheese ****-floral patterns
and this addition of coffee ****
and i'm tired of gesticulating
something "lesser"
when the lesser is circumcised
and i'm tired of guilt i'm
tired of something being translated
in a way that has to transcend death
and i'm tired of wanting
or appealing to white,
mostly anglo-saxon women's whims
and *******-tying...
i too have a fetish
a geisha girl without a ****'s depth
to match-up to that of whale's great
dip... how's that?
the pendulum swings to & fro...
i'm tired of wanting something
i either don't...
or will not have...
        
i'm tired of wanting or having to
compensate myself in
the genitalia Olympics of how's
it pairing... up? may i ask?
hardly a frown-upon these demands
of topic... it's there this low
hanging fruit of baritone tickling
shaved *******...
for one man's 12" is another man's
violin-esque of a fiddling with
a beard:
that has certainly become
a welcome addition with age...
that little bit of something
to cover the chin and neck...

***** so made a spectacle of...
i'll scratch my Eden region
of the body...
and it will be the same sensation
coming from the elongated worth
of a stubble...

troubles with interludes:
i like the words laconic and lethargy -
both don't expand into
an explanation akin
to "conservative" and "to conserve":
nor rigidity and
glue...

    how i've stashed enough worth that
might be deemed necessary for
it to be categorised as "lye fff":
life... and not one of those
awkward lapses
of moments to delve into
existence (out of every instance:
a persistence) like
all solo endeavours are
to be devalued because...
one isn't... i'm an omega male-on
hard... pass...

write long enough and after
a while the most random trivia-esque
posits come to the fore...
memory expands...
imagination shrinks to a size
of a peanut:
bellow: how come this pink
elephant-sized grease of a form
come into a room and expect
seeing the constellations?

how ridiculous: from time to time...
when not interchanging
definite and indefinite articles
properly... "properly"...
how very odd... how very english...
how all so queary: odd but not queer...
same but not **** bogus
or Duke Wellington / Harry Enfield...
skewing into -esque...

how sensibly so...
    how anything this must be how
they attired... and how things
mattered and how it was the year
2021 and how i have to scribble
enough to want: looking afar and toward...
my own certain summary of deeds:
that i'll be dead too: "alas"...

a century's worth of time
from now... from these numb to nimble
fingertips...
the choicest of breeding comparisons
of towing chew...
brevity exampled when stressing
such restrictions as kosher...
             enough to grant pork
benevolence...
elf-half-a-vegan troop of emptied
stomachs...
this endless gravity into darkness...

i might as well pretend to squint
from too much lemon &
je suis...               hail "Zeus"...
               joy begot sussing out
the standards...
            all very limited: progressing...
when laughter came to be depicted
in writing and
the Spaniards wrote
something the Germans agreed
to really quickly:
or how the western slavs strode
with a pronoun i.e.: ja ja ja ja ja ja ja....

yore... yawn...
    why Y is given a consonant
status (elsewhere)...
and is not treated as
a                            samogłoska?
     i don't want to know...
yes... being bilingual can be bothersome...
almost schizoid-ascription-prone...

because the mezzo
  full-fattening bogus is cut short / off...
i can translate...
to hell with it...
feed it to the pigs:
throw it against a democracy...
don't bother refining anything...
feed it to the poach and tickle...
make mediocre the desiring
quest for all things...
thus lazily begot...

     feed it to the pigs...
smear it in mud, ****, tripe and ghosts...
call it an alimony of literacy:
vote: X...
      i'm tired and have been
too belittled to continue with
an entertainment of...
having to care.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]

                       Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

2012, The Road to Magdalena

fickle reminders of love...
adamant: same old...
all's a love's nest... loved up... dubbing tow...
some insane promise of
conservatism
within the confines of family...
gladly... if we were all poor...
from the 19th century...
this... estranged uncle of mine...
at least with cats... sphinxes...
bonsai tigers i allow myself
this... drifting in and out of solipsism...
how Narcissus arrived at the gates
of the demigods...
but there was no...
   "Solipsus"...
my cat has an unnerving fascination
with ice...
his fascination with ice is something "more"
when associated with dealing with
raw cuts of meat...
turkey is bland... perhaps in sushi format
it's more...
beef is frowned upon...
by any standards of the living...
beef is frowned upon?
eat pork... leather shoes... belts...
gimp suits... don't eat pork...
eat beef...
don't eat beef because of the milk...
you can ****'s sake milk
a goat... goat's no problem...
hindering the ****** gods that are
already ****** to begin with...
i, don't want to... make... sense...
of this... crab-bucket escapade...
     it's like waking into a nightmare...
my cat has a fascination with
ice
like he doesn't have a fascination
with raw turkey...
the a priori paw pretending
dangling & suspension...
concerning the ice cube...
like it's a rubric cube...

an altar of stairs...
the pyramids of the Aztecs "vs."
the pyramids of gwand Giza...
once upon a time the suffering
of both idiots and smart
menschen...
otherwise an elaboration
of altar... where Christie did her
grinding... ****** reveal...

not that i'm any smarter
but i was expecting to feel less...
invigorated by this....
blatancy of a summary to deviate with...
as ****** or Yew... lackland johnny two bit...
forever vermin as...
some... other...

       the three partitions are over...
there's apparently a conversation for a return...
the estranged uncle is making
hot topic of... alias Denmark...
a coconut Pacific safeguard...
banana-esque republic...

            life and all that's semi-what...
for the authority of a lost soul...
all this simplified vector language:
feed, sleep, ****... ****...
i forget the see, hear, taste laden
sort of bollocking tease of a trickle
when the uvula of the bell...
drool... slobber... squat...

conversation starter...
take it up with my bicycle...
take to Amsterdam... with... my... bicycle...
my cat has a fascination with
ice-cubes...
but not... my bicycle...
i wish i owned a horse to break my
neck... i don't...
i don't own a car...
i prefer harry enfield & chums
to monty python because...
of... my bicycle...
i prefer cats to dogs because:
there's no leash no muzzle involved...
and i don't...
jargon exercise to my dog
when jogging...
because if i would...
i'd stash a sphinx in a rucksack
and Sally him to big ben & Westminster Abbey...
because...
of my ******* bicycle...

but hey... alles spaß... mr. spastic mr fantastic...
mr... hint and hinterland and
herr harbour and mr oink-the-potato-towing...
granulated embryo rice-crispy-tonne-loans...
north of Greenland...
south of Greenwich...
     one chant that's elsewhere
beside a football match-up
and most certainly not in ****** would be:

gott! mit uns!

   my nein nein nein nein: no-ah...
of a people of the past that had
no sur-names...
let alone...
apostrophe contra surd letters...
   knight "vs" 'night...
           etc. hello(w) w'ah rowld...
**** yeah... and that almost looks
synthetic Cymre... cymru...
all sodden... priority for...            Velsh!

cwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    The Hunting Camp

                            He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen,
                            That seith that hunters ben nat hooly men

                                          -Chaucer, Prologue, 177-178

Friday evening

The merry fellowship of the hunting camp
In the golden time is one of autumn’s joys
Unpacking by the light of a kerosene lamp
Where men for a weekend are once again boys

Saturday morning, I

Up before dawn, already the coffee’s made
The ground seems harder than it did last year
Is that poison ivy where my head was laid?
Pour me a cuppa that caffeinated cheer!

Saturday morning, II

With my ancient Enfield I walk the trails
I really don’t want to see Bambi today
Along the creek as the mist unveils
Folk memories and idylls are my only prey

Saturday afternoon

I rest in the shade of the forest eaves
Quite at peace, here where I want to be
The smoke from my pipe drifts through the leaves
I hope the First Peoples’ spirits will sit with me

Saturday night

No one got a deer today – that’s good hearing
I think we were all okay with that
Cards and jokes and talk in our little clearing
The occasional flythrough by a Mexican bat

Sunday morning

As it was in the beginning of boyhood
As it is now that we are old men
Our world must end, but for others great good
In the sacred woods of the Lord - amen

it wasn\t a fear of losing out working outside
the stadium
like a silver horse
wizened
and not a football safe atmosphere
of inside violence
and hate but beyond football
the old tribes of europe still walk from door to door

and now looking into
the repertoire of Beyonce on my own
the day after i drank a little bit too much
and what did Martin do when
he lived with him mumma
and i wonder why did he do what he did
that philosophical explosion of the mind
and thus in the body dwarfed
a state that only Death and call Nirvana...
while i'm travelling home
and on the way i picked up my father's fathers' fathers
bones
and i could not hear the music
because there was like an external overtone
to the live music: there was the American Anthem
medley breaking in
because i just didn't like Renaissance but
i tell you Cowboy Carter is a testament
of a solid artist,
and i'm pretty sure Martin retired working
in security
really lazy work
i think if he only thought of that work life path
and life of mine will go on
i will write about and bridge the distance between
river and the prism of the surf
greeting earth
like fire greeting air...
being able to breathe
but also rock that breathed....
and even cooler oh right covers covers
weaving a new breed of music
musicians making music listening to music
like poets writing poetry
after reading poetry
                              all my internal misery
i sometimes think about breaking into
tears spontaneously
away tearing away from everything sober
and sane
because it seems there's no longer a god
to be sought
      but a friend unto my self: in the distance
dot of ego somewhere in the matrix of god
like the search engine Caesar...

because there was the drudgery of work
but all that human interaction
from a para-police or something
how there are rules to the roads
and to places where people congregate to celebrate
now i'm choking
with the words with the stink of these pages
i need to find a point to relax
yes
a much better concert
i didn't miss out i worked a beyonce concert
as a steward before
i was quickly promoted to supervisor
without a SIA BADGE
which is the basic stage of going up
being promoted in a high-viz jacket
like it was anything but fixing the pipes
and the sewers in the end
with the grump of man
and all those riches elsewhere
or perhaps that memory PTSD
of Manchester
                                and the potential
i didn't miss much
i worked one concert on entry level
enjoying myself
with eagle eyes of the cctv movie...

well... it's clear...
Beyonce > Taylor Swift
i think that little miss R
could become a fan
when she grows up
maybe i should just play some Beyonce
on the radio over there
when doing something
like work
i didn't listen to any music when i was
working
i think that what stressed me out
the most
i think i was scary how i didn't listen
to any music
when i was there
               over on Kauai
like i didn't take that part of me over there
i think Grandma listened to music
the radio
but i mean we can't listen to Hawaiian
radio
we have to make our own radio
i wonder if Reyla could playlists
for us three
one mix tape with our favorite songs
and she could
but it just dawned on me i could have been
listening to music when doing
the plumbing
replacing the faucet
and working on the lanai
taking apart that massive cupboard
that just stood there haunting
but why didn't i listen to music when
doing those menial tasks
the menial medium of hands
and eyes and perhaps mind piercing
calm measured with a tanglement
of raw physical ****** or the frustration fruit
and now the GENIUS
RADIO INTERLUDE
RADIO INTERLUDE
then lightning a cigarette
a bit like when the Offspring
oh jeez i've been to the concert
and it was a perfect idea i was working so so hard
i was working working so hard
for the real honey i mean i need to get a--t-shirt
i'm a fan **** i'm a fan i'm a fan
oh **** me i'm a fan this album is like
me being 15 again listening to some prog rock
and wow i'm a fan

i was going to walk in on the concert
but then i got some good accoustic
outside
so i went and bought myself three hot spicy
wings and one thigh
and some mayo and ketchup with some dr pepper
on White Hart Lane....
Hart Lan... White Harts... Richmond F.C.
i would start Richmond F.C. (north) somewhere
in Enfield...                      just an imaginary
consumption
     but oh dear... there are 27 songs on the album

BODYGUARD is
my secret best song...
    i was the bodyguard or some sort of guard
but as a song... it's so pop it's so neu-pop
neu-pop amazing rhythm oh my god an ******
all these girls walking about but
i am now seeing with a filter of marriage
so just the groove of the urban jungle
a little mermaid event when Poseidon
comes to wrestle with Zeus over who has
the right to what season
Hades chose Winter
and where is Our Sister:           GAIA
there was Zeus Hades Poseidon and Gaia
because they had drawn the four
seasons between them
poseidon took spring and all the rains
to rain on zeus' summer parade at Wimbledon
joke... ******* on it...
the events of man in the warm months
unlike the winter months
where sports dominate our coping mechanism
with the banality of life
sports to survive in winter
but concerts in the summer
collectively: to keep ourselves sober and sane
and arriving at some point *****:
because the song bodyguard is just that...

well indeed it then becomes this gargantuan
realization that it's no longer a poem
but its own self i am only the tip of the fingers off of
because there's no more of that empty hurt
clearly a sharp focus because
i thought i told you i was bemused
by my pay raise without changing uniform
you know like i am a secret manager
a hands on
in security i think that the roles security
don't work hand in hand with the "underclass"
or the logistics men
i greatly respect
but i mean a mix of the two roles being the brawl
i can show you how i can work with objects
please don't put me in charge of response units
let me show you how strong i am
don't bring me into crab fights and ape farts
i don't like those emotions
but you get what i mean
i was working two matches in april
i worked one sitting back like a security supervisor
but second day i had a revelation
and incorporated parts of logistics into security
a joint role
                                 i know those guys probably
have records but i can't be too sure
so yeah point being
i took care of the arches and batteries
and the fencing...  
and today my idea came to fruition and i was thinking
about inverting the ratio of cueing queue
ing  
                           i'm sort of working for a contractor
let him become a sub-contractor on our books
we like working with him
he has good ideas and how to implement them
he has become a changed man
so i mean i can't explain the
up on my wages i was on $18
but now i'm working for $27 an hour...
i am working as a sub-contractor for Tottenham
and that contract was fought for on my behalf
by some manager at the company the other company
i'm working with:
like just please explain it
why i am "working for tottenham"
but actually working for a different company
it would seem but thanks to them
i must have got that raise and no one even told
me about it... but it's easy math
for 10h i am getting $270:
they are those kind of hours
but that's sporadic
like 4 times in only a certain month
whether june july or august
depending on how the concert season operates
but couldn't you possibly be told about a pay rise
no one tells you?
but you see it on paper              hmm:
could it be that pay rises
well this is my first
that's covertly in my hand and wallet
i wonder
                                   because prior to whenever
i got a pay rise it was only a numbers game
so not really of the matter
and told: oh just a little pay rise... either $2 or $1 or $3
per hour depending on "qualification"
an SIA license costs around $1000 so get a $1
pay rise...
but                an NVQ certificate
    well... that's a pay rise of $2-$4 and sometimes
even $7 i was once a quadrant manager
     at Wembley                 and i think i worked for $21
but that was a one off and someone called off
an hour before the event and i was pushed into
it...                                      but that was like speedy
gonzee and Gonzo journalism as they call it

because i don't think i ever wrote poetry about work
and working and money
and a literary realism beyond prior known about
the nature of work and how writing is yet more work
and in that work there can be work
that has nothing worth containing art poetry and learning
language
                            away from children
but indeed Bukowski               about but merely licked
the topic
                      but maybe it was that sort
of time and that sort of work like being a postman
but i can't imagine being a postman today
unlike say captains of container ships travelling
across the seas
    or those strapped to lighthouses and madness
                 but of work it can be said:
that...                                                  wh­at
a strange eerie and stranger forest
    inscribed in it the words arbeit macht frei....
                               this album is illicitly making this
allusion in its grandeur...

SPAGHETTI
         SPAGHETTI              oh yes: this is where
it came from the African-American
lets face it whenever European came walked hand
and chain to the African
                            at some point there were
kings and queen of europe and africa
but how many monarchies are still in africa?
Morocco Eswatini (Swaziland, formerly known)
                                 Lesotho
and all that African-American energy of a woman
just a specific woman like her
in the voice and rhythm
yeah                                           so much appeal
i remember being asked by a friend in our early
20s why didn't taylor swift type
tiny girl
had no feminine vibe i understood i could
have translated
i have stuff to do tomorrow so i am not going
to lounge around:
i can't just stay at home:
i'll probably just go out walking so i spend more time
outside the house
but only because i have an aversion
to cycling
because i remember dreaming of thinking
that using your legs for swimming would
be the same as the very cerebral experience
of driving a manual car
i mean:
it seems like an ancient art these days
maybe that's why i waited so long with my driving license!
maybe that's the secret why i waited so long
so long to get a driving license!
to have enough drivers out there only being
able to drive automatic cars
and here i am                    a manual driver
i get the feel of a manual car
and it's so amazing it's a drug
i mean it's a drug when you get it just right
and try to pretend the driving instructor
is sitting there with you
   when you just get the gears in proper motion
and you get to feel the car like
you might a super horse
and how different
the horses used to be steered using our heels
but now we have horse or rather the four horses
and duck feet... flat under the fingers
the positioning of the feet on the three blunts
is like prepping your hands for QWERTY of able to
look at screen and not at the keyboard
seeing the words and not really the letters
seeing the words but not really the letters...
and here's to giving up smoking again
maybe this time for real
i think i can do that
if i can stage such a good shift
i mean i felt i was central
and the manager worked with me
and sort of taught me so maybe next time
i will have that spot outside the Coliseum
truly that can be a yay moment

                            thought it was Miley Cyrus
but didn't want to say it
so a duet it is and                how many words can
drop in between songs and thinking
about the breaks thinking about the breaks
recovering from all that:
but if i could focus on work yesterday
so the excesses i could find in Manchester If
a crazed testimony of hero could
have been so a downer on the poetry unless it
became more and more obscure
for that too is very relevant: because of
shotgun shotgun
being a downer
   a real downer of a song

SHOTGUN < skipped skipped never
to be found on rewind
                                  back to the theme of cougar
cowgirl and cowboy
but i was in the role of actor in a role
                         because i don't think i was an actor
because no one seemed authentic
but rather prolific                               rxage
                                    solid ink of naked rage: in a cage
some return to form with the lyrics Levi Jeans
i think that's how the song goes
but i didn't fall in the garden i just kicked the light off
i didn't drink to the point of not remembering
if i fell into the trees and breaking them:
no, i kept form because i knew i would have to
write
oh boy boy
Beyonce can admire a former older singer
but all her duets with women are ugly
but when beyonce does a duet with a male
oh boy boy all the best of her comes out
but i didn't get the older sister vibe
                              with                        "Meryl­ Streep"
(look-alike)
                
              maybe an hour has passed
and in it
                                              all that is contained in an
album
        i wonder how the album translated into
a live performance with a meddley
of past youthful kick-starters
the youthful pop anthems that would be
only crowd and radio pleasers
but then the personal experience of Beyonce's
music: with actual knowledge of entire
albums... the gem of flamenco
i don't know because that voice range
is from a classical education
it must be:
funny fact: most musicians in Poland have
had a musical education
or at least did in the past
not all but a large majority
(if not factually correct
then i'm thinking of Sting and some band
from Poland)
like Myslovitz or something like that....

oh YA YA and this is still the same album?
was this a double album?
tomorrow i'm going to the bank
and i'm going to the music shop and
sobering up and finding happiness in life
trying to maybe think
about buying a cheap car
i mean i have an NPKK number
so someone can check my file
well: and my provisional i think maybe
buying a really cheap car
but then the process getting insurance
oh jeez:
there's that aspect of owning a car
oh crap... it's not just about the driving
it's about the maintaining oh man
and feeling like:
jeez... she's talking about getting a new
car oh jeez i now see it really
oh i see it
but honestly that's it i can't have those
days off i will have to think of something
to do
i mean yes
talking about it but what sort of job
is out there that might allow me to work in patchwork
i wonder
but this can't be the one album must be a double-breaker
double-deck-er
                                      at least in my
mind's eye the sun is shining on the corridor
in my house
oh louisiana i don't know how else to describe
the sensation as an idea on the album:
this is a beyond concept album this is unlike
anything i've ever heard
and i'm pretty sure: it must be under 2h and i wonder
if she followed the album live
                               i'm waiting for the song
this lady talked about and jiggled to when she overheard
it coming from the stadium:
from atop: down down down              i'm \
"creamy in the middle"
                                      doxy
doxi                                                 then onto
RIVERDANCE
                                         oh what an open world
out there when you give yourself some focus
and say: yes i will give up smoking and drinking
yes
the combination can only be like this
a remedy prescribed not a tool to sleep
they only allow me to deep sleep in excess and
in return i get also short pointless nights
so there is good use remedy
or to tear open in celebration
                                    because you get the best
night's sleep when in the same bed
with her
                                and that was very
healthy and i can't really excuse:
                                               but yes:
if that person doesn't become contained then
you get paranoid eyes
you think because it's so easy isn't not going your
own way and giving away time
to pointless poetry
                                         because i no longer....
let me save and observe the concept of time
7:38pm and
i think i started at around 6:30pm but i can't be sure:
i simply made myself coffee and

.............................................................
i­n..........................................................
te...­................................................r......
l........­...................u...............d.............e

.............­................................................
...........s....­..........ee..............m..............
...........s...........­.....................................
l..........................­............................egit

(II hands
   II heaven)
                                           praises o praises
perhaps making my peace with jesus
i think she wants that the most from me
that i have to make my peace with jesus
but i can't imagine being a convert to christianity
away from catholicism
i know that Catholicism isn't any sort
of Christian denomination in America
on whatever the scale is and not organised
i think that's where we are conflated
in that realm of life
                                                  
tyrant
sweet honey buckin'
amen

                                        a poem written in the time
it takes to listen to Cowboy Carter
the full album
                                   a poem of that kind that sort
i don't think anyone has yet written a poem realistic to
the time it takes to listen to Cowboy Carter
i don't think music was referenced like that
tyrant tyrant
                             is she singing about her drinking habits?
i wonder i think
sort of cougar rapper              a cougar rapper
she sounds so much better with age
i think that there are women like that who
become better with age
and **** at least i need to think about August
because August is going to be completely empty
so i can have my two months of summer
like pretend boy
                             but what if i buy a car in poland
and drive across Europe?oh jeez... didn't think
about it... that would be proof of my self
i think i will need to think like that...
travel across Europe...
from Poland
i would only miss 4 concerts
but i wouldn't because i would have to drive
back
and i would need a phone plan
maybe cheaper
                   with calls abroad... from Poland
i don't know i'm thinking i need to plan
ahead i'm not thinking about a writing career
in the bedroom i finally get it
but that's realistic if i had to cancels
but when i will actually know about
the pay raise? on the 15th of July
i will know about the pay rise on the 15th of July
i don't know yet
i think they made a mistake or something
why i was paid more:
is that how working in large companies works
like under communism
no one knew what they were earning
some people earned more
                                 the misconception that
there was a standard wage for all
kind of jobs...
would be stupid
                                             a nightmare of stupid...
but true:
                   that would be money well spent?
a car in Poland?
       what a wild idea...        a young boy dream
i think and the idea of passing past Amsterdam and
staying there: some wild fancy dream
not for me some youthful daydream....

buckin'
buckin'                          buckin'
                                      buckin'

at least a Sunday saved
Amen...

                                    go to the bank
ask them how you're paying off your credit card
whether it's debited from your account
immediately after the date
i will give up smoking but i will also have another
coffee
and i have to get rid off the idea that i would
get me 2 more bottles of cider
now i have a sense of hope:
i now have a sense of hope with Amen and it's
a song that sort of repels the whole album
a thank you to god
most certainly: and having completed an album
oh the joy with Religion
and wow...
                                        Oh jesus indeed when
because to say his name
jesus - after having appreciated some sort of art
like an album: ends with the sound of a drop of water...
p[ing! the end...

                    amazing.