Opening Words for Poetry reading Jan. 17, 2017

Welcome everyone, the winds are blowing tonight with near gale forces; an elephanteer has recounted seeing a fellow poet being wisked in the air by his ears and blown to the other side of the lake! 

But for those of you here tonight, many are desirous to berate, to tell

your loved ones, your mignions, that despite trying to do well they might as well sit full lotus on a tatami and stare at the wall.

2017 is a special year, it is a year that exudes in confidence : we are invited to be full of ourselves and express ourselves in succinct tweets such as : « Honey, Hashtag So ugly in front of mirror this morning. Divorce not happening ! »

2017 is the year for Radiant Elephants to Berate again !

And these past few days have provided us with lots of exciting news!

·      There was medical confirmation how cleaning elephant ears with Q-tips is not only a sensless waste of time but ineffective. Just letting the wax fall out turns out to be the healthiest option.

·      A Trump construction company that has started operations to clean the swamp in Washington, has found  20 years worth of gas that otherwise would have polluted the atmosphere.

·      William Sessions in his confirmation hearing said that he would not hesitate to use unchained prisoners to train attack dogs to guard the US Mexico border hence breaking with his earlier positon of using chain gangs and attaching prisoners to posts.

·      Despite Brexit and the heat of Teresa Mae's hard words England is expecting a surge of toursim this year mainly for its Imbolc Fire Festival in Huddersfield, a Celtic festival that involves burning symbols as well as the Blessing of the Throats in ST Ethelreda, London where two candles are tied together, lit, and touched on the necks of people suffering from sore throats.

·      Macedonia’s economy is said to be booming this year mainly since the appellation « Macedonian salad » became protected. « We just followed the example of Champagne » Aristomace Dzovnimir, a spokesperson for the Macedonian Chamber of commerce said. « Only Macedonian salad can be made in Macedonia, and any country that tries to label our heritage will have to pay a penalty.»

·      Filippino boxer Manny Pacquiaois is being brought back by NIKE after last year he was let go for saying that « gay people are worse than animals. »

« We clearly over-reacted » CEO Peter Parker stated. We misjudged the politcal climate of the country and our market. We have decided to make Manny Pacquiaois one of NIKE’s most valuable faces of our company and he will be compensated at the same level as Cristiano Ronaldo and Kobe Bryant. Rumors have it that Ryan-Lochte, the Olympic swimmer implicated in a nasty scandal of being held up in Rio, will also be reinstated on Wheaties cereal and Horizon Legacy dog food, food that will make your dog a better swimmer.    

                                                                                                                                                   


The closing of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus has come as a shock to many but fortunately Donald Trump has come to the rescue and offered a permanent residence in the west wing of the White House where formally the press corps used to work from.  "Barnum closing # won't happen!"

So thank you for coming and may we get on with some stories and poems to kick of this enticing year !

My moustache has been hacked

I thought I was safe

Protected by my moustache

A pure, rational hair growth with a distaste for authority

My moustache had ethics

It collaborated with my nose and mouth

It flaunted growth cells like an automaton

looking for a lost hypercube of 8 dimensions

Chorus: "How ungracious to be hacked by the sword,
Thy claims are fallaciously audaciously unexplored!"

Some said my moustache was cryptic

Hiding the ultimate design of a pattern or tapestry

But I took those comments as random outbursts

Of an order that was seeking a behaviour that wasn't there

Chorus: "How ungracious to be hacked by the sword,
Thy claims are fallaciously audaciously unexplored!"

My mom called my moustache a modern mathematical forest

That was running in all directions.

"Shave it or brave it" she said.

I had to brave it knowing that there was no

Imbroglio behind,

The 'stash was pure, without breaks in any sequence

As regular as bowtie pasta that follows the rule of life and

Knows to replicate itself under Rule 90. (Wolfram 2002, pp 269-270 and 667 -701)

Still it got hacked.


Chorus: "How ungracious to be hacked by the sword,
Thy claims are fallaciously audaciously unexplored!"


I don't know if it was the KGB or a group of Spelunkers

(a group exploring unauthorised areas and building)

Or even a third party with no links whatsoever!

I no longer exercise control over it

There is no rationale that I can offer for those of you seeking

Rations, comfort, or just a "decent" dose of RDA of riboflavin and calcium.

A hard hashtag is gonna scrawl*

*This poem is inspired by Bob Dylan's "A hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I've tripped in the swamp over 12 slimy frogs
I've walked and parkoured over 6 torn up newspapers
I've stepped in the middle of 7 Twinkie factories
I've been out in front of a dozen dead hot spot access points
I've been 10,000 terabytes in a memory hole
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I saw a newborn embryo with cells all around it
I saw a Trump highway with nobody on it
I saw Megan Kelly with blood drippin all over
I saw a room full of trans boycotting Corn Flakes
I saw a white ladder covered with Mexicans
I saw 10,000 tweeters whose tweets were all choking
I saw M'15s and suicide jackets worn by young children

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I heard the sound of of kids playing Angry Birds
Heard the roar of Black Friday shoppers that flooded a K-Mart
Heard 100 swipers swiping on Ipads
Heard 10,000 commuters coughing and choking
Heard one cheeky child in a condo for adults and old people smirking
Heard the song of a rapper who dyed his hair blond
Heard the sound an elephant who had no circus

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my sweet Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I met a young refugee near an invisible border
I met a black man who walked a white dog
I met a young woman whose tattoos  was chillin’
I met a young girl who gave me a bodiless piggy bank
I met a frustrated young man with 10,000 girlfriends
I met another man who was hammering hammers

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl 

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my sweet Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I’m a-goin’ back out before the tweets start coming
I’ll walk to the depths of the most salacious lies
Where the people and the few have their hands ringing of gold
Where fake news is swimming like salmon up rivers
Where the righteous and mighty dance around prisons
Where the executioners face is all over Instagram
Where hunger is an obese notion, where intestines are exalted
Where black lives matter if the matter has money
And I’ll tell it and speak it and feel it and tweet it
And boast it from my tower so all can reflect it
Then I’ll stand on my skateboa watching the world without moving
And I’ll lipsinc my song before I forget it

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl 

Alt Right

If you're an alt right cuckservative, cornservador,

Burning up more twitter fans than 

An atom blast in Fukoshima

Then you may be a shadowy dissident

Breaking conservative walls

built or unbuilt upon 

A quagmire of a swamp

A deep echo bounces like a flat rock over the water resounding,

WE NEED TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

Hoping to give society the mediocrity 

That stands of non-conservative

And smells of

Non-aligned

A fingerless keyboard punches:

"Pragmatic neo-liberals

without a care for religion

Or Yiddish bagels..."

WE NEED TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

It is time to promote the edges of the internet

4 Chan 8 Chan

Upstream neo-apologetic 

Accusatory misinformation generation

A media where culture is halting 

Stumbling elephants approving of nationalists

That today are coalescing 

And moving into the public spotlight

Chanting unchecked the Homeland is 

Now a beacon, a fireball an incendiary device

Beckoning broken masses to turn and veer and rattle

Where no snake hath slithered

A bodiless bear servers as my son's piggy bank

Where has the body gone, where are the gold chips?

Why are people boycotting fruitloops?

Kellogs is accused of dividing the country

Muslims and Christians won't eat Corn Flakes

My son walks out of a swamp in the moonlight

The croaking of a bullfrog flushes out the sound of his approaching steps

It is a dream

I wake up wishing

Wishing I knew what to give him for Christmas

Wishing I I knew what to give anyone for Tomorrow.

WE NEED TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

Nasty Women

Yesterday I tied my nasty wife to a chair and left her there.

You may think that cruel but if you listen up, you'll understand.

Bernice and I have been fighting for years. Been trying to get divorced but she won't let me.

(Turns out she has a lot of money that she's been hiding.)

We go to a judge every month. She tries to shoot me down for little things.

I forget to take out the trash, "that's a man's role" she says.

I don't read books to our baby daughter. Well who reads these days?

It's all in the tone. Mean. A nasal rasping voice that will cut through any fog.

A few years ago she disappears for 3 weeks. Blackout from her friends, relatives.

One day I come home I get wacked with the butt of my deer rifle. 

I fall onto the floor, spit out a tooth and say,

"Honey, not in front of Baby Bess!"

She smiles, snickers or skittles and says it the bear trap next time.

Bess is now 7. She's getting nasty too. Rough like her mom.

When she smiles her eyes come together. Like a devil.

She'll throw rocks at me and her friends. She throws food

and she jumps on my stomach for fun. Only she weighs like a 10 year old

and she flattens my intestines like a tape worm.

Bernice is an Instagram addict. I went christmas shopping with her last year.

A guy in the mall falls on top of the escalator and has a cardiac arrest. I got

to help him and she pushes me away. "gotta film this! she barks. 

And so she goes ahead filming and for her defence she wasn't the only one,

a crowd starts filming cause they all want a maximum number of hits on their

Instagram. I finally push her aside to do CPR but it's too late: he's dead.

She does the same thing to our neighbour. The guy takes a shower and you 

can see his butt on the opaque glass. Bernice does her filming then sends it

to his wife with some lewd comment. "See that?" she says to me, beaming,

"that'll teach him!"

To the judge she holds herself nice and upright and says that I can't even shoot

deer with my deer riffle. Says I spend the day basket weaving and she brings

her mother in as a witness to prove that I'm the one who is hiding the money.

"My husband is a filthy rich basket case" she says, her

eyes full of compassion and tearing in front of the judge. 

I look down at my feet, my stomach, full of acid, cramps another notch.

The Hug

There's something in a hug that's my milder than the trail of a slug 
For some it's a ferocious tug For others it's like being rolled up in a rug

But at the recent opening of the African Museum of History and

Culture in Washington DC

Michele Obama hugged former president 

George Bush 

Bush was leaning back with a vulnerable and

Almost child-like expression on his face

Whilst

Michele

From the side and behind 

Wraps her long arms around the president 

Making him slightly teeter

Yet wearing a smile of love

It is a startling image

Charged with humanity and grace

The hands show the tenderness of 

Rembrant's Jewish Bride

Painted 400 years ago

Yet still bearing an afterglow.

Demi-sel 2016

I pulled my caddy out from a Saturday morning shopping spree

Where I shaved off precious minutes by using the 

MFC (or "Most full cart") method

An algorithm developed by MIT scientists that

Proves if you are

Intent on getting on the shortest line then you 

Should:

-go to the left

-avoid male cashiers

-seek the fullest cart
Feeling light-headed.

Compliant, aligned and conformed to this scheme

I should have been seemingly satisfied to pay

To be asked to present my card

So that in a flash I could be on my way

Like a bat out of hell except for my

Eye

That fell

Onto a bar of butter, more rectangular than stick-like

Having been scanned with a single "beep"
(post-beeped, post-scanned)

The letters "demi-sel" proudly printed on its side.

Bien sûr this is all happening in

France

Where demi-sel is salted or lightly salted butter

I confess I have skirted this product for years and years

Friends and family have tried to get me to let go and

Ride this senseless aversion head on

My nephew thought he had it when he showed me how in

Minecraft a character jetsons hundreds of bars of butter into

A swimming pool
Thinking that I would have me

Burning in virtual empathy!

Then my doctor told me about the micro

Flora rich fat soluble properties that 

Peppered with a touch of salt

Can lower your adrenaline spikes while

Supporting thyroid and extracellular fluids.

All this I barred out

Crossed out in my mind like the words in

Jean Michel Basquit's paintings

Words that appear to reappear just because 

They have a line through them.

But the main story here is the salted bar of butter

Not the Zika spraying of Naled in the wee hours of Miami

Not the alarming rise of homicides in Chicago

Not the fact that most para-olympic athletes 

Despise the word "inspiration"

I cried out staring at the butter that I ended up paying for (because

Somebody, unbeknownstly chucked it in my cart)

"Demi-sel!"

Yet with my poor pronunciation the cashier understood

"Deux mille seize" (2016)

And the person behind me understood 

"Deux mille seize"

So from all directions I was looked at with stupefaction and a drop of

Displeasure 
As they thought how this displaced shopper wearing

Shorts and shoes with no socks on a cold, rainy day

Could make a striking statement that the salted

"Demi-sel" butter was 

A cru of deux mille seize.