Sunday, March 30, 2008

Finally Leaving Toronto - Part 3 of 7





"[God] said, before it had really begun, 'I prefer the one about my son. I've been wading through all this unbelievable junk and wondering if I should have given the world to the monkeys.'" --Elvis Costello



Sitting in a Guelph garden watching a Siamese miniature eat grass. Like Buster and Oilrig, this Siamese was a crack baby, breath cosmetic shallow and first-time lover rapid. But he’s blue-eyed cute and innocent seeming, tentative and frightened, moving in chicken-like spastic progressions from the concrete back porch to the greenish lawn. His love and affection for me is unabashed.


Before I got here Merlin welcomed me with one sustenance potion and one medicine potion. Next thing I knew I had joined the all-night Nintendo hockey circuit, where due to limited skills I played the goon-game for $135,000 US a year. The money and a masochistic stubborn need to win (and score puck bunnies) kept me hooked to a job I hated until bleary-eyed 3:00 AM.


Yet in the morning I managed to become the rookie of the day Ultimate player, with an interception and an assist, your winded hero. I’m out of shape from too much alcohol, caffeine, acids, spices, and chocolate. Of those, only caffeine is not addictive. It’s the taste of coffee I need, not the buzz. But I’m a good eater, with almost no meat and I’m trying to cut down on dairy too. Plus I’m always the first to finish with my bubba-ganoush chin and mustard t-shirt.


Lodowne was good enough to bring me to KK's after Ultimate, together we watched a movie about the beauty of big and the weak of small, the insignificance of non-English speaking entities, unless they breathe fire or walk upright. A right funny summer flick – we all peed our pants.


I later discovered that it was a true story, when I encountered 50 confined clucking hens to three fighting cocks, pens one through 13. In pen number seven rooster number three (P7-R3) got his erectile red comb caught on the chains of the feeding trough and dropped a pint of blood and an ounce of flesh.


KK cried out “Somebody come quick my rooster’s in pain!”


The vet sauntered by saying “You – come here! I got no car! All my cotton swabs and iodine are here. Bring da rooster here!”


So we circus clowns chased the wounded rooster down. You should have heard the sick squawk he made when KK grabbed him: “Mmmcklawwk!” I’m only just learning roosterese but for all you English junkies, I believe that means “Noooooooooo!”


Some dead men walking go like lambs. Our rooster once busted accepted fate with the neutrality of the Gita, eyes complacently glossed. The vet poured iodine on, shoved cotton in the open wound, and sprayed puke-yellow Bleedstop over the gauze while KK held the rooster and I pushed his head down, making him watch rows of caged pencil-necked liverless egg-chickens insanely punching the clock, squawking and balking saying “Eat free-range or don’t eat eggs at all!”


Back in the hen-house # 7, Hen # 36 (P7-H36) had the chunk of red rooster comb in her beak and was running around while the others tried to steal the secondary erectile flesh. KK, with dextro-advantage, won the game. The hens resumed pecking the tail feathers off of each other – just killing time you see – and the wounded rooster went back to the feed trough lickety-split.


Meanwhile, in the Ontario parliament, the Premier (OP-MP1) was accused of calling a Minister of Parliament (OP-MP15) an ‘A-word’. An apology was demanded. The house speaker (OP-SH) said he had missed the insult, and asked OP-MP1 to “please repeat what you said.” OP-MP1 said “Fuck you I never called him an asshole!”


“Sorry OP-MP15,” said OP-SH, “But I didn’t hear it and he denies saying it, so I can’t make him apologize.” OP-MP15 proceeded to peck OP-SH on the bum; OP-MP1, not wanting to be left out of the parliament house trivia game, started pecking OP-MP15 on the bum, and OP-SH took up the peck on OP-MP1’s bum, forming a neat little pecking triangle. The rest of the Ministers played follow the leader, and are probably still pecking away.


Meanwhile, outside, Ontario’s on fire and we can’t find any water to put it out because it’s all been shipped to Texas – those poor Texans have never even heard of Walkerton!



Friday, March 28, 2008

Free II




“Areas of the world that are the most biologically diverse are also the most diverse in language, yet the rate of decline is greater even than that of species loss.” –Paul Hawken


I am free
of that society

Walls surround me
constructed by culture

I am free
inside my mind

You can be free
even in this prison

You can free yourself
but you can free
no one else

Walk with me
imagine pathways
past the walls
to freedom

I am free
but what good is free
If I'm alone?

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Burning Bush


“Only one species on earth does not have full employment and that is homo sapiens.”
--Paul Hawken




Burning Bush


I can't believe
the directness of your lies
The sheer quantity
of your false strands
somehow you never got stuck
inside your own web
Death and Destruction
Those are your powers

How well you trap your prey
for their poison
A demented Predator
unaware of any limits
on its own appetite
Playing games
way over the ocean
trillions die in the suction.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A Good Driver

“I’m a good driver,” he said. “Been drivin professionally for 15 years never had one single accident.”

As he switched lanes the Tercel in the other lane quickly veered off the road into a telephone pole. With a quick glance over the shoulder he sneered, “Idiot! Probably drunk.”

Back to the passing lane he switched, forcing a black pick-up truck into the median, off of which it smashed-steel bounced into a swerving Mercedes, and together they careened into the ditch. Hearing the crash he exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Well, that’s a Chinaman for ya. I’m not racist but those fuckers can’t drive worth shit!”

Looking back to the road he swerved to avoid a pedestrian and ran a red light in the wrong lane. Two cars driving perpendicular to us through the green were forced to swerve into cars stopped for the red, causing all four vehicles to explode.

“By Christ that was close!” he hollered. “Fuckin pedestrians!”

It was as he cut off a caravan and it swerved and flipped end over end six times in mid air that I turned on the television over his bunk in the back. The President was addressing the press, and through them, the nation.

“I, am a good pres-i-daant,” he drawled. “During my time in office I worked hard to build our great nation’s economy and protect our security, and nothing could affect my resolve!”

Just then a homeless man’s frozen body dropped dead. “What was that thud?” the President asked, scanning the assembled press corps for answers.

A giant drill broke sacred ground, the caribou starved and thundered into a pit of oil, and the locals joined the welfare line at the back. The President didn’t seem to notice. A two-tonne bomb landed in a remote southern village taking many lives and leaving many widowed wives hungry and wondering if there is something wrong with their country’s economic resolve.

“Today, thanks to me, we are a stronger, richer nation,” the President replied distractedly.

Then a transport truck ran him over, and I was distracted from that television when I heard the trucker say, “What was that thud?”

Secret service bullets came smashing through the windshield.

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Monday, March 17, 2008

The Confidence of Jesus





“When Oscar Wilde allegedly gestured at the garish wallpaper in his cheap Parisian hotel room and announced with his dying breath, ‘Either it goes or I go,’ he was exhibiting something beyond an irrepressibly brilliant wit. Freud, you see, wasn't whistling Edelweiss when he wrote that gallows humour is indicative of ‘a greatness of soul.’ The quips of the condemned prisoner or dying patient tower dramatically above, say, sallies on TV sitcoms by reason of their gloriously inappropriate refusal, even at life's most acute moment, to surrender to despair.”
--Tom Robbins



The Confidence of Jesus
I’d crucify myself to have
the self-confidence of Jesus Christ
he, who when he walked into the city
was praised
he, who was asked
why do they praise thee?
he, who answered
‘if they did not praise me
the rocks would praise me’
With that attitude
I wouldn’t need water
I could walk on air

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