whoa man - that's deep

.
when you turn on a light,

you don't see the light

-

you see the light-bulb.




(this realization has blown my mind)

I need a piece of toast

I have a need, this growing thirst
it must be quenched or I will burst
--but my thirst is not the liquid kind, however
it is luscious toast for which I pine...

a slice of rye, or loaf of brown
glass of milk to wash it down
some toast I need to sop my wounds
blackened grain for every mood
a crispy breastplate for my soul
stacked upon a plate with rolls

yes, I crave toast in all its myriad form
singed so glorious every morn
toast to slather, toast to butter
a crusted sister, a raisined brother
--why, if I had toast instead of family
then christmas would pass quite crunchily

I call for jams, I cry for jelly!
clear some room within my belly!
coax the honey, rouse nutella!
Mr. Toasty is a hungry fella!

I walk through life - not living - inside a dream
of toasted angels with crumbèd wings
while my toaster sleeps 'neath stars that gleam
I prithee wake me when it dings

Boxing Day Special!

Who poisoned our primate primacy? Invalidated vertical-vertebrate victory? ‘Twas the Venus villains in their moments of truculence, so bustling and mammarious, deep and cavernous like a moistened fig. ‘Twas the taut limbic bubble teeth, the oily meerschaum moneyed cockroachery. Yet none of it compares to a fine grain of flaxen mucus... Look, a wagon of indecision! A brown paperbag of damnation! O you snails of weariness, do avoid the Zippo cliques, you helmeted online dowsers oaring your way to Niger-nirvana: have you lately kissed a midget? Have you ever jellied a hedgehog? You lack so much experience – it could make a concierge blush or wet his pants. Yesterday, my friends, I drowned a lemur – my patience is not Stonehenge; and tomorrow I may fancy an onion bath – my tears will flow like rainwater. So zounds to you, o accomplices of stench! Woe to the wicked that crackle and dance! My brain’s not made of tungsten, I have no good ideas; my insides are polycarbonate; you fools who rub my left index finger, you are like the singular sing-signalizers or malevolent malingerers, and I huff and puff and puke. Has Mabel made you pimple-necked; has Morty stolen every last nickel, or five hours worth of thunder? Hmm, exactly as I thought…. Now lay the peppered parmiggiano lasagna inside my yellow brick oven; greet the plumber on his way down the caboose, hurl cabbages if you like – such vegetables are healthy – or trek the vast white Klondike. Fondle every last bit of plasticine, its furrows are ingenious, it makes gobs and gobs of cents, like friendly Konrad and the lashless Lorenz… Attention all pot-bangers! Your clanging soothes my nerves; call your friends in from the frying-pan orchestra and bash me repeatedly. For I know a purple dinosaur, we call him Garth the Vagabond, he is a pterodactyl, he rhymes in terrifying dactyls – so large, loud and reptilian is crotchety Garth, alone in the dark, perpetually missing the mark with his extinctual existence…

(Merry Christmas!)

love and loveliness

Don’t sleep – it’s so much lost time. We don’t want to scare ourselves but we do. I went back to church again. I was helping out again, and I was talking straight with you. I was helping out at the door, I greeted every patron. At Christmas we're back together; now I’m out of school, I need Christmas more than ever. We went back, where we began, we continued, even better. You never could tell a lie, but you hide your eyes when you cry. I always felt so bogus, I thought we could get through this. But your face still makes me sing.

The crystal tinkled down the hall, and I was in tune with that piece of glass; I was vibrating again, one crystal among thousands, spreading fire from top to mountaintop. I was circling around again, I was a whirlpool, plucking you in my octopus arms. I lifted you up every night; there was nothing stronger than that embrace, nothing as cruel as your smiling face. I memorized the tragedy, then I performed it, so let's all laugh at it. Four or five minutes I made you feel; I am here in the ears, I am in your throat, forcing myself out - why don’t you sing your own song? I am driving you over to meet a friend, he was wandering so long; we all got found together when we found each other finally. So touch my feet with your warm hands, touch my toes.

Calabria

(I was supposed to write this a year and a half ago. what can I say, except it takes me a while to digest)

Calabria
in my grandfather’s town
olive trees tall as ents
greeted by a marching band
the local ladies and gents
all so good looking
except for hairy arms
wrists and necks, dark and thick
from errands to the farm

then came bovalino, and
I saw such simplicity
my cousins had an orange grove
fruit was falling off the trees—
I felt myself in that cracked pavement
I’m not just going on
memory

“the ionian sea is a green crystal
lonely in may, yes, but swimmable…”
we lay down on pebbles
you were so beautiful
you were there
all this time, apart
all that we have, shared

my land is a foreign land
filled with people like me
my eyes and smile
even the dimple.
you wonder where you come from
wonder if you’ll always be there
there was a boy who came from the hills
there is a boy who loves the sea
now I finally understand
I come from
Italy.

unforgivable/unforgettable

cross country drove
with a man
at a drop, she left him
to become my woman
turned round, home drove alone
a fickle thing
what a thing
for me trading him

eight months later, so
I did what I must
the bullet bit
she bit the dust
eight months crushed
- a fickle thing, I was -
had it coming, all summer she
had left me hanging
- she, then, left him

it was lose lose
making beds
baking cake and eating too
lying in steads
eight months later
what I did was just
but back again looking
was all of it just
a
serially monogamous resentment bust?

I met an angel yesterday...

I met an angel yesterday, she was naked from the wings down. She hopped on me, it was love at first bite, like crunch and munch except I was no candy corn. Or maybe she was a vampire? This is the wildest thing I can think of, this tall bleat-barn in the woods, the limousine fleets the keen dream to believe the sheened mean yuletide touching xmas spirit the loving loch ness wildebeest, the memory of fingers on keyboard, and the oar lackeys the child bunkers the welted fright in the massed moonlighty doomed hemmorhoidal butler kegs. Jealous French fries fasten lifelines to mosaics so sweet, in the war room the umpteenth fragment of mirth reminds us of the everpresent value of the downy feather furniture revival. Here is the talking mushroom boat, the eleventh hour of your doom. Logan and the Hereford cows, the meatmongering diatribes sullen until happy go luckily skipperish tickles swing and sashay like police firefights in the emergency service wards of eastern Kentucky, the loveliest Jellofied wrath rapids the gangrenous screams of sawed off limburgers, the Joycean gaffes the crystal-meth methods and icicles made of iodine, the kernel at the centre of an atom, no more a hypothesis than a way of speaking – it’s not so much a particle as a process, dialogue; this 21st-century physics best pictured by illiterates. Waves and light and the particulate fight, the moonstone moan, the laconifying library loan, the reindeer vixen named Dasher the Christmas cookie I chewed the ginger loaf I bent and polemics insistently propagated, the half assed attempt at trickery the bickering road crows that take wing and issue with every chiasmatic foodstuff, taking different intestinal paths down to the same stomach acid. Pretty parlance is not enough; we like love and it’s better if it’s rough. Try me on for size, talk about the Western decline the fractalized nuances that take up your time, so you get to be an expert, chasing down nothing to infinity like the graph of 1/x. I called myself St. Cecil, the trout of love and valour, the infantile choler, the high-pitched squeal that rachets your blood pressure. Kaleidoscope enemies, the whirlpool words, the scrabble fads and crossword kibbutz, the music malarkey and the bare knuckled phrase fights – all these too shall pass.

one minute song

Here is the minute song; I got to do laundry – the bell ringing, rinse those sweaters now, pump quarters into high and dry time machines. (Fabric softener's the best thing to soften fabric, that's tautologic.) If obsessing every minute, take 60 seconds to relax. To reach a conclusion, begin at the ending, slice problems into pieces; work backwards, end up at beginning; show your professor on lined paper, and it's right on to next one... time is tickling - don't laugh wasting it; go ahead, laugh as it wastes you.

creepy-crawly thoughts while waiting for the streetcar

All cars should have six wheels, and be named after insects - eg the Volkswagen Bug, the most successful car ever - b/c that's what they look like; that's how they act. Subways/metros are worms, commuter trains are snakes; buses and streetcars are slugs and caterpillars respectively. Airplanes are dragonflies, while most boats fit into the spectrum of whirligig to electric eel, depending on size. A tank is a kind of armadillo; submarines are sea turtles. The space shuttle is a bird - the only thing we've built that can truly fly. Helicopters? Hmm, a cross between spiders and grasshoppers - that's a tough one to classify... Paved concrete is just frozen dirt.

Zanzibar and Elenore encounter a rascal

"Rum tum tugger - I am a bootlegging bugger"

Trucking rum down to Alabama, Zanzibar and Elenore met trouble off the I-95 interstate, by an El Cheapo gas station outside Savanna Georgia. A mucklucking rascal approached the van with a hostile gait, waving a pistol. “Hoss me the vittles,” cried the well-armed rake - “the gig is jiggy!” The rumrunners would've run but were transfixed by fear; Zanzibar could have stomped the horn to get attention, but few cars were around at 2 am. The gangster’s Beretta sang twice into the sky - this rascal was deadly. The back door opened by force; rum was all over the floor. The rascal licked his lips, grinned in a sweat, "Jeebus been good to me!" And Elenore hissed, "Take it quick, you rascal - and you tell El Santos that he's won this round," and she puked all over her shoes. El Santos had his way again, and Big Daddy would not be pleased...

Your stepsister; your uncle

(pointless and violent... just like _________?)


Your stepsister

Your stepsister is a hog
she wants to hold a rave
dance upon the table
and toss her saffron recipe
she likes to cook
man does she like to cook
shake it up and shake and bake
things are interesting in
the kitchen ’round here
we are having a wild burlesque orgy
things are pretty fun


Your uncle

Your uncle is a demon
he spits and calls for Jehovah
he likes to roll the dice
he destroyed a rack of spices on a wall
and didn’t repay the owner
the owner got upset
and purchased a large sharp weapon
which can be found in
your uncle’s skull, now
messily cleaved in two

Dec 9 - four sweet paragraphs

Face the dragon and click until the ticket says go home; it’s mid-evening in winter. Music loud enough to inspire, but not overpower; Thursday, stomach rumbling, predictability, words go down easy, and here are the images: jello shots sucked off women twice our age, fiendish dominatrix leather bought incognito for devilish pleasure, the myriad squalor of the downtown – if you aren’t a freak here then you simply don’t belong. The safety-first bitches and grandma admin queens can’t save us now; we're tied to this life boat drifting out to sea-space, to SETI land, talking with aliens finally, negotiating a favourable treaty before the mother ship lands. It’s not easy, moving every minute; I want a nice park bench to rest my totties – but who can frickin' concentrate surrounded by these hotties… (see, I went to an all boys school, there was discipline and goodness – the importance of the rules.)

You are stylish and smooth, indiligently froo; conspicuous in effortlessness, impressing with your prescience. The vagrants fragrant push flowers on me in the middle of my dinner – my stunningly by-the-way dependable-on-Friday lady says “no no, don’t let it come to those - I’m much too humble for your red rose.” This sidewalk is where I get ideas, foot falls like bicycles in regular rolls; we interview us earnestly breaking into strolls: where did you come from? why did you leave - what are you selling and where do I get mine? We all wanna get some – and hence these obtuse interviews. I shove my obstreperous mic in your flush face; your lips go loose, lighting up the place. See that mannequin, pale by the door – you can be just like her if you lose a few more…

Tune town marigolds, daisies by the fistful, I sigh so clear and you accuse me of the wist – it goes with territory, the job of a critic; but better than obsessing about spelling and enclitics. I once studied Greek – yes, mostly on a dare – it was Greek to me; it was, all of it, there. No longer could I pretend toward ignorant bliss, so I translated words, they made sense at the time, it was a one-way relationship and really, that’s fine. But manic mannerisms are the latest word in cool; it doesn’t make sense, yet the blog dogs all drool – at the end of the day, which of us is fooled?

I talked all night to call-centre flunkies – lonely on the phone and begging for a smile; after hundreds of hang-ups there’s still that extra mile, a sucker calls it hope, to a cynic it’s the payoff; for logicians like me it’s law of evening averages. Every so often we hit pot of gold rainbow-edged bonanzas and then it’s lucky lotto leap-laughter into each other's arms, far from harm for the moment and happy in embrace, there's that one special place; to say hello or goodbye in a pure moment of class; brush the velvet elbow of that very special lass; open up your eyes before the rainbow meets the sun, evaporating dew like the things we did for fun. I’m here if you need me, but I’m all over, too – and I’m hearing that you need me; that’s exactly what I do.

Do not read this

(you have been warned)

There are things that can never be changed from one day to the next; there are the only things I can give to the licking helmet sin the fridge who tuckers the urn freaks and the garish mushroom maggots hissing sweetly since the Yule log was extinguished. Loki Paterson fielded comments from the great mass of men in the marsh water. The yellow freshwater was dripping into the plain of duress; it was Saturday and we were all alone in the cellar. Pool hall kelp drunkards and the werewolf valium salesmen who insinuate and lavish praise like so many freebie flyers handed on the corner; this was the last straw I promise you. Laser surgery burns me down to the very pores; this is the righteousness of vanity the smooth skin nazism the well coiffed fascist flipping birds into the visual field of all the underlings and the eureka groupies who fawn fantastically over maddening scientists; we queen ourselves, and the gay district doesn’t even singe us, though it is flaming. Police the manicure barns; they are swimming with corruption; dry out the long lost apprentice manuals – there are secrets in there that have to be understood—let us think about what we are saying, let us discuss with each other the consequences of this keyboard. I have a feeling this jazz will not go down well, we all have delicate stomachs you know, and nothing goes stale quicker than yesterday’s newspaper or last night’s jazz. Modigliani in town to impress upon tourists the need to pay homage to pay respect to pay a few dollars at the door – this town knows art from farts; this town can really boogie if it has to and we can consider this the most impressive achievement to date—wagon wheels aligning themselves into dew point symphonies, and occasionally here is the fixed up bread the loaf for slicing the moronic massacre at Monday night football headquarters it’s what the networks think will attract the most ratings so why not let loose with the other programming and beam satellite images into the brain of every tom dick and Harry and hairy fairies are the long lost winter despisers the fall fellators the real estate beraters the magical mission men; the tent peg bathers – it’s off to bloatsville, the town with the fattest people in the world, the town with the tallest ogres who spit and frump around in their underwear because they have been spoiled by their mothers who always did their laundry for them but not any more because women’s lib would not have it that way. The meatloaf mothers are a thing of a past—a nostalgia fast filling up our prime time sitcom contents. Uruguay depth can never be solved, the stupefied pirates squeezing blackheads out of spite. The igloo barn that wheeze so swiftly in the lagoon bog monsters and the sweet sultry tasty ladies who touch my neck and sing me lullabies, this is a change of the mood, and the coming together in harmony at least twill seem to be a thing of such pomp and ease and the ceremonies of contentment are just beginning, there is a swallow whose wingsbeat at the thousand flaps per minute, it is the fastest creature on the planet its magic metabolism hums and swizzles the opulence is obscene, the ray of sunshine the rainbow I saw in the puddle sure it was gasoline but reflections of colour? I’ll take those whenever I can, this is a month of hard won miracles, of triumphant returns to the blank page, every line OI hammer down is a giant hug I give my friends. Zero was invented by the Greeks or the Indians—who care because that entire debate will only amount to nothing. Ha ha. The mathematics left inside die hard and the geometry is something I won’t ever take for granted. It is difficult living in a cage, it is horrible being a part of this zoo—look at me, don’t feed me e, I might bite you. Yaks are dangerous they have hair in every crevice; zebras are not much better—their stripes can make a sane man go mad—the overlaps and the subtleties, a complex figure in black and white—space enclosing space, minds cut off from the hive---that’s what’s going on when you fool yourself into thinking you are sharing this experience with any one else, that there is some sort of relationship between myself and you. The illusion the illusion is better than confusion at least so remain there is the eye, and the you, the I in the middle of the universe, the I and you, the eye and the ewe, the why and double-you, the Y is the I; surrounding the I is the world; for each man is that the centre of his world, his point of-ewe. Pointed at you, we are too. Are surrounding the world is the word—because first there was the Word, and the word gave way to flesh, and the flesh took on three dimensions, and it is only thanks to the word that we are able to see in three in dimensions; the perspective was invented in the 16th century or thereabouts just after the printing press gave us that general proliferation of things, concepts, words in a line on a page and the idea of plans and logic and the well orchestrated armies that rise up, spread until the entire earth is crushed. So it must be, and so the results are ok; we will look and not react we will passively accept because we have learned to read read so tedious when every last wheeze and sneeze from the brain when transferred to page gains that much more intensity, and if you heard me tapping away like this without a keyboard you would just think my fingers were restless and they are so that’s why it’s good to get exercise for ten minutes or so, and spread a little bit of knowledge and little bit of confusion with this systematic tapping – man it’s pretty fucking hilarious when you think about it, that this bit and byte here and there can make you shake your head in disgust and throw this laptop or whatever against the wall.

I'm all out of Confessions

"It was bound to happen, given the breakneck pace of the past year. From here in everything that happens is your fault too - it's all a favour I'm doing for you. So go ahead, let me shrivel into a raisin, let me catch TB from typing in this basement; you audiences aren't as innocent as you think. It drives someone silly trying to get some attention; you think you can click em off your conscience? You can't shake responsibility so easy. Sure this may be the internet, and everyone's anonymous - but there's still a little thing called karma; we're rolling around in this together. Whoever said money is love was wrong. No No No. Money is attention. Money is neurons firing in your brain. Click click click. Karma karma karma. The observer alters the outcome - that's the quantum physics they need to teach in kindergarten. But when I was in school they were still in the 19th century - readin', ritin', memory tricks... As for this century: if the internet ever becomes truly communist, then most idiots out there are going to be glad about Apathy Insurance, and its converse - the Popularity Tax - as measured out in jolts of electric current. It'll be the only social stabilizer we're going to need..."


(?)

My lady

My lady

She is blonde
In a bottled up way
She is brilliant
In a lovely fashion,
eh



(some phrases that might make sense one day:)

Simpler things fading away today, and it was done to maximize income; to do the thing I hate most because I get paid the most. To have a personality that doesn’t wither with the oncoming of the season. I was some teenage fool and you were a gynaecologist in the moonlight. I plumb those memories with my puffin wings in a winter’s day. One thing done well compensates for ten million disastrously.

The underwear hegemony, the rodeo monsooning. The yawn-inducing sneeze of the regicidal dwarf. A dwarf wants to harass a king at the same time he wants to claim a crescent moon sandwich from the counter of the suburban deli and the whitewashed storefront needs cleaning once spring arrives and it is one entire year of nothingness.

Every statement implies its antithesis; every statement is a challenge of truthhood and falsity. Logical statements are either true or false - which is why I prefer speaking in noun phrases. Wonder woman, the dialectical atrocity, my law of excluded middle.

So inquisitive and thoughtful and forgetful and slow to act and quick to understand. And so in love with wisdom.

(don't hold your breath)

Crystal, B

(mystic fooforaw?)

Yellow-bellied tortoise mouths make me mellow, and the ugliness I nightmared about vanished into a silver dew mist. I was crystal again; ten thousand straight lines glittered from the centre of my heart; I talked soft and you heard me ten thousand miles away. My voice made you act, your actions inspired talk, and people listened. The crystal grew from the earth, the force of tectonic shelves creating the transparent simplicity that equals beauty. William of Ockam was searching for diamonds - the clearest kind of simplicity. But we are other kinds of carbon, the messy kind; we want to be diamonds and shiny. And nothing cuts flesh like a diamond; there is nothing so cold and sharp. Now carved words don’t excite us like they used to; it’s got to be colour and light and the touch of the tongue. My poor words have taken to the wind – there is a storm, and we are in it; those words must learn to fly. Oh oh oh where do they land? Implosion and we are in it. Threats and we exalt in it. West becomes east; east, west.

There was StoneHenge, and Crystal, and the bones of men. To Bonehenge, I miss you. One day - I promise - I’ll drop by.

Marilyn and John talk rubbish-rot

John: I got a new woman now
Marilyn: Who?
J: A real fox, from the Argentine motherland
M: You mean fatherland?
J: What are you, the Fuhrer?
M: What's that mean?
J: It means you got the wrong parent silly
M: Listen Jelli-stone, you don’t know nothin bout families
J: Families often make each other cry
M: Quoting Lou Reed again?
J: Step off, bee-otch
M: Why are you talking like some gangsta?
J: I express myself in manifold modes; it’s the way to complete satisfaction. Like the great Diego Maradona said once to an Argentinian goalkeeper, "Your mom is a like a killer whale—a ten-ton murderous bitch."
M: That makes no sense
J: Neither does your mom’s harpoon-free existence
M: You have the manners of an oaf—you need to learn a thing or two about etiquette
J: I need etiquette lessons from you like a baboon needs fishing lessons from a mule
M: You need them slightly more than that. You're just silly; what's up with that?
J: Listen, maybe if you paid more attention to me when we were going out, it wouldn’t have been such a disaster. Like when I asked you to smuggle drugs from Panama into Singapore...
M: But that carries the threat of the death penalty--
J: You gotta pay the price for love
M: Speaking of, tell me bout this Argentine skank of yours?
J: She's lithe and furious
M: Like a killer whale?
J: Hey, I thought we were getting off mommas
M: We are
J: Good, cuz I just got off yours
M: Oh man
J: Yowzah
M: Well your mom's so old, she owes Jesus twenty bucks
J: Double yowzah!

PunGents.com - a Chronology of Hype

.
The XML has been mashed into submission, the Dreamweaving done, the HTML racheted to perfection; yes, the punstruction is complete.

Angry Brown Man and I are sitting tight for the next 24 hours, but when December arrives in all its coldness, so too do the Pun Gents arrive in all their boldness.

For those addicted to the excitement, here it is:

A PunGents Chronology of Hype:

• October 15, 2004 - After much soul-searching, Angry Brown Man decides to abandon his fruitless ph.D studies, and search for meaning beyond the grim cages of academia. The Cupcake Man, eager for a partner to assist in his own quest, welcomes ABM with open arms. The duo consume much coffee and cabbage rolls one Tuesday evening at a certain Toronto eatery, appropriately named Future Bakery. Having resolved toward greatness, all possibilities for the Future - marvellous, mad and sundry - are entertained with wild-eyed gusto; misgivings, inhibitions and obstacles crumble like so many flakes of cabbage. The world is their oyster.
  
  
• November 7 - Several more visionary trips to 'the Future' and the duo has laid the groundwork for the universe's most revolutionary pun-based web site. The next day there's an announcement in FIAC, followed by more Cupcake hype on the 15th; hysteria surrounding www.pungents.com steamrolls, from snowball to avalanche. The universe runs for cover.
  
  
• November 18 - The concept of "Puns on Demand" is leaked strategically; the online community soils itself in disbelief.
  
  
• November 19 - Still more FIAC hype; the intelligentsia collapse into coughing fits; the proletariat sharpen their pitchforks for revolt; young lovers toss themselves into burning volcanoes - all because of the Pun Gents.
  
  
• November 29 - Scant hours ago, Angry Man Brown announces a cessation of his frantic script-mashing and Dreamweaving energies. The Pun Gents, their brows beaded with blood, sweat and tears, bask in the sweet moment of anticipation; their web site is finally ready.
  
  The question is...
  
  
  
  ARE YOU READY?
  

Because, you see, at midnight tonight - the universe has nowhere left to hide.

Headline: "Saliva exchange causes kafuffle"

Lithe, silk
brushing knee
with suggestive finger
flirty-girl kissed, lips
on lips under
mistletoe
shocked awe-filled
colleagues whispering for
weeks; it’s
harmless
Xmas gossip?

thanks a lot!

never accept
accept with a shrug
~gd

hey momma bomma you got lots to lose, we are food for news to the french fries in the parlour oven in the armoury, in the big fat testamental thai poon preponderances.

now listen to this: "To the polemicists in the squash court, the retro-night nightmare nerds, the queen-sized hangover-helpers who urinate on uranium festivals in the middle of winter; to the wintry black whirlpools of insidious discontent; to the popular magical moonshine swug at a drop and retched with a cough, to the lopped off chopper-top mopman made of copper: thanks a lot."

My brain's in my fingers, my fingerfalls on clacky-path, a dancing surfnet web of flaregun syntax firin and inspired wrist writhing, jittery spacebar smashing litterbug-letterbugs with the qwerty-bashing and scatterbrained scat-maimed name wraiths.

Use this sentence at your discretion; don't blame me if it makes you boogie!

"Your toast is singed until crispy, speakers sexy but lispy, clouds permanently wispy, the doo-dah is snappily zippity."

Yah yah you big fat fool
yah pass me the appropriate tool
yah plate full of gruel
you were so cruel
to become a monkey mule,
brayed all sunday evening
because you couldn't pass your stool

(you need more fibre in your diet!)

November rhymes

(back earlier than expected... this erupted yesterday, so why the heck not?)

Under the ground we don’t hear a sound, we mime noise, talk colours, sing symbols into stone, we groan gastronomy, laugh lyrics, twisted benedictions, topsy-turvy prayers, layers upon layers, meaning cleaved, dreaming never to be believed, we thin-limbed ringers of bells, tin-innard, heartless, mindless, lollypop-livered devilry delivery boys, toy-wrap rippers, daytrip hipsters, lark lovers and mid-life gutbusters, motorbike Mikeys or tetracycline tricycle-dykes, Nokia-nattering Nike-noodles selling shoes to poodle owners, ignoring lowlife loners; instead it’s the zone-Capones, mobster mimics, lifestyle lemmings and turtleneck cynics.

Save quarters, do laundry, Frankfurt Germans and their autobahnery, College and Manning, Ted’s Wrecking, nighttime traffic, headlights gleaming, beetle shells cover auto insects crawling on concrete. I leave you at the corner, ask you for Kroners, we’re in Copenhagen translating 'Lagerzapfen', every day this way, so trusting and gay, we float like Sugar Ray, sweetness stinging, oven bell ringing, coffee pot brimming, leaves fall, blowing, the calendar flips - gonna be snowing - row on and on, throw another on: Barbie clothes, barbecue coals, grassy knolls, gaping conspiracy holes deter paranoid delusions, escapist illusions, systematic refusals, perusals reveal flaws, too scary to grapple, and so we dabble, dawdle, dilly-dalliance balletic in sophistication, evasiveness fostered by omnipresent impenetration; we grow bored at fright, numb from the fight, numb from our names, sense-sensibility shot to hell, we trade socialist shrill for Orange County thrills, Hills-Beverly, glory gals, bright lights and dark shades, ghosts, hollow, flicker in a prisoner's daze.

How much excitement can you pigs handle???

I'm taking a brief respite from cupcakes and their attendant consequences for the next week or 10 days. Nonetheless I have some important...

*ANNOUNCEMENTS*

Good news! FIAC Volume II: Liberty is a Bagel, a new freedom-filled compilation, will 'hit shelves' in the approaching weeks. Can you believe it? Yes, well a lot of thirsty, contusion-inducing work must still be done, but FIAC's latest sanity-stretching (ill)literary lootbag of (un)poems, (ir)rambles and (---)sequiturs should be ready by mid-January 2005. Those who managed to make it through FIAC Volume I know it was an emotionally searing, painfully soul-destroying dirge-drama, but this second one will be a lot more fun, both to have written and to read--I promise. Though, I'll still 'freak' the 'funk' right out of you in my own special way--because I know you pigs eat that shit up. Such enigmatic excitement!

So by all means continue to be a part of online history: if you leave a comment on FIAC when Vol. II is done, I'll send you the WORD attachment, which you can save and treasure in your hard drive forever. Or, just turn your printer on, and run off what you like for posterity. Yowzah!

*ALSO*

Now taking shape is the long-awaited FIAC Stupendous Short Story Agglomeration, a collection of 25-30 stories previously published online (in baffling bits and pieces), all which will be finished off for your incredulous edu-tainment. Tentative target for this cerebellum-shattering anthology is set for February 2005. Enjoy the brain-disturbing, bowel-distending misadventures of such antiheroes as The Three Big Pigs, the rebellious Rambunglstiltskin and the man-child Moses DreckSnider in the comfort of your living room, ie even without an internet connection. What frenetically fantabulous fantasticality!

*EVEN MORE EXCITING*

Hotly anticipated by the litterati and half-witterati alike is www.pungents.com, a punderfully cupcakey col-laff-eration with esteemed colleague Hominus Iracundius Brunius. The Pun Gents will be mainlining in pun-blication in just 13 days; we'll be kook-ing up a whole lotta trouble; so to all you eager pungredients soon stepping into our sizzling linguistic griddles on Dec 1, 2004, I promise you'll not be dish-appointed!


*SEE HOW MUCH EXCITEMENT!*



(ok ok, I'll let you catch your breath... back in a jiffy ;-) )

Late Braking Gnus...

...cause accidents!

Check out the punstruction site at pungents.com for more pun-ishing Fast FAQs.

cold and lonely

do I belong here?

or is this the way it's got to be?

hmm... depressing.

and it makes me laugh.

but have I made a mistake in coming here?



ps

sorry, granny -- I was just trying to be normal.

your granny

(speaks for itself)

your granny

your granny is addicted to bacon
it sizzles in her arteries
she gives new emphasis to the phrase ‘arterial cloggedness;'
so much bacon has your granny eaten in fact, that
the authors of bacon.com
asked her for an endorsement
--she would gladly have given it
but alas,
she is a total moron

Desktop chaos

(it's messy but it's neat)

There's a scribbled line speaking inky Shakespeare; I could stare at skulls handheld like Hamlet in Act V, to be or not to be, but I sit instead wishing there was nobody in the washroom—I really have to pee. I form analogies like a calculator, abacus clinking bricks into a sublime arithmetic. There's remote-control southern twang like a cow bell--gotta have more cowbell--from the stereo in corner. I stare at my two best friends, their picture on my desk; so beautiful, and their smiles never closer. At the edge is a pile of used post-its; ballpoint with nib unscrewed sits waiting at an angle. Empty envelopes for letters never sent or letters ignored--there’s always a more important letter on the way. My address book gets emptier by the hour, so I substitute for love the bits of wisdom I've gleaned from that true granite witness sitting serious on my desk; I call it a book; it is a big one, a big fat book of famous quotations--and it's scaring me witless. My brain spreads out like the speakers, spaced out just so to maximize the wavelength effect, to ameliorate my synesthetic sound-sing-speak experience. There’s a telephone too, black and plastic, clanging bells and fizzing receivers, like Bill Cosby if he were made of plastic. A glass half full of hi-liters and paper clips; I’ve never drunk from it but if I need yellowness I’ll know where to look. It’s oak that's housed decades of hard work and self-discipline (by others, brothers, not just me), tossed into this rubbish bonfire, and my new lease-sheets, my papered place to live, might burst into flames along with the wood (no good). The Iliad perches precariously above the wastebasket, and my electrical wires cross indiscriminately, but that’s just me; I let my wires be. The laptop has never seen the top of a lap per se, so I label it a liar—I can’t stand falsity in advertising. I look to Lou and Gord for edgy repartée; their cds are lying empty in the case, so I turn on the lamp, light up the whole place--it’s no halogen but so what, we can’t all save the planet. Not when we think and work in this desktop disaster-math, my dusty flat chaos giving good folks at Office Depot a hardy-har heart attack....

classification scheme (finally)

(Like most things, this post is more worthwhile if you've read the book first)

Looking back on the first 15 FIAC (un)poems, here's what I figure:

Inward or outward (I or O)
Girl (G)
Craft (C)
Nonsense (N)
Random (R)
Rhythm (M)
Happy or sad or angry or spooky (H or S or A or Y)
Zesty (Z)
Keystone (K)
Worldview (W)
Biographical (B)

1. The entertainer CAKO
2. Who’s afraid of the dark IWMCKY
3. about (bad) poetry ZCOK
4. Not so easily classified YIC
5. 236 Lake Drive, Willow Beach BIO
6. coffee cup rhymes WIMSK
7. Afternoon drive OH
8. Calm and storm RY
9. Can I get to heaven before I go to hell? IG
10. Sass-und-frazzle INHZW
11. Dec07—subconscious INMY
12. A deer caught in the headlines (National Post, Nov 11) OCA
13. freedom o’ press AWOC
14. cracked eggheads, indigestible omelette (too many cooks) AZOMW
15. The techno-babel genesis ZWO

Then I got bored, and figured who gives a rat's ass. Feel free to figure out the other 85. Talking about me bores me to no end; it honestly does. Is that sad?

Sunday morning, you're in Napoli?

Ring
Ring
Pick up the phone
And sing to me
Bout how much you
Miss me

Different versions we saw of moments spent together, difficult to together tether, we were like two girls chatting on the phone, wasting million minutes alone in ethereal vocal zones. Poison my metaphor, it’s a bacon sandwich anyhow. Now it’s staged exhibitions of leather, big box stores of doubt, the ginsu knife of doom, that’s what they called me in Grade 7. You walked into me, slapped me ’cross the face; the way we wandered into melody, talking softly over wind, whispering promisingly, then you crapped all over me, smote me with your divine buttocks; your god-awful farts were like an acid sandstorm.

Clark Ramsey, man of eleven fingers

(an id-based friendship)

The greatest guest I ever enjoyed in my big backyard was Clark Ramsey XI, a man of eleven toes and fingers. He always asked me whether I’d like a back rub, and even though I rarely desired one it’s the thought that counts. But I never could put up with his massive refrigerators! He would bring them everywhere. One time at a party the only way I could get around his giant refrigerator was by requesting curtly, ‘hey pal, this carpet isn’t a graveyard for your firkin’ dying fridges! Get this shit aside, or I start in with my ‘crow’!’ Now ‘crow’ is slang for crow bar, which is like all names a metaphor. The words said, it was all up to his action, his willingness to acquiesce.

Clark said to me in Latin ‘quaero una femina bona’ and as if that wasn’t enough he was willing to fly me to Tallahassee to show me his fleet of Oldsmobiles. I said I’d love to go but I was busy that year with other things, like my hair do, which required constant love and attention. Clark looked disappointed, so to make it up to him I pushed his childhood enemies off a cliff.

ps what the hell was going on in that last post?

(as for today, 'nother delirious hodgepodge)

Dragon slayers fret about the lack of business... 'I am here to kill a dragon,' the man said to the shopkeepers looking curious at the shining knightly armour the tall man wore. 'Dragon slaying ain’t like dusting crops boy.' And so we come to the great crossroads of the age: to kill a dragon or to step on his face with dirty slippers, and by doing so maybe undercut a bit of his momentum...

I try and fail to describe the freshness of the breeze that licks at my neck; the words are washed away in the wind. The lake is a cool friend, and without the stench and humidity of July the mosquitoes are more and more scarce. Fewer than ten bites this week, says Jeb. Poor Jeb always wears dark colours, and so always gets bit more than I, who am draped in white like a ghost.

We drink vodka mixers on a cool summer’s eve. We talk about booze and clouds and how the sun never comes out when you want, and when it does it’s never for long enough. I ask the boy at the dockside to fetch me another, and he goes upside obediently. And this is so banal. Here I am, trying to write sentences never before dreamed up, things that won’t ever be thought in a million years, and then I go off on a Muskoka tangent. I admit it, finally: I am ambitious. I am vain. I am not even close to perfect... just wait till I write my back story; my prequel.


The cost of living at home is untold inertia. And living a life so predictable. So much staleness. We eat the tripe the part of the cob that gets thrown to the elks in the Norwegian forest. And there is such an industry for us people, but the gulf between us is enormous. And so what? Legs are too warm; there is too much harm in the air. And the ways we justify and the fears we feed. Germanic in origin, but those Latinate verbs lack the basic poetry. Submit infer preordain. Too much stimulus, try to track the thought that bounces back, forth through a thousand consciousnesses. The mouse in the back room scurries and hurries. We expect a lot of flurries and the hurricane will arrive by noon; and depart discourteously through the back doors, the Kawarthas, which I am told is lousy cottage country. The tired refrain of multiple media and the detrimental effects of too much scriptedness... I found a sincere lady, who smiles and talks and offers me her hand. I found a love on the internet, a cyber fox. Oh the safety of it all. And pre-screening. There is always a market for boredom. Lavalove Starbucks and McDonald’s, and the predictability of lust. Because lust is what is predictable, so they package it on-line. The coup of the usual; dictatorship of the mediocre. And we can pre-qualify for a friend. We want the instant access and the physical stim and the tight fitting hosiery in full view. Two dimensional love, brought to you by your fibre optic messiah. But this is written upside down, fragmented and intermittent in four dimensons at least. You know, twisting dials on a radio, searching for that one kickass tune...


Dear Fiona of Tullamore,

You are at risk of being evicted. You have stunk up the neighbourhood with your long-legged dromedaries. These animals, while enjoyed by the town children, are a menace to the blind folk, because they leave droppings and tend to spit when least appropriate. Please send them to the knacker and have them turned to glue. We can share in the revenues from their ‘gluement’ in a 50-50 manner but beyond that we do not compromise.

Please also remove the large signs on your lawn that say ‘Death to the Mayor.’ They can be construed as inciting hate. Consider the Environmental lobby; as the mayor of Hybrid, Indiana, once said at a general meeting of bucket-sniffers, “We have to root out methane-causing cow stink at the source.” This quote can be generalized to all situations, but it means one thing in particular: banning the foxtrot. It is a most vicious and suggestive dance, not meant for practising in this burg of moderation, especially under our right-thinking governance. So all citizens have good reason to despise this fox-hoppery, as it will only promote intolerance and devilry if observed and imitated by any soul with an ounce of credulity.

We also advise you, Fiona, that it is uncouth to snap your fingers at senior citizens. This has been a vice of yours, one much noted to be on the increase. The other day we had to pacify a seventy-year-old woman from Ulaan Batur. This Mongolian had thought Tullamore was a peaceful place, until she reckoned with the harsh crackle of your thumb and forefinger rubbing together. Now she complains without cease. Let me assure you, it is most disturbing to behold an aged Mongolian applying ointment to her earlobes, and we will tolerate it no further!

Please also end the profligacy of your husband, who has been seen spending large sums at the local five and dime, purchasing unnecessarily large quantities of string. How much string can a citizen use in a year? 500, maybe 800 yards-length? Your husband has now purchased over 6,000 yards of string, and we fear he may have no place to rest it all. What if there should be a hurricane, and a resulting shortage of string? Your husband has a monopoly on quantity, which is not good for economic laissez-faire competition. And so we are revoking your bond-trading license as well, as of this morning, at 10 p.m precisely.

Yours sincerely,

the Administrative Council of Tullamore



(pps what the hell was going on in that last post?)

Yaba dabba!

Yaba dabba, chaka lakka! Bakka makka takka. Me Bloggah, talka lotta! We wakka lotta lika teevee, watcha fafas make-a speecha! No good, yankee dankee, Bushee bloppy, Krishtanee nek-reds insany stuppy sillees, Kerry Kerry, Mika Moora! Saddy saddee dis eerie Eerack racky, Osama bama, bomba! Bomba! Bomba! War for oyloo nogood.

Yaba dabba, yoosa dumbo! Mesah smaartee, yabba! Lookee picky, bigga booby! Porno picky, webba debboo, freeya bimbo, bayly legoo, yabba, looka, screena go-glo!

Yabba dooby, compootah, me lika, yum yum big frendy. Tekky tekky maka mee stooped? Nono, maka mee globoh, talkee talkee big-ho planeet. Maka meha likka lika oldy tima no mo boooringa– intranetty hava evree tingy me needs! Maka me likka Jaja Binky, yousa dumbo mesah smaartee!

Yaba dassa, mesah goo now kowkay? No-mo tenshun spanno, okee say bayou-bye, dissa poopy postah soo broringy! Chakka yabba bloggy blobby!

Resistance is futile?

“I am no more me than you are you; I am defined by my external pieces, my extensions: The CDs I listen to, the words I write on blogger, the things I say over the telephone, the clothes I wear, the sushi and sashimi I eat, the books I read, the hockey pucks I shoot into yawning cages, the perfumes I wear with ‘fragrant’ delicto, the preset radio stations in my car. My insides are irrelevant; you can't test what you can't see. But at least now things are finally peaceful. Do you agree? We’re all connected now; I mean, we have to agree. All our bits and pieces, it makes a big beautiful puzzle. Do you agree? You better agree. Forget the pelican man--you better agree.

Middle East? Soon enough, they will agree too--ha ha, 'peace' by piece-by-piece. Conflict free, you, me and Muhammad Ali, won’t we be happy…”

August 7

(going through old magazines -- 'nope, don't throw this one out!')

There’s a man with a fist of fire, balancing on a telephone wire, underneath a no parking sign; then there’s a family with a baby carriage, and you’re going out with a junkie. We meet in the arena every morning, to do dishes together, stare into canyons and count the colours, call each other sister, brother.

I was nothing if not ecumenical, nothing if not inclusive -- I wanted everyone to share, I did not reject a soul. But men like to split things up, attach signs; women shriek aloud at spiders, and hang laundry on the line. The trees downtown are choking, automobiles addicted to smoking; I wish I was joking but I haven’t laughed in years.

Revolution means going in circles; the sun revolved around the earth, now it's earth around sun. Your revolution will take you nowhere, you’re out to brunch and around the bend. That was the beginning, this is the end...

"I will not say kiss or darkness or love, but I will kiss you, I will love you, and you will not see anything because of my darkness."

(yowzah, that last one's spooky)

seven deadly clichés

seventy-seven times a sinner
first one to a hundred is the winner
seventy-six times forgiven
just one more time makes interesting living
lust, greed, gluttony, wrath
'it's time you called a homeopath'
then there's pride, sloth, envy
same ol genesis, never ending
--the seven repeating clichés of
the manic media Madison men in the murky message maze

more pointless than usual

The best part of the midday is the gregarious girlish pig men who snort and whistle.

Police mavericks and yellow Edsel drones and the rewound pumpernickel buttress makes you chug pepper; the leopard the deft swiss chard salesmen who gear down in their trucks and curse their Irish luck. Snails and mimes test my patience, yes.

And if the electric light is pure information, perhaps that’s why nothing interesting happens on the internet per se.

A reason, flash of insight into the human condition; it disappears suddenly and you wonder if inspiration will return, but I guarantee it does. Keep your head up and miracles become routine.

My children all alone, the house burning down, help me save them! save them! Thank you thank you now let’s not forget the furniture too I paid a fortune and none of it’s insured.

(…the ungrateful electromagnetic attention span)

You killed me in August, I was burnt by the sun; I used to be rare but now I’m, well, done.

Let’s all go play Bingo, it knows how to treat me right at least; let’s get together and sell tickets all night. There were a million smokers in there. There were a million tribes in MesoAmerica. There was B-eleven and fifteen weaknesses, there was N-fifty-five and G-twenty side effects.

Man, all things get in the way of writing. It only comes when I can’t do a thing about it. There is so much else.

Cowardice lies in the barrel of a gum, fishstick nuggets populate the earth, Fu man chu and his accent is the worst. Whiff the wind, the thunder blinks--call it lightning, flashes, winks. Man crawled, he walked; he thinks.

Police the trout; haul em in, cast em about, don’t overfish or the money runs out.

Defrocked Cappuvino? Poinsettia palming bigots, rotund monks sifting earth to earn livings, pressing wine to make townfolk drunk, disingenuously drumming up business for Saturday afternoon confessionals.

Anger, intercepted by hunger

“I want so much to smash you
shake you up and thrash you
wanna lock you up and stash you
ride up and lasso you
I’m gonna trade you for a… peameal rasher
at the bacon-butter rodeo?”

Noodle and Doodle

(read this out loud... oodles and oodles of fun)

First, there was Noodle; then, there was Doodle.

Noodle said to Doodle: “Food, Doodle.” For Noodle wanted something good to chew.

Noodle wanted food – but as Doodle knew with Noodle and food, few foods were there for Noodle to chew which Doodle did not chase for Noodle. With no Doodle, Noodle knew not what to do for food.

But one day, Doodle did not move when Noodle called for food. Choosing not to chew, Doodle drew a few doodles. Though foodstuffs too were few, what doodles Doodle drew improved.

Doodle delighted in drawing. But Noodle groaned, hungry.

Asked Doodle: “No food, Noodle?”

Noodle: “Not for me, not with you Doodle, you fuddy duddy fool. Go to school and doodle-improve -- you’re muddling my cool. I need food! You flim flam mule, it’s time you learned the rules.”

Doodle died inside; he grew blue at Noodle’s bad mood.

Now Noodle, he knew Doodle did what Doodle does, but chose not to encourage Doodle to do what Doodle did best.

Doodle, blue, groaned and not drawing, chose instead to dabble. With dabbling done, not doodling, did Doodle find a bit of food.

Noodle, dapper, chewing food at last, said to Doodle: “Food is cool, Doodle, do dine, else we both are fools.”

Doode grew red, he drew on inner dread; Doodle threw Noodle’s food at Noodle’s head!

Noodle now red, said, “Doodle, do not do this to my food – else Noodle make Doodle dead!”

Doodle, his red redder than Noodle’s, said: “Make me dead? Noodle, you go on and try it. Noodle, you go right ahead.”

But Noodle did not move.

Doodle said: “You make good on Doodle’s dabbling? You, Dapper Noodle, happy and good, do you now choose to offer food?”

Now Noodle’s face turned blue.

Said Doodle: “Fie fie, pooh pooh! I’m leaving you Noodle, I take my dabbling with me!”

Noodle’s face turned black.

Continued Doodle to attack: “From now on I does what Doodle must do: good doodling, improving at drawing. You, you dread-threading, bed-wetting, limp Noodle—it is you who are the fool.”

Now Doodle knew there was no turning back. He said: “So listen up, when the sun comes up, there’ll be no more Doodle for you to beat like a mule. Doodle cannot be cool while Noodle abuses, so screw you, Noodle – there’s more to life than dabbling."

"Really," asked Noodle, "like what?"

Said Doodle: "There’s doodling and there’s drawing; and that’s what I’ll do instead!”

With that, Doodle went to bed. Noodle was dumbfounded; he also went to bed.

And the very next day, Doodle did exactly what he said he would do.


End

sentence of the day

Time and lateness, breathtaking greatness, elated moments, fomenting torment which warrants an act of abhorrent extraordinariness, this is the warring Taurus storm, the shield and sword drawn and gory.

Trials of a Silly Man

(the long-awaited classic, finally on-line)


Trials of a silly man

"You ruin my pants with your fruit!"

I walked out of the house that Monday not realizing how silly my life was about to become.

But when I tripped on the sidewalk and landed on a kumquat, it struck me: things were indeed quite silly this morning.

Yes, the kumquat was my first clue. The offending matter squished between my leg and the concrete. The sound was rather silly. Sploosh. I looked all around, but saw nobody, not even some stupid kid who might have left fruit lying in just such a spot on the walk. I uttered a curse, “Rydda Nrygg!”, which in the Druid tongue means ‘I do not deserve such mischance, not on my first day of work at a new job!” (I had learned this phrase while reading a large book about ancient languages).

To explain a bit: I had just been promoted the week before, to assistant upper class file sorter at Whamco Omniplant Ltd, which is a key Northeastern US manufacturer of wheedles and gaskets for the overseas prefab drywalled drill systems market. It had taken me seventeen years in the mail room to reach this new level, and now a single kumquat was threatening to ruin me. Think of the scene if I were to walk into work with stains on my pants—an embarrassing spectacle, to be avoided at all costs!

Tossing the offending fruit in a wastebasket, I uttered another oath: I wished I were dead; I wished I had never been born. And I wished I had worn kumquat-coloured corduroy that morning, so the stain wouldn’t have shown.

Using my saliva as a solvent, I rubbed tenaciously at the soiled material. I poured cream soda on my pants, in an effort to leach out the stain. ‘Kumquat comes out with soda water,’ I remember my third-grade home economics teacher Ms. Uberkraut in her lectures to the class. I thought fondly that Ms. Uberkraut’s advice on stain-leaching was unimpeachable—thank god we had that unit on Very Silly Fruit back in Grade 3.

But leached out or not, the sheer insult of the kumquat left a wound; there was foulness in my heart as I walked toward the subway station. Clutching my train fare like a weapon, I inserted the token into the box with a violence not seen by any other passenger that week on the L-train Rapidex Underground System. ‘Ka-ching!’ Was the sound it made; the turnstile cranked and I was engaged with the Transit; I was hot under the collar.

It was there, on the platform, that I saw the culprit. Had he noticed me first he would have run, and good thing, for there was red devilry all inside me; I was all systems go to dole out some comeuppance. But there he was—it was Nathan Peddleburg, the man who stood on the corner beneath my apartment building most days, who was always selling kumquats. That bastard, the kumquat-distributing demon; I should have known it would be him!

I uttered a variety of oaths and curse words as I approached the troublemaker; yes, there were damages outstanding, and Peddleburg would do the paying. I looked him square in the face, and I grabbed his neck with my left hand; with my right hand I twisted his nose, like a restaurant waiter turning a corkscrew.

After a 45-degree turn his nose spurted a familiar red liquid. “Ack, I am bleeding” cried the wretch. When I peered closely at his face, I realized he was right. There was a lot of blood dripping out of him onto the ground—but not the horror-movie ketchup kind. This was much scarier, and was liable to complicate my life with police reports and jail time and such. Yet I continued to twist at the man's face.

For his part, Peddleburg did not approve of my tact. “Street punk! Madman! Let me be! Assaulting me upon the nose in this way is sheer silliness!”

Silliness—stinging and ominous, the word caught my attention; it bothered me, like when a big crow flies at you in a narrow hallway and pecks at your forehead. I realized I'd gone too far; I untwisted the nose and let go. Peddleburg continued to wail and gnash his teeth however. I had no kerchief to wipe up the blood, so I offered him a stick of chewing gum, as I fumbled about in my mind for an explanation, my hotness cooling into bashfulness. He continued his lamentation. “No, no, I do not desire gum at such a moment as this!” And so he declined my offer, his nose still spouting a fountain of what, when you think about it in a certain way, looks just like cranberry juice, but, in reality, it is blood.

He got a look at me and recognized who I was too. I felt extremely silly as he pronounced my name. “Ethan Pelletier,” Peddleburg implored, now pale-faced from the blood loss (for he was a haemophiliac and he would soon die), “What wrong have I ever done you? Am I not a reasonable man? Have I never babysat your little kid, even though he spits up all kinds of carrot-puke and makes the worst kind of diaper stink?”

He was right. Peddleburg was in fact a babysitter of Jebediah Pelletier, my first son by a woman no longer my wife: Fiona Detroit, now a stripper at dentistry conventions, to whom, luckily, I had managed to avoid forking over much alimony (strippers make more money than mail clerks). But I didn’t see my son Jebediah much anymore, so I started to forget what he looked like. Call me a lousy husband and an even lousier father, but how was I supposed to recognize my son’s babysitter, when I didn’t even recognize my son?

“Sat-on babies or not, you ruin my pants with your fruit,” I tried to justify myself. “And so, should I not exact revenge, whatever form it must take? For I am a man of employment, Peddleburg, and my new employ depends utmost upon cleanliness.”

Peddleburg was losing coherence; he made no reply, which satisfied me--it meant I was winning the debate. But his wound was not clotting; blood from the man was dripping onto my loafers. Shoes soiled, I panicked. I thrust Peddleburg down onto the platform, and though I risked the disapprobation of the consterned onlookers, I hurried toward the street exit; thus leaving the fruity shyster in his death throes. It was better that I walk to work, I reasoned-—less chance of murdering some other fruit-hawking haemophiliac.

It was 9 am, and I was late for work. I had vengeance on the man who ruined my pants with his delinquent produce—he had trifled with me, and it cost him his life.

But tardy as I was, I was jeopardizing my new position at the corporation.

And, to top it off, it was beginning to rain. What could be sillier than that?

brain lint

Cyril P Wurther walked into a momentless vortex

The best sentence is this: francophone beelzebubs ticker themselves.

What’s the longest sentence ever?

Drained into the edge of time is a cool moe dee sandwich

Every step of the way

Zapatista rebellions

Mendocino clearance

I am the master of framing

Urban couture is bliss.

Rain down on the Gap awning.

Fire hydrant hair-dos


Words to refuse to use: love, madness, sadness, good and evil.

What one writer said to another: you are too sad, you are too verbose; you are too judgmental.

Cathedrals stand for centuries, but the marble doesn’t stay shiny forever. Genghis shmengis, said Larson.

The editor of Lima Bean magazine and the fired deputy minister of agriculture, they met one moment at a cocktail party and discussed the desiccation of that year’s soybean crop. The trouble was with the olive, the competing shrubs infringing and impinging negatively on profits.

(another) three minute midnight

Pulitzer prize scribblers in election night hysteria, Lloyd R and the world with bated breath wait, so quick to pounce on any stray voter, Ohio, Florida, the multivocalic states, in a partisan civil war.

Putrid fetid choppers and the terrible mandible that slices and dices with uninterrupted neurotic smoothness, so hair free and care free in this magical bubble tea and glass chrome universe. I was alone all day and claustrophobic all night. I was talking to you in a gleaming case of dew, talking so loudly in an elevator too. Let’s get off on the 66th floor; pry a fireplace poker to open up the door. I was talking to the weirdoes and they fell through the floor, down elevator shafts splattered with gore—we’re in love, we four, me, Galahad, Guinevere and Elenore. The raven quoth bleakly, “nevermore? no more.” I grab volumes of Poe and hurl them out the door, we get down tonight on the waxed watery dance floor, it’s great when you’re alone but you never get bored.

Old men smell like bleach in the hall, they don’t clean themselves, they got mildew in their pores. Zanax and Zantac and the million man march. My favourite tree has got to be the ash or the larch. Poultry polemics and goose ganzissima, the Italians buy cheese--whatever gli piacciono moltissima. I wait for hours in the middle of a boat, there is never enough pasta when you want to buy a goat.

Yodel all day, touch me when you like, I smile when it’s easy and I like to ride my bike, it’s the exercise I get, the best way to breathe, when twister doesn’t happen the orgy doesn’t please me. There are things in this life that none of us can know, there are people who are lying and it rarely ever shows, there are beauties I describe and I try to tell them no, but the words are alive—I don’t control them any more. The rain it comes, it wets what it wants, I glove my baby chick and we ride out the storm, where there’s happening and union and love in the torn. I was called together by the moon and eclipse-- and if you return in 2007 like the next lunar E, I can finally pay you back, for everything you gave me, how you helped me, saved me that day when I was nearly gravy; you picked me up and let me cry, you let me be your baby.

the ______ has no memory

.

I am shell

of a man who used to

sing—

hollowed out, voice cracked, sand-dry skin

—but there’s beauty still

inside my shell

it lets the ocean ring;

so if you set my

lips beside your ear,

remembering my ocean grins;

even as you put me down

I will

have forgiven everything

Father Cupcake drinks a Corona

(and grabs a soapbox)


"Call me crazy but here is the most bittersweet bottle of beer I ever drank. There is something in it that displeases me; could it be its toxic aroma? I think not—perhaps the hops are too stale. Or perhaps the lifetime of oppression of the workers, who soil their shirts with sweat and bleed profusely over the pavement for the returns they sow, perhaps it is this which bothers me. But no, I am no unionist, I am no collectivist. I am however a discerning bar patron. I think perhaps it is the tastiness of this beer, combined with its unpleasant aftertaste which has struck a chord within me. Let us consider the rose, a sweet smelling flower, but quick to go rotten and stink up an entire area, whether indoors, out of doors or an enclosed courtyard. This is what I mean when I highlight the evanescence of earthly beauty. And so it is with beer. Now, consider the buzzing of the bee, or the lamenting yelp of the hound dog, as it chases its afternoon vittles down the road in the form of an ice-cream cart full of dog sausages – for sausage is known to go bad left in the summer heat, and so ice cream carts are sometimes put to this use. Consider the flux of the river, the changing of the seasons, and the perfect arc the sun makes in the sky in its daily voyage through our hearts and minds in time, space and serendipity. Then ask yourself, “Have I made the life of my fellow man just a bit more bearable?” Indeed such questions are not easy; the answers trouble us with repercussion and meaning we least suspect. There is an old Native saying, “He who is without the shade of an oak tree, is like a lonely reed.” The oak tree is the rock we build our lives upon – without a rock, a tree is but a mere twig, ready to be snapped by any passing mule or wolfhound. Such is the grim test of nature, as we are cast about day to day in an unremitting frenzy of rock, trees, and unquenching yet seemingly delicious liquid refreshment. Which brings us back to beer. Who among us has not tasted a premium lager, and thought, “Indeed, the brewmaster is a mighty fellow!” I wager not a one of you. For let us not forget the skill and knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, that made men like Alexander Keith’s into the well-marketed household names we rely on to feed our artificially contrived system of manufactured consumer wants. I believe it was that modern-day economic Methuselah and fellow Canadian John Kenneth Galbraith who once said "The richer we become, the thicker is the dirt.” I have no idea what that means, but clearly, the man was drunk off his cake. Which brings us back to beer…"

Mr. Gabby goes trick or treating...

Doesn't everybody love Hallowe'en? To me, this time of year is 'da bom', but then again, I'm a freak for 'da bommativity'.

For those about to 'rage it up,' remember my first rule for Hallowe'en: 1) take no prisoners. That is, if, when cruising the streets in your Skeletor Mask or Slutty Thong + Devil's Horns, you see some prisoners moping about and teeth-gnashing, please, do not take them. Let them be -- they've suffered enough as prisoners (of 'the man' or their 'tawdry lifestyle') and don't need reminding of their shackled existence. Because the rule is 'take no prisoners'. Ok? Ok.

Another rule of thumb for Hallowe'en is 2) all's well that ends in a well. This rule refers to litter and other forms of environmental negligence. If you see chewing gum on the sidewalk, or an empty tin of soda laying about, then a) find the nearest well, and throw this refuse down the hole (it should be at least 10 metres deep); or b), if you don't know where any wells are, then phone a water treatment facility in your municipality and ask them for a convenient location. This should solve most problems associated with rule #2 -- except for large cinder blocks that won't fit down the well hole, but those are the exceptions to the rule.

Speaking of rules, I would continue with more strategies for Hallowe'en (for example rule #5: chocolate goggles sting the eyes, or rule #23: a flaming pumpkin can be your greatest ally) but I don't want to 'talk down' -- after all, you have a fully functioning brain, and such pedantry is noisome, bothersome, or as the French say, ennuyeux -- which is to say 'back off, honky-tonk; I ain't no honky fool!' But enough slangery, and more on Hallowe'en:

Hallowe'en, this most infamous day of intrepid costumery, is known in some circles -- particularly, French circles -- as la jour du bonté de l'âme, or 'the day of soulful goodness'. Now this interprétation a la française may come as a surprise, or even a shock, but hey, that's your problem -- the HW-dog was not devised for the faint of heart. If you can't handle the wicked Hallowe'enic truth then please, head straightaway to the devil -- perhaps someone will pray for your damnèd quintessence come All Soul's Day -- which is Nov 2. But enough morbid theology; what's most important is that you remember to say 'Boo!' a lot on Hallowe'en.

Now Boo, that supposedly vulgar, monosyllabically partisan reprimand is not just a 'cat call' fit for sporting events -- it has myriad delights and uses. Indeed putting Boo in such an athletico-spectatorial 'Boo box' does not do justice to all of those who, for centuries, have laid down their dignity in the name of Hallowe'en, dressing up as Fairie Queens and Homicidal Pitchfork-Wielding Robots, scaring the mucus out of idle-minded gawkers in exchange for a little candy. Therefore I say Boo! to the Boo-belittlers: Boo is not merely a cacophonous foghorn on the playing fields of negativity, but also a wonderful interjection of wondrous surprise, of cunning trickery, a bon mot of winsome guile -- and with such winsome trickery follows the delicious 'treatery' that is the prerogative of the 21st-century treat-or-trickster (un Hallowe'enien moderne in the original French). Indeed, as the great liberal democrat Alexis De Tocqueville once said to himself in the shower, "with childish candour, shall come much candy." This is pure wisdom. So by all means boo to your (hellbound) soul's content: the sprites and spirits of Hallowe'en are smiling!

Anyway that is all. Look for me October 31 -- I'll be the guy dressed up as an umläut, booing his guts out and loving every minute of it.

paragraph #3143

(note the utopian banana men and how succulently they suck...?)

The tether in the yellow bell grows and glows, the weepy urn-ash vixens fight for the clogged moneyed jugular. We can never tell you secrets; placation comes too late in watery minnowy ponds, with the yuppy igloo centaurs and the prefab oligarch factories; hey why don’t you whack moles into dirt and stop clutching at my fronds... I am taller than sequoias but you’re thin as a reed - you frantic kleptomanic bean. Utopian banana men suck succulently, thrashing with finesse – it’s the hopping never stops; the 'bipping' leads to bops, two hundred centipedes caress my feet; luckily I have pity and don’t squash. And my friend, Frigid Filipino Ethel has a colourful coal mine canary - underground she sings with it - but its wings were clipped by a big brown Doberman, so she must use a walking stick.

toast of the town

the toast of the town
is sugary brown
the folks who eat it are
called ‘toaster hounds’
butter’s spread good
whipped and fluffy
jelly well slathered, it
makes a nice muffin

moist and chewy
this toast's the bee-yatch
folks goin' screwy
to taste the whole stack
the upper crust love it, it's
all of the rage
it's toast of the town, and
crumb-bums become sage

toast of the town
on all the cooking shows
the rest of the breakfast is
stale and it blows
but the toast of the town
has keys to the city
the flavour don’t last
but the banter is witty

the toast of the town
it boasts savoir-now
so let’s grab our chow
while it’s passing around

it's toast of the town
—but don’t burn your lips
as you swallow it down—

and if you chance to miss it
just catch the next round
when yesterday's plate’ll
be tossed to the ground.

shaggy pig-dog story

(animal crackers redux?)

The pig in the garden sighs a lot
and drinks a cup of cider
the reason he squeals is ’cause of the gout he
contracted from a spider

the spider’s name is Bethany
an eight-legged hairy frump
she knits a sweater with her eight long legs
and rags on grampa Grump

Grumpa’s a tarantula
he poisons people anon
Bethany bugs him about his venom
so Grampa shouts "Eh, Ron!"

now Ron’s a sexy scorpion
a jagged tailed bloke
he scares the little alley cats
sneaks into stores for Coke

the cats hiss and chase ol’ Ronnie down
it’s scorpion ‘do or die’
Ron’s saved by Tabitha, the shaggy black lab
who howls at the sky

Tabitha’s been to Brixton
where the market’s really hep
yesterday two big pigs were there:
Silly Sam and Porky Pep

Pep and Sam said to Tabitha
“You’re bound to catch the gout,”
Tabitha nodded, mentioned the pig in the garden,
“There’s been a lot of that about.”

now this story’s about pork and pop and poison,
shaggy dogs and pigs that sigh
it’s a silly little ditty ‘bout tarantulas
and scorpion chatricide;

it’s bound to raise an eyebrow,
a quick scoff or "no one cares"
but it’s got to be written anyhow
though it floats away on air

'cause dogs and poison, and pigs with gout
are what make the world go round
and so we wallow like hogs in the fancy-free
’cause it makes a pleasant sound!

animal crackers

(mind-bogglingly stupid; with nod to S&G's 'At the Zoo')

animal crackers

fish are in the schoolyard
the trout are in the barn,
llamas are chiding the dromedaries
--it all sounds quite divine.

the pandas get quite queasy
chugging quesadillas,
nor do lemurs have it easy
importing raisins from Manila.

the ocelots are tepid
they don’t support the arts
the pumas are pee-yew-mas
adept at cupping farts.

the orcas held a conference
exhort the walrus and the seals
they're tired of trade restrictions
that hurt the common weal.

and ibexes are deadly
their horns can pierce a tank
while skunks are quite lascivious
—those stinky smelly skanks.

yes, the animals are everywhere
they're flooping from the trees
but their pageantry's oblivious
to silly human beans.


(hmm ... needs penultimate ‘transition’ stanza?)

the lizard is back

(impenetrable as ever)

Trebuchet magnificence comes into mind at least expected times, and police coat moon wagons cannot fret until the yesterday choice magnets frump contiguously from one census tract to the next. We are alarmed at the dripping of water in the basement - how can you sleep at night? Politeness pays more than firmness, so let those recalcitrant debtors alone, like Solon in Athens - something about the letting loose of chains. Forgive debts and there’s great release of creativity; this has been documented hundreds of times through history... In outside space created by industrialists and business interests we walk in straight paths; we sing to rhythms jotted down on horizontal lines; predictability pacifies the masses say patricians. We move from left-to-right back to the margins, we're like the typewriter return key. I opened the door, to breathe oxygen; and my autistic subconscious rattled off lists, the best the british the ancient men; I talked internally, wandered finally to the great ubermensch the loggerheaded beatnik microphage the spirochetes and the dog treats you leave on a shelf for when the neighbour’s pup trips by...?

We surf amid polluted fruit food, the mood music interludes, the mid-tempo transitions to a more advantageous auricular position, the decision to stick with fission, the semantic stitch after the linguistic incision; your tongue gets stuck in neutral, so rub the clutch with a grapefruit citrus herbal concoction. In Latin we were Roman, in Greek we were Hellenes; we wallowed in testamental sight-reading eyeball look look look at me now, an AmeroCanado-Englishmun, please, call the doctor quick; Dear Dr. Marshall -- I've become a McLuhanatic.

across ocean

(send a blanket in the mail - it's getting chilly out there)

I tickle you with
words because that’s the
only way to
touch you; when
we will sit,
snooze together again?
my dearest darling friend, makes my
face flush warm tickling
massage? how bout it
you say ‘amen to that’
like the end of prayer, me wishing when
you answer
every couple weeks
’cross an ocean you
flicker in a screen
my teeth flicker too and
I’m smiling into you
that big-tooth sheen of mine
I know you’re keen on it and
you onscreen
my big brown eyes lit and I—
you, afterward, after words we
smile, having gleaned from
the eyes, the sheen—that we know
'kindred' means that
only we know what 'we' mean

apologies in advance...

(nothing's more annoying than a poet with morals - but this erupted somehow today, and so who am I to get in the way?)


Benjamin's easel

Benjamin was a weasel
he had some paints and easel
tried to draw a beauty
—but it just came out evil

Benny was agog
he never seen such fright
he stuck a knife right through his painting
and wailed throughout the night

Benjy was a jerk
he spat and shirked his work
he called in sick and hit the bricks
til everything just burst

B-spot was alone
sat by the phone and moaned
‘I am good, so give me food’
but the bank refused his loan

B-Jam ate canned beans
thought up crazy schemes
he made wishes, washing dishes
in his head he dreamed

Benjamin’s a friend
inside of all men
but we kick him and we punch him
we don’t like what he pretends

He forces us to think
which drives some folk to drink
better one man sinks, so the rest don’t think
‘bout how everything just stinks.

So, repeat after me:
Benjamin was a weasel
he had some paints and easel
tried to draw a beauty
—but it just came out evil.

My Cat

(nb, I do not own, nor have I ever owned, a cat - but if I did, it might go something like this...)


*ahem*

My cat

My cat, he slinks
He drinks his water regally, quiet and royally
Ferally stalking, he’s walking or ambling
Finally feeling sane, he pauses—
feline claws clenched for an ambush
(A fine game of rat or mouse. Oh to kill and eat a defenseless baby duck!)

He stops stalking when I look at him
he returns my stare, glowering. I glare, almost glowing. Mad at my cat. Why,
he doesn’t even love me, my tabby. Me?
Ok, so I am chatty, admittedly. Lonely yes, but dares he pity me?
Me, his master? How durst he! Must he?
This cat of mine, coughing up a dust ball! Nine lives, p’shaw!

First of all: “Get off the couch, you hairy beast,” I shout right through my home
For now he brushes against my leg, and again against his scratching post
fur rubbing gently now
almost erotic for such a heavy pet
almost ‘sexy’
like the clubs on Queen Street where I feel like
the real deal
or the ace of hearts.
And I’m on fire, shuffled out onto the deck for smoking,
but it’s like I’m burning, stuck in the mud
smoking outside the clubs
before leeched lovers sucking on each other
wannabees, really
full of beans. They’re for the birds
not for me,
Me alone out on in the courtyard on a Friday night,
But it feels like a Wednesday

In there, inside there
I am the dancing king
in rooms full of sweaty courtiers.
Those are diamonds in their eyes
“Oh, but you’re so shiny”—that’s what they tell me, tauntingly

Don’t patronize me,
I feel like scowling, but instead
I walk away

I want to say, “Listen cats, you do as I say.”
“You’re just cats; you can’t speak English—you depend on me in every way.”
But
with agility they leap away
And I think,
oh you silly cat,
you stinky dirty rat—
I’ll have your ass one day.


(yeah, gets a bit carried away ... March 2001)

Writer's block

I stopped, knocked off
at the dot
my robot scoffed, dropped and I
bopped the cop
I mopped up glop
topped up til
the cap popped
the lip locked
I rocked back, forth
Now it’s
socks off
and molotov
so don’t mock my
cocky cocky Cockney
Rachmaninoff?

the Poltergeist Magnificane

Welcome to the world of the Poltergeist Magnificane and the popular poultry finger:

“Yesterdiction, Futurifaction, Satisblixion, Multivacuation are the order of the day.”

So sit on my throne, police my face - you are the best wet dressers in the whole damn place.

Usurious road nuggets hiss trembling and yelp yellowy. Whether Iguana rectum or walrus whisker, my violet feathery foxfiddle begins to be a trickster. So quiggle my thumb, rub my tum, begin barn-blasting and open up the rum, we are the tall tots boasting about the cage full o' chum, we are the big smelly acoustically unholy pollywog-and-rolypoly coconut drums!

tired of eating pretzels...

I'm sure you fish faces can understand that.

be still my muse

after all I stand to lose, your eyes

insides I needed to use

we do what we must

do, but when

everything unglues

and still I need you

will you be at least my muse?


(I can't believe I ever lost you)

Mi piace il cafonismo...

"I like being a jackass..."

And who can say what it means to be a gentleman? A knight-errant treated like second-class refuse will eventually cease his errands. And become a garbage tosser too. It’s such a shame that what goes around comes around.

We often cry instead of frolicking in the gardens where we were born. How tragic. Yet I have taught many an apple to turn brown on a wire instead of losing itself amid the tall trees of Oceania. Wigwams and lollygags are interspersed on the avenue of fried things. Does this frighten me? Probably not.

Helmets are legislated for bikers, the long-legged trekkers on their way to Avalon; Ben Franklin fritters and Marlboro cigarettes are the lost products of the last decade, banned and censured for deleterious effects on the common weal, and for their odour the smoke the tobacco cloak the shaggy dog story revoked as irrevocable. Logarithmic dieticians and nutritious metaphysicians make predelictive predictions beyond the expansive Euler scale, as though the truth about calculus won't blow down in a cosmic gale, hoisting pelicans these hurricanes. So say hail and all hands high and all time good times in the blink of an eye. Follow and wallow, lead and breathe freer, determine what it is you must believe in, the weekend reprieve or the clothing store manager’s vacation leave?

I left the city with an anchor 'round my legs; I tripped in the highway, got run over by a semi. I washed outside with a garden hose, walked about the piazza looking for mosquitoes. I was searching for a friend to take me to Ohio. My good friend Ms. Correcto drinks a lot of Milo - (call me crazy if you have to but at least it makes her smile-o). Every time I asked the waitress for a high-chair for my bug, she laughed, spit in my ashes and asked if I'm on drugs. So I hid under the covers and drew your face in crayon; you said "let's strap on some leather tonight, and really get our 'gay' on." I waited until midnight to open your lipstick letter. Feeling better I sighed, jumped outside and called your name: "You're such a big fan of tapioca, and that makes you pretty lame!"

My mad mad love

(oldie but a goodie, written in the dark days... watch out for the blood)

My mad mad love

My love is mad crimson love,
it spills into margins,
nibbles your fingers and tickles your wrist; you
drop your can of cream soda
and fall on your knees
howling.

My love is an ocean of confetti
tossed back and forth like a frisbee
on a grey concrete highway;
it breaks down granite
and melts into warm
raspberry pudding.

My love is a secret rainbow of
ultraviolet regeneration;
it takes seven years
to blossom from the tiniest
mustard seed, but it feeds every
hollow capillary.

My love is an open book of
prayers, spells; a blue curse
when you are deaf, a
stone statue, paralyzed
in terror of being
in love.

And my love is a clutch of darkness--
blackening my insides, maggots
rotting in midsummer stench--
when I fear
my love is wrong and
I hate my own soul.

My love is killing me
killing me every hour so
I pierced my heart with a silver switchblade—
all that’s left now is
sixty seconds of
mad crimson gurgling.

"...nonconformist."

Prefab vocab? Ironclad drab? Blah blah yada yada, Crabby crabby, rather be a cabbie; same old same old, at the end of the rainbow is the dull yellow gold; I want something shiny, sure, but I don’t like the mold - makes me sneeze - sure I’m hard to please, I don’t mean to tease, but I got to live with me until I grow cold.

turnip-eyed leaf-blowing gasket devil!

(another one that gets away)

Middle of College St. I saw the devil, goat-face, horns and all, and he was smoking a cigarette. He was total mafioso smoking that cigarette, brandishing a leaf-blower with his other hand, clearing a sidewalk in front of an antique store at the north side of the street. Good thing he didn’t see me, as I was in no mood to sell my soul, or have leaves blown all over me. I felt like I was moving through space invisible again, but I know from experience I’m pretty conspicuous. I mean, who else has a giant turnip growing out his eyeballs?

Yeah, that’s me, ‘turnip boy’. Folks oft try to chew on my eyelid-turnip, because it’s novelty to them, but it’s all bets are off when that happens, because hey if you idiots want turnips then head to the goddamn supermarket. Meantime I’m just trying to avoid selling my soul like I said.

Most times when I’m walking along College, I don’t feel like a freaky turnip-eyed munchkin, because I’m looking at the rest of you circus nuts; but so what eh, we all have problems. Like my friend Larry, he has a gasket problem. Meaning that, instead of a lung, he uses a gasket to breathe. Until I met Larry I didn’t even know what a gasket was. But now I know that to breathe in and out of one of those things your whole life involves a desperate world of hurt...

help available

twentysomething lefthanded Italo-Canadian blogger seeks employment in postmodern meritocracy:

-master's program not quite working out; will wash dishes or write sitcoms for food (whatever's more dignified)

-skills include: smiling, bad puns, flights of fancy, basic arithmetic (to 99X's tables), some word processing

-has experience in: public speaking, running twice-weekly newspaper, writing books in vain, making waffles, keeping the bathroom clean

-academic: university degrees (2) in arbitrary disciplines (2)

-languages: English, Italian, French, some Latin, plus I live in a Portuguese neighbourhood!

-awards and citations: if you leave a comment below, does that count?

eloquent testimonial

"I got a friend, he a big pizza pie makin chillyo, name o’ Frederico. Now things went to shizzle for this mofo, but ol F-diggety didn’t crumble or nuth, tho it was bad. It was badder than Tremclad, yo, It was like the fourth of July in reverse, worse than a bunch a turkeys in yer face. But no way man, Effie he’s tall crayfish in a sea of lazy clam! F-bop he goes down, sure, but not underground, no way ma bubba. In short it’s all pow-wow and no shizzazzle; Freddy he picked hisself up, did the dusty dust, and continuations were ensuant yo. So, things became wickedy-dick prêttee-dam-quik. Talk aboot the inspira-tron, my bruthnut, cuz F-bomb return to the pizza rollin and the pie bakin, better than eva, and his biznitch near trippy-dips in a ma-fat-ter o’ months. All because of lil ticket I call Rabbi Tone-def Robbinovitch and the Persona Pow-wow Programm!"

(holds for applause)

"Masta Tone, will ya pleez burglarize me from da micro-funk?"

(Tony Robbins smiles, takes microphone)

"Now let Massa T-Rex sing the mass!"

feeding the dragon

there’s an empty file folder
in my computer
it screams at me in binary,
“what have you lately done
for me?”
back to Square One
got to go shopping
pick my brain
every single day, the same
wake up naked, beside a dragon
so relentless in its feed
--I wish I were an
accountant
something to count on
every single day, all the same
I
wish I were an
accountant
to keep track of what
it means

712 College St

(it’s that west end Toronto sidewalk, dessert-talk, smoke, handshake, squawk, gawk… institution)

“The Lord Himself dwells in these waffles!”
quoth the fat Jehovah’s witness
espresso slicker than gheri-curls
as Lil’ Richard graced the business

they say it got unhip up here
southwest - the Drake’s - where sizzle’s now
but ‘they’ don’t know Tronno from Tonawanda
and the Sitchy-Side still blazes

sure, the waitress ain’t really from Sicily
but she looks pretty good to me
brings us water, lots of bubbles
I wink, and tip accordingly

time to park, blab, hang out
with black Camilla, Swedish Inga
one scoop chocolate, one of vanilla
sidewalk days or nights out

don’t dress your best; or, dress to impress
chug the coffee, slurp that mess
spit out foam on your fresh pressed breast
sit and watch the stars gleam

it’s PortuGinos and paesanos
veggie gentry and ’bridge Sopranos
905ers and downtowners
--it’s so much more than ice cream.