(whozzis? factor: 8)
Handle not these words as a baker grabs hot pizza trays with an oven mitt. Instead, let the sizzling slop pour down your legs and stick to your unwilling knee skins, 3rd degree burns be cursed-- or better still, allow your soul full immersion to sights your eyeballs shrink to see. Filter not the ear-ringing that ensues upon crunching my message to its kernel: instead, flutter your lips with hosannanalia and cup your lucky ears to the wind. Be coarse and gay and twimble about the barn!
Do we dine, or die? Do we limp and lie, or crackle and fly?
A weekend awaits! Scan the movie-house schedules and build a future-barge to float your flopsy fantasies. You could dig a large hole, fill it with butter, jump headlong and cook yourself in predictable stews. You could snort vast quantities of otherworldly powders, seductively expedient shortcuts to ectasy - but would they open your essence to its inner eagle?
Fantastic figures of otherwise ordinary citizens, drowning each other with carefulness to keep all volume at a medium -- to Styx with them, they lack all glitter. I insist upon a more potent jamboree. I will have a violent clashing of words, and I will sweep up all the hairy leavings and build a magic pillow to sleep through this incredible assault of boredom that cankers my skin to dust!
BLARGH!
Showing posts with label urgent request. Show all posts
Showing posts with label urgent request. Show all posts
7/15/2008
Admiring my empire from inside a bottle of ketchup
O, rude people, sad citizens, drowning in your thick-necked wizardry and donkey-minded back-and-forthery--will there be a peaceful moment for my clucking to cash your quickness? Hep, young lackeys! Untether my goats. I am hastened toward doom if no wench can cut through ear crusts and mend her wayward belching. If I sneeze in your face, and your brain is beslimed, your guts unsteady, then inhale that wet whisky and redouble yourself all the more!
Yech. I am agog, filled with brine. I rain these invectives for a reason, yet you quiver as toads under a shepherd's boot. Do you choose life, or loathing? Parcels of piffle, or proof and providence? Alliteration, or agony? All the more I impel you and yet you crumple in your daily quagmire. A martyr's death I'll choose before lurching under your bloodfisted baron's capricious yoke.
What there? An unassuming Olympiad? Call my mile-long trains and plunder them for a feast. Oh bottler, a million buckets of creamed soda! A tyrant's end to the unworthy! A joyous clanging amid the cock's drudgerous crow! A re-boinking of all redundancy and extra melting under the warm watery sun!!!
Yech. I am agog, filled with brine. I rain these invectives for a reason, yet you quiver as toads under a shepherd's boot. Do you choose life, or loathing? Parcels of piffle, or proof and providence? Alliteration, or agony? All the more I impel you and yet you crumple in your daily quagmire. A martyr's death I'll choose before lurching under your bloodfisted baron's capricious yoke.
What there? An unassuming Olympiad? Call my mile-long trains and plunder them for a feast. Oh bottler, a million buckets of creamed soda! A tyrant's end to the unworthy! A joyous clanging amid the cock's drudgerous crow! A re-boinking of all redundancy and extra melting under the warm watery sun!!!
12/27/2006
Cupcake Man seeks over the top blues band
The deal: I write the lyrics, you and your band sing them.
Start with this lil number which I call 'El Flopso':
Start with this lil number which I call 'El Flopso':
The Flopso Blues
Bigass carrots, peelin grapes/ pinch my sugar an' shake your bake
8/09/2006
Please stop smiling
(...and let me finish my crossword?)
Dear Smiler,
Quit smiling when I’m trying to finish my crossword! Your smile makes me want to rush over and kiss you, but my face is smudged with brown sweet stuff from this morning’s chocolate croissant. I don’t know what the French (or maybe it’s Portuguese here in west end Toronto) put in their croissant-filling but you don’t want it on your face – but that’s what’ll happen when I kiss you.
The crossword is my reason to get up in the morning: I think of ‘15 across’ and my inner thighs grow taut and twitchy. Have you ever completed the Globe and Mail’s Whango-Superbo Saturday Special? It requires the genius of 11 professors. So imagine how your smile must be interfering, if I'm impelled to throw down my pencil and slather your lips with my chocolate-stained labials whensoever you smile. A croissant fetches approximately $1.35 at a decent café. You’ll have to share in that expense: this is a house of crosswords, not of chocolate gratis. You must learn etiquette, for this is a place of accomplishment and well-considered verbiage. Therefore cease smiling and undertake a crossword of your own! I recommend the TV Guide's ‘Cross-Tease’ for starters, because while your grin is notorious your wordcrossing experience is probably near zero.
That smile - the reason it bewitches me so – is first, what goes on at the level of the tooth. Many have said (and I include in this generalization the great Coco Chanel and his assistant Velhimna) that teeth are ‘the bouncer to the soul’. Your mouth may keep me out, but I line up for hours in my well-coiffed suit to glimpse your shineys. Your pearly whites are more like Pearly Gates; does St. Peter loan you an ivory toothbrush? I am agog.
Next: the lips themselves, ruby red with a hint of Citrus Splash lipliner, which was purchased from a drugstore, one of the nation’s finest. ‘Like a drug’ is right: your succulent pneumatic mouth-hearts are narcotic vis-a-vis their intoxication of my soul! Those lips could withstand months of industrial testing to verify their bouncy resilience, their glistening moistness.
Also, the dimples: as part of the smile as Shemp was part of the Stooges – quite often absent, from uglier people that is, but when they do appear it is a grand comic farce that liquefies my soul into butter at the mere thought of your lactic succulence. In short, your dimples connect me to a higher plane of existence and nonsensical hyperbole.
Finally, it is the combination of all the above. Your smile has many variations but a single theme, that of smiliness, and those smiles, while magnificent and rival to Michelangelo’s David in baring the sheer beauty of the human form - they also mess with my ritual crossword! A man with a crossword is a creature of purpose, un wordsmith nobile to quote the French (only partly in their language); a crossword is a test of diligence, gateway of curiousity, the fruit of hours of newspaper content-related decisions…. So, please stop your torture and let me finish what I have begun!
Dear Smiler,
Quit smiling when I’m trying to finish my crossword! Your smile makes me want to rush over and kiss you, but my face is smudged with brown sweet stuff from this morning’s chocolate croissant. I don’t know what the French (or maybe it’s Portuguese here in west end Toronto) put in their croissant-filling but you don’t want it on your face – but that’s what’ll happen when I kiss you.
The crossword is my reason to get up in the morning: I think of ‘15 across’ and my inner thighs grow taut and twitchy. Have you ever completed the Globe and Mail’s Whango-Superbo Saturday Special? It requires the genius of 11 professors. So imagine how your smile must be interfering, if I'm impelled to throw down my pencil and slather your lips with my chocolate-stained labials whensoever you smile. A croissant fetches approximately $1.35 at a decent café. You’ll have to share in that expense: this is a house of crosswords, not of chocolate gratis. You must learn etiquette, for this is a place of accomplishment and well-considered verbiage. Therefore cease smiling and undertake a crossword of your own! I recommend the TV Guide's ‘Cross-Tease’ for starters, because while your grin is notorious your wordcrossing experience is probably near zero.
That smile - the reason it bewitches me so – is first, what goes on at the level of the tooth. Many have said (and I include in this generalization the great Coco Chanel and his assistant Velhimna) that teeth are ‘the bouncer to the soul’. Your mouth may keep me out, but I line up for hours in my well-coiffed suit to glimpse your shineys. Your pearly whites are more like Pearly Gates; does St. Peter loan you an ivory toothbrush? I am agog.
Next: the lips themselves, ruby red with a hint of Citrus Splash lipliner, which was purchased from a drugstore, one of the nation’s finest. ‘Like a drug’ is right: your succulent pneumatic mouth-hearts are narcotic vis-a-vis their intoxication of my soul! Those lips could withstand months of industrial testing to verify their bouncy resilience, their glistening moistness.
Also, the dimples: as part of the smile as Shemp was part of the Stooges – quite often absent, from uglier people that is, but when they do appear it is a grand comic farce that liquefies my soul into butter at the mere thought of your lactic succulence. In short, your dimples connect me to a higher plane of existence and nonsensical hyperbole.
Finally, it is the combination of all the above. Your smile has many variations but a single theme, that of smiliness, and those smiles, while magnificent and rival to Michelangelo’s David in baring the sheer beauty of the human form - they also mess with my ritual crossword! A man with a crossword is a creature of purpose, un wordsmith nobile to quote the French (only partly in their language); a crossword is a test of diligence, gateway of curiousity, the fruit of hours of newspaper content-related decisions…. So, please stop your torture and let me finish what I have begun!
8/03/2006
What makes you so special
(pure gushing)
I was thinking about what made you so special. Now I don’t want these words to be pure sugar, as that nauseates every tongue. But I was thinking about why for example the sun parts in rays just for you. And what power you hold over the weather, and always so dramatic every time you arrive it’s either lightning and soaked skin or cherryblossom breezes drying dewdrops off toenails; you don’t get caught in in-betweens. Something fascinating about extremes, not that we get so bored with moderation, maturity, mediums or every other kind of M (the exact middle of the alphabet). That weather, or the tone in your voice - it’s the way you exhaustively answer the most mundane question, as though no one else in history has ever asked it. You turn the razor attention of that mind on my eyelash, and my stomach turns in knots. If a poem could be written about swatting a fly with a Buick, well … oh there I go again about extremes. But I’m avoiding my initial problem, that of your peculiar quality. Is it your teeth – such fine teeth. Why is there so much emphasis on this planet about beautiful teeth? I’d rather have a cast-iron femur, guaranteed never to snap (something about certain death from massive internal bleeding). I’d rather have skin like a rhinoceros. I can eat meals through a straw if I have to, I don’t need shiny teeth, pearly whites, gate to your mouth your weapon of expression, your voice constant and reassuring like waves lapping against my cottage dock in mid July.
But no, it was never anything physical. And that too is cliché. I can’t call you special if I describe it in clichés. No, I need different phrases, like big pointy purple things, large orang-utan bands playing the banjos and hell maybe a fruit smoothie so damn smooth it’s like someone kicked me in the nuts with a half-litre of banana-pureed nutritional delirium – those kind of images could possibly be a start; though it’s ridiculous I can find therein the sublime, the underlying ne plus ultra of your speciality. I can’t resort to nature, the weather, physical footnotes or any other kind of archaeological cluebook the romantics fall back on. Give me my orangutan band and a ticket out of the solar system – there’re comets passing through every 86 years that don’t get worn out by this planet’s hackneyed explanations. Just passing through bearing gifts from Proxima Centauri, so much travelling you’ve done, just want to learn from your latest adventure.
Sometimes I wonder if you actually exist. Remember that game we played as kids – when we turned our back to the room and wondered if it was still there behind us? These were epiphanies – entire philosophies - disguised as hide-and-seek. I get that feeling when you’re gone from my life; not quite sure it was just a trick, not sure whether what I believed left any indelible meaning. And maybe I should apologize for my lack of faith – but if I could count on miracles they’d stop being miracles, and it’s pretty predictable where you’ll find me: in death valley. Then you come back and the universe has wheels again, clocks resume ticking, the entire dictionary reads like a single shop-sign declaring ‘open for business’. Church bells repeat your name and I spend all morning going gaga, spilling ink for cappuccino froth with cinnamon and a saucy wink from somebody’s long-legged sister - and that’s as close to heaven as I need. Did I mention the wink from that waitress? Thank you thank you–she’s smokin hot but also witty, warm, and she actually knows how to read.
I can sketch a series of images, I still won’t capture it: I gotta slice you up, section by section, trap you on a microscope slide (the goal of science is to use genius to eliminate all possibility for imagination, and oh the sad ingenuity that requires, the dedication to explanatory blandness; I don’t have it). I’m afraid I don’t want to reach my intended destination. Much too much of a digression, I’m completely guilty of procrastination.
So -
What makes you special – you turn each of us into a complete fool.
Plus – there’s that delicate flip of your rose-scented wrist, casting light in a tunnel and glowing in my iris. Pointing the way with a chuckle, halfway between a slap and a kiss.
What makes you special is your cast and crew, this insane retinue, and I’ve gone black and blue cataloguing everything they do. Sometimes they blindside me, other times I am grateful to borrow their eyes, step outside my shell and float. Out of body experience? Fuck no – I’m clearly out of my mind, and what I mean is that I get to be in someone else’s. An honour and a privilege.
What makes you special is that 883 days ago I dedicated everything up here to you – and somehow you keep pulling me – I’m pulling it - through. I don’t just feel like I’m showing off, because I know I’m really humble and besides – it was you who asked me to.
Pelican man, I [heart] you.
I was thinking about what made you so special. Now I don’t want these words to be pure sugar, as that nauseates every tongue. But I was thinking about why for example the sun parts in rays just for you. And what power you hold over the weather, and always so dramatic every time you arrive it’s either lightning and soaked skin or cherryblossom breezes drying dewdrops off toenails; you don’t get caught in in-betweens. Something fascinating about extremes, not that we get so bored with moderation, maturity, mediums or every other kind of M (the exact middle of the alphabet). That weather, or the tone in your voice - it’s the way you exhaustively answer the most mundane question, as though no one else in history has ever asked it. You turn the razor attention of that mind on my eyelash, and my stomach turns in knots. If a poem could be written about swatting a fly with a Buick, well … oh there I go again about extremes. But I’m avoiding my initial problem, that of your peculiar quality. Is it your teeth – such fine teeth. Why is there so much emphasis on this planet about beautiful teeth? I’d rather have a cast-iron femur, guaranteed never to snap (something about certain death from massive internal bleeding). I’d rather have skin like a rhinoceros. I can eat meals through a straw if I have to, I don’t need shiny teeth, pearly whites, gate to your mouth your weapon of expression, your voice constant and reassuring like waves lapping against my cottage dock in mid July.
But no, it was never anything physical. And that too is cliché. I can’t call you special if I describe it in clichés. No, I need different phrases, like big pointy purple things, large orang-utan bands playing the banjos and hell maybe a fruit smoothie so damn smooth it’s like someone kicked me in the nuts with a half-litre of banana-pureed nutritional delirium – those kind of images could possibly be a start; though it’s ridiculous I can find therein the sublime, the underlying ne plus ultra of your speciality. I can’t resort to nature, the weather, physical footnotes or any other kind of archaeological cluebook the romantics fall back on. Give me my orangutan band and a ticket out of the solar system – there’re comets passing through every 86 years that don’t get worn out by this planet’s hackneyed explanations. Just passing through bearing gifts from Proxima Centauri, so much travelling you’ve done, just want to learn from your latest adventure.
Sometimes I wonder if you actually exist. Remember that game we played as kids – when we turned our back to the room and wondered if it was still there behind us? These were epiphanies – entire philosophies - disguised as hide-and-seek. I get that feeling when you’re gone from my life; not quite sure it was just a trick, not sure whether what I believed left any indelible meaning. And maybe I should apologize for my lack of faith – but if I could count on miracles they’d stop being miracles, and it’s pretty predictable where you’ll find me: in death valley. Then you come back and the universe has wheels again, clocks resume ticking, the entire dictionary reads like a single shop-sign declaring ‘open for business’. Church bells repeat your name and I spend all morning going gaga, spilling ink for cappuccino froth with cinnamon and a saucy wink from somebody’s long-legged sister - and that’s as close to heaven as I need. Did I mention the wink from that waitress? Thank you thank you–she’s smokin hot but also witty, warm, and she actually knows how to read.
I can sketch a series of images, I still won’t capture it: I gotta slice you up, section by section, trap you on a microscope slide (the goal of science is to use genius to eliminate all possibility for imagination, and oh the sad ingenuity that requires, the dedication to explanatory blandness; I don’t have it). I’m afraid I don’t want to reach my intended destination. Much too much of a digression, I’m completely guilty of procrastination.
So -
What makes you special – you turn each of us into a complete fool.
Plus – there’s that delicate flip of your rose-scented wrist, casting light in a tunnel and glowing in my iris. Pointing the way with a chuckle, halfway between a slap and a kiss.
What makes you special is your cast and crew, this insane retinue, and I’ve gone black and blue cataloguing everything they do. Sometimes they blindside me, other times I am grateful to borrow their eyes, step outside my shell and float. Out of body experience? Fuck no – I’m clearly out of my mind, and what I mean is that I get to be in someone else’s. An honour and a privilege.
What makes you special is that 883 days ago I dedicated everything up here to you – and somehow you keep pulling me – I’m pulling it - through. I don’t just feel like I’m showing off, because I know I’m really humble and besides – it was you who asked me to.
Pelican man, I [heart] you.
1/02/2006
9/18/2005
"Tell me what's wrong..."
You drove into the ocean
and hollered on your cell phone
it was three thirty in the morning
when I got to hear you drown
I was better than that
than last minute confessions
you made me your vomit bag
you made yourself a clown
and hollered on your cell phone
it was three thirty in the morning
when I got to hear you drown
I was better than that
than last minute confessions
you made me your vomit bag
you made yourself a clown
4/24/2005
Note to one self
There is nothing I can do - is a lie.
Fear of rejection – get over it.
Stop playing around.
What you aren’t doing is just as important as what you are.
Watching your every move. Thinking your every thought.
Fear is the killer.
Come to me.
Why pile up these future regrets?
Stop watching your every move – before you don’t make it. Stop thinking your every thought – before you don’t think it.
In the past is a rotting carcass of anxiety and inaction. The French have a word for this kind of paralysis.
You’re better off as an amputee. Cut it loose.
Every day I give you a clean slate; I’m always striving to say hello.
Hello hello hello.
Fear of rejection – get over it.
Stop playing around.
What you aren’t doing is just as important as what you are.
Watching your every move. Thinking your every thought.
Fear is the killer.
Come to me.
Why pile up these future regrets?
Stop watching your every move – before you don’t make it. Stop thinking your every thought – before you don’t think it.
In the past is a rotting carcass of anxiety and inaction. The French have a word for this kind of paralysis.
You’re better off as an amputee. Cut it loose.
Every day I give you a clean slate; I’m always striving to say hello.
Hello hello hello.
2/15/2005
Hold still
Hold still
I want to
linger
on your eyelash
2/05/2005
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)
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)
10/14/2004
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)
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)
10/12/2004
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.
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.
6/28/2004
Vote!
Not in one of my wonderful web polls, but in today's Canada federal election.
If you are a Canadian citizen and haven't yet voted, then stop reading this, turn your computer off and get to the polling station, dumbass.
Especially if you're part of the 18-34 'I-love-apathy-and-dictatorships' demographic whose average turnout rate is lower than whale poo (and THAT'S at the bottom of Hudson Bay)--believe it or not, your ballot matters today. Don't let a bunch of 65+ 'election sluts' (turnout rate for seniors: close to 85%) decide your future!
Click here for voting stuff.
Vote!
If you are a Canadian citizen and haven't yet voted, then stop reading this, turn your computer off and get to the polling station, dumbass.
Especially if you're part of the 18-34 'I-love-apathy-and-dictatorships' demographic whose average turnout rate is lower than whale poo (and THAT'S at the bottom of Hudson Bay)--believe it or not, your ballot matters today. Don't let a bunch of 65+ 'election sluts' (turnout rate for seniors: close to 85%) decide your future!
Click here for voting stuff.
Vote!
6/12/2004
mona get out
("behind every beautiful thing..." -Bob Dylan)
mona get out
posing for the portrait
holding so still
waiting for the miracle
brushing by his will
O mona, get out
shake the paint about
we're all here inside
waiting for your shout
leo is gonna ’mortalize you—
he’ll frame you, make
you goddess, steal your soul—
and that’s a bad bad scene so
go mona go
don’t let him trap the smile
(but it’s driving him to drink)
’cause they’ll hang you in the gallery
and
they’ll curse you for your secret
and
they’ll stare at you for centuries
and
they’ll never let you blink.
mona get out
posing for the portrait
holding so still
waiting for the miracle
brushing by his will
O mona, get out
shake the paint about
we're all here inside
waiting for your shout
leo is gonna ’mortalize you—
he’ll frame you, make
you goddess, steal your soul—
and that’s a bad bad scene so
go mona go
don’t let him trap the smile
(but it’s driving him to drink)
’cause they’ll hang you in the gallery
and
they’ll curse you for your secret
and
they’ll stare at you for centuries
and
they’ll never let you blink.
6/06/2004
Dear Mr. Norbert MacPhail:
(this one's fun to read out loud)
Please sir, remove your socks from the rail-banister above the 2nd-floor landing of our building--our olfactory nerves have suffered enough.
Sir, of late our apartment building has become a by-word for putridity and for nose-harm. With all due respect, this saddening reputation is due almost entirely to you and your socks. More to the point, Mr. MacPhail, it's due to your utter rankness. You might not realize this sir, but you are a stinky man, and, as noxious consequence of your stink, the socks you peel off after a day's wearing are quite stinky as well. Therefore when placing your socks on the railing outside your apartment--in direct exposure to the stairwell traffic--be aware that you create a poisonous, unbreathable atmosphere!
Surely the city health unit, if availed of this phenomenon, would move fast to declare your sock-pile an egregious biohazard, incubating passersby as it does with its pathogenic skunkery. I implore you, sir, do not court that ignominious label, ie 'Norbert MacPhail, Officially Dangerous Cesspool of Stink,' from our city's health inspectors. Why force the inspectors to declare publicly what, to your co-tenants, is already plain--that you and your socks are an assault upon all nostrils, far and wide? Instead, remove your rancid foot garments from the stairwell with all courtesy and with extreme haste. (What you do with them after is up to you; I personally suggest you burn those wanton bacteria-sleeves, or bury them under ground.)
So for god sakes sir, cease and desist this godawful stink.
With neighbourly concern,
FIAC
Please sir, remove your socks from the rail-banister above the 2nd-floor landing of our building--our olfactory nerves have suffered enough.
Sir, of late our apartment building has become a by-word for putridity and for nose-harm. With all due respect, this saddening reputation is due almost entirely to you and your socks. More to the point, Mr. MacPhail, it's due to your utter rankness. You might not realize this sir, but you are a stinky man, and, as noxious consequence of your stink, the socks you peel off after a day's wearing are quite stinky as well. Therefore when placing your socks on the railing outside your apartment--in direct exposure to the stairwell traffic--be aware that you create a poisonous, unbreathable atmosphere!
Surely the city health unit, if availed of this phenomenon, would move fast to declare your sock-pile an egregious biohazard, incubating passersby as it does with its pathogenic skunkery. I implore you, sir, do not court that ignominious label, ie 'Norbert MacPhail, Officially Dangerous Cesspool of Stink,' from our city's health inspectors. Why force the inspectors to declare publicly what, to your co-tenants, is already plain--that you and your socks are an assault upon all nostrils, far and wide? Instead, remove your rancid foot garments from the stairwell with all courtesy and with extreme haste. (What you do with them after is up to you; I personally suggest you burn those wanton bacteria-sleeves, or bury them under ground.)
So for god sakes sir, cease and desist this godawful stink.
With neighbourly concern,
FIAC
5/13/2004
Spartacus goes shopping
Why do we stand in the back of the lineup, waiting for The Man to make us pay? Brothers, sisters, levitate, congregate and fulminate. Today a new day dawns. Today it is the choicest and fluffiest loaves that we select from bakery shelves. Today it is the heartiest chicken broth that we sip; no more shall substandard, stale licorice swizzles be pawned off to the heretofore too-mild children of Africa. No more shall we honest victims engage in tiresome struggle for basic grocerial self-determination. Seize the firmest, most perfumed melons! Pluck the most savoury tenderloin from the under the nose of our cotton oppressors! Can you smell the premium coffee brewing? Well today and forever we shall have righteous cause to sip from that same percolating kettle!
5/10/2004
good news... and no, I'm not really a writer
The good news is that, today I find myself just one *poem* away (*poem*--from the Greek word meaning 'thing that is made') from finishing my first *book* (*book*--from the German word pertaining to 'beech', the tree whose bark was used for writing 'things' on).
To be honest, I don't consider myself much of a writer, because a writer is somebody with something to say (like a speaker has something to say, but a writer relies more on symbolic ink patterns or cathode-ray squiggles, instead of pharyngeal air vibrations). I much prefer *listening* and, after that, *editing*, as opposed to this presumptuous, confrontational act of writing. I don't write because I like writing, really, that's not the reason; I'm more of an editor of the things I catch myself listening to (and listen to me now: it's perfectly ok to end a sentence with a preposition). Generally, the writing part is accidental--in the most disastrous sense of the word--and I'm as surprised at the disturbing results of these creative accidents and impromptu emissions as anybody else.
So when I do force myself to write something (often against my will, when I'm exhausted or depressed; often when I'm in a fantastic mood, and should be outside kissing some pretty girl instead of sitting at this laptop and shrivelling into a raisin), then to get some satisfaction, to make it worth the cost, the sacrifice, the inevitable carpal tunnel syndrome, then I have to guarantee myself that the ultimate product of that writing session has to in some way, somehow, blow my mind. And doing that--ie melting my own face, with words--often requires a lot of *editing*, which on the other hand I am more than happy to do, because editing is fun, and so that's when this blog becomes fun, for me. So I confess--I have only a vague idea whether or to what degree the stuff I'm serving up here is blowing any other minds out there, but rest assured, if it's on this blog, it's because I've just managed to utterly, absolutely blow my own mind, and felt compelled to share it with the universe (who needs to smoke cigarettes, drink liquor, or tip cows to have a good time when I've got blogspot?) . That said, I am glad a few of you (among the 20-35-odd people a day who check this site) have reacted favourably to the things I've written/edited; it gives me another reason--in the long run, quite a significant reason--to keep on doing it.
So thanks to all those who have left the kind words, and please, forgive me today's puzzling hypocrisy, ie doing all this *legitimate writing* (since today I actually have something to say, which in itself is a fine thing, but is strange when I just said that usually I don't--have anything to say that is) when in actual fact I'm not a writer. I hope you can let it slide. Fortunately for me, there is not always so much writing to be done, but there is more than enough editing to go around. I tell you, *everything* out there is just waiting, asking, begging to be edited--which is probably why I've been so busy the past two-and-half months. :-)
Anyway, regarding my *book* and its one missing *poem*: it has a title, ie this poem does, but it itself is not yet written. This is where YOU come in, hopefully, since I don't know if I have the energy to complete it myself. This final, keystone poem (I wish there was a better word than *poem*, one not so completely raped and bankrupt), is titled "99 rejected subtitles." The "subtitles" referred to in this unwritten poem's title (please try to follow this) themselves refer to, ie are subordinate to, the title of the book itself, which also happens to be the title of this blog, that is, "Freedom is a Cupcake," which, you may not know, is the title of a *poem* that I wrote/edited several months ago (I think it was in December) and which so utterly blew my mind at the time of its making, that I made it the title of this web site in addition to the title of my (never-to-be-published) book, which, as a chonological sidebar, I started compiling/editing even before I knew what a *blog* was (book beats out blog by 'bout three months).
So, here's this much-too-much-ballyhooed *poem* so far:
99 rejected subtitles
[empty space]
What fills this appalling void will be a list of precisely that, 99 lines or phrases or entities of an interesting and poignant subtitular quality. And each phrase will begin with the number 99, a la
(think first, for inspiration, of the title of the book, 'Freedom is a cupcake')
(now here's the title of the poem:)
99 rejected subtitles
(and the guts of the poem:)
1.99 things to do when you're unemployed
2.99 reasons to call a psychiatrist
3.99 ideas you're going to enjoy meeting
(man this thing is writing/editing itself!)
4.99 *poems* by 99 *poets*
5.99 excuses for my misbehaviour
6.99 smiles and frowns
7.99 deliciously liberating tidbits
8. .....
9. ....
(and so on and so on and so on, up to 99 different rejected subtitles)
...
99. 99 ways to start writing a book
Anyways thanks for making it this far down in this utterly, mind-numbingly ruinous post; I hope you can help me write this *poem*, (and will perhaps want to read my book, if it ever gets published) because Lord knows I can't stand doing it myself.
Oh, just so you know, this book will end up including 100 *poems*. This one, about "99", will be the 100th.
That's all for now. Cheers, Pat
ps next up, it's blown minds, I promise
pps I was in such a rush to write this that I didn't have time to edit it very much. man, I hate that.
To be honest, I don't consider myself much of a writer, because a writer is somebody with something to say (like a speaker has something to say, but a writer relies more on symbolic ink patterns or cathode-ray squiggles, instead of pharyngeal air vibrations). I much prefer *listening* and, after that, *editing*, as opposed to this presumptuous, confrontational act of writing. I don't write because I like writing, really, that's not the reason; I'm more of an editor of the things I catch myself listening to (and listen to me now: it's perfectly ok to end a sentence with a preposition). Generally, the writing part is accidental--in the most disastrous sense of the word--and I'm as surprised at the disturbing results of these creative accidents and impromptu emissions as anybody else.
So when I do force myself to write something (often against my will, when I'm exhausted or depressed; often when I'm in a fantastic mood, and should be outside kissing some pretty girl instead of sitting at this laptop and shrivelling into a raisin), then to get some satisfaction, to make it worth the cost, the sacrifice, the inevitable carpal tunnel syndrome, then I have to guarantee myself that the ultimate product of that writing session has to in some way, somehow, blow my mind. And doing that--ie melting my own face, with words--often requires a lot of *editing*, which on the other hand I am more than happy to do, because editing is fun, and so that's when this blog becomes fun, for me. So I confess--I have only a vague idea whether or to what degree the stuff I'm serving up here is blowing any other minds out there, but rest assured, if it's on this blog, it's because I've just managed to utterly, absolutely blow my own mind, and felt compelled to share it with the universe (who needs to smoke cigarettes, drink liquor, or tip cows to have a good time when I've got blogspot?) . That said, I am glad a few of you (among the 20-35-odd people a day who check this site) have reacted favourably to the things I've written/edited; it gives me another reason--in the long run, quite a significant reason--to keep on doing it.
So thanks to all those who have left the kind words, and please, forgive me today's puzzling hypocrisy, ie doing all this *legitimate writing* (since today I actually have something to say, which in itself is a fine thing, but is strange when I just said that usually I don't--have anything to say that is) when in actual fact I'm not a writer. I hope you can let it slide. Fortunately for me, there is not always so much writing to be done, but there is more than enough editing to go around. I tell you, *everything* out there is just waiting, asking, begging to be edited--which is probably why I've been so busy the past two-and-half months. :-)
Anyway, regarding my *book* and its one missing *poem*: it has a title, ie this poem does, but it itself is not yet written. This is where YOU come in, hopefully, since I don't know if I have the energy to complete it myself. This final, keystone poem (I wish there was a better word than *poem*, one not so completely raped and bankrupt), is titled "99 rejected subtitles." The "subtitles" referred to in this unwritten poem's title (please try to follow this) themselves refer to, ie are subordinate to, the title of the book itself, which also happens to be the title of this blog, that is, "Freedom is a Cupcake," which, you may not know, is the title of a *poem* that I wrote/edited several months ago (I think it was in December) and which so utterly blew my mind at the time of its making, that I made it the title of this web site in addition to the title of my (never-to-be-published) book, which, as a chonological sidebar, I started compiling/editing even before I knew what a *blog* was (book beats out blog by 'bout three months).
So, here's this much-too-much-ballyhooed *poem* so far:
99 rejected subtitles
[empty space]
What fills this appalling void will be a list of precisely that, 99 lines or phrases or entities of an interesting and poignant subtitular quality. And each phrase will begin with the number 99, a la
(think first, for inspiration, of the title of the book, 'Freedom is a cupcake')
(now here's the title of the poem:)
99 rejected subtitles
(and the guts of the poem:)
1.99 things to do when you're unemployed
2.99 reasons to call a psychiatrist
3.99 ideas you're going to enjoy meeting
(man this thing is writing/editing itself!)
4.99 *poems* by 99 *poets*
5.99 excuses for my misbehaviour
6.99 smiles and frowns
7.99 deliciously liberating tidbits
8. .....
9. ....
(and so on and so on and so on, up to 99 different rejected subtitles)
...
99. 99 ways to start writing a book
Anyways thanks for making it this far down in this utterly, mind-numbingly ruinous post; I hope you can help me write this *poem*, (and will perhaps want to read my book, if it ever gets published) because Lord knows I can't stand doing it myself.
Oh, just so you know, this book will end up including 100 *poems*. This one, about "99", will be the 100th.
That's all for now. Cheers, Pat
ps next up, it's blown minds, I promise
pps I was in such a rush to write this that I didn't have time to edit it very much. man, I hate that.
4/01/2004
Waltzing Matilda (for TW*)
[*to be read listening to ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)’**]
The morning click of the doorknob as you return from the shower; the muffled whoosh of moccasins on my front porch; the itchy screen door you scrape with car keys; nodding furious your soft, earnest forehead, to follow where you’re going--that’s what I need to make it through another day. But I couldn’t jump as high as you; I wish I could've, but oh the things you can do and I just can’t, and I’m sorry dear; I never did. You didn’t ever stop trying though, with your platinum gold smile and growling raspberry tenderness, until your giant spirit fluttered off into the whirling pea-green river… And before we met, the first hello, the first time, I already knew your name; you took my fingers in hand and squeezed my calluses, asking ‘how did these get here?’ and I just shook my head and grinned and your eyes were so big, and you looked in mine and whispered your secret; time was running out. Now I’m losing my voice every night, with Tom W howling beside me, and I wonder--why won’t sad Lady Matilda dance with her man? Why won’t she waltz with him? Was I afraid of sliding across the wooden ballroom with you, sparkle spin and we spun, out of control we were. I was an amputated sailor once, but you took me by the arm, and I was weak when you led me up that hill; I was starving but you didn’t let me fall down, you never let me fall asleep, even in the cloudburst. But on Good Friday, you left--you left town nonetheless, you left me and now I pace back and forth in my bedroom, pummelling my forehead with fists, knocking myself out in the closets, digging for at least one of your tattered shirts, because I need a piece of something to hold on to, and I bet you come back someday still, because I have something you own. My heart my heart--but my heart is so big and some days it spills all outside, and there is never enough kleenex. And you said you’d remember everything I once told you; you said you’d never let me sit alone in those tired blank spaces, but the footsteps I’m hearing are just foghorn echoes of passing ships, and that night-sky supernova, those feathers, remind me of beach sand and the boardwalks--and hey, remember that time I let you cut my hair, and when I looked in the mirror we burst out laughing? What a disaster we two. But you promised to keep the sofa-bed free whenever I needed to lay my head, and today, boy do I need somebody’s Somewhere to crash--and do you ever wonder, how we’ll look when we’re old? You'd be more stunning than now even; you have those black eyelashes and dimple on one side. And I never say goodbye, because you can’t leave me, and if you leave I won’t forget it ever. It was blinding, how you rushed inside and took me, but just as blinding you brushed past… and do you ever find what it is you’re looking for? Answer me, please I am begging, you--fucking... answer me--say something... I remember, Saturday night was holy when we were together; that kind of waltzing was the only kind: we two spinning madness in my front hallway, back porch, my face flush in the middle of winter, in the upside down world you took me through, your silver horses and magic powers, your morning-after promises. So to get me through today I’m always falling on my knees; I worship those memories and I want to bury myself inside them, naked, dancing in your arms and shivering.
[**'cause that's how it was written]
The morning click of the doorknob as you return from the shower; the muffled whoosh of moccasins on my front porch; the itchy screen door you scrape with car keys; nodding furious your soft, earnest forehead, to follow where you’re going--that’s what I need to make it through another day. But I couldn’t jump as high as you; I wish I could've, but oh the things you can do and I just can’t, and I’m sorry dear; I never did. You didn’t ever stop trying though, with your platinum gold smile and growling raspberry tenderness, until your giant spirit fluttered off into the whirling pea-green river… And before we met, the first hello, the first time, I already knew your name; you took my fingers in hand and squeezed my calluses, asking ‘how did these get here?’ and I just shook my head and grinned and your eyes were so big, and you looked in mine and whispered your secret; time was running out. Now I’m losing my voice every night, with Tom W howling beside me, and I wonder--why won’t sad Lady Matilda dance with her man? Why won’t she waltz with him? Was I afraid of sliding across the wooden ballroom with you, sparkle spin and we spun, out of control we were. I was an amputated sailor once, but you took me by the arm, and I was weak when you led me up that hill; I was starving but you didn’t let me fall down, you never let me fall asleep, even in the cloudburst. But on Good Friday, you left--you left town nonetheless, you left me and now I pace back and forth in my bedroom, pummelling my forehead with fists, knocking myself out in the closets, digging for at least one of your tattered shirts, because I need a piece of something to hold on to, and I bet you come back someday still, because I have something you own. My heart my heart--but my heart is so big and some days it spills all outside, and there is never enough kleenex. And you said you’d remember everything I once told you; you said you’d never let me sit alone in those tired blank spaces, but the footsteps I’m hearing are just foghorn echoes of passing ships, and that night-sky supernova, those feathers, remind me of beach sand and the boardwalks--and hey, remember that time I let you cut my hair, and when I looked in the mirror we burst out laughing? What a disaster we two. But you promised to keep the sofa-bed free whenever I needed to lay my head, and today, boy do I need somebody’s Somewhere to crash--and do you ever wonder, how we’ll look when we’re old? You'd be more stunning than now even; you have those black eyelashes and dimple on one side. And I never say goodbye, because you can’t leave me, and if you leave I won’t forget it ever. It was blinding, how you rushed inside and took me, but just as blinding you brushed past… and do you ever find what it is you’re looking for? Answer me, please I am begging, you--fucking... answer me--say something... I remember, Saturday night was holy when we were together; that kind of waltzing was the only kind: we two spinning madness in my front hallway, back porch, my face flush in the middle of winter, in the upside down world you took me through, your silver horses and magic powers, your morning-after promises. So to get me through today I’m always falling on my knees; I worship those memories and I want to bury myself inside them, naked, dancing in your arms and shivering.
[**'cause that's how it was written]
freedom o' press
(because the public has a right to know)
freedom o’ press
Readers of the world, unite!
your Writers do not right
they cage you in their pens
skinny pale women, sour little men
daily opinion, pundits political, critical hippos, commentators
compensate for friends
with ‘professional relationships’
clique of vipers, insider outsiders
hissing secrets to each other
revelling in their voices
pretending privately for them
what is public
don’t bother them with letters because
they don’t know how to read
how do you spell ‘dutiful eye’?
it’s ego ego, doody-filled ego
mercenary eagles, deadline beagles
but how you spell ‘hack’?
the message, dear reader, is the medium:
so put down that paper--now
pick up your broadsword and ATTACK.
freedom o’ press
Readers of the world, unite!
your Writers do not right
they cage you in their pens
skinny pale women, sour little men
daily opinion, pundits political, critical hippos, commentators
compensate for friends
with ‘professional relationships’
clique of vipers, insider outsiders
hissing secrets to each other
revelling in their voices
pretending privately for them
what is public
don’t bother them with letters because
they don’t know how to read
how do you spell ‘dutiful eye’?
it’s ego ego, doody-filled ego
mercenary eagles, deadline beagles
but how you spell ‘hack’?
the message, dear reader, is the medium:
so put down that paper--now
pick up your broadsword and ATTACK.
3/07/2004
"... it couldn't come at a worse time" --GD
for those compelled to speak when they shouldn't; for those compelled to silence when they should scream. Whatever happens, fight for your medicine man.
what you didn’t say
what you said
shocked me;
I admit.
but it’s
what you didn’t say
makes me afraid
--not that I was losing you--
but
I never
knew you
because
you never said it.
and now
what we didn’t say
is
what we are afraid
to find out
(please
tell me
I am right.)
what you didn’t say
what you said
shocked me;
I admit.
but it’s
what you didn’t say
makes me afraid
--not that I was losing you--
but
I never
knew you
because
you never said it.
and now
what we didn’t say
is
what we are afraid
to find out
(please
tell me
I am right.)
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