Matthew Conrad

May 15, 1986 - Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski
Send Message

technically: but technically no

technically: but technically no, no, not really,
how many rounds of ammunition
do you have?
i can a few... erbacce.com,
acumen.co.uk...
you name them... these "publishers"...
with their editorial
canapé or sorts -

since when was this ever a "vanity"
project?
since the last time i forgot
to remember such... "bollocks"...

it's like: there's a need to bypass
editorial pressures...
on such platforms...
good grief: what if i was truly
looking for either money
or fame, having but these words
to work with?
then i'd truly be in the 6ft deep
shamb'oh of utter
crass beginnings...

but i'm not... yet... these poetry
magazines... forgot, yeah, they, "forgot"
a little technical detail...
for all its worth...
wattpad.com did actually come
up with a solution...

the inability to ctrl + c / ctrl + p their
teenage drivel of content...
i have yet to visit a poetry magazine:
website... that...
if i had the audacity...
i would actually have to write out
a plagiarism... instead:
i can just skip past it and ctrl + c / ctrl + p...
and the "job" is done...

so these magazines really do
boast about publishing something -
the cost of electricity / internet access is
equally shared...
but what would i be waiting for?
for editorial scrutiny...
not a public scrutiny -
an editorial scrutiny...

oh sure... it's cheap shit heap of
word crab bucket bollocks -
or? i'm giving the voyeur a perfect
inclination to a raw and feral mind...
at least in sketch...
not displeased by some
editorial "nuance"...

i'd take these sites seriously:
if they took themselves:
less seriously...
or perhaps if they didn't simply sell
the constipated chance
of a niche readership...

https://abegailmorley.wordpress.com/anthologies-and-magazine/
a really good place to start...
and... plus... the framework between
writing raw and allowing
for raw eyes to see...
i'm living with the times...
i can't exactly wait... on a whim...
for a "window of opportunity" to submit a
poem i will probably abhor the next day...
but someone, just might,
keep to adore on the same day it was written...

there is absolutely every reason to believe
in the maxim:
das Eisen schmieden, solange es heiß ist
(and how it sounds in german,
is how i want to feel when thinking
about it in englisch)...

still... first rule of the editorial game in
turning paper magazines into digital outlets:
you make sure that ctrl + c / ctrl + p doesn't work...
like: what doesn't work on wattpad.com:
i know it's a platform: and not a publisher...

in the end it was always about bypassing
editorial pressures - and reaching an audience...
any audience... notably the 1-on-1
psy-session dynamism...
again: thank god i'm not here for either
fame - or money...
otherwise i would be truly armed with
a screwdriver and... a bunch of screws...

n.b.: there's only one good estimate that
you writing is worth anything -
it doesn't beg the question of either spelling
or grammar... sure... it can explore
neugrammatik... but the spelling has
to remain rigid...
and... i'm pretty sure i've done that...
sure... my punctuation is idiosyncratic
and my own: because i am not going
to sit another - GCSE english exam as if
i'm 16... either...

- and if i really had to wait (yes...
you can begin a sentence with a conjunction
like /and/ - as long as you include
a hyphen at the beginning of the sentence) -
and no, i do not care much for
the standards of prose-paragraphs
and the "correct": CAPITAL at the end
of a dot.

- aeons can pass by then...
and i will no longer be strapped to the river of
thought passing through me
being translated into itchy nibbles
of the tips of the fingers...
i'll be bound to: more or less relaxing
by the shore of the whole history of time
barraging me with: itself and -
how i am to "suddenly" find myself,
being, appreciative of the gob-smack view!

i don't have the time to wait for
editorial interference...
for some "respectability" award of seeing my
name "in print"...
the playing field is pretty much
evened out...
i pay for the same sort of internet access
as these "publishers"...

personally? am i a the beatles / the rolling stones
sort of guy? neither...
13th floor elevators for the former...
wooden shjips for the latter...
there's a want to push against
an editorial condom...
why succumb to stifling the muse
for some "respectability" factor...
some critical acclaim...
since when have editors coincided themselves
in the same heap as critics?
aren't... aren't they synonymous
these days?

'i'm just here to spew, man' -
said any Bukowski Jr.
and i'm here for the canvas...
i just need a canvas...
i want to see an "exhibition" that has paint
still drying on canvas...
sometime overflowing from one
brushstroke into another...
merging into a quasi-cubism imitation-goo...

ah: those petty editors who think
that professional critics will lend their critical eye
and give: the required illumination
for some budding talent?

or is this a price of "instant gratification" gimmicks?
but i also can't be bound
to keeping my writing a secret -
to stash it in some drawer -
to keep festering my wounds of either shame
or talent for some future...
when... when i can just bypass these hurdles
and aim at a privy-in-the-"south" of
respected communicas...
after all... this might be the one and only
time in history when i will have
this, supposed, "freedom of speech"...

i best exercise it... without conventions
and classical routes of publishing successes...
i still wouldn't have been able
to write the sort of fifty shades of grey
required...
envious?
not exactly... i've found a halfway house
of my drinking habits, my desire to serve
at least 6hours per head of night in
the army of Nod...
and hence... the most perfect music...
folk... german folk...
pop bores me,
rock bores me, i'm tired of anthems...
and i'm not exactly a baritone or a soprano
to sing-along to opera...

but folk? well... i do like the deutzschezunge
if i'm to be completely honest...
mix this with some reading of heidegger...
and we have: folk...
thick as thieves...
perfect drinking songs...
or at least songs best listened to when
drinking:

wir sind des geyers schwarzer haufen: h'yah h'oh!
und wollen mit tyrannen raufen, h'yah h'oh!

spieß voran, drauf und dran,
setz aufs klosterdach den roten hahn! (x2)

do i look like / imagine myself
as... the next fucking bellboy for an october-fest
drinking orgy
of some khaki-party notable?
(der ficken nächste hoteljunge für
ein oktoberfest trinkenorgie
von einige khakipartei bemerkenswert- ? (

i believe this language can be raised
to a higher esteem for all its historical worth:
that it does not have to succumb
to concurrent cheap gimmicks and pompous
exhibitions in the english...

the h'american fetish for the nazi
is nothing new, nor something old...
and it is so cheap and crass and still...
mostly associated with rock,
metal... trash metal genres...
and if these people were to sign the folk...
well... to sing these songs in english
would be like having a distant familiarity
of a diet of raw herrings in a cream sauce:
or some other paradox...

i still can't envision passing this sort
of script... via an editorial process...
however much i'd love to attain the knowledge
of a rejection letter...
but this is not a sidenote in bukowski's
biography and what life was like
in the 20th century...

sorry and "sorry" in that i'm:
not sorry...
a little © at the end of a name...
on a poetry's magazine website is nothing without
a fixed physical inability to simply:
or otherwise play the ctrl + c / ctrl + p game
to the text...
when paper was fiat...
when paper was fiat and not this pixel
canvas of disemboweled manuscripts
and brains and spines in pickle water
in pickling jars of pseudo-immortality's
worth for at least a century to come...

i dare not wait...
i dare not wait...
i wanted to bypass editorial pressures...
after all: what sort of "credibility" is in store:
had i the patience...
and enough digestive juices of
anticipation, egomania...
self-pretence and "self-worth"...
perhaps if paper was the sort of worth
that fiat money was once worth...
said every single one "of those" fiat
writers to those fiat editors
who would succumb to the exposing
the reading demands of
a fiat audience...

because we really do not converse
covertly -
in this last bastion of "free speech" that's
the west succumbing to chinese "concerns":
much can be admired about the chinese -
at least if they impose via the state...
everything is fucking disney...
that any "latin man" could be able
to read... the chinese transparency
is the zenith of what is otherwise
the sick nadir of western idealism...
chinese state transparency can be written
in ideograms...
but it translates into syllables and letters...
atoms...

i could have been bound to have escaped
the satellite state of poland
when the ZSSR was breathing and beating a hollow
iron heart... and escape to h'america - where?!
i'd escape... to a place:
where i were to live among glass people
in glass houses -
rather than to have to live among
mirror people in mirror houses...

i once pondered: so this internet dating...
profiling... why write a profile...
and then go on a date...
where's the spontaneity...
when you have revealed everything?

i'm not chinese but there's one compliment
worth giving: to a state that numbers
over 1billion people...
it's certainly better run than Latvia
with a population of less than 2million...
because the state said:
we will be invisible / visible by being
transparent...
you can gain more freedom when there
are viable rules in place...
than... when there are idiosyncratic rules...
age-old preferences...
class disputes... historical artifacts...
trans-generational biases...
not when... the... already existing rules
are under an impeding scrutiny of
needing to "ammend"...
to revise... to change... to work-better
for someone readied to abuse them...

some would add:
chinese sensiblity is not born of selves but
of slaves...
personally? i'd much prefer to play
a game where the rules are fixed...
and... there was no guiding principle
of freedom within the confines
of the motto:

the clause and then the amendment -
or however the world is...
the united states of h'america
is an anti-federalist save-haven...
on the inside...
but to my "suprise" is a federalist
export elsewhere...
no wonder so many of us
want to see the: little-shithole america...
and the grand canyon...
otherwise it seems rather pointless
from the perspective of living in england:
that such a massive cusp of land
should have to share the same
language with only "orthographical"
differences - stretched over
pointless metaphysical debates...

like: too little butter spread over
too much toast...
much of the same tongue should not
be spread over so much geographical space...
the chinese are concentrated...
and have no mongolian desire to, "move"...
the blue indians of the raj...
em... weren't they the first
multicultural folk?
what's to be celebrated
in the stiffening of succumbing to
the anglo-saxon plateau?

just, "curious" questions...
i wouldn't question a german should i known
him to be a Swabian...
but i will question the anglo-saxon...
or just the schwarzschaf von die deutschebrut...
der Sächsisch: ßaß...
i imagine... the "what if" of a world
with these words that would begin
with the anglo-swabians...

anglo-saxons share so much
of the ridiculous need to move akin to the people
they most critize - the hebrew semites...
and look... they too move!
moving and loving to move so much
left them without a scrap of land
the hebrew semites now defend...
to the moon! to mars! to venus!
where now to?!

i'm here... counting the hairs on my head...
then on my chin...
and then counting the number of ants
in the underwear of the saxons.
146 Total read