My Paperboy is a Fourth Dimensional Shape-Shifting Bipedal Iguana
A paper he brings – everyday!
On Sunday he knocks - I obey!
Disturbed from my dinner
I quake like a sinner
And turn in my coin for his pay
His fingers are bony and cold
His incisors are capped with gold
He’s says he’s thirteen
But he’s tall and he’s lean
And smells likes he’s forty years old
His peepers are frighteningly deep
(I wonder what secrets they keep)
I’ve heard that his knees
Will reverse, should he please,
To allow him a forty foot leap
But let me be totally clear
I wish he would stop coming here
Cuz’ it would be sunny
To have some more money
For pizza and porno and beer
And tune to the sweet symphony
Of digital HDTV
Snug in my flannels
With Two-hundred channels
As Jesus intends it to be
The Dog Fight
There are seven concentric rings.
In the center ring are the Dogs fighting a bloody snarling war. Fresh dogs are added when the fight slows down.
The second ring is for the Holders. Holders train and care for the dogs and loose them at last into the center ring.
In the next ring out are the Owners. Owners employ holders as well as manage general operating concerns. Owners take a cut from…
…Speculators, who occupy the fourth ring. Speculators are the liaison between the inner and outer Dog Fight. On fight night the Speculator oversees the weighing of and paying of the silver that changes hands. It is an illustrious and infamous role.
Upon the next ring ride the Rollers. Rollers come to play the fights in a big way. Deep Rollers are mean ass players in the game for life. The Dog Fights are but one arena for the Deep Roller. On the other hand we find the High Roller, a stale fart that thinks it is a porterhouse steak. High Rollers get lucky and then get out or don’t get lucky and get broke and become…
…Twerps. The sixth ring. On any given fight night, Twerps are the major body. At least every other living soul at the fights is a Twerp. Commonly the number exceeds ninety percent. This startling fact is chimed by the clear ring of a bell-curve. The music of the bell-curve is inaudible to the Twerp, which makes him excellent prey to the vigilant Deep Roller or the fortuitous High Roller. It is impossible to convince a Twerp that he is not a High Roller.
Standers form the outer ring. Standers are so called because each individual Stander represents one fixed point on the outer circle. There are five Standers on fight night. Sometimes, because a fight is big or unusual in some way, more Standers come, but it hardly ever happens. Standers are mainly observers so their interest in the Dog Fight can seem detached. They do not play in any visible manner, but they, literally above all, are hooked on the fights.
From ‘The Stander’s Manual, A Guide to the Dog Fights’ by Dorian Crayon
The Stander is seen by the Speculator and the Dog, but is invisible to everyone else.
To the Holder and the Owner the Stander is utterly unknown.
To the Roller and the Twerp the Stander is a mirror of themselves.
To the Speculator we are Mystery. Because he is a scrivener the Speculator must see the Stander and count and try to measure. But because we do not play he can not understand us. By nature the Speculator fears what he does not understand. Therefore the Speculator must create a story to help him brace against these fears. The Speculator believes that the Standers are a conspiracy and a secret power. He is correct but he’ll never know how.
To the Dog the Stander is Gnosis. To the Dog we are the many eyes of God. Because the Dog is at the focal point it senses every eye upon it. The Dog can feel us but she does not know us. The vibration of our interest does not harmonize with the clamor of the fight and the Dog interprets our distance as Godhead. It is within this teaching that we find humility. For it is awesome to be perceived as Power when you have none at all.
After we are appropriately humbled we may descend into the fight itself, to feel the eyes of the True and Unknowable Alien God upon us at last as we tear away our worn and useless flesh and bear ourselves to the burning dawn, etc., etc., and so on. Methods to be discussed at the donut shop over coffee and crullers.
The methods for achieving Dog-Gnosis outlined in ‘The Stander’s Manual’ read like a ‘what’s what’ of Religions, Governments, Scientific and Corporate Concerns and Secret Societies. Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, Freemasonry, Jazzercise, Tantric Sexual Yoga, Origami, Beanie Babies, the collected works of Jackie Collins and the combination top loading washer/dryer were all conceived and implemented in the attempt to achieve total Dog-Gnosis. All of these efforts were unqualified failures, and yet managed to be picked up by well meaning Twerps as ‘discoveries’ or systems of knowledge that the world could not live without.
‘The Stander’s Manual’ is lengthy, since it forms the uninterrupted thread of Dog Fight discourse going back to the beginning of time. Still, it is fair to say that the body of the manual serves mostly to extrapolate the simple system of the Seven Rings outlined above. It goes without saying that the lore of the Dog Fight, exactly because it is the origin of All Systems, reveals All Truth.
If you think you know something that is not uncovered herein, you are a Twerp.
The Legend of Fiddler’s Green
(Overheard at a Zombie coffee shop jam session, circa 3029 A.D.)
It was a thousand years ago, a thousand years of endless night
For that’s how long must go, you know, before a zombie learns to write
A thousand years of zombie pain, and all the earth a desert blight
A thousand years of cold and rain and unrequited appetite
But long ago, O bygone time! There was another social scene
A Tower Gold above the slime was balanced like a chessboard queen
And founded on a bed of lime, the people lived in quarantine
Those 'living' people in their prime did live it up on Fiddler’s Green
A happy life, so full and fair and quite contently free from fear
Much better to be unaware the dead are drawing closer, dear
But close we did and none to spare, delivering the New Frontier
To spread our message everywhere and maybe nibble on your ear
Now, metaphors will sure abound. ‘Say tell me zombie, whatzzit mean?’
Decode the message you have found around the ruin of ‘Fiddler’s Green’?’
And so Big Daddy will expound and in a manner quite routine
A secret simple and profound – but not in metered rhyme mutha! My zombie brain is fuckin’ killing me
No it ain’t the imperial U-S-of-A surrounded by the groveling masses
No it ain’t the great mother-earth choking on greenhouse gasses
No it ain’t the Ygdrassil Tree, serpent gnawing at the rootz
No it ain’t that famous statue in the Good Book, head of gold, and iron girdle, but a pair of clay bootz
None of these, none of these, none of these…
IT’S YOU, MUTHA-FUCKA!!! YOU ARE THE FIDDLER'S GREEN, YOU LIVING DISEASE!!!
And WE are the LAND and the LOAM, born in the still waters of JUDGEMENT
We are the GRASS at your feet and rising, RISING to consume you, FLESH to FLESH!
FEED with us and be IMMORTAL!!!!!!
(Cheers and applause erupts among the zombience. There is a pathetic attempt at ‘The Wave’ and then silence)
(Big Daddy continues…)
That was a thousand years ago, across an agony of time
For that’s how long must go, you know, before a zombie learns to rhyme
A thousand years a zombie bro’, and hunger can become sublime
And much more than a memento of the human paradigm
Now look around you, apprehend that our humanity has fled
What zombie wouldn’t recommend the perfect bliss of empty dread
And that is how the story ends (though some of it remains unsaid)
For all of us are friend to friend forever more: the walking dead
Too Many Heroes
The trouble with here is too many heroes
Too many heroes and not enough worms
This is a world of perpetual light
Accountants and Janitors beat back the night.
The trouble today is too many lions
Too many lions and not enough lambs
A pundit remarked ‘It’s a fact of the age
Knights of the Round Table get minimum wage.’
I guess I believe there aren’t enough dragons
Dragons that bellow and smoke out the moon
We fought with them once together as brothers
And now we have nowt but to turn on each other.
The Tiger
(The Tiger contains controversial themes. Reader discretion is advised.)
Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forest of the night….
-William Blake
A man wakes from a dream of being stalked by a ferocious tiger. We can infer this
is a recurring event. Next to him, a prim looking wife innocently snores. As he
rises to shake off his night terror, the setting is revealed. Domestic middle class.
Earmarks that reflect harmony with the best stated virtues of ‘Western Civic 101’.
Our hero is a young father. Married to a sweetheart. He is journalist. His current
assignment is a story a plot device will reveal to be near his own heart.
There is a squeaky clean religious org called ‘Way of the Lord’ with strong
community and political ties. The hierarchy of the church could be compared to
LDS or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, with a high ranking board of deacons making all
important church decisions.
A scandal of incest and a subsequent cover up rock the church. Our hero
investigates. The accused is a childhood friend and both men were raised in the
traditions of ‘Way of the Lord’. For reasons to be revealed, our hero has broken
with the church and his own family, who all remain adherent. The newspaper
employing him hopes to exploit him to insure an insider angle on a controversial
story.
The plot unfolds as we learn the intertwining stories of the accused pervert and his
old friend the journalist.
Followers of ‘Way of the Lord’ are to be married by twenty-five. Parents no later
than thirty. Marriages are arranged within the church and infertile couples adopt.
When a child is between eight and ten they are sexually abused. This abuse is
reinforced and repeated over a short time and then suddenly and permanently
stopped.
Cases are rarely reported, but in such cases the church openly vilifies the accused.
Secretly he becomes a church martyr. When he has served any legal debt to
society, he is reintegrated into the church, in a new community if necessary, into a
position of honor and power. He has followed the ‘Way of the Lord’ and is washed
of his sin.
In this light our hero’s dream can be properly interpreted. As he awakes in a cold
sweat, he understands. The tiger is his own father, waking and brutally raping
him. Only to beg and cry for forgiveness, holding his son tightly as if to protect
him. This is the way it must be, the father weeps, you will understand in time.
The cosmic truthfulness of Blake’s mysterious words can be decoded. The Lord
(Tyger) is the Rapist and Raped. The awesome insatiable power of The Almighty
and ‘all the little children’ suffered unto Him.
He alone beholds Himself. It is His ‘Way’. Tigers must prey.
Swedish ending: Our hero, heavy-hearted, leaves his dream and descends to rape
his own beloved child. Abraham and Isaac settle old scores. He returns to wake
his wife. As he confesses a horror dawns in her eyes. A destiny is complete.
Marketing: Zoloft, Xanax. Potential anti-psychotic meds from use of sub-textual
imagery.
Michael Bay/Bruckheimer Ending: A large arsenal becomes available. Mortally
wounded in his one man attempt to bring down ‘Way of the Lord’ Arnie-style, our
hero lapses into the ether as surgeons gallantly struggle to resurrect his broken
body. As he awakes from a gauzy consciousness, he feels the warm soft grip of
his beloved child’s fingers gently gripping his own. In the child’s eyes he sees
unconditional love and the true ‘Way of the Lord’. Marketing: Kleenex, Pampers,
Pepsi and KFC.
Mayberry/Cunningham Ending: A blemish on the character of the hero is
extrapolated. His sin can not be of great order. Something like a bad thought or
marginal larceny á la Ransom w/Mel Gibson. This forces our hero’s personal
reflection. In a higher state he forgives his friend, family and even his father as
‘The Way of the Lord’ comes down in a crushing media exposé. Music over newsbite
montage to credits. Marketing: Spam and other yummy pork by-products.
Production note: Church colors s/b Black and Orange. Marketing tie-in: Baskin
Robbins.
The End.
The Way
Yea women but an empty place
Churning to be filled
And men like children lost in space
Yearning to be killed
Come with your trust to Jesus and I’ll bet my bottom dollar
You’ll be thrilled
He’ll lock you in an engine room
His chariot to drive
Across a giant mushroom
Ain’t it good to be alive?
Give your heart to Jesus and according to concordance
You’ll survive
Running down oblivion
Across the galaxies
Lifted through the neon
Lowered to your knees
Sign your soul to Jesus and my goodness gracious me
You will see
Daily departures from Las Vegas
Keith Spicer
I met a man, though only twice,
Quite preternaturally nice
(By nice of course I mean precise).
His attitude was calm, refined
And spoken softly to remind
The benefits of being kind.
Though I may sentimentalize
I think that he was surely wise.
A candle burned behind his eyes.
He offered me a book to read,
A simple unpretentious deed
From which a friendship could proceed.
At Christmas time we talked, and then
I promised him we’d meet again.
Though I neglected where or when.
He died today. When I was told
I cried and felt a brittle cold
And cried and felt a little old.
Why did I lose this gentle man?
Proceeding with a quiet plan
I’ll find him yet, I know I can.
I’ll try to draw his heart to me
And weather life as well as he;
With pride and equanimity
And whispering my shibboleth,
Alive and sure and short of breath,
Toward the mystery of death.
We are grateful that our assignment is bade to brevity, the shining soul of wit. The normal desire to plumb deeply the secrets of an excellent text are rendered into the realms of the sub-moot. What pretends to the Altar of Art must submit to the Refiners Fire. True Art is instantly universal, immortal and leaping with water. The work of Mitchell has the palette of dehydrated potatoes: wilted, fetid and effete. We feel it fair to assess 'Jake and the Kid' is not art nor literature at all, but instead the shadowed memory of a conceit. A heap of ash scorched into irrelevance by the bright passion of minds that proceed Mitchell ages and ages gone by - most especially our own.
The thinly veiled Jungian persona of W.O. Mitchell
Because he is a straw dog, Mr. Mitchell's literary persona burns away in the slightest heat. He wants us to believe he arrives on the tail of a comet. A quick Lacanian gaze at Mitchell's self-projected image is all the proof needed, evenso for the talented acolyte. Mitchell fancies himself a dairy-prairie S.L. Clemens yet never the twain shall he meet. We do not mean to suggest that imitation is improper - many fine writers have devoted a 
career in the pursuit of a personal literary Parnassus. Rather, the hallmark of Mitchell's whitewash is that he has utterly denatured his subject matter into a Panglossian half-life of existential denial. Art is ritual. Ritual is beautiful but it is also barbaric. The true artist, from Hans Christian Anderson to Dr. Seuss, from Laura Ingels Wilder to Joan Didion, from Homer to Joyce, wrestles the human ritual mystery with the utmost courage and muscularity. In such company W.O. Mitchell is a 97lb. weakling.
staged for the Saturday meeting of the Ladies Gardenia and Orchid Appreciation Society of Neepawa, Man. The Rite of Spring itself should cause such a rumpus! Before the dust settles the PTA, the Blue Birds and the RCMP are marshaled to 'maintien le droit'. The local chapter of the Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry convenes in fiendish glee, although this is not widely known to the community at large. Social degeneration, dueling in the streets and apocalyptic frenzy must surely follow as wretched night follows rapturous day. But wait... what's this? A cricket chirps. No one gives the proverbial tinker's. Mitchell is dead and buried before his ink may chance to dry. And with him from this world go gleefully the Gzowski gang, munching cucumber petit-fors and sipping chamomile, not to chase the Sun but pressing eastward over Dover Beach to drown in the mighty Atlantic - 'when the wind blows the water white and black'.
(Jake, who is the Biblical Joseph). Miss Henchpaw, the source of tension and much comic relief, is the Mean Old Witch of Hansel and Gretel, who officiates the ritual alchemical wedding. In Gnosis she is Salome painted green. In our time (and cribbed mercilessly by W.O.M.), she is best known as Baum's Elmira Gulch, teacher to Dorothy Gale and dreamed into 100 proof distilled truth in the alter world of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West.
hopelessly pedantic. Hansel and Gretel and The Wizard of Oz have earned their place in the Book of Life and are threaded by the Norns into the Divine Logos. These works ignite startling new visions of kaleidoscopic ingenuity. This is Magick in the purest and best sense - its essence blossoms into manifold beauty. By simile, Mitchell's stark effigy of his source material reeks of spongy mildew.
marriage with the living blood of sacrifice. Hamlet was an Angel of Light called to inert action through intimate contact with the astral plane. Purged of his pugnacious id, unfettered and sublime. Action untainted by Thought and yet...
George Bataille, in his ecstatic snapshot of Dali's visceral masterpiece The Lugubrious Game intuits in Dali the primeval terror of ritual circumcision and/or castration. We must forgive the zealous, gorgeous George for a minute mis-calculation. The Lugubrious Game is in fact a quiet celebration of this mystic rite of passage, and not the morbid fear thereof.
nail over the smaller boots. The lantern is by cryptography, the Jewish Menorah, which always burns with the Light of God yet here has fizzed out. The boots stand in as an adult and juvenile penis. The hat on the nail, over The Kid's boots, is the uncircumcised crown of the phallus.
glitters like a million bubbles of champagne. Odgen Nash and Erma Bombeck, Buck Henry and Groucho Marx, Baudelaire and Chaucer. Each and every one altogether immortal. Down into the vortex is a velocity
where winds the Raven. The trickster. The deep roller. The Impossible Poe. The Naughty Nabokov. The Toil-est T.S. Eliot. Moliere and de Rostad. Woolf and Highsmith and Atwood. The list goes on and on. And what panache! For how can this be? Why are these not sucked into the depths of darkness? How do they remain so splendidly buoyant, to dip and redip into the coldest, purest waters of memory?
