4/09/2005
Bakuta Lady
Bakuta lady (part I)
I have wandered through neighbourhoods and delighted in the small things, and I have tried to ignore this screen, but something sticks in you forever… I am looking outside, at a lot people walking down the street, at an Asian man in a black cap with foggy glasses, a buzz cut redhead looks back down the sidewalk, a bit skittish, maybe he was feeling guilty for littering, and the Keith’s logo above the recently bankrupt store doorway. The phone number for a hairdresser in a yellow font on an awning; light comes through the window and through a clutch of potted ferns and small Amazonian trees with highly bunched flat leaves, more dignified than a palm, and the nice Native Indian looking woman in the kitchen maintains this oasis of calm on a dusty crass blue-collar street. One sketchy looking mechanic walks in; he has no business being here, he doesn’t he know how to read probably, he’s waiting for Bakuta woman in the kitchen, maybe he wants to kiss her; I know I probably do. She wears a red apron, has a royal bustle about her, round lips that could melt a lead pipe. She has a shimmering gold thing around her neck. There's a defunct organ by the doorway in the north end of the cafe, not useful for much else beside holding up knick-knack statues and empty candlesticks. What’s that smell from the kitchen? I feel like I’m somewhere in the Caribbean, except for the bland Canadian radio, so I disturb other coffee drinkers with my Roy Orbison squeaking out at the lowest possible setting, barely perceptible enough to get you distracted (I have a fondness for small mind games.) There is an announcement board across from me, cluttered with tiny neighbourhood emergencies and all those unknown hopes and dreams and shysters or lonely folks looking to find community where public broadcasting says there ought to be. I went to the washroom, found genuine flowers and some tasteful magazines. I tried my best not to piss on the floor. Bakuta woman is too good for the sketchy looking man on the couch; he seems gruff and lazy, a bit long in the hair. I try not to pass judgment, leave that for the Lord, but when you’re by yourself at a coffee table you can’t help wondering. I tried different styles today; I tried Bob Dylan’s triplicate rhythms, I tried a rhyming thing that made me queasy just thinking about it, and I tried to write a cover letter for a job application, but practical things have abandoned me completely. I don’t think much about my broken body when I’m typing like this; my MRI was pushed back five months, my pelvis is out of alignment, I have no core stability; I’m talking about it like it wasn’t even my fault. Was it my fault that I broke my body? I don’t know, I stopped being able to place blame. I don’t know much about placing blame but I don’t mind stepping forward and taking responsibility. And that sure is a bitch.
(to be continued...)
4/08/2005
Mind game
What in the world could be deduced from a splattered can of nous, the Greek word for mind, a find, also a French pronoun so politely reclined; have you called a truce? It is a verbose pose, a lachrymose boast, counting on toes and digits, the basis for calculation lingers, and who made us count by tens, my friends, was it laws of heaven or of our fingers? Why not count by chicken-eggs, the hens laying zeroes in every coop, we confuse the Moors and the moops, it takes you for a loop... This thought was over before beginning, a future interception, a lousy self-deception, prose without a plan; It is random, I’m random, ‘I’ is not me, identity does not exist, at least not for me - what a limp-wristed explanation or evil abomination! a poor excuse for abandoning speculation. I read more when I was younger; I did not have hunger, I was a wonder, like thunder, a bustling tongue-wagging punster with tricky meaning, sheen and sizzle, a swizzle-stick sized to stir pots, a photo-essay in Camera-lot. Mind and soul, body too, the duelling dualists run it through, the frog Descartes, his mind was art, his body pained gave us a start. I am I is no white lie, you are you, this too is true, we are us in the grammar pew. And so they say, but what is ‘they’? They’re not them, not do they obey my fingerplay; do they say nay, or say they ‘neigh’? Nay on neigh I say today; hey, a horse of course eats its hay, its mind is naught and soul a blot, the animals and flies we swat; and then there’s God, dominion Lord (we’re so 'fraid that we get bored), and what is Time, can we rewind to the Big Bang rhyme, to remind me of my mind, materialism is fine alright, but things inside now give us fright, (the dreams you have at night, do they arise from oligodendrocytes?). Or so we hope and pray inside the mind, that soully brine so undefined and intertwined with ‘causing things’ in wavy dots and quantum zings, and so we’ll never know upon this train what reasons are upon this plane: mortals discordant, Immortal Supreme - in this spinning world is a balance beam and thinking through it makes everything cold and chaotic scream, so bold, beautiful, velvet and chocolately serene…
4/04/2005
Taking Tony Down a Peg
(haven't written a story in ages... this one took about 7 minutes. I think it has potential; I especially like the second sentence.)
Depegging Tony van der Meulen
Tony van der Meulen liked to smoke pillows of corduroy fabric in his office. It was the cause of everything else that happened.
[unfinished of course...]
4/03/2005
rhythm experiment
one big tree's all I need to
topple you with my big poo, it
clangs and shakes the motor breaks
the fist I take and ram it through
everyone must catch the meaning it
sucks the brain and takes the tweezing, it
calluses the inside of my head
it rocks and talks the way we trust it
must unrust the bust I lust for else I'll
end up dead.
Here I can and now you can't you are a sinner
you must recant, you can tell me and everyone I see it's
a walking talking fantasy, so come with me
don't tell me lies, it sighs skies I realize a hypnotizing rhythm
unwise to surmise the fly-pies in the eyes of the wiggety white guys.
And taking and telling unravelling hellions and
the motorcycle millions and the silly old sarcophogal mould
the older I get it's useful to forget the
truce I won't regret it begets clorets
and menthol cigarettes, I take bets to
impress the suffragettes.
In and out I tinker about so long without
my baby trout, she cannot shout about the drought she
walks about the square and there is nothing there care to for,
romeos and wherefores I scare
forlorn to winter time so wash the brine from my hide,
it cracks inside, yet we grow stronger in the meantime, the faulty brick it
sticks thick and makes me sick this rickety stop I
wonder at the top it unlocks bricks to throw at cops.
We can stop we can't heave it over the top it rolls logs and clogs itself like a sewer dog, pollywog and hunted hog.
4/02/2005
3/31/2005
jazz licks
All my appetites satisfied, there is nothing left but the dishes. Clean up the kitchen, wash down the floors, find some dignity in that day-to-day activity. We need to clean the rug, to be outdoors, I need to hike the moors, to climb the hills, he needs to pay the dealer, to figure out his bills.
I dropped you off in evening and you kissed me on the cheek. Now it's the middle of the night, and I want to have a fistfight.
I was conjuring something from nothing, defying laws of conservation of mass, laws of energy I couldn’t afford to believe. I had to believe in miracles. There was a time I couldn’t offer anything but reason, then one day I took it all away and torched it before I realized what was happening. Now I was drifting free, anchorless and in excruciating bliss.
3/30/2005
Hitcher Without a Face
Hitchhiker Without a Face
Driving by the road, there's another man
listening by the radio held firmly in his hand
claps along with Scott Joplin, and
rags away the time
he asks me to get hitched, and that, today, seems fine.
He wanders to my four-door and
thanks me for my kindness
his is a sullen, grizzled glare that
softens a moment to fondness
I ask where can I drop him
he whispers ‘any place’
his eyes are twitching nervous
- he's a man without escape
I collect my wits and step the pedal
the roadway is our task
men who drive, must arrive alive
with seltbelts firmly clasped
the hours melt like snowflakes that my windshield wipes aside
the cars droning are, my passenger moaning
his fishlike exterior quietly deboning
I’m pondering his faceless hide
Suddenly, yow - a crack of lightning brights the dash!
us riders scream and lurch
I yelp a fast reliable prayer (– that’s funny,
I’m not a man so easily churched)
Don’t wonder what happened the morning after, when the hitchhiker left the road
My bags were stolen and interior soiled,
with foul sausage slims and empty whisky skins, and so
it’s clear that man was no Tom Joad.
(missing a few stanzas methinks?)
3/29/2005
poor old Stelvio
The children in the playground were giving Stelvio the middle finger, because he was shouting at them, “Hey, kids, betch’oo can’t guess what kind of toys I have for you at my house!” and he cackled. The children responded with a volley of one-finger salutes that would make you blanch, or at least pause for a millisecond, and then maybe you'd adjourn to a pub for a couple of Molsons, and curse to yourself about kids these days having no manners. Well that’s exactly what Stelvio did. Old Stelvio was a bit of good for nothing. I mean, he never had a job or even a fixed up car; instead he drove a Fiat Panda, and if that’s not a shitty car then neither is a Lada Niva...
3/26/2005
romantic drivel
mystery would not be kind if
opened up, hung on a line
and vision fails in infrared, so
feel the heat in what’s unsaid
a gaze can speak in any tongue
with soft breath more than empty lung
catch the drift from a nod or wave
point’s as clear as a crying babe
where mermaids sing in harmony
I study a secret chemistry,
measuring the best of me
awaiting her clandestinely.
(alright, who wrote this crap??)
3/24/2005
The MegaRant is almost ready!
3/21/2005
unfiltered cupcakes
"I've been short on posts lately, and some friends have complained that I'm slacking.
This is a) 'absolutely untrue', as I'm still posting about 3-4 times a week, and b) this is 'relatively true' - I used to post sometimes 10 times a week.
I guess this is a rite of passage for every blogger - working through the slow periods, etc. - getting your second wind after being online for over a year (my first blogday was this past March 1 - though technically it will be Feb 29 2008, since I started on a leap year - happy belated bloggiversary to me)... anyway I am sorry.
But in that vein, check out the following excerpt of pure 'keyboard brine' which my fingers pumped out last night. The following bit took about 3.5 minutes to write, and will probably take about 3.5 days to make sense out of; it's unedited, with all typos left to scar your eyeballs:
Mar 20-05 rant
Velevet was the ordeer of the moment, ghte ghoul I was feeling in the yard, it was umberto eco the thirds most understood write in the western hemopsere this iss the meaning we hope to cleave that when people come toghet in the flu cod the moment it will not ver overided by some know itall from inside a cpu, I was rock and roll keyboardist I could open ip the ocean with these owreds tot the rhytrhj of the sambe, the eat in the eating the ehteral moment the coddled truck driver who doesn’t’ get fired because ehje got some piece of blakcail over the management, things like that the corruption that makes your vlood shiver and th emietahpora that doesn’t do uyou any good,. He threw a bit of tumbleweed in to the truch and I was stuck with his overlordish swampo neck , the tallest beast the bovine smelling smalts the heifer of neglect. Into the brain pan that I saved for easter lamb’s faces I stuck three tablets of cyanide to murder the lamb should thet ever decided to strat form the flock and the ot gt. God you have forsaken your littlest lamb, said the motion of the people in the nightimte it wsa their unspoken mass communication between them, this new kind of group telepathy and this occaiosnal lucidity within moment of hwoling rage, thi sis the shame the rteaser what makes you think I still jave all my marvels, this is smeagol and gollum at their most existential and tearing at each other with their shrivelled cave man dfleh, he never would have left the cave if it weren’t gfor the good and great thoughts that made men wantr toi edplor5e the wordkl . I was carving out ad face in to the mpoutina dn it was the greatest I ever saw, she was blonde and green eyed and her ears were like two slices of beef liver, covered with onins and mashed potatoes, overprices becaue of the college street location but that is the wat it is when you psay for nostalgia. This is the moment of pure truculent agony, this is the moment of the firestorm the first fistfight, the flowing glowing coals of the firelight, I was touchin on a river of gunk, to find some trsesre I was propesctign for thoughts so many drift by and sad I have to toucht tjem all so I was coing to invest a more effiecent boioiler some sort of process to improve my yields but there can never be a separate a cujltued pearl spearete form the rest it is na moment of torment and neglet, it is a moemtn of pure electoral fishiness.,
So, dear reader, you see the (extremely) raw materials I have to work with. And this is a typical first draft! Then again, with these kinds of 'horrible ramble posts' I don't even consider myself a writer. I'm more like a coroner, searching to find cause of death, or a forensics investigator struggling to reconstruct a crime. Eventually I will edit the above into something I find quasi-coherent, and serve it back as a 'filtered cupcake'. And that process could take a long long time - certainly more than 3.5 minutes. For my own self-serving vanity, I just want you to realize how much work I put into this lil' flea circus.
Yours in cupcakes,
~Freddie FIAC, chief cupcake foreman"
ps Please don't ask me to explain why the flea circus matters in the first place - it's years before I'm answering that one :-)
3/19/2005
Three billion women
It’s the playboy galaxy
There’s Betty and Zoe and Sherry
and Constance and Penelope
They smile at me
Call me cute
I’d ask them out
but
The point is moot
She's not “can you whistle my tune?”
it's just
“toot my flute”
-So I sit and eat my
Jujee fruit
(he mocks himself)
3/18/2005
more ouija sentences
These are thin moments, unnoticed torments, unanswered phones, draughty open doors and dust blown from secret shelfish tomes... My bones have owned me, my skins have clothed me; I am no one if not a gnome from Nome, a roaming nomad wiping feet politely on notepads, boring alone with no privacy into virgin dirt, sharing intestines on this telepathological prototype, hammering at hierarchy, histrionic in real time, cleansing weighty wordiness from a senselessly shocked and sleepy high society.
Sides of bacon get me quakin; cholesterol and menthol, cancer sticks and cancer stripes, we tots slurping lollies, in trollies, in desks, at a board meeting, in a casket, not long for this life, so please please find me a beautiful wife; I just want someone to treat real nice.
You knaves, you sit in caves, crow about your peer-pressure tactics, progressive taxes and pats on the backs. Reward inanity, cheer for incompetence. Vampires suck blood, mediocrity relieves anxiety. It's work less, not worth less; enjoy leisure, celebrate senselessly, tis the season, tis the season - as long as you fit in you don't need a reason. It's 'A equals B', it's you and me - it's the Golden Age of Stupidity.
3/17/2005
Paddy's riff
a guiness machine, bash my
fists with smithwicks pricks
- a dream-age teen, shamrock sheen, leprechaun
mean, rainbow rims and gold-tooth grin,
a woolskin weave, kiss me clean, i'm
a blarneystone beam, crossed peat and Shaw,
Joyce me raw, shlonk my jaw in a dublin crawl,
the post-pub brawl, they're
drunken on the Mall,
so gay this way, pray
in your pints, high as kites
lowlife punks and bandwagon skunks with good old boys
and lifelong stoolies 24 hours of freshness, foolishness and folly bloomin
with Molly in Paddy's
daylong daze.
3/13/2005
take a 5-minute metaphysic and call me in the morning
(loopiness factor: 9)
I am writing in a total vacuum. Finally I'm behaving according to theory
(On prosody):
3/10/2005
how to get rich quick
(today's obsolescence = tomorrow's leisure trend)
man i am tired
here's some random clauses, which should inspire me for the rest of the post:
the more complicated the instrument, the more beautiful the art
or
use space shuttle technology to draw doodles?
and - at what point will the surgeon general realize that computers are making me stupid?
How soon until there are group 'arithmetic' classes - math for fun; math to kick back, relax and socialize! - just like we have group aerobics (pick up math hotties)? As soon as a basic human faculty - calculation - is made obsolete by technology that eliminates cognitive work (computers), then as our brains atrophy from disuse, mathematics becomes a desirable social-leisure activity. And once a leisure activity, there is real money to be made. Did private gyms exist before automobiles made physical exercise unnecessary? I don't think so. And so it will be with arithmetic social clubs.
So yeah, I’ve decided I'm starting up a 12-Times Tables salon. Let's get together and multiply out loud: fifty bucks members’ fee, payable every six months. My profits increase exponentially!
3/08/2005
Seven minutes spent recalling the weekend
Sweet success
we need another reason to get upset
something to hate
rancour and bitterness, fuel for our wittiness
we need someone to tell us no.
Romangstic
Dreaming, of mounties gunned down, the streets running with blood, the ice that kills you with cracked hips, the salt that corrodes through clothes, winter on its way out. We are melting slowly, slowly. Bitterness does not last through spring; there is the pain of rebirth. Phoenix again. Let’s head to
Extreme Birthday Fun
We crawl ten kilometres
East to west, to do our best
I knocked over a hobo just to snag a bus transfer
I never used to be this coldblooded
But there’s a fake marble trophy on the line
And the winner gets all the biotches?
3/06/2005
Unsolicited wallet-based enthusiasm
(incoherence factor: 8)
Hey, you all must check out my new wallet: it can out-‘wallet’ billfolds from around the globe! My new wallet - I call him Thurman the Wallet - was a great alligator once; now he ensconces my legal tender, but this is upward alligator mobility. Fie fie on the naysayers– tis a drama, an epic of crocodilian proportions, an alligatorial allegory! ...and where prithee are the fish wallets, the snakeskin billfolds; the marmoset coin-containers? This lack of mammalian moneybelts is a consumer monstrosity! Are lactating and fur-bearing non-bovines only fit for good-luck keychains? An anecdote: once there was a jackrabbit in my kitchen- Herbert Fuzzbutton by name - I sawed off his foot for luck, and he wailed most drippingly. So yes, I am a pig for wallets. I am the fiend who chases wallets down alleyways and out from around corners, and when I chance upon a virgin ‘wall’- as I call them – my yelp is gleeful and girlish! I do enjoy wallets, how they flap open exposing their leathery gums to the outside world; how they allow phalangeal access to credit cards, library cards, birth certificates and other hosts within the cornucopia we call sociomonetary flavour-plastic. If I ever won the lottery, I would probably use half the winnings to buy more wallets! What better way to proudly display my gambleriffic success? In sooth I tell you I cherish my portafolios and I wish I had a half-dozen more! My collection shall be ever-burgeoning; do you understand what I am saying??
3/04/2005
dripping descriptor
...Queen Street's home to those with small asses, I catch myself thinking, as the ennuied Vietnamese pouts behind the counter– she hates her job – while the Portuguese teen with pink sweater and chopsticks in her hair froths milk; the cash register clanks rusty. The radio plays canon pop out the speakers; it’s morning music, predictable as a prayer book...
3/03/2005
Rugged and hatless
Draidle my indecision, wheedle and cause elision, I collect fragments in a jar for shards, the larder pantry and the collection of brain lint: Sweet causality, I turned myself into a special effect, a notable glimmer on a much larger and deeper surface; no more dull totalitarianism for the mind, more like one small star among billions, my little solar system with its own laws of gravitation, exceptions to the general theory. The confidence of an absolute, the fog of special relativity (I fell in love with my third cousin? ;-) ); I am a prime candidate for hemorrhoids – shit or get off the pot. (the opposite of a watertight argument, someone more interested in asking questions than proving self-righteousness.)
I was listening to Lucio all day - he was on a desperate erotic stomp. He sang a song for a song that could find a girl. Who knows where she is; send the music after her. On the radio, passed along by satellite beacons, she catches your intentions an ocean away. (I’m not romantic; I can’t trust birds, roses or rainbows to relay messages; I won't let smoke signals do my dirty work.)
Don’t ask me to sacrifice myself to you, she says, I won’t live for you. You can’t make me happy – it’s not within your power. I can help you live for your own sake though - there is no greater favour. I will let you die, if you don’t let me live… Let me live, and I will help make it possible for you to live…
So stop taxing me! And turn off your vicious medieval philosophy of death.