sugarpepperpuff

Angel speaks to me and says all is ready, he reserved a room for me; the acrobat twirls on the thin wire, such tension, thoughts swirl and light laugher peripherating the tightrope – but there’s not enough distraction in the world to move him from his purpose. Where in the world are we; where in the world could she be? Looking under rocks for the jewel the tiny treasure I remember from homespun happinesses, the small translucent shells that glisten with magic or gasoline from ocean, the gravity mocking puff balls floating through the air from dandelions, those everywhere annoyance-delights; I can run through tall grass the chase I give, catching flies in my bare hand – I scare myself sometimes; I have preternatural reflexes. Like an animal. The angel tells me that’s what happens with some – I should be thankful; half hunter, half jester. Flinging out gifts, singing out sunshine, fighting dry winter skin with sugar pepper parsely and cinnamon.

The hype, it seems, was not entirely empty

If you live in Canada, check out the National Post this Thursday - Arts and Life section. Angry Brown Man and I are newsworthy pun-dits!

And so - excitement - the cupcakes become all the more sweet.

If you buy one of our Pun Gent shirts (available in March - see 'Merch Madness'), I'll reimburse you the 75 cents for picking up the paper. Deal? deal... So much fun!

surviving joy

saw pure joy today

been long enough

saw her joy again

- not long enough -

but

there she goes again

and

we'll be tough

- tough, when she's gone -

because joy is enough.

Hold still

Hold still

While I brush away

your eyelash

While I

hold still

let me be

beside you still

Don’t turn

Don’t paint your face--

I like it that way

please

We don’t have all day;

One of us has to

blink, but

please

wait, hold

still--

I want to

linger

on your eyelash

zazuby pamoobi ladooby

(this is your brain on jazz?)

zazuby, pamoobi, ladooby-la
fringa fonga funkifaw
higgle snuggle toggle noose
mama got locked in a google booth

clicky zap, flippy pap
wiggy waggy, piggy bobby
quocky flecky himmy haw
jason mitzin' twibby craw!

netty nockers, wangy dong
digi pixie singin' song
macky billy antitrust
mozilly fibro-coptic lust

nurry nurry flashy fry
silly syllogismic pi
mon-manny baddy, glo-bebe gong
soon be nothin write or wrong.

MegaRant

I've been working on something called The MegaRant - which is part of Liberty is a Bagel (coming soon, I swear!). It's taking a Mega-long time though, as it's hard to wrap the noodle around all the Mega things I've written, especially when I keep thinking of Mega-new ideas for how to present them. When I'm done it should be one 70-page Mega-long (non)poem. Will it be any good? I have no idea. But it will be Mega, definitely. And then there's the rest of the (non)poems to worry about. Man they should call this web site Freedom is Mega-chore. ;-)

(and now some computer wag will now say that a few thousand MegaRants will make him start to Gigal!)

meaning = absence of suffering?

When I was a boy I killed a bird that flew into my window.
I ran outside. Its head was wrenched completely backwards. It was bleeding, jumping around spastically.
Seeing pain like that makes a body sick to its stomach. I had to act.
I'm not sure who was putting whom out of his misery.
How did I know he had suffered enough?
I threw a rock on top him. A muffled thud. I didn't blink.
I knew it was important, even at the time. That's why I remember it.
I'm not sure I'd want anyone to make that decision for me.
(You too can donate your bodily organs to philosophy.)
But animals don't have souls. Hmm. Does it still work as an example?
Probably not.
I'd still like to thank that bird, for donating his body to philosophy.
...
(let he who is possessed of the meaning of life cast the first stone...)
...
ps when in doubt, blame the windowmaker.

Transcribing brainwaves, 15 minutes at a time

It’s ‘like versus like’ that’s interesting, it’s the close things that cause the most friction, and sparks fly between two nearly identical things, so we bonded brothers stick together like flies in spider-webs of mutual mistrust. The sweet blackness, the woman with rotund behind who shakes to the beat of the hum-drum, and that drum pulsates and vanishes untraceably like so many heisenberg electrons in the desert tribal twilight… but today I fight back: in the kitchen there was dust; I vacuumed, swept, then mopped with soap, then water again; the dirt reappears always, so you sweep again until it is smelling of pristine Lysol cleanliness, fleeting and temporary but existentially significant. A job well done makes it fun to be alive. Sweet sizzling sausages! There is a pizza burning in the oven! Yet another task. I spend half the weekend in a motional stupor, there was the grand man moving pianos and over here is a tall tiger ready to pounce. Same old same old. In walked a drag queen named Stephanie the telecom girl, me the grill cleaner the sweet water drinker the wasted fried beast ther teeth gnash grit and alone smashing and the accidental slicing of your finger open when cleaning the gun. The trigger is cold, set on stun, but the locked safety, thank god—the last thing we want is a firefight. Clean up the crumbs.

Sweet Toronto, here is diversity. We preach tolerance in this city and don’t accept anyone who doesn’t believe in it, so selective in our socially accepted prejudices. Swing back and forth between competing ideologies, your yin and yang is a stupid vicious blender; oscillation its middle name, and the lamentable pseudo-reasoning that flows from a hypocritical compromise…

It is a shamanry, this sweet translucency of half-truths, journalistic, rhetorical, one-sided fallacious phallogic used to serve the ends of tiny men; green one day and yellow the next. What makes it possible? The internet has no memory. Computers do, but this web we wander does not remember. Everything’s present-tense and subject to change; our overloaded neurons don't have a chance; there is no memory to electricity, there is only on and off, off and on; lightning bolts infinite and taken from on high – seeing is almost believing – but the light fails and you realize how ridiculous your world really is without that currency. In the inexorable darkness, straight lines are our best friends, a hand guiding blind along the inner wall of a labyrinth. Daedalus, you could have been our friend. Insecure demonic prick. Selling out to Minos and Minotaurs…. The dark is something we run from, and we go camping one week of the year to remind us of that. The tidal wave, mother nature returning home after a stray – have we gotten a bit too comfortable?

East meets West? The yin is the thing, the James Joyce Finn-again wakenings, beasts and the flute that flows, the music notes, hip-hop rock n roll and the boats bringing other men in, our time has past; let them have their turn. Shut down the libraries and give us a G-chord. We are elves fleeing from Rivendell, we sprites take flight, and now it is up to men to fight. Can we find any of quality? I don’t know you personally, but I’ve witnessed the things you did. Does accomplishment matter any more, next to marketing? And I don’t believe in resumés, they only encourage dishonesty; there is nothing that can be revealed in a job interview that I can’t observe by watching in patient silence. And why don’t you trust an honest face? I’ve been burned before, I know it’s not right to stop believing in people, but I’ve been hurt before. Bitterness is the easy way out. People like sob stories, so sad we want to be fearing-freedom and wallowing in our misery-loving company, keep me company in my hysterical misery, keep me in fear so that at least we’ll be living equally. I don’t desire happiness – I want you to be sad like me. That last sentence is pure evil. Nothing helps a bad mood quite like spreading it around, a cartoonist once said.

There is a struggle within these 1000 words, it’s like waiting for a count down to let you off a treadmill; those last 10 seconds are always an eternity, always the most excruciating. I could never be a sprinter. For some people though, it’s the milliseconds they keep track of, but the days drift by without anyone noticing.

I saw my best friend, he was finally flying; it is true, he can do it because he believes. I have seen miracles, every Sunday morning I see another. You know the man who controls the sun? He knows when and where there will be cloud. He controls the weather but what good does that do anyone? I have the best intentions I really do. That and a hitchhiker’s thumb will take you down the road to hell.

"Who are these liars putting white cement sacks at the foot of empty lots, announcing intentions to build skyscrapers, to start from scratch? What nerve." Man you have to admire that kind of determination. But it sucks to wait, to stare at an empty lot. Thanks for humiliating the rest of us with your achievement, thanks a lot. So do not remain in this sweet and excruciating aimlessness - who’s more depraved than the purposeless man? (AR). I don’t know and I don’t want to.

I never hear good ideas any more, why are they being kept secret? I never hear good ideas - are there experts keeping them under lock and key? All professions are conspiracies against the laity. All associations are hateful acts of exclusion. All generalizations are a slap in the face. The Coles Notes of wisdom.

To the magnificent muse: there is splendour in your every movement, there is the smile and the touch of your hand, you have those hands that turn everything to gold you touch my face and the aching melts away. We can come together and praise you in your absence but wouldn’t we rather just see you in person and happy? Wouldn’t you just rather come meet me for breakfast and laugh? I am certain of very few things but a good brunch is one of them.

I promise to keep quiet for a year, don’t let me speak, this noise is turning us inside out and making your spirit sore oh the wringing I’m giving it. Who can handle truth? Do what you want to me. Face me down in a hallway and take away my land and prizes, my women my stables and all my horses. Don’t ask me to explain because I don’t know how and don’t think it’s important. I never tell you anything in person because I want you to read my mind. Thank you thank thank you this is my mind. This is my mind; you are reading my mind. :-)

Elsa's ecstasy - wisdom from the goonèd saint

Sweet-tasting pepper! Great irony fluff! Assemble dragons into the boxing ring; I am here to pass out hypno-flutes. I will frapp them on the temples. I will tame these rubbery snakes. I will smash them into straight lines. I will stretch them out and etch them into stone as warnings, and they'll writhe forever in cold grey guilty granite.

You - musicians, lend me a melody! You - carpenters, build me an opera house! Summon the contractors - for today at least, they will be like honest men. O greedy ones, gather round - you are going to get your fill. Don't stop yourself from gorging - I will harness you for a higher purpose. Pass ganja 'round to the sarcastic dolphins (I have need of a higher porpoise). All the things you do, they are good - you feel light because you are immensely important. Joy is a sin, yes - but respectability will not fill the circus tents...

(On the weekend when it is cold out, you think about back rubs and hot chocolate, and try to remember what makes your spine shiver)

"no, tell us what's REALLY bothering you..."

I hate dictionaries.

The reason the dictionary failed me is because I didn’t know how to spell the word I was to look up. This is a fatal flaw in the lexicographers’ system, yet politics and patronages have silenced my cause. I scream but I am muted by the powers that be, Whitey if you will, and there is no end to my alienation. I am even considering going on CNN to complain about it. But the sponsors have said they will pull ads. Oh the yes men lackeys, the white-collared techies, the neo-yuppy prepsters. Ack, agog and alack!

(ok now this is a stupid post)

Two new blogs!

Was having a bit too much fun name-poaching on blogger today. I tried creating logspot.blogspot.com (gives rise to the euphemism, "I had to go to the washroom to post a couple of blogs") and spotblog.blogspot.com (man's best blog), as well as topsgolb.blogspot.com (backwards blog aka golb-dygook), but those names were all taken. :-(

Instead, I'm proud to present a couple of new, purely mischievous *sham* blogs. I encourage you to visit and offer suggestions as to what direction they might take:

• blogspock.blogspot.com - The Spock Blog: A look at the galaxy through the eyes of a stoic Vulcan
• blogspout.blogspot.com - The Blog Spout: A look at the galaxy through the eyes of another raving loonie

Any other suggestions? The Glob Blog? ...Nope, taken. Hmm... well, I think we get 9 or 10 of the damn things if we want, so I encourage everyone to take full advantage - somebody out there may want to pay for one of those names!