Matthew Conrad

May 15, 1986 - Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski
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christmas eve: say hello to ITS

perhaps i'm just... tired from making christmas eve
preparations...
the mother is fresh from hospital having had
a hip replacement - and she's only just teasing
being 60... and this sort of thing waits for women...
coming to 70+ and in 15 years or so...
there's a high chance of a second replacement
and that's only one leg and socket...
but christmas eve has to be covered...
whether she's sitting at the table or whether she's
lying in bed...
return of the dutiful son... some son,
some duty... and by no means a return...
i can't remember my 20s...
fog of psychosis or... never quiet allowed
to get a neurological perspective outside of england...
when i had the dough to get an m.r.i. scan...
they sent me with my early-dementia riddled
grandfather for the results...
i said: so, doc, kind herr neurologist...
am i mentally ill?
the doc replies: anyone who says you're mentally
ill is mentally ill themselves...
21... 33... 12 years of some sort of brain damage
and i'm still... typing and minding typos
like a neurotic or some variant on the spectrum
of impulsive-compulsive disorder...
i still want to see the face that fucker saw...
when he gave me... what he said was going to be...
an LSD trip shortened... so much for my naiveness....
friendships... ties to growing up and school...
so much for reading any C Castaneda
for that matter...
christmas eve is coming and i'm doing everything
i can to find an hour of drinking and typing...
it's hardly enough to find the perfect lotus...
i have to lay down twelve dishes for the table
come christmas eve...
christmas day is half sorted...
there's the meat already baked...
and all i'll have to do is the breasts...
wrapped in an envelope of skin which will
be filled with butter and fresh thyme...
the baked tatties will be just fine and
the honey glazed carrots and 'snips will also be:
just fine...
and when the 26th of december comes i'll
be... hopefully... left with...
so much anticipation... over a month's worth
of advertising... i haven't bought a single gift...
i offer my time...
grandma calls today and says how...
it's nice that her son (my uncle) is there...
i have missed 4 consequitive christmas celebrations
in england... 4 years and now i see the banality
of christmas... in a catholic nation it's...
slightly different would be a major fucking
understatement...
i should question... but...
i have come to understand that...
whatever the truth might be...
esp. if its the coincidental unearthing of
the nag hammadi library, the dead sea scrolls...
the year is 1945 and the great bomb just drops...
and... the gospel of st. thomas is only cited by
psychiatrists akin to r. d. laing in the 1960s
about... make the male female...
make the female male... the innter the outer...
or just your casual invigoration of the transgender
zeitgeist... and medicine catches up to the psychological
whims... and...
i'd just like a cold ms. amber...
perhaps a london derby in football...
a robin on a fence in my garden...
a migrating flock of canadian geese in the sky...
and a frosty morning with a cold azure delight
of a sunny pristine sky...
no pompous summer with her sensual orgy
of scents and colours and distractions...
and how: winter is never old...
never somber... lucky for me... winter is always
drunk and readying itself for a birth in death...
or some pseudo-mystical bollocks...
but i can use a plethora of psychiatric terms...
last time i checked...
i was tested for regression in one instance...
regression being: having false memories being
insinuated for you to believe in...
a dirty trick done by psychiatrists...
i still don't mind...
those 12 dishes will be served...
- a mackerel paste salad
- herrings:
(a) in cream with apples...
(b) classic... oil and ocet
(c) kashubian
- a crab, prawn and smoked salmon pate
(cream cheese and trout caviar, dill)
- oven baked salmon with veg trimmings
- beetroot borscht
- borscht "ears" - dumplings stuffed
with cabbage & 'shrooms... or just 'shrooms
- short-crust pierogi (oven baked dumplings)
filled with pickled cabbage, 'shrooms onions etc.
- a trad con. salad
(cubed... eggs, potatoes, leek, carrots,
celeriac, pickled cucumbers in brine,
etc.)
- racuchy
- an oven baked cheese cake
- a poppyseed roulade
- a keks (fruitcake... very much a...
loan of weihnachtsstollen)... i've been feeding
this motherfucker 3 tablespoons of rum
every 2 weeks for the past month or so...

how many is that? there needs to be twelve...
shit... herrings count as x3...
leftover prawns...
so... a...
- prawn cocktail...

and of course a plate and utensils for that...
un-expected guest...
would i go to the christmas eve mass?
the "shepherds' mass"?
last time i went... i dragged a monkey with me...
250ml of vodka is a monkey...
and i had a swell time...
listening to the nuns pray for the alcoholics...
but not the workoholics...
and playing itchy eyelid and nerve tourettes
with an itchy face with some kid
in the aisle in front of me...
and... then walking out mid-mass
to piss on the church: to ensure... it would...
grow!
but... this is england...
i can't afford to go to a catholic mass...
and not stand out...
not that many catholics around these parts...

i have my twelve dishes+...
christmas day is going to be a doddle...
the roast potatoes have been perfected...
the meat is ready to be sliced
with sour dough bread...
there are no children,
no presents to open...
just enough time to survive this over-hyped
bollocks... enough time to wait for
the true celebrations,
and these ones... if not in the company
of two people nearing 60...
then... two people nearing 85+...
with easter, in a catholic midst...
walking to church with painted eggs...
to subscribe to this... advent of the castrato choir...
easter and spring...
a crucifixion... that we do indeed pay such
obsolete rigour to tradition:
even if we're not expected...
i guess justifies everyone else being
so hyped-up about the birth and death
of a demigod...

i just imagine: but what if i didn't do all this?
what's the alternative to:
r.i.p. marie fredriksson - god rest your soul:
you beau lass... 'spending my time'?
the t.v. zombie? the internet claustrophobiac?
what alternative?
are you a downton abbey up fan...
or a downton abbey down fan?
up? the sirs and the class distinctions
and what the fuck it has to do with
a room's decorum?
or... the staff locum?

all i know is that i'm about 20 minutes away
from a 25mg / 250mg naproxen / 500ml
of ms. amber knock-out sweet dreams goliath
motherfucker...
i'm already thinking about...
postcards from Geneva...

the falling asleep part i never mind...
the waking up part: oh god i do, i do...
and there's nothing worse than apathy:
but of course there is...
there's the truth... and having to have
some secular decency...
in attempting to carry the burden
of disbelief...
a natural consequence of an equilibrium...
to have to have experienced the truth
in some way:
you can only carry disbelief with you...
as you somehow try to cover
a poppy's seed's worth of diameter every
year to a nibble of that once
grand truth...
a disbelief... a negation of:
because if i were to believe in... whatever
i have to disbelieve in order to covert and
tactifully let everyone else a place ahead of me...
what's the alternative? will what then becomes
"the truth" / a truth?

to have truth in your mouth...
in your ears...
in your eyes...
and then... to have to stall...
to carry with you a disbelief...
without a plethora of agnostic doubt...
imagine being...
excused from the thrill of entertaining
the plethora of emotions bound to
agnostic doubt...
i miss those days...
when one could simply "wish away"
a thought...
or a thought would disappear of its own accord...

yes the grand-wise master of a grandmother:
she fell from a chair...
which she stood on...
when a cushion was still on it...
because... she really wanted to change
the curtains in the kitchen...
the epitaph would have run...
i lived my life... but i died:
because i really had to change those curtains
since christmas and shit...

i am burdened with disbelief not because...
i don't believe it...
a marijuana hallucination in central london,
located with me hiding in a church: elevated...
a fucking choir, an iPod check,
a great wind...
polite society would not allow me to...
do much more...
i can't doubt... that's my problem...
i have to... "negate"...
i can't negate outright...
logically... premises, presuppostions...
web of rhetorical angst... etc. -
and i can't believe it either... by believing this:
marijuana auditory hallucination...
what? it's already 12 years "late"...
and by belief: will it?
to what end? my own? its: "its"?!

"my prefered genger pronoun is: ITS"...
well hello... ITS...
yes, ITS because it's not it is...
or rather it's because my it's ITS is already
included: so... i-its t t t t t...
have its tits?
em... samuel beckett... watt...
tits up its... etc. -
and grammar is that grand fucking crescendo
moment when all the apes will fall from
Julian Tuwim's opera carousel -
and fall they will: and will immediately
stand-up straight... and figure out...
the blessings of the thumb...
thumbs' up up anyone's ass.

with a thumbs' up like that...
in anyone's ass... you're bound to see
a thumb's peek-a-boo in Beijing...
like: swap-prizes! this one isn't even surreal.
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