Broken Ballad

Left the hum of my cubicle, at three thirty am.

Seconds later I felt the slight chill of an empty night, and cried out "all hail the American night!"
Walked into a fluorescent lit pizzeria. One look at the police officer talking on his walkie and the stale margarita pizza on display and I was back on the road with a terse apology to the man working there. I would not be hustled into swallowing unpalatable Italian food, made and served by a servile chinaman.

In third world countries stadiums fill up for politicians.

I cast an abject glance towards the north and abruptly picked up pace, running to my house. A quick shower and some grub awaited me. Got to my house and realized I had left my keys.

I laughed out loud. I was going to trounce the night!
My spirits hadn't dropped yet. I walked to an old friend, Timmy's. This is where the night really threw me a look.

In I walked, looked around, attempting to mimick the keen observance of a writer.
There stood the beatest old timer with some very respectable mutton chops, talking to this old short four foot pudgy lady. As I began to survey the empty racks, where hot rasberry muffins usually sit during the day, I heard him say: You seen this guy, Morrocan lookin fella with a reeeal nice suite (he gestures at his faded black shirt)? She slowly sways her greasy crown like a pendulum. It was like as if the great wired sieve of toronto had placed within the grimy of walls of this establishment its finest characters. On a table to my left was a balding character with a stained white shirt and bushy eyebrows toiling over math problems; on my right a young gal with a white dress rocking languidly to a tune in her headphones working on some fashion sketches in a great large drawing book; surveying her, and then shifting his glare towards me, is this other old thin hipster, his hair slicked back in grease, headphones on, with a small notebook (could he be sketching my character in this notebook, as I sit down with my mocha?).

Pervez Musharraf resigns on the tele, as I type this up proclaiming his humanity. Bhutto is dead, and Sharif is lurking around the corner. Pakistan's politics is laconic and dead. They recyle the old faces, like an old czech writer who loathes to baptise new characters in a novel he's been working on during the long cold years of Soviet occupation.

Ravenous as Nixon? Nah, he has a pretty blunt set of canines.

A self-appointed moralist? Saint Ralph?
If "the National" had their way with Ralph Nader, he would get shot fifty six times for having vague ideas.

This resident of Washington, rides his once eco-friendly white horse through and through, parading about this message he's allegedly been sending to the public, for too many years already.

Shit, man maybe he is aight, but people in America aren't that badly off, at least they don't know it yet, to listen to a populist leader who spins the political jargon wheel about "citizen power". Its the mere fact that he will never sit in the oval office that allows non-actors like him or your taxi-driver to talk horse-raddish about the bi-partisan stranglehold on America.

The words of "Summerbirds in your cellar" resound loudly...beware of false prophets!

Give the mule what he wants!

I was just watching the electric kettle reach a boiling precipice and automatically switch off, when I heard a rhinoceros or some other horned mammal devour a transmission tower, stirring up a commotion of rage and electronic clamour from my room.

I dumped the vociferous water into my mug, which contained equal amounts of coffee and sugar, and ran into my room; entering through the doorframe astounded, top hat and all!

Crying out in a fix, I dashed to my desk, dotted with mugs, like a german minefield, half-full with dark shadowy liquids.

The noise that had erupted from my room and garnered my attention from the kitchen, had been captured in a studio in Offenberg, in the dark reaches of southwest germany, by Judy Winter and Peter Oehler, and a handful of their long-haired, shabby friends. They probably lived as a collective on a lake, for four weeks leading up to their memorable session; indulging in all but a myriad of mind-altering activities. The revolutionary beggar's opera that ensued was probably the apex of their lives...just as my water came to a triumphant boil! Don't take their word for it, listen to their only remaining recordings: SWF sessions, available, only on vinyl from the subterranean German music company, aptly named, Longhair Music Label.