The Hot dog Vendor's Practical CV (Inspired by A Confederacy of Dunces)

You are the one who navigates a cart full of dogs
Dogs and drinks and foodstuffs
Rolling, gliding beef and pork and complex sugars
Over a complex urban network

Today -but not the first day- you circumvent potholes
And drainless puddles that accumulate mostly during
Winter months
Yet your mind remains fixed on the types of buns, sauces,
Cole slaw and drinks that you have set out
This and every early morning

A mission of sorts that takes 40 minutes to get to your
Destination
A corner where some people still try to sell single cigarettes
Along the journey you rehearse some of your clients' first names and by their favourite
Topping or drink

Some have such accents that you strain to
Understand through the smoke and the sizzle of your
Skewer but their hand, their gesture makes everything clear

Today, a hint of tendonitis lingers in your upper left
Shoulder
You wonder but know it's from the miles of serpentine lines of
Mustard that you so expertly spread every month, every year
You know how to get the mustard to stop flowing in a snap!
Whipping up the arm all while with the right hand you crack open another
Refreshment can with the index finger

Rain or sun you sell those hot dogs it's, it's
More than just a transaction
It's a moment of awe when a
Customer sinks his teeth into a
Bun and you can almost hear
The juices howling
The dog skin cracked
Steam streams up your client's sinus the
Mustard is liberating

You chuckle then smile freeing your
Stomach that has been pressed against the cart
With your wet rag you clean it for the 100th
Time this day

Always impeccable
Always shining
Always moving

Fast like your idol, Mohammed Ali
You know you can catch the cascading sweat drop
Cascading from your forehead
Catch it with the hanky in the left hand while
The right hand is adding cabbage and returning a customer's change
With a  movement that resembles that of an airborne dancer.

The Blataro Institute of Higher Bribing

We all know that Sepp Blattaro’s days with FIFA are nearly over as he has extraordinarily single

handedly decided to step down and new elections will be held in the next few months.

Rumor has it that Mr Blattaro has been negotiating with Nord Angler, a consortium of schools, to open up next fall the first Sepp Blattaro Institute of Higher Bribing in Lausanne.

The Radiant Elephant Community has been privy to learn some courses in the college’s curricula:

Blatt101: Point Shaving

Learn how to shave points and connect your sources to organised crime. 

Blatt 101: Advanced Point Shaving

(Blatt 101 required) Learn about the benefits of academic fraud and the hiring of strippers to shave points.

Blat 201 Slush Fund

Gain intimate knowledge on how to create a slush fund. Get trained by former Southern Methodist coach Bill Launder, who will tell you how to pay illegal cash bonuses to your players.

Blatt 301 False Accusations

Ever wanted to have your opposing team falsely accused of rape or other crimes? This course, prepared by experienced tutors, will show you how to use minors, strippers and even drug addicts to smear your opponent without you having to lift a finger.

Blatt 401 Universal Deflating

Our hand-on technicians will teach you how to falsely gauge pressure and deflate any ball, or sports gear, including pucks and shot puts before a competition. From Formula 1 to football lean all the tricks of the trade. This course is compulsory to graduate.

Blatt501

Match-fixing 601 (101 tba)

Ever wonder how 10 of the 12 disabled basketball players on the Spanish Para-Olympic team had no disability and went on to win the gold medal? This course will prepare you to rig a game, avoid suspensions and even shoot for the Hall of Fame.

Blatt 701 and 702

Blood Replacement, EPO and other drugs (Both 701 and 702 are essential to graduate)

(Advanced High School Biology and Chemistry courses required)

You will be taught by reputed scientists and doctors on how to make performance enhancing

cocktails that will avoid drug testing detection. Study the wonders of blood in sports and learn how to even use fake blood (bloodgate) to fake injuries and offer your player precious time to recover and get back on the field.

Blatt801

Referee buying

Avoid clumsy and irresponsible transactions when buying a referee. Learn the value of having political connections and even magistrates on your side Before you buy a ref. Avoid conspiracy charges and get rich quick by having booker bet millions on your matches.

Blatt 910 

Motorcycle and Car Racing Crashgate

Our experienced pilots will show you the value of crashing during a race all in the name of sportsmanship. Lose a tire, break a gasket or just crash into a wall. This course is taught with real motorcycles and cars.

Blatt 1001

Doctoring bats, javelins, and other sports equipment 

With this course you will learn how to cork a baseball or cricket bat, curling stones or even javelins. The instruction is hands-on and extremely valuable for any sports career.

The Scapegoat

That Bromine mineral stench of yours

That you carry like a sacrifice on the edge of the cliffs

That you scour day after day

To the bewonderment of ill-comprehending

Witnesses who watch aghast waiting for a hoof to slip

Yet you stride in your high heels

Defying gravity

Carrying your goat skin and white fur

To a land where the most spectacular views

Are yours



Somehow in biblical times

During Yom Kippur two of you were chosen

One was sacrificed and the other

Laden with society's sins

Was let go

We know you so well because you are

The scapegoat!

That noble creature is blamed for getting away!

Are there not others who can dish the blame?

Surely the CIA was blamed in Iraq

Bush, Cheney and George Tenet discussing Iraq

Oliver North took the blame over the Iran Contra affair
The Senate committee shot him with a barrage of questions
Yet North, in his decorated uniform
Held up just fine

Bullies are always blamed from A to Z
In literature and films a fall guy is a must
In the Maltese Falcon
A tangled plot delivers a fake statuette
And who is to blame?

But if you fall too easy that makes you a Patsy

And we know that goats, goats don't fall!

Mountain goats licking salt deposits on the wall of an Italian dam

Today, 2000 years after being named a scapegoat

You have discovered the pommel horse

With inherent talent you straddle and show flares before dismounting the olympic apparatus

You show extension and lines like Kristian Berki

The judges give you soaring scores

Finally, there is nothing to run from

Nobody to blame

The judges are unanimous: with such grace not even a sheep can compete! 

Early Hashtag

The earliest human hashtag has been discovered in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia, the same area where Lucy's bones where discovered in 1974.
After several months archeologists have deciphered the tag which says,
"Cannot find mammouth eggs" #HiSpeedBerthaCookTip

Despite close analysis of this message its true meaning remains opaque. Does the "mammouth egg" refer to a giant egg, possibly that of an ostrich or was the cranial capacity of australopithecus so limited that our ancestors actually thought that mammouths laid eggs?

A conference on early hashtags will be held in Greenland on August 5th and more revelations are expected.

The Botox Vending Machine

Most of us know the Vending Machine

Some consider them intimate 

Associates

Interchanging, exchanging

Dropping your Choice without

A Thank You or

A parachute

On a daily basis

The Vending Machine

Offers a smooth, even transaction

It's a masterpiece of movement in a box

Unless your number is caught

In the Piggy's curlycue whose mission

Is to eject your choice

And leaves it hanging for Eternity!

Vending Machines are everywhere!

They reproduce in silence

Appearing in unfathomable locations:

A tunnel, a forgotten corner, next to a cash machine 

Yet we forget how long they have been with us

Remains of prehistoric Vending Machines have been found

Be it the Mammouth Meat or Sandal Dispenser 

Evidence points to how these machines

Wheeled Mankind out of darkness

Paleolithic Vending Machine circa 160,000 B.C.

Our forefathers knew that

Hot Meals could not depend on a woman 

-Or a man

Even monarchs and politicians knew

And continue to exploit these instruments

The Queen of England addressing Heads of State. This lavish dinner was 

served using only the latest Vending Machines. (2004)

But some of us remember how beautiful they were

Like elegant Cartier jewellery shops

The Vending Machine came first

Its goods second

Designers worked to build a trust

That even an expired Hershey bar would not spoil

The intellectuals 

(Always the intellectuals)

Dreamt of a way for

Books to be available in the desert or Amazon

The Book O Mat made this possible

At any hour, at any time

You could run out 

And read Heinline

And for those who think porcelain or crystal

Need to be delivered with delicate hands

You are right!

This machine, designed to be placed in households

Avoids marital abuse:

No more flinging plates at your spouse

The Love Dispenser

Breaks all tension with couples

Even those with histories of long abuse have 

Have basted this Dispenser with Merits

Today some say Vending Machines are out of mode

Yet every year sees new innovations!

This Botox dispenser has not taken a wrinkle

Available only in Doctors' waiting rooms

The lines continue to grow.

American Botox Dispenser, 1912

Young love

Never shall I

Be thrown into despair

By a network malfunction

Or honey bees buzzing in the air

I listened 

Motionless and still

Waving finger over screen

As if I had no will

Your texting mingles with the splendour

Of a youtube clip with a million hits

Your blue ray love stings my heart

A song ebbs and echoes in its chambers

Katty Perry, Dark Horse, hashatag, #never apart!

I cradle for a home with hot plums

Where a brash black crow

Eats a worm in front of Emily Dickenson

And then rows away in the sky

Today my emotions go toe to toe face-timing virtual foes

Face-timing until I'm faceless,

Over connected 

A  Teletubbie stuffed in the fast cycle of a dryer

With no wifi just whistling fi fi

And Spock who could forget the gifted Vulcan 

Tribulating with Tribbles

That purr to get stroked 

Spock ain't no dope

He never played with magic

Tribbles were hybrids 

Tribbles multiplied and got stoked

I got a trophy tweet 

From my homeboy wearing a straw hat

In the shadow of a pumpkin field

Says he’ll get me a chip and an app for my

Birthday all weighing less than a gram

And I should come as I am

I chuck my new trending 

Gaza Strip loafers

Into my River Island vintage bag

Knowing I can move faster in my sneaks

But at the door I pivot and spin

My battery is down

Down

Gotta recharge

Texting “Recharge”

My nail speeds over the keys

And it has the texture of a butterfly on it.

Wearing Leonardo da Vinci’s Hat

This weekend I went to the Santa Maria dell Grazie to see Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

What an amazing work: such colour, balance, all the characters seem to be joined and working together. On my train ride home, as I ate my garlic stuffed snails from my light green tupperware, I couldn’t help but think about their antennae, shells and longevity. So I wrote a poem about it.

When I measured the 

2.2006 microns that straddle

The peering tentacles of a Roman Snail

And multiply that distance by 100

You get the same distance between

2 horse ears

And upon further observation

The visual memory of a snail

In captivity or in jail

Could last a good 10 years or

The same as any Ecquus Caballus trotter.

Surely snails' snail view few mountaintops

Rather the paths it slimes over

with scoops of  home blend mucus
Are part of it visual highway of information

As I pulled an antennae delicately out from my teeth

It dawned on me how when I was 6 years old

A row of snails ran into a srteam where I used to play

Making olives bounce off the water 

And I saw the water swirl over their shells in

The same manner that 

Years later in Med school I witnessed 

Blood in the left ventricle valve of a giraffe

Swirl and gush before reaching the lungs.

(Lazzaro Spallanzani the father of Gastric Juice
and chemical digestion, also uncovered the mystery of
Skipping stones, in Italian,
Rimbalzello or in Chinese, frog jumps 
The record today by
Kurt Mountain Man stands at a jumpy 88 which 
exceeded my skipping olives by 22)

Fascinating how just like the heart valves,
The snails would not recede 
On their mucus bed they rule
even upside down albeit some drool

The Roman Snail that I am eating
Sails at 2.5 inches per minute
Yet a Red Hook Snail 
Trucks at 9.2 inches per minute
And though snails can hibernate
And live long 
A hermaphrodite Roman snail 
Surpasses the Red Hook by 3 decades!

In my simple train compartment
The mountain pass offered unexpected jiggles
With my special fork I pulled then

Placed my lips over its shell and
Sucked and aspirated the chewy mollusk
Its body arrived in my mouth at
80 feet per second
Meaning that if I or it or
We together in a car
Travelling at present
Would be flashed by radar at a speed 
Most objects would fly
I need now to calculate the quantity of 
Ooze that need be emitted to reach such

Prodigious speed.