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scully Nov 2017
he can't write sober.  the mind of a man who
drinks too much whiskey and touches girls without
blinking. whos body is cold no matter how large the fire in
front of him is. he just can't write sober. i feel like the girls he touches,
rough coarse hands on peach fuzz skin. tongues battling in
and out of holes in my cheeks. angry apathetic grunts and dissatisfied sighs. im afraid this is where my life is headed. i am afraid i am the girls he touches and bitterly touches and fiercely touches and
he can't write sober, but he doesn't always drink. sometimes
his hands shake too much to drink. sometimes he smokes,
sometimes he crushes up pills and snorts them. sometimes
he doesn't bother crushing them up at all, he downs a
stiff drink with three pink or white circles and he sits in a
chair in the living room until he can see his hands move
in front of him, until he can pick up a pencil without wanting
to snap it. he can't write sober, so he doesn't. so he waits
for his mind to come to a tachycardic rhythm and he writes.
and when he does, he writes and writes for days. he can't write
sober but when he's not sober he will write for miles, he will
tell you about why he touches girls like me with soft pink skin
that is fresh, that is easy to bite into, that is full of life and not
stained rough and harsh. he can't write sober, so when
hes not sober he will tell you her name. he will not be able to do anything but tell you her name, her name her name her name-
he gets stuck, when hes not sober. when hes nodding in and out
of consciousness. he gets stuck on her name. he gets stuck on how
she felt under his hands, they weren't rough and calloused when
she touched him. he gets stuck on how she smells, he tries to
speak it onto the page but he can't, not sober anyway. like lavender.
stuck on her name and the lavender, the pretty girls with short
hair that sort of look like her, her name, her name and the
lavender on her neck and her wrists. her pretty wrists. how she
left and she looked like a ballerina in a performance, grabbing her
coat and her hat to cover her ears. that short hair never covered her ears. she looked like a dancer. the lavender, her name and her name and her name like a dancer. holding out her hand for him,
her small pink hand, her fresh hand, and
he can't catch her sober. can't keep up with her movements sober.
can't smell her sober, can't say her name sober. but when hes not
sober, he can write it all down. nod in and out, the lavender, her
name, what was her name again? what did she smell like?
until he passes out in that chair, by that fire, i feel like the girls
he discards and the whiskey he drinks. he can't do any of it sober.
so he doesn't, he doesn't have to.
her name, drink.
lavender, drink.
like a ballerina, drink.
her name, drink. her name, drink. her name, drink.
her hands, drink. her ears, drink.
miss keisha Sep 2017
i was drowning
but then came the pouring rain
and for the first time i could breathe

the glass on the table no longer tempting,
the voices in my head no longer speaking,
and the smoke that suffocated me have left for the night.

sober nights like this are what make me glad i didn't call you in the dark of night,
asking for a place in your heart that was never mine.
sober nights like this are what make me realize i was right,
right not to ask favors you were sure to decline.

they say doing nothing is an impossible thing to do, but sober nights like this are when i do impossible things for you.

shattered glass on the floor
but they were not mine nor were they yours
because we kept ours and so we dont bleed

i know tomorrow the wolves will howl again,
i know tomorrow i will miss the silent,
but while i can say this to myself, i'll ever be grateful for

sober nights like this take up my regrets,
regrets that i could have had if i crept on your blankets in the moonlight.
sober nights like this give ease to things i fret,
because here i get acknowledge the cost of fleeting delights.

the ghouls in my head make it hard for me to see, but sober nights like this let me know what's good for me.

the glass on the table no longer tempting,
the voices in my head no longer speaking,
and the smoke that suffocated me have left for the night.

i know tomorrow the wolves will howl again,
i know tomorrow i will miss the silent,
but while i have control over myself, i want to burn this to my head:

sober nights like this come and go,
and i know tomorrow i'll be drunk in my thoughts.
sober nights like this are hard to let go,
and even harder to remember after the return of the demons i fought.

i'm a slave to the darkness that broods inside, but at least in sober nights like this, for a while, to myself, i can lie.
lowkey in song format
In my chemical dependency class we have to write down days sober chemically, and says sober emotionally.

Days sober chemically: 55
Days sober emotionally: 75

But they don’t ask how many days it has been since I thought of you.

They don’t teach you how to control cravings for a person.

I could write a book on ways
to control the urges to smoke a joint,
but I am helpless as
to how to prevent myself from texting you.

I don’t have withdrawl symptoms from *** or *****.

I do have symptoms
of a broken heart.
I can’t remember the last time
I used, but I can remember the
last time I felt your skin
against mine.

Last time I took a shot was,
I don’t remember when.
Last time I felt your lips
against mine,
was on the 29th of
November.

I don’t have a craving for **** or *****,
but I do have a craving for you.

I can stop smoking whenever I want.
I can stop drinking whenever I want.

But I can’t quit you.
Because, baby, you’re the monkey on my back.

You don’t encourage me to drink or smoke,
You encourage me by existing.
They say that we all have the power to be sober,
But, what if I don’t want to be sober?

Because when I become sober from you,
Is when you have passed through.
Copyright © 2015 by Kathleen McSweeney
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
.via ghana: i iz welcome the haiku poetic extractionz of the maxim: full-on potentiality of - few words maximum effortz! one wishes to almost die from feng shui minimalism! chinese geomancy and european chiromancy (reading balzac et al.) - but the sigh poetic of pepsi max effort iz wot iz the breaking of the camel bonk and backß... last time i heard from a kenyan bartender... all the timber comes from ghana... as does the wheat from ukraine and the salt from poland... coal is always "elsewhere"... or no coal... wind... the wind comes from: far far away... beyond the language of the seven vowels...

it took much of an effort to have to overcome
a reading of Stendhal...
esp. when you find him in your teens..
almost impossible...

it's enough to visit a brothel:
once a year... perhaps skipping a year...
and there's enough body,
and skin, and warmth...
to contrast... what i'm yet to read about...
otherwise have read, i.e.:

2010s through the 2020 summary...
lucy holden now 29...
sexting, dating apps, bisexual flings
flatmates with benefits...
millenial serial dater...

all the details are already known...
mine? that strip-clup in athens on a whim
with two strippers either arm
burrowing my face solving the mole
in their cleavage...
the goodmayes borthel with the romanians
that said a very bulgarian word, once...

and who can ever forget
the south african cocoon ****-accusation
of: not unde the bed-sheets and please
oil up rather than dry-******* me...
or the thai surprise picked up
in a park and that a little bit of heavyweight
beer and some jazz and a garden shed will allow...
the number of times i've had ***...
well... what are fingers for?

the black girl with a coccyx like an iron maiden
attempting to tattoo itself onto my pelvis...
2nd time round?
i heard she had a child and his daddy
would be bringing him home the morning to come...
and this other black woman,
oh i mean: full detail - woman...
two children sleeping on the bed...
get dragged off...
thrown to the bed...
and i'm there to **** an imitation ******
of... a tight fold of legs...

it's not exactly **** but even with that:
i'm not a best fitter...
so tell her: it's not going to happen...
we pretend to sleep or at least i do...
when this afro-fur-ball with a plucking sound
of a smooch is standing at the end of the bird...
he's naked i'm naked everyone's naked
i pick him up like i pick up maine *****
and lay him on my chest...
i can't allow a river of fingers through
his afro tangles... so i pat them down...
and he falls asleep...

***... oh no ***** word about it monsieur!
just this *******...
oh but i'm glad that some girl nearing
her 30s has made up her mind up...
only recently i've heard that my mother was
attempting to woo a married man
who was part of the Solidary movement
and probably waiting for a greencard...
i heard this... from my grandmother...

i'm still pampering on the sly for
a Mary Antoinette...
Ilona was wrong... i wouldn't become
a child strapped to a hellhole of a teenager's bedroom...
i'd become a leech hybrid...
as along as i have enough excuses
to return for "the word"... and never rap it...
i'm fine fine... best be on my optimal behaviour...
to never find myself in a baptists' church choir...

- there's also a quick fix procedure...
the match of the day is watched
with the mascots on screen...
the ben-hur's not making it to
prophetic status... yes the bread...
yes the circus... and all those cul de sac...
soap operas of parking scenes...

and there's always language...
best expressed when drunk...
never sober because is what delves into
the formality of: dear sir / madam,
kind regards...

the day when i stopped combing my fair
and peered at the beard...
uncombed hair: almost reminds
me of donning a pineapple on it...
an ancient buddhist balancing act...
like performing the act of gravity...
without copernican mathematics...
as simple as finding the CENTER on
a bicycle... or like finding
buoyancy in a swimming pool...
perhaps i am more water than flesh...
but i'm also a fraction of fat...

i can float on water if i can find
the balance... i don't need to play
the drunkard treading water surviving
to stay afloat.... i... relax...
then i float.... or bob-on-the-surface
teasing an unexpected shark-bite-attack...
although: swimming in a sea
is not my thing...
i very much appreciate seeing
the bottom i can dive down toward
and touch... the chernobyl stink of chlorine...
is almost a parisian perfumery...

heat breeds diseases it breeds...
insects...
i abhor the heat...
the zenith of winter is yet,
is yet to arrive... and for the help of god:
i can't arrive at... writing sober...
should "poo'etry" ever be written sober
to begin with?
i mind: that i don't mind...

i can find 8pm and 9pm quite:
which implores you to not quit - curb colt...
i was making a sponge apple stuffing
roulade...
after having made some biscuit
with brown sugar and diadems of hazelnuts...
and prior to some sausage rolls...
three fillings...
cranberries with some peppers and
chillies...
fennel seeds with apple...
and the third... the third...
i don't quiet remember...

my head was exploding with a brain being
towed and all was:
i am yet to grieve a passing,
a tax of death...
i am yet to be left half imbecile and half
of any other texas hold-up poker game...
i'm wishing for...
that quarter of a million of a bet
i placed on:
one team wins...
but both have to score...
ergo... catching a mosquito by the testciles
donning boxing gloves chance...
2 - 1 etc. victories...

i don't want to blame women...
the last one i was serious about...
she's on her 3rd marriage or whatever...
and i'm still in woad: in deep blue
coinciding with...
god's roulette...

as a testiment of man...
there's the ambition to find: the void...
to find nothing...
and from that... find the thinking thing...
res vanus: the emptiness
that can be fathomed with more or less
thinking, than a yawn's presence...
because...
descartes doesn't really exact ontological,
whatever...
i can't be and be:
when i churn out a day-dream and
a day-dream is all that is...

thankfuly i have nothing to "work"
with... most women only have boredom to begin
with....
at exactly 20 minutes to 1am...
i'm not so sure...
a mother can say: you stink...
then you go and buy something from
a convenience store...
and the cashier stresses how fresh you smell...
that's quiet something...
a woman likes the way to smell to her...
in between doing these *******
tribunals of sweating over
apple roulades...

and Stendhal... it's only my mother...
i just have to gnash my teeth
and apply the burden of sober...
this canvas... no other...
i drink for the 1 hour pleasure
of disorientation...
a shot in the head in some Ukranian
prison...
stiched to the next to be executed...
chikatilo...
i'm not exactly fond of the company...
but i'm pretty sure...
kurt cobain... and his shotgun antics...

and how the prolonged death appeal
of Christine Chubbuck lasted much longer...
Kafka said it right:
a stab at the heart...
**** colt and boyo... don't aim for the head!
that's how Ukranian convicts die...
shot in the back of the head...
in a cell... never in the open...
it's not like the brain delves into
the automated unconscious of the pump
that's the heart... how do you think
the urban myth of the cockroach that lived
for 2 weeks more was born?
the head didn't have a mouth to ingest
food with...

shot in the back of the head is an execution
that, done in an Ukranian prison cell...
is pretty much all of Dante not visiting
either heaven or a hell...
but two weeks with... in the presence
of death... the body starving...
that magic finger-pointing exercise
of seeing death in movies?

well thank god they did a movie about
Christine Chubbuck's (rage against the machine):
bullet in the 'ed!
i was lied to, no matter...
i'm here to hush and sweep the leftovers...
because why would you march
a man into a prison cell...
shoot him in the head and close the door
and wait... because no: in the open...
with a chance for rabid dogs to feast on...
in the darkened night just shy of Kiev
would ever matter...

Christine Chubbuck was left dying on
life-support machines after her half-high Kiev
attempt to pop the balloon...
psych- myth of the brain as source
of the sigma soul...
my left toe has more soul than this
rubric forever explained as forever to be explored
goose-fat sponge...
come to think of it...
after a haemorrhage that no one believes
beside me, some neurologist and a dementia
riddled grandfather who easily forgot...

what's this brain this brain this nought?!
**** it... kamikaze cockroach!
as ever oh but always so much when
someone has to mention...
has to mention: with no exacting details
of fancy...

also called the drought period when pakistani
gangs are up in Leeds and i'm strapped
to the outlier Loon'don culture:
as ever playing the obedient schizoid...
because that's, just fair game...
centuries behind what the youth
of Denmark have to offer...
the mutterzunge and the l'inglese of:
any future of tourism with Jack's flag...

heavy influences stemming from
st. andrew and all the worth of wordworth
with a tinge of punk...
but never a baron of lexicon coming from
just shy of 4 hours away from
the lisp of masovian warsaw...

what could possibly be wrong?
how about... stemming it down to the root
of... sober people and the lacklustre of
when writing: under no influence at all...
apparently "now" the high moral ground!
the sobers usher in the words
that we are abide by when the football hooligans
their casual Tuesday mundane,
their casual Tuesday mundane custard
splodge of oats in regurgitation...

i can almost but not quiet...
imagine myself being the cameo in this dear diary
of these "free" women of the western world...
give me a feral black woman pulling
two kids from her bed in order
to imitate a ****** by folding her legs to
pretend...

it's still a bullet in the back of the head
for some, minor or major
andrei "cain" chikatilo -
no... with a full crop of cranium of hair...
and a grandmother that says...
well... how busy your chin hairs are...
that you are able to lodge a pencil in there
and it doesn't fall out...
hair here and all other hair elsewhere...
chest and... where the antioch identifier
of achilles ought to be of a six in sixes
packaged...

since who is buddha... or a christ when...
an thích quang duc "oops" happens...
the people will never leave their unison...
their get-together "happening"...
but what's to be celebrated should...
the crucifix be turned into that "other"
torture ordeal of being: piked...
crucifixion the tsunami wave of history...
when one can expect the fate
of being piked by the more imaginative
sorts?
if only the antichrist was gay
and was sentenced to levitate on a pike...
passion and ecstasy via
the Walhalla doing ****... again:
sorry if the pike missed the **** baptism
of ecstasy... and instead aimed
at ripping apart the flesh and bone at:
whatever pivot was made available
to work from reverse ingestion:
beginning with the pelvis...

i'm just tired and cooking and shooing
shadows for the past month and i know that it's
just an exaggerate lounge period...
and all i want is an added arm...
and the serenity leg to take the step to return to...
footsteps... with a bulging echo to command...

it needs to be stressed that these women were black...
i call them ivory beauties of chocolate come
quicksilver moon glistening...
i can't remember... no... "you're" right...
i never managed to **** anything
of an ethno-centric "perspective"...
i'd be arrested for that...
as if starting a hitlerjungen movement or
some other random "****"...

i'd package myself with a mexican strapped into
alcatraz...
the Louis of the Aztecs and some
long lost St. Juan of the Mayans...
leash me... Russian or Prussian or...
what's that third otherwise power of influence
that this body was allowed to morph into?

perhaps i once was allowed to control these words...
but that's how drinking goes...
it's a homocodie when you **** someone
when under the influence of alcohol when driving
a car...
this is a sort of homocide...
i trully gave my hands away to the devil...
and the brain: oh forget that old fabble of a pickle...
what's in brine was always supposed
to be in brine and pickled...

- and what were the chances of me becoming
a sentimental drunk... listening to some
crowded house - weather with you?
the la's - the la's... no... not merely the 1990s
epitome of h'american tourism lodged in london
of myth... as any ******... that myth translated
itself into paris... there she goes...
i mean the whole album...

whale! whale! a beached whale!
Grindadráp...
and some want to go on the Hajj...
and die in a human stampede at the Mecca...
but... well... some want to...
of all of Europe...
Venice, Paris, Rome, Athens,
Amsterdam, perhaps Edinburgh
(wink-wink nudge-nudge)...
Barcelona...
or... Grindadráp of the Faroe Islands...

capture a polyphony in language that is hardly
ever going to be much more
than a chance to... to do that...
shove three fingers into your gob...
expect an elevated volume of sounds...
call the hounds! a mile away!
i was never allowed to learn that
whistling "trick"...
perhaps that's why i never managed
to play the trombone or the clarinet...
the ****-poor leftover guitar...
which is as much as having to read
braille!

reality: i live in england but i'm a ******...
i haven't ****** an english girl...
or a ****** girl...
i was close! a ****** girl licked my face
like a cow, once...
chin, lips, nose and forehead...
i was actually waiting for e.t. when that
happened...
the pakistanis have all the english girls...
sorry... it's sad...
but... the australia...
the fwench... the russian...
it's a decent rubric...
crude... nuanced...
so is buying fwesh meat at the butchers...
the perfect crime is less severe...
fiddling with a tombstone...
then towing it for 2 miles...
to bury the remains of your cat...
after your neighbour "accidently" killed him
when you were away...
and of course they deny it...

after all... i live in a society...
innocent until proven guilty...
said jimmy saville...
it's not the old... european "misunderstanding"..
of guilty until proven innocent...
if not a real story of Tomasz Komenda...
there's the Shawshank Redemption...
or there's... the Count de Monte Cristo...

if all are innocent until proven guilty...
what's that? the genesis story never happens...
it's hardly a moral deterent...
isn't it? people will do as any aleister crowley
would command them to do:
do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law;
this is a naive presupposition of
fudge-packed jurisprudence...
what should have been egg-whites..
it merely some sugar dissolved in water...

statistical counts aside...
i would be more inclined to... fear...
being held guilty... to then be allowed "innocence"...
that to being held innocent...
to then be forced as a doubly-culprit!
how does the double jeopardy paradox arise...
from the high pillar of: innocent until
proven guilty?!
law is at one's own leisure...
should all be bound to an innocence...
revisions of the biblical metaphor...

if we can all be innocent...
wouldn't we at least all fathom an innocent
attempt to break some law?
for a matter of: testing the waters?
even if innocent until proven guilty is true...
there's no narrative of redemption...
why is it that the shawshank redemption
is such a popular movie?
since it adopts the continental motiff of:
guilty... until proven innocent...
it offers... redemption...
it's a popular movie because it's unfair
for the basis of a single individual...
not some amassing of victims of a jimmy saville
recount... that have... none... zilch...
no redemption!
their redemption: ist tod!

because if i were to be found guilty...
with no chance of defence...
i would exercise a double-think in relation to this...
rather than exercise this leisure into
grieving the orwellian zeitgeist monstrosity of
but the one novel...

i'm not convinced of the english model...
this... innocent until proven guilty...
this pontius pilate argument...
i'm not for it! this sinking to the core of my heart
and hopefuly, prevents me from a heartbeat...
perhaps so fewer examples of
the #metoo would come to the fore...
if... one were not so easily allowed
a ststus of innocence...
perhaps... guilty until proven innocent...
doesn't allow...
so readily accessed accusations...
perhaps this modern, english model of
jurisprudence...
is missing a medieval lisp?

as law abiding as would suggest...
i would be much more deterred from inacting
a grievance should i be found guilty...
without a benefit of a doubt of a jury...
than if i were to be given the a priori: innocent
status...

i don't like this: england and greenwich in tow
is the bellybutton of the world
demand of... all else is less than we...
no... did i come from Algiers?!
what has Algiers to do with it and Leeds
shouldn't?!

at least that's how a man sobers up...
while still drinking...
he might focus on sober demands...
of topics that only drunks should speak of...
and since neither of the two meet...

because i have stood as a witness
in a court...
and i was given a photograph to...
"compare" having identified him in a mugshot...
the photograph i was shown still
had a date imprinted on it...
and this was the ******* argument...
the photograph was years old...
i identified the culprit in the police mugshot...
but the case was "won"... for no apparent reason...
the witness said: i...
this photograph is years old...
i can grow a beard and hippy attire in a year's time...
of course i was the witness that said:
note down the registration plate
of the car this camel-jockey jumped out of
and grabbed m'ah fwends mobile...

i've seen how: innocent until proven guilty works...
i'm not conviced...
i can't be... there's something instinctual preventing
me from adhering to this english...
jurisprudent sensbility...
it's hardly a ******* charles dickens novel...
if it were... and i greatly underestimated
charles dickens... no... really...
i shouldn't have read any of dostoyevsky...
i should have read charlie ****'oh'ends...
believe me when i say that is hould have...
since... heidegger's ponderings VII - XI
will retain their shelf-status as... the book most
probably unread...

such is the sobering process...
am i, in no way, allowed to sacrifice my 'ed
on the premise that: innocent until
proven guilty is the right categorial imperstive
to buckle on... since...
the anglophonic world buckles on it...
like a spectacular breakdance feat of
a penguin on steroids...
doing the diving header tsunami
of chore: the crowd goes wild!
it's no operatic applause and being
"superficially" reminded as to how...
find your proper seat...
before the castrato peacock does his
singing bit...
apparently finding one's seat
when it's never going to be a maggot-pit
at a slipknot concert is all that's
about to happen...

come by the butcher's and let's attempt
in finding you some oysters
among the volume of red boisterous...
to replica your genital parts
and sordid caviar letfovers...

perhaps i could be angry...
but la ilah illa blah'lah...
i am... halway bound between
being simulation circumcised
and being castrated...
i never which is which...
notably, given...
circumcised men are not allowed
the impetus of taking up
web-cam Susan on promise of...
also pleasing themselves
without wanting to earn some money...

it's a real problem though:
innocent until proven guilty versus
guilty until proven innocent...
relish...
the english indiosyncratic
wishing they were scandinavian iceland...
no... honey too sweet tooth bear...
this is not how the GMP affair that exends
with its genesis in the jimmy saville affair
looks like...
this quest for: apparently "superior"
is not going to work on me...
kin of a kind-of luvvie dubby...
bon voyage!

the entire continent is listening...
individualistic rights...
innocent until proven guilty...
the more i reiterate these words...
the more i sober up...
because i can't see how...
i am: a thief...
until i am proved to be... a thief...
by having performed the act
of thieving...
or not even an "after"...

sorry... please expose your divine
rational intelligence and tell me
via a reiteration that 2 + 2 = 4...

i am not a thief,
but i am a thief...
only if the act of stealing is proved...
and if "the" act of stealing is not proved...
i'm way more than a thief...
i'm a thief with a baby driver!
this anglican logic *****...
if innocent until proven guilty...
is to sustain the individual flourishing...
i'd rather make theatre of the original,
biblical deterrent...
a queen of this sort of popish claims
and her duaghters of yorkshire because...
the pawns of justitia...

conventionality of continetal thinking...
there's not even a "what if" or
"it would be better" should... allow,
extended into:
guilty until proven innocent...
rather than... innocent until proven guilty...

i sometimes find myself chattering...
in the cold...
but i'm not chewing anything...
i'm pretending to pivot the piano on a ghost...
being played as some per se magician's
excavation of: whatever time...
thus it was spent...

i call it chattering chopin...
bite marks available... like the multitude
of signature most willing to be...
allocated a collection foreseeable...

the would the artichokes of arabia...
or the fennel roasted roots of Italy...
there's something to be had of a woman
sporting the "cherokee" leopard-skin prints
on something that's...
90% cotton and 10% lycra?!

and the reason why i visited a brothel
in the past ten years was because?
if i want to play poker...
i'll play poker...
easy ***? it's not so easy in the act
and you want to find a kiss and...
she tells you: it's against the laws
of this sort of nunnery...
but you still manage to slurp a lip or two
of a shy pluck of the tulips of the sea...
or however this thing that
language is works...
if it's not going to be a hammer and nail...
forever... this "excuse" to allow nothing
more than YA novels...
metaphors and... pedantry of elswhere
from punctuation?

herioglyphic assumptions of :) emoji?
wink barrel baron! oi!
non-responsive...
black also implies: ivory beauty...
i started to admire their teeth...
since mine were always going to be
custard yellow death grin...
like bone to the rot...

no... i'm pretty sure tonight ends
here; now;
the prodigy - destroy...
given how... keith flint...
and that horse... and it was never a tale
of the stormy badger...
and how the fox is my aid and will
never make it to...
transcend the red coat hunting parties...
because... just because.
Patrick Ramsey Nov 2020
My anxiety is taking over
My anxiety is taking over
My life, is not yet over
My life, is not yet over
I'm stone cold, yeah and sober
I'm stone cold,  yeah and sober
My anxiety is breaking me down
Its causing me to drown
It erased my smile
I've been without it a long, long while
And replaced it with a frown from a clown
My anxiety is taking over
My anxiety is taking over

I feel like I'm always losing
Even tho I should be winning
I'm close to losing this fight
Even tho I'm giving it all my might
I try to breathe, I can't breathe
My anxiety is killing me
I roll over, I become colder
My blanket is giving me the cold shoulder
Im usually hot, but tonight I'm not
I'm doing a better now,  I'm remaining sober somehow
I'm one year older
I endure pain, i experience fear
I don't feel I compare to all of my peers
Because of that these eyes are pouring tears
Everyday I ask whats keeping me here
Just a misunderstood youth, who speaks the truth
It doesn't matter how much these eyes rain
No one ever understands my pain
When poison entered my veins
Never once did I complain
It knew my name
It played my game
It was a hard lion to tame
I have been robbed
For falling for the wrong heartthrob
Never again will i bring my walls down easily
My anxiety defeating me will not be easy

My anxiety is taking over
My anxiety is taking over
My life, is not yet over
My life, is not yet over
I'm stone cold, yeah and sober
I'm stone cold,  yeah and sober
My anxiety is breaking me down
Its causing me to drown
It erased my smile
I've been without it a long, long while
And replaced it with a frown from a clown
My anxiety is taking over
My anxiety is taking over

I'm remaining in the slow lane, I'm staying in the right lane
Just because I do well at carrying myself
Doesn't mean I'm steady, cuz lets honest, **** is getting really heavy
I'm all the time being put down
I look in the mirror and stare at my frown
I wanna turn it upside down
I wanna know the secret to finding true happiness
Because what I'm feeling isn't happiness
I feel like with my luck **** with end like city of angels
No fairytale ending just a nightmare fable
I do all I can, I know I'm able
To turn over this ******* table
I must find the the right content
It might take me a while
Its something I'm probably going to have to invent
I truly ******* hate this
Is there a secret recipe to ending this
Where is the cheat codes
Triangle, square, circle,X it didn't work
Where is the correct code?
I'm still feeling hurt
Without Chester I feel lost
Withour Wrld I know what's at cost
I wanna hold on, but its getting hard
I have so much but I don't want to loose it all
I'm stronger now but I feel I'm still going to fall

My anxiety is taking over
My anxiety is taking over
My life, is not yet over
My life, is not yet over
I'm stone cold, yeah and sober
I'm stone cold,  yeah and sober
My anxiety is breaking me down
Its causing me to drown
It erased my smile
They replaced it with a frown from a clown
I haven't seen it in a long, long while
My anxiety is taking over
My anxiety is taking over

I can't believe the neglect
I've done to myself
I wanted to eject
I felt like such a reject
I lost my way
And I'm paving it now
I embrace each day
No matter what I'll make it go my way
No more keeping my head down
I'll keep it held high
As I look up into the sky
I am so blessed to still be alive

My anxiety is losing the battle
My anxiety is loosing the battle
I've got my **** handled
I've got my **** handled
No more relying on poison I don't need it
I'm doing the best now better believe it
I'm awake now, no more narrow minded
My heart is free no longer binded
My heart is free no longer binded
My source of warmth is now my friend
It will be with me till the very end
My anxiety is losing the battle
My anxiety is losing the battle
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2021
that i fear the fiend might come knocking...
taking masks hanging on wall parallel the stairs...
grating the wall while he stumbles down...
that i fear the fiend might come knowing
oh so little... that he just bought himself an
£18 worth of Eclipse Mount Gay Barbados
***... and he just had a sip of it...
                        fiend... border collie...
       can i catch him before the taste wears off?
after all... even i agree with him... this ***...
which doesn't look like *** at all...
stands right up there... with the best of mr. whiskers
and ms. ambers...


1

i promised myself a whole month of living
inside my head...
    inside my head: mein kopf -
i promised myself to not venture out of
it with either fingers tongue or bruise:
augen allein - mit:
                                    with only eyes...

i promised myself to not
write phantom with phantom:
most assuredly to not write in a drunken
stupor - or somehow:
drunkenly excited: Horace citing or
in admiration for some
  ego-worm from dust in a library burnt
down spawned...

i promised myself a month of living:
if i were to use my hands it would
be to fix up my bicycle...
tighten the brakes...
lubricated the chain and gear cogs...
the wheels...
bake two dozen rhubarb & white chocolate
muffins...
play a little bit of the guitar...
work with a screwdriver...

   make a pork & beef Hungarian
sauce with plenty of peppers and chillies
with smoked paprika and cinnamon
for a potato rosti... or add some flour
to the potatoes and make a potato-pancake
for the sauce...
certainly drink more coffee...

perhaps sip a 25ml sip of some expensive
liquor to remind myself:
sober: come earthquake or tsunami...
i promised myself to live inside my head
for a month: not writing or what
i sometimes call writing:
that crux of an exasperation from
doodling... sketching: marooning
myself on an hour where i could be doing
something plentiful in
the garden...

                    itching for soil beneath
my fingernails...
after all: sober might be just mediocre:
where is that bombastic drunkard who
would write: anything goes?
   irgend etwas geht...
                     gehen weiter... go further...
neu-nüchtern alt-nüchtern:
but it's never the same...

only this time: i haven't given my word:
or honour... i gave my hand
in a handshake: i break that i might
as well chop it off...
and that's no good for a typewriter
of any sort...
    i'd need a hand more dexterous
and probably much bigger...
   and it would be just as well to have
a 2nd thumb: thumb-either side...
i promised myself a month inside my head:
i even called it:

     nüchternlücke... a hiatus of soberness...
periods of 4 days (3 hours prior
to sleep) of treating my liver as a punching
bag - 4 days counting
passing from lump to slime
to all sweat and furriness:

   masks in the hallway: down the stairs
fell... perhaps more perhaps less
than dominos...
              refrigerating a clock...
                                        freezing a cigarette...
not even if the readership plucked
200 x 2... 400 eyes...
i would continue thus...

   reminiscence of those strained sober
in-soma nights:                    work the horse on
to a tight schedule...
                          it was only a superstitious
day three days ago...
a Friday a 13th...
an August a year two-thousand-and-twenty-one...
i cycled a new routine...

2 hours during the day from Harald's &
Harold's Hill / Forrest... and further afield
like atte-Bower teasing a sight of
ol' father Thames and the A13...
through the village of Rainham to and through
the village of Wennington...

bypassing Upminster via the pristine flatness
of the county of Thurrock... Belgium?
not as familiar... but close enough by
comparison... and then full-circle back to Harold's
& Harald's via Great Warley -
but that's of course during the day...

by night an hour's worth of
looking at Friday's, Saturday's and Sunday's
clientele at either Hornchurch or
Romford...
not that much of a terrible sight...
i must have looked worse when drinking...

    such was my youth: only these days
it would appear that the colts are pimping
the mares... Hornchurch girls...
classier than Romford girls...
       O moralist... let the butter churn...
body against body:
you're passing through, anyway...

- but at night when the air is thin
speed becomes multiplied by at least 1.5mph...
make that: 2kmph...
just thinking of a date...
i'd say to her... why don't we cycle these
outer-suburban labyrinths...
while listening to the soft moon:
all downhill from the opening song
breathe the fire -
written by luis vasquez... Spaniard or
-es-que...
                           all the cure you can
hope for... translated into
dig: a 21st century hole...
                      not of Joy or Depeche...
bicycling at night:
from streetlight to streetlight dragging
shadows...
air come night is so much
thinner: less traffic to mind...
no need for comfort, safety...
no high viz. no headlights...
           headphones in...
intuition... unconscious arithmetic of
spatial coordination...
i always felt safest at night...
and using the momentum build-up
of large trucks at a roundabout...

i must forget to have written anything
good drunk: for that matter... this is all
sober... sober judged sober feels
sober the anchor of an "anhedonia":
but only to excess!

       by now the fiend would reply:
past the 35cl mark... smooth sailing on
the rough seas...
otherwise... prior to the 35cl mark...
boat crashing and toiling on a lake's serenity...

i promised myself a month inside
my own head... to rekindle a reading list...
the old Libra: never write more than
you read: read more than you write...

away from the city on the Thurrock platitudes
like lyrics from a Leonard Cohen
song: you don't really care much for music,
do y'ah?
i've wasted my youth on music...
probably as much on movies...
now for the privy of a well-worked-out
bicycle... no need to sing a praise
for sparrows: they're off on their own
chore of song...
sober crow... eternal sober crow...
gallows keeper... the bird than splinters
a pine tree into a thousandth of a thousandth
needle... then threads...
ghostly cotton figurines...

2

a week passes: it's already too late to leave
a carbon footprint, only circa dating...
one approximate late, or later than usual...
Kabul has been resurrected
and is standing face to face with its original
indentation against the mountains...

pity the other commentary:
in Plymouth i see no need for psychiatry...
not that... a Jihadi has any "mental health issues"...
can't see the forest for the trees...
well... it's like that joke i half finished...

an incel, a jihadi & a... pornographic actor...
walk into a bar...
like i said: half-finished...
give terror its due where it's... not hiding behind
some waterfall of milk...
although... as all social commentaries go...
give a jihadi a bride...
                  and you'll probably get half the jihad...
but what to do when the reward is
rejected? by those who... would sooner
**** their own mothers than ****
with an allahu akbar?!


3

what ought to have been a month was only
but a week...
this inflammable whimper of time begun...
by some yesterday... toward some:
but even vaguer tomorrow...
  whimsical whimsical one two and three:
a measure to count with...
a measure to overcome a horizon with...
from plateau to hill to a bundle of curated
forest...
a sea of Thurrock's wheat...
  kinder than the actual sea...
                           i suppose no more than
this... spare me more time away from
this canvas of burning eyes
and skeleton-key letters...
                       i'll return to a time...
when words were sacrosanct... and written
by a priestly class...
when they didn't pierce all things...
so that things were kept intact...
but not here... among the rubble...
   the atoms... the stretched audacities of
a prison cast(e).
Vilene Joubert  May 2011
sober
Vilene Joubert May 2011
Getting sober has been fun
As being fuckt
It has its pro's and cons
Being fuckt
I knew myself
A was a cold hearted *****
Emotionless I was free
Being sober
Is a whole different me
Its all New
And I can Feel
Being sober
I have realized
Nothing else makes sense
Being without you
Its useless being sober
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2019
i can't exactly call myself a recovering alcoholic,
that would be too obvious,
too: well boxed...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   new sober'.
                                                                     /

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

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

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

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

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

                               wooden shjips: V... /

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

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

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

                                                                  /

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                           just let me absolve myself
from citing stereotypes.
Mateuš Conrad May 2017
who the **** dares to write sober? you only write on some form of intoxication... i can't believe there's a need to write when sober... when sober? you talk... you don't write... there's no need to write when sober... there's sure enough need to think, and perhaps talk... but writing? leave that to the intoxicated; unless your're an eager scribbler, and can usher out 30 volumes of harlequin novels; then you might as well be dubbed a blacksmith, of itchy fingers' worth of taking to nibble at using a hammer; as a spartan might have said: gentiles... athenians... the same glut; oh ****... you'll be searching for an acute and a slavic "o" in the last word i mentioned, prior to the semi-colon, akin to asking for an actute u... to rephrase a case of omega.*

most of the time, when i read something,
and realise: you were sober?!
   **** me!
                          i was drunk when
i wrote my ****, and took myself seriously
when being sober, as in...
       well... i.e. not bumping into
fellow pedestraisns.
                       sober opinions are scary;
tear jerking... like dicing an onion.

— The End —