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.

Moloch in the Ghetto

Moloch was a blood-thirsty Semitic deity known for demanding sacrifices of the human flesh. Allen Ginsberg was the reigning poet king of the beatnik era, with a passion for words and men!

What's the link between the two?

I wouldn't know, but ask Eldridge Cleaver:

The rebellion of the white youth in the epoch of worldwide revolution, against the oppressive injustice of their fathers, apparently took four discernible stages.

The first steps were heralded, by the irrevocable war-cry, of an oft-times tunic clad jew, followed by his assiduous pilgrims, "who were too lazy to take baths and too stingy to buy a haircut". This ravenous modern-day deity was raising his howl, a scathing, outraged denunciation of the system - demanding the first-born child of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and all the way down the lineages of these "great" slave-owners.

Cleaver, then quotes Kerouac... the lilac evening when Moriarty, a disillusioned white man, wishes he were a Denver Mexican or a soulful young negro with a husky voice.

This was just the first stage though. Moloch's revolution was content to passively withdraw into reclusive communal living, rejecting the economy of oppression. "In their cool beat pads, smoking pot and listening to jazz in a perpetual orgy of esoteric bliss, there were others, less crushed by the system, who recognized the need for positive action."

"Moloch would gladly have legalized the use of euphoric drugs and marijuana, passed out free jazz albums and sleeping bags, to all those willing to sign affidavits promising to remain 'beat'."
Hah... and yes that is where the deity of poetry ended and non-violent sit ins started.

My blues are the deepest of reds

when it rains it pours...
just had a horrible day; the human race is fickle and ineffectual

No wonder Stuart Murdoch thinks its a sin to leave the house!

I turned around an otherwise miserable excuse for the sun to come up, by turning into dominion after class, turning up the volume on b&s and turning down the aisle to pick up some delectable pasta sauce on sale!

Now, I'm no merchant, but this struck a chord with me, somewhere in between looking for bread and waiting in line:

I'm not as sad as Doestoevsky,
I'm not as clever as Mark Twain,
I'll only buy a book for the way it looks,
And then I stick it on the shelf again...

I'm only lucid when I'm writing songs.

Intermission

a man of culture is as far from an artist, as a historian is from a man of action

they were in the countryside,
he held a microphone,
she eluded him, resigning only to yes or no responses

"and your surname,
is it republic?

no

totalitarianism?

no

liberalism?

no

trade-unionism?

no

democracy?

yes"

Lady Grinning Soul

"Time – he’s waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me, boy"

Two black Rastas were standing outside a Caribbean record shop, dressed in black leather jackets, eating instant noodles.

And the other day, I was on the subway, right.
Thoroughly enjoying Coldplay’s new album, right. (Oh the horror! Commercial music!? Oh no!)
And this flamboyant man of the homosexual persuasion enters and sits a few seats away, with one of his “girlfriends”, all the while gesturing and moving his hands in the air, like an opera conductor!
Now I am listening to “Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love”, completely oblivious to this flamboyant presence on the subway, well not completely, but I could care less, right?
And then across from me, is sitting this, this hulk-esque Asian guy who is so jacked, he can barely sit on the small subway seats. Him and his buddy, have probably just left the gym and he’s trying to read some sort of massive textbook, nursing I’m guessing. He’s inscribed on every side of the textbook, what must be his last name: HO.
Now this guy had finally settled with his highlighter, and like five different coloured post-its, right?
Then the aforementioned gaudy, glitzy, character enters the subway. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I saw Hulk get all uncomfortable, shifting and fidgeting his enormous limbs trying to concentrate on his textbook. He finally gives up!
I am out-and-out enjoying myself with this show, as I overhear Hulk talk about workout routines and his adversary talk about issues of femininity, along with all but a myriad of hand and full-body contortions and gesticulations!

look at my watch it says 9:25 and I think oh God I’m still alive