POETENCY & APOETASY

DAUGHTER OF EGYPTIAN SATIRICAL POET ATTACKED

2012-01-26T16:00:00.003-05:00

Nawara Negm, the daughter of Ahmed Fouad Negm, Egypt’s most popular satirical poet, was recently attacked by small crowd of assailants as she left Cairo’s Nileside state television headquarters.

This message has been compiled by Poetency Press
"All the muse that's fit to print."

Wally Keeler Rants: "What Does It Feel Like To Be ...

2012-01-22T22:22:00.004-05:00

Wally Keeler reads Spontaneous Printout 10041980 @ Art Bar

2011-08-19T12:43:00.001-04:00

High Heels Lo Fi Play Poetry @ Art Bar

2011-08-19T12:41:00.002-04:00

James Dewar Massacres In a Gadda Da Vida @ Art Bar

2011-08-19T12:31:00.003-04:00

James Dewar reads Ode Found on a Grecian Urinal

2011-08-18T11:08:00.002-04:00

POETAGE @Mattawa.ON

2011-08-10T22:50:00.006-04:00

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The MRI

2011-06-11T17:27:00.002-04:00

October 17, 2003, circa 6:50am while blow-drying, my right arm collapsed, flopped to my side, dangling like a used penis. The CNS (Central Nervous System) failed to effect commands to the arm. Paralysis. Paralysis remained for 3hrs. CNS eventually regained majority control within a few hours; residual control returned over days.

It was a Transient Ischemic Attack. A blood clot grid-locked in the brain, asphyxiated a nerve that sensates the right arm. The following functions failed:
Signature
Holding coins, soap bars
Masturbation
Turning door knobs
Opening jars
Keyboarding & mousing
Buttoning a shirt
Nose-picking
Prostate assessing
Tying a knot

The device is a huge, powerful magnet. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Metal objects must be removed. People with metal pins in their body are questioned -- some can never go into the machine, nor near the machine. It is in a room within a larger room segregated to a small section of the hospital. I am asked if I have ever been a welder, or otherwise worked in a job whereby a small bit of metal could have been embedded in the eye, which could be ripped out of its jellied bed by the magnet. Pacemakers are forbidden.

So I am in a thin cotton gown, laid on my back onto a narrow table. A prop is inserted under my knees. As I lay there I begin to feel a surge of anxiety. Plugs are inserted into my ears. Props are placed on either side of my head -- immobilizing it. I am positioned to a cross-haired bull's eye on my forehead. Anxiety rises. A cage is pulled down over my head. I can't swallow. My throat is dead dry -- anxiety prevails. I talk about it with one of the two technicians. I ask for water. She brings some. I lay there immobile; take two sips, take a deep breath and say "OK".

The tray on which I lay slowly smoothly inserts me into the machine, into a featureless chamber. There is breathing space only. Panic is suppressed. My throat remains moist. I continue to swallow. Good. A woman's disembodied voice advises that a session will begin for a minute's duration. A thumping sound begins. There are no bodily sensations, just the thumping.

The longest minute passes.

The disembodied voice said I did good. It will be 3 or 4 more minutes before the next session begins. Then the voice says the next session will be 4 or 5 minutes duration. The tray nudges my body a few centimetres, then a new noise begins, and begins and begins and goes on goes on goes on goes on & on & on... There is a small mirror I can look into to see the two female technicians behind glass in another room fondling dials.

More long minutes pass. A voice says another session of two minutes will begin. And a third unique pounding noise begins. This was endured. Endured.

More long minutes pass. A voice announces another session 4 minutes long is about to commence. There were 4 beats of one pounding followed by 4 beats of a different level of pounding and so it’s repeated over and over again and again. At the end of the session, I twitched. I was seconds from pressing the panic button. I felt suffocated. The tray moved. I was withdrawn from the machine. I sat on the table for a few moments to regain my composure. My forehead was soaked. My thighs, which had been clenched together, were sweatwet. I got off the table and took more moments to look into the chamber where my body had been. I was rattled. My hands trembled, even as I civied-up to go home. I was rattled.

That is the literal description.

. . .

This is the poetic description:

I guarantee it in writing,
sign my name,
I, Clarence Wallace Keeler,
in the 56th year of diminishing virility,
hereby declare
to be metal-free
neither microchip nor nano-entity
lurk subcutaneous;
I am 100% human male,
vulnerable
to everything.

Laid out on a tray
I am inserted head-first
and dry-throat anxious
into the magnetic cylinder
head-first up a techno logical vagina
a bloodless lustless vagina
I am a dildo for diagnosis
by a bland gland

Don't even dream of moving your eyeballs,
they will blur the imaging.

I'm instructed to be still
to play dead
to lay like an autopsy cadaver
inside a bloodless vagina
and comes
the thrusting noise
the rhythmic pounding pulse
imaging my brain
in molecular slices
digitizing it
into a multi-binary portrait

Magnets
compellingly attractive
magnets
line the bloodless vagina
compellingly attractive
as the bloody real illogical thing

So I am inserted into the machine
with the smooth grace
of a dismissive gesture,
yet its power to picture
my brain excludes
the weeping warm vaginas
of the women I have known --
for them
the secretions of software
that initiate poetry programs.

The vagina of modern diagnostics
penetrated my head's hardware
cross-hairing a pixel
of enormous consequence
in a troublesome artery
ensuring the blood
continues
f l o o o o o w i n g
into my imagination
as I lay there
immobile as a corpse,
the scrapbook of my lovers
paging in my head
their vulvelour vaginas
silking me
milking me
remains impenetrable
to the mega-might
of robo-cunt claustrophobia

And I lay inside it
stiff as a stiff,
imaging the moist remains
of my love life
tent-poling the thin sheet covering me
with a hard-on
as insouciant
as a middle finger salute.

BUYING CIGARETTES FOR THE DOG

2011-05-03T21:24:00.005-04:00

“It reminds me of Richard Brautigan,” said Wally Keeler, after reading The President’s Cold Legs, the third fictionette in Stuart Ross’s collection of short stories, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. Brautigan was a hippiedom darling, the fantasist of Big Sur, the author of In Watermelon Sugar the Deeds Were Done and Done Again as My Life Is Done In Watermelon Sugar.

After finishing Stuart’s book, Wally Keeler FB’d the poetariet, “Stuart Ross has a brain wonderfully broken in several places and there is major leakage of imagination.”

Wally rarely read short stories, preferring instead, the relative brevity & beauty of poetry. Then Stuart Ross moves to Wally’s hometown. Stuart is easy to spot because his short tousled white hair looks as if wild animals had frolicked there and he was proud to host them. So naturally and organically, Wally scooped a copy of this book at King Street Books & Sundries, Cobourg’s only downtown bookstore.

Wally has had incidental bantering exchanges with Stuart over recent years. “So Wally, what have you read of mine?” Stuart Ross asked. Wally froze on the border between lying and the truth, nanosecond after nanosecond went by…

It took three Stuart stories to convince Wally that this was bathroom material of the first disorder. Some stories are brief as a snack, brief as a thorough evacuation of the previous day’s edibles. Great timing. Timeless in a manner of speaking easy. A yellow highlighter pen was placed next to the sink to mark turf for high concentrations of wit breaking through the palliative prose of everyotherday lives. Almost needed a second highlighter.

Stuart’s short stories contain the finest blend of banality mixed with generous helpings of imaginative reality. His stories charm and amaze, the qualities of a magician. He delivers simple stories of us with a slight-of-bland that produces a straight flush of wit.

He writes a story based on the outrageous premise of a man hiring a bodyguard to protect himself from his pet poodle. Held at gunpoint, the dog owner declares, “You’re nothing but a fucking sneaking poodle.” I swallowed the story whole, without choking, such was the ease with Stuart’s wiring and writing.

In another story, a couple of pronouns are up a tree while below them “…shopping carts prowled in lurching packs” and “the sky draped over us like a gigantic lung…”

Stuart has a natural gift for establishing moods and ambiances, then throws a Shakespearian volta at the end of the paragraph, “The trees were dark and cool, and the breeze rustled through the trees like gentle static… The sky was painted thick with clouds and not a single star shone through, not even the moon or the sun or Mars or a covert flight to Honduras.” Such subtle absurdity integrated into the text as a banality bursts with the surprise of Sandinista wit.

Witty banalities! -- who’d have thunk it possible? The medium is the messy age; Stuart’s clarity reveals that the very banality of life is absurd, and he pulls it off so neatly.

Stuart’s uberpeculiar imagination will kick your own imagination around, because, “you never know where life’s journey is going to take you, like you never know how the years are going to shove you around.” Lucky for Stuart and us, he detailed the life-knocks in narratives marinated with “charm and wit,” as Wally Keeler persistently asserts.

A “wild peculiar joy” drove Irving Layton to poempous excess, but with Stuart Ross, the process produces a poetpourri of writing elegance, from brief nano-narratives to extended tales wagging dogs disguised as dogs with tails to tell tall stories from Stuart’s wild peculiar imagination.

SUPPORT DIVERSITY

2011-04-20T02:22:00.003-04:00

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This message has been brought to you by the Consortia of Human Rights Commissions in collaboration with the mediocrity of the Politically Correctalistas of Blandland.

Bigotry Buster

2011-01-09T14:35:00.000-05:00

The Structural Elegance of the Common Haiku

2011-01-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

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Perfectly Poetic Pizza Place

2011-01-06T15:39:00.001-05:00

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Rhyming Couplets

2011-01-05T14:29:00.000-05:00

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Burka Woman - Saad Haroon

2010-12-23T13:35:00.000-05:00

FREEDOM Is the Woman I Love Most

2010-12-18T19:45:00.000-05:00

Wind, Waves & a Woman (Ode to the West Wind)

2010-12-18T15:06:00.001-05:00

Wally Keeler reads SUNSEX

2010-12-16T15:18:00.005-05:00

SUNSEX

I love the Sun
l u u u u u u u v i n g us
with perpetual patience
ever since the famous Day of Yes
"let there be . . ."
sworn on the Oath of Earth
so there was light
there was warmth
there was luvrise every morning
unfolding itself like a brilliant idea
of wings, wind and elegant physics

It prepareth for us, The Earth
a wet lush salad
days after evermore days
according to law
as set by the regulatory authorities of YES
we emerged and merged and morphed
evolving and revolving and whirling
in a wonderful waltz of unwavering loyalty
to The Light.

I love the high noon lust
beams and boners of flaming excess
penetrating the breathing space
the prophylactic membrane of oxygen
to practice safe life . . .
so we all get naked
like blooming flowers
with dilating petals
glorious little wide-ons
in the great solarium
of multicolourfulism
where pollen is flower-cum
spicing the salad
with the frolic of fertility

I love the musky dusk
when the sun
goes down on
the swooning wetness of Great Lakes
s l o w . . g o l d . . g l o w
scorching scattered clouds
spreading a carpet of ululating light
drawing lovers dripping in dream
to walk towards it
into the closing scenes
of novels and movies

I love it more
when it goes
d e e p
d
o
w
n
on Mother Earth
its descending forehead sweating scarlet
tongue flares receding
into the soothing softmess of afterglow
while the night sky
glistens with the delirious debris
of star splatter.

BLAND LAND BUSTS POET SMOKERS (1st draft)

2010-11-09T10:16:00.002-05:00

Five units of verse of the universe of the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry (PRP) were arrested in Bland Land early yesterday evening on charges of possession of poet for the purpose of trafficking, and being intoxicated on poet in a public place.

Proseph Stalin, director of the Blandinistas, announced the arrest, “Bland Land has come under direct assault by the 101st Word Warriors of the imagine nation of the PRP once too often. It is done under the cover of poetry readings, spoken word performances, slam bam poetry or other sub verse euphemisms with the purpose of overthrowing mediocrity, the stabilizing governing principle of Bland Land.”

“These misguided units of verse were found to have been carriers of pure poet. Countless studies have found that chronic poet smoking, principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagine nation, produces a state of mind that is ‘at war with every base desire’.”

The units of verse had been touring Bland Land as part of an outreach program known in poetry circles and triangles as Give the Bland a Hand. The program was developed by the Creative Intelligence Anarchy in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Inspiration.

The units of verse readily admitted to being poet smokers. The poetic outreachers were reported to have been in possession of an unknown quantity of ‘Onomatopoezia: sans simile’, a genre of poet that condenses the imagination to its grass routes of grunt, groan, and moan alone that often finds expression in sound poetry.

The Minister With Poetfolio of the PRP, condemned the charges. “Poet smoking is nothing more than the inhalation of airy somethings to rearrange the local habitation and names of their origin allies. Bland Land is a verbless noun. They are seriously blandicapped.”

“Arresting and detaining our units of verse is nothing more than the worst kind of blanditry. We appeal to the United Imagine Nations to demand the release of the creative force that through the green fuse spurts a world of multicolourfulism.”

The Creative Intelligence Anarchy released a terse statement, “Poet smoking is the leading cause of flights of fancy. The imagine nation will not be grounded by the farces of suppression, oppression, repression. We will continue to enforce landing writes in the blandemic wasteland of mediocrity. Those units of verse will not be ablandoned”

Poet smoking has been the write of every unit of verse of the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry.

Spreading the Sword

2010-11-09T07:22:00.000-05:00

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YOUR IMAGINE NATION OR YOUR LIFE

2010-11-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

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In Case of Mediocrity -- Break Down

2010-09-29T20:09:00.001-04:00

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Waterfront Fun

2010-08-17T02:15:00.008-04:00

Cobourg's waterfront was assaulted by outsiders last Monday afternoon. The outside agitators came from the west, an unrelenting swarm of heavy breezes silting Corktown with fine sand dredged up earlier in the year. The outside agitators also stirred up some exhilarating head-banger waves to entice local teenagers to the bottom end of Division Street.

Click on images to enlarge

Occasional waves exploded two or three stories into the air, drenching girls who perched themselves, like sweet little seagulls, on the steel railing that perimeters the pier.

There were three boys and a girl in the frothing turbulence of the water, riding the surface currents of the waves. It was a wonderful display of mental alertness and physical strength and endurance of their prime-of-life bodies. The background ambience is Danger. Risky behaviour? Of course. How else does a human being test their abilities?

The waves had a rough rhythm roughly learned by the quick-witted teens, when they were climbing the ladder, the impact and withdrawal of a single wave ripped them off the rungs and pulled them back down in to the deep. One of the boys gripped the girl's arm to ensure her safety. She successfully made it to the arms of a girlfriend.

Some times the waves would tease the teens, pushing them up as if to cast them out, but in a split moment sucked them back into an adrenalin rush. Toying with them like so much flotsam.

Finally, everyone is safe and secure, drenched in a lifetime memory. They will eventually become responsible civilians, pass through two or three decades, and recall the sheer exhilaration if this day. One older woman admonished the teens, telling them the fine details of bashed heads, lungs full of water, etc. It reminded me of the words of Irving Layton in The Whole Bloody Bird:

"It is cruel for the old to inflict their disillusioned wisdom on the young. Fortunately it is also impossible."

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SHALLOW

2010-08-16T13:58:00.005-04:00

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SHALLOW

For the past half century
enjoying an unprecedented
state of peace and prosperity
I savored the muscular memory
of my signature hand
how it held
firm
moist
the curve
of your pubis
It has been
two years
since …

I am beginning to lose

my

g
r
i
?

.

.

.

Standing For Free Speech for Salman Rushdie

2010-07-25T18:33:00.001-04:00

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BLAND LAND SLAMS THE IMAGINE NATION

2010-07-05T17:26:00.000-04:00

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BLAND GLAND BOSS BUSTED

2010-07-05T16:42:00.000-04:00

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Poetry Raises The Stanza of Living

2010-07-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

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Bland Brand Boys Hit Five & Rhyme

2010-07-03T09:46:00.001-04:00

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

SUNSEX

2010-06-26T10:38:00.015-04:00

I love the Sun
l o o o o o v i n g us
with perpetual patience
ever since the famous Day of Yes
"let there be . . ."
sworn on the Oath of Earth
so there was light
there was warmth
there was luvrise every morning
unfolding itself like a brilliant idea
of wings, wind and elegant physics

It prepareth for us, The Earth
a wet lush salad
days after evermore days
according to law
set by the regulatory authorities of YES
we emerged and merged and morphed
evolving and revolving and whirling
in a wonderful waltz of unwavering loyalty
to The Light.

I love the high noon lust
beams and boners of flaming excess
penetrating the breathing space
the prophylactic membrane of oxygen
so we all get naked
like blooming flowers
with dilating petals
glorious little wide-ons
in the great solarium
of multicolourfulism
where pollen is flower-cum
soaking the salad
with the frolic of fertility

I love the musky dusk
when the sun goes down on
the swooning wetness of great lakes
s l o w . . g o l d . . g l o w
scorching scattered clouds
and spreading an ululating carpet
drawing lovers dripping in dream
to walk towards it
into the closing scenes of novels and movies

I love it the more
when it goes
d e e e p
d
o
w
n
on Mother Earth
its descending forehead sweating scarlet
tongue flares receding into the calm softmess of afterglow
while the night sky
glistens with the delirious debris
of star splatter.

TO THE END OF YES

2010-06-23T15:14:00.003-04:00

In the beginning there was the word
and the word was YES!
so I fucked her
I fucked her again
mornin’ noon & night
I fucked her
day after day
I fucked her
year in & year out
I fucked her
YES! YES! YES!
I fucked her
OUI! OUI! OUI!
I fucked her
SI! SI! SI!
I fucked her
DA! DA! DA!
I fucked her
in every tongue
from left to right in Poland
right to left in Persia
top to bottom in China
everywhichway in Klingon
I fucked her
affirmative action of the first disorder
she scented herself with YES tonight
I fucked her
in great mutual affirmation sessions
cum-sensual adults
every time she opened her legs
it was in the shape of YES
a very expletive undeleted YES.
She was YES to the very nucleus of her woman
She was my woman of want
She was my woman of want my vowels.
YES, she sucked vowels from me
Vowel-howling sound poetry
ecstasy poetry bouncing off the walls all covered in wet YES
I fucked her
YES! Aaaaaaaaaaa
I fucked her
YES! Eeeeeeeeeeee
I fucked her
YES! Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
I fucked her
YES! Oooooooooo
I fucked her
YES! Uuuuuuuuuu
I fucked her
in great gobs of gushing vowels
She loved the splatter of vowels
So I fucked her
with a mouthful of wet YES
my fundamentalist theology
exploded down her throat
To hell with the socialist sub-committee policy meeting tonight,
YES let’s fuck
To hell with lobbying for funds to feed crippled orphans
YES let’s fuck

I love how she gives good debate
turning onto her knees
to present the best part of her argument
like the good field beast she is
I’d rather plunge into the democrazy poetics of her cunt
than earn a living pro-actively in happy contrivanceland.
than a committee of global swarmers
She is my Al Gore rhythmn

And the decades go by
I fucked her
fucked her again
and again
it was all YES,
choirs of YES
chorusing down the hallways of YES.
Gospel YES, the G-spot
Soul YES Deep Soul
Classical YES Class Suckle
Rock YES & Roll YES
Decade after decade
The pension arrives
I fuck her on weekday afternoons
Sometimes right there
on the floor before the tv
in front of Oprah & Dr Phil

YES through the seasons

Then June 23, 2001
she whispered a soft italicized yes
into my better ear.
so I mounted her
and there was a breath of yes
followed by the de-conjunctiving ellipse . . .
So it was
in the end
there was the word
and the word was NO!

LEARNING TO UNLOVE LOVE

2010-06-23T15:05:00.001-04:00

When I return alone home,
morning, afternoon, evening, night,
when ever
what ever
how ever

no one
. . . . . . is there . . . . ever
no one

silence undances with a skindeep shadow
reflected from an unsilvering memory.

I bed my brokenmess
cocooning the pillow
soft but unbreathing
yielding but unwarming
the unthreading remains of love
pulled up to my kissless lips
grow thinner
as night grows colder
as I turn
and curl
into a foetal question mark.

I Am Writing Letters

2010-06-23T14:59:00.001-04:00

I am writing letters
from my primary residence
on the Island of Alone

Paper skins
Words kiss
Sentences caress
I like them swollen with myths
Of turbulence and tremors
Of abandonment
And collapsing stars

I love weaving long umbilical poems
that vine their way into your heart

Debris

2010-06-23T14:55:00.000-04:00

For the past half century
living in an unprecedented
state of peace and prosperity
I have savored the muscular memory
of my signature hand,
how it held firm the curve
of your moist pubis.

Throw me out of your home
Throw me out of your heart

My grip on reality
crumbled
to debris.

A Rant

2010-06-23T14:53:00.001-04:00

She walked up to me
soaked in post-graduate effervescent optimism
fresh as early dawn dew
asking,
“What does it feel like?
What does it feel like to be 63?”

It feels like erosion
It feels like corrosion
It feels like regression
Like abrasion
Like deterioration
Like degeneration
Dilapidation
Evisceration
Desecration
Castration
It feels
Like the same damn thing
24/7/365
Day after day
Morning noon and night
Year in and year out
Inhale
Exhale
Wash rinse and repeat
Wash rinse and repeat
After me
After day after day
Morning noon and night
Year in and year out
Winter spring summer fall
In the same fucken order
Winter sales
Spring sales
Summer sales
Fall sales
63 times and again
Water freezes
Flowers arise
Skin burns
Leaves fall
63 times and again
Weekly bills
Monthly bills
Quarterly fees
Annual taxes
Dishes to wash
Laundry to do
Floors to clean
Ass to wipe
Day after day
Morning noon and night
Year in and year out
Inhale
Exhale
How do I loathe thee?
Let me count the fucken ways
Every newspaper has a headline
Edition after edition
Everywhere you look
Wherever you are
Regardless of language
Every newspaper has a headline
Blood is red
Water is wet
Poetry is poetency
Green go
Red stop
Gravity rules
The sun is on perpetual contract
To the same unrelenting immutable laws
East-rise
West-set
Christmas carols every goddam December
Decking the Hall every Unsilent Night
Allahu akbar five fucken times a day
Passover and over
Time and again
Day after day
morning noon and night
year in and year out
From infancy
To infirmity
Be to not be
Inhale
Exhale
Inexplicably here
Inexplicably now
With all the substance
Of bland gland drool
And banality boner cum
On a revolving planet
Going round and round
A revolving sun
In a unremarkable galaxy
Pointlessly adrift
In an incomprehensible universe
Littered with Big Bang debris
So we live on and on and
On a swirling speck of shrapnel
We couple and cum and cum again
And what goes around cums around
And I slouch incompetent
At the intersect of infinity and eternity
Divvied into day after day
Morning noon and night
Year in and year out
Inhale
Exhale
Towards depletion
And completion
That’s what it's like to be 63
63 winters (all of them cold)
63 springs (all of them wet)
63 summers (all of them hot)
63 falls (all of them crisp)
63 years
And counting…

Every Word She Speaks

2010-06-23T14:44:00.002-04:00

Every word she speaks
is touched wet
with her
tongue.

I want to become
the vocabularly
she draws on
the language
of l'amour

I want to be the word,
a long multi-consonant verb
that tumble-tongues
into luscious nouns
carried on vowels
made of the soft-interior
of her cheeks

A Spring Thought

2010-06-23T14:35:00.000-04:00

Forest ferns all foetal
uncomma themselves
to full-frontal green grammar

Sex percolattes in the soil,
hormoans bloating
the bulbs shouldering up
break-through flowers
gluttoning themselves
senseless with sunsex
as we lean forward to sniff
their delicate wide-ons
all petal perfumed
in the quiet orgy of gardens

The Best Part of Me

2010-06-23T14:20:00.001-04:00

THEY ARE THE WOMEN

There are Women who last a lusttime in a Man's groin.
There are Women who last a lovetime in a Man's heart.
There are Women who last a lifetime in a Man's soul.

God sleeps at the edge of the universe
where the clarity of science fades to uncertainty
where the deep-throated howls of women
in the full froth of fuck
soften into wet whispered somethings
soothing in the vowel of O

The universe is a wOmb
The earth is an egg swirling dervish in cumulus cum.

Their small breasts
fit firm
into my hand
into my mouth
into my poem
warmly as a sparrow snuggles in its nest

I love how they open their legs
in the shape of YESOYES
fitting into them
firmly as the rugged root of an oak
into the sun soft soil

They are the Women
who make the best part of me
uncivilized.

We Con The People

2010-06-04T12:28:00.000-04:00

COMMITTING POETRY -- FREE SPEECH

2010-04-10T09:26:00.001-04:00

POETRY IS POETENCY

2010-04-08T16:40:00.003-04:00

Dedicated to the supremacy of Poetry over mediocrity.

Departure Lounge to the Imagine Nation

2010-03-09T14:28:00.002-05:00

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SECURING THE IMAGINE NATION

2010-02-24T11:02:00.001-05:00

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Poetry Lovers from Farsi to English and back

2010-02-18T00:00:00.008-05:00

Mojgan Navidi

Who?

She is Persian
She is Iranian
She is Kurdish
She is Muslim
She is mother
She is daughter
She is sister
She is more than these nouns of identity
flowing down the lyrical river of verbs known as poetry.

Several years ago a friend sent me some of her poems. I replied that she could not expect to be published in English because there is so much accent in her poetry, but yes, yes and yes again, she is amongst us, the poets. Thus began a foreign exchange; her Farsi for my English and back again.

“But poets dare to confide
That is why they are dangerous
Poets love freedom
Freedom is the woman you love most of all”

Two poets making love to language, speaking in the tongues of mothers. I key in a password, click on an icon, and the bomb-proof net delivers her rich declaration:

“You brought me a miraculous pen, which amazingly even writes in English; never running out of ink.
I conceive by the moon in the sanctuary of the night.
Precious tiny kicks in my womb tenderly fulfill my feminine desires.
I am creating a third language - the common pain.
I give birth to my baby; her name is poetry; she talks rain”

The romance of rhyme, the longing of lyric, and a garden of verse detonating into diversity, she declared:

“You are a pleasant accident in my life
My heart seeks refuge in you
from the repetition of colorless days,
from the infinity of odorless nights.
And it happened
as simple as a butterfly conquers a petal”

Poetry lovers. As simple as that. I gave her Irving Layton, “Whatever else, poetry is freedom” and she gave me Parvaneh Forouhra:

“Let us clear this dark trail
With the chimes of our hearts
Let us sing the song of life
In the path of freedom.”

So there she was, in Tehran, all of 19 years old, a prisoner in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, the same prison where Canadian-Iranian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, was tortured to death in the name of all that is holy. She was 19 and not dancing and spinning to the music, her skirt flowing like ripples in still water. She was 19 and not flirting with stolen kisses. She was 19 and not letting her hair tangle with splinters of sunlight. She was 19 and a prisoner, a three year prisoner.

When? Decades ago. Today, she lives in Vancouver, today, where precious metals reward a lifetime pursuit of physical excellence. Her body lives free in Vancouver, while her spirit continues to fury against the prison walls that confine colour. It is my blessing to know her. It is my blessing to have received her missive below, her request to sing agony to the world, to the world of well-lit West, a dove cooing in the darkness of bright lights.

NB: “Neda” is the young woman who was shot dead in the street in Tehran late last year. A handful of seconds as RED pours out of her head and into our hearts, and her unlonely death will live forever in YouTube memoriam.

The Illegal Colors of an Illegal Generation by Mojgan Navidi

2010-02-17T23:37:00.010-05:00

Four months after the 2nd anniversary of the 1979 Iran revolution that overthrew the Shah, and installed the Ayatollah, the jailors confiscated the books and paper we had collected in Evin Prison. To protect my young, breathing poems, my cellmates memorized them. There were five poems, so five women volunteered. Each woman became a poem, in a manner similar to the outcasts who became books in the dystopian movie, Fahrenheit 411.

I memorized none because it was understood that I was most likely to be the chosen one for execution. Shortly after the memorization, I was taken to an inner courtyard with two of my poems. We were made to kneel down in a row.

The poem on my left was executed.

The poem on my right was executed.

The gun was put to my head and I was taken back to the prison cell.

Another poem disappeared; we never learned of her fate after the prison transfer. Only two poems remained alive to recite themselves back onto paper.

A few years ago, I told this story to poet, Wally Keeler, a Canadian. He replied incredulously: “I never wrote a poem that had been executed. I wrote poems that had been neglected, orphaned or returned, but never executed.”

February 12, 2010, the news:

These days in a festival of Olympic light, Canada celebrates its self-awareness in a garden of mass color that washes away the cry: FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS!

Meanwhile an army of dread and decay in full force celebrates the 31st anniversary of ignorance in a colourless prison as big as a country; repeat after me, a prison as big as a country.

We will endure massive violence, brutality, and chaos, while the world hardly endures the picture of what we Iranians have already witnessed.

We have been killed for 31 years -- my children and I, not because of big dreams, but for free spirit.

I am guilty of illegal imagination,
illegal poetry,
illegal life,
illegal spirit
and y/our Neda illegally whispered,
“There are colors,
many colours,
other than black, green and gushing RED”.

Can you imagine?

WE SINNED and we don’t have any live hero to participate in the 2010 Olympics.

Mr. Poet; A few years ago I failed to respond to your disbelief, but I trust today you can see that by definition, in a land I call home and you know as The Islamic Republic of Iran even colors are executed.

The ironic words of the Iranian poet, Sadi, written 800 years ago, adorns the entrance to the Hall of Nations inside the United Nations building in NewYork, calling for the breaking all barriers:

"Of One Essence is the Human Race,
Thusly has Creation put the Base.
One Limb impacted is sufficient,
For all Others to feel the Mace.
The Unconcern'd with Others' Plight,
Are but Brutes with Human Face."

Signed
We, the continuing Illegal Generation.

SLAM POETRY: We Are More ...

2010-02-15T12:16:00.002-05:00

http://www.virtualstadium2010.com
The Stadium is a global collaborative art project for fans to participate in the XXI Olympic Winter Games.

Celebrate Canada and the spirit of the Games, with Canadian slam poet Shane Koyczan's tribute, We Are More.

For a transcript from the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games, please visit http://ow.ly/17hel

SAMIZDAT2DIGIZDAT

2010-02-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

Hey Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone

2010-02-04T13:10:00.002-05:00

Written and performed by Blurred Vision. Directed by Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Babak Payami. www.blurredvisionmusic.com

Here is a poetent mashup of a rock&roll classic, Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd altered. It has been morphed to express the situation of youth in Iran. HEY AYATOLLAH, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE.

During the Cold War, I was deeply involved in the smuggling and distribution of samizdat in and out and between the nations of the Soviet bloc. Samizdat consisted of underground publishing, always paper bound. Magnetizdat consisted of underground audio cassettes.

Technology has evolved and the youth know how to wield it big time. This is 21st century samizdat – youTube, Twitter, etc. (Coming soon to a tablet near you) For instant news from the Iranian youth front, a Twitter site [http://twitter.com/search?q=%23iranelection
] provides links and info. Fuck the Ayatollahs and their Islamaniacs!

Below is a description attached to the above video:
"Rarely in the history of rock 'n' roll does a cover version come
along that actually dares to exist at the right reactionary time. By
cleverly updating Pink Floyd's 1979 iconic protest anthem "Another
Brick In The Wall" exactly thirty years to the month that it was
originally released, Blurred Vision are wielding their activist music
as an irresistible force irrevocably set in motion to shake up the
staid conventions of repressive regimes and show solidarity with common street soldiers everywhere. Thanks to Blurred Vision, the revolution will be downloaded."
-- Jeffrey Morgan, authorized biographer of Alice Cooper and The Stooges.

"WE ARE AT WAR"

2010-01-08T12:01:00.003-05:00

“WE ARE AT WAR”

declared the Nobel Peace Laureate, as 30,000 more U.S. combat troops were surged to Afghanistan. Obama Lama Ding Dong seems to be displaying some BUSH league mentality. Apologistas and progressives are queuing at the mic, chomping at the bit.

MARG BAR DIKTATOR

2010-01-05T10:27:00.002-05:00

WE WANT FREEDOM. DEATH TO THE DICTATOR. WE WANT FREEDOM.

A 3 1/2 old boy tells the ancient Persian tale of Arash E Kamangir (Arash the Archer). Set in context of the Iranian uprising against the fascist government of the Islamic Republic and its fraudulent 2009 elections. "MARG BAR DIKTATOR"

WARNING EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGES. Iranian citizens rise up once again to clash against the fascist Islamic Republic and the fraudulent June elections. Cut to Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.

FIGHT FOR FREEDOM IN IRAN dec 30 09

2009-12-30T12:46:00.005-05:00

Brought to you via GREENUNITY4IRAN Students protest against the government of Iran and basiji militia

The Fight For Freedom continues

2009-12-29T14:38:00.001-05:00

A Shura Protest song ***Team TEHRAANN Thanks X-ELEMENTZ For This Beautiful Video!***

Tehran (Location: Vali Asr)

What the FIGHT FOR FREEDOM looks like

2009-12-28T14:15:00.005-05:00

UNITY4IRAN is a youtube portal where many videos of the current unrest in Iran can be seen. The video below is one from their channel.

This is from GREENUNITY4IRAN

I'M FREE by The Rolling Stones

2009-12-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

Protected Free Speech -- Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta

2009-12-04T13:15:00.002-05:00

(bolded emphasis mine)

Homosexual Agenda Wicked

The following is not intended for those who are suffering from an unwanted sexual identity crisis. For you, I have understanding, care, compassion and tolerance. I sympathize with you and offer you my love and fellowship. I prayerfully beseech you to seek help, and I assure you that your present enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied. Many outspoken, former homosexuals are free today.

Instead, this is aimed precisely at every individual that in any way supports the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s. I cannot pity you any longer and remain inactive. You have caused far too much damage.
My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume. With me stand the greatest weapons that you have encountered to date - God and the "Moral Majority." Know this, we will defeat you, then heal the damage that you have caused. Modern society has become dispassionate to the cause of righteousness. Many people are so apathetic and desensitized today that they cannot even accurately define the term "morality."

The masses have dug in and continue to excuse their failure to stand against horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality. Inexcusable justifications such as, "I'm just not sure where the truth lies," or "If they don't affect me then I don't care what they do," abound from the lips of the quantifiable majority.

Face the facts, it is affecting you. Like it or not, every professing heterosexual is have their future aggressively chopped at the roots.

Edmund Burke's observation that, "All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," has been confirmed time and time again. From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.

Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.

Your children are being warped into believing that same-sex families are acceptable; that men kissing men is appropriate.

Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex and at the same time being told that it is normal, natural and even productive. Will your child be the next victim that tests homosexuality positive?

Come on people, wake up! It's time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn't rooted in protecting homosexuals from "gay bashing." The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.

The homosexual agenda is not gaining ground because it is morally backed. It is gaining ground simply because you, Mr. and Mrs. Heterosexual, do nothing to stop it. It is only a matter of time before some of these morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.

If you are reading this and think that this is alarmist, then I simply ask you this: how bad do things have to become before you will get involved? It's time to start taking back what the enemy has taken from you. The safety and future of our children is at stake.

Rev. Stephen Boissoin

Your Imagine Nation or Your Life

2009-11-18T19:44:00.005-05:00

Click on image to enlarge

This young frightened poet

is denying some serious issues.

Not all poets make it through their difficult formative years with lyrical agility or arrogant aplomb. The worst find themselves abandoned, slouching towards bedlam on the streets of the Dominion of Bland Gland, stripped of metaphors and verbs, unable to articulate their presence.

Poet Polls released a 5-year study last spring, revealing that those poets with only one chapbook to their name, remain the most vulnerable demographic of Poetry. “The first five years after a first chapbook are the most dangerous for poets,” declared the report. "It's a culling of the wordsmiths, removing strains of pulp friction."

Watch for these signs: unrelenting melancholy punctuated with exclamation points of elation, delusions of editorial whitelisting and blackwashing, carries an equine feedbag stuffed with reject letters, clothes smell of mimeograph alcohol, and gross gregariousmess.

If you see a troubled poet, key THE-911-POET. At the sound of the beep, press the GPS key. That's all it takes to rescue a vulnerable poet from a fate worse than mediocrity.

Breath-Taking Poetry

2009-10-29T15:47:00.000-04:00

He Stood There In the Remnants

2009-10-09T16:23:00.003-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

GRACELESS AGING

My Mistress;
we had an extended sabbatical to breed apart,
your son from him
my son from her

Together again
your small breasts sag like cloth change purses,
the decades deflating
the platinum perkiness to impertinent pennies
-- the small change interest paid on life’s investment

Gravity pulls us
into the spinning grave that is Earth
Gravity pulls us from the warm light
sparkling in our eyes
rewarding our devotions & celebrations
with brittleness, tumors & Alzheimers.

Gravity pulls us
D
E....D
E....O......D
P....O......O
.....M......W
.............N
Gravity, the ungracious gargoyle crushing cartilage
subverting our uprighteousness
bending our spines to its swill

Gravity pulls mine down also;
what once was pulled up robust ready & red,
resplendent in bloody lust
the bold exclamation point of my want you & want you & want you
pointing all proud & loud to the glorious gods
droops now with the dumb destiny of sated desires

After a lifetime of flights of furious fancy
in the vast lunatic lunaverse of my imagination
I am descending onto the runway
without landing gear.

A FIST FULL OF FREEDOM

2009-09-28T12:07:00.001-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

Poets Fled to Their Garrets

2009-09-23T21:55:00.000-04:00

THE BLONDE BITCHES OF BLAKE

2009-09-06T15:56:00.009-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

THE BLONDE BITCHES OF BLAKE

Ten years ago, a ménage a trois of bitches became renown throughout the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry for saving 20,000 annotated anthologies of William Blake’s Collected Poetry from a fate worse than mediocrity.

In the heat of Word War 738, the main library of Poempeii had suffered a major airstrike from Bland Land and collapsed. Bills of lading indicated that the platinum-printed Blake anthologies had been delivered the day prior to the strike. The anthologies were nowhere to be found in the lightly-damaged shipping & receiving depot of the library. No other evidence was available to indicate the location of the books in the vast complex of the library, so Ginger, Honey and Sugar were called in.
The collapsed library was fragile and perilous. This fine family of bitches consisting of a mother and two daughters, were undeterred and sniffed out the precise location amid the rubble. Their sense of scent was so highly developed that the bitches needed only a single line of “Tyger, tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night” to trace the whereabouts of Blake’s glorious illuminations. A brigade of Virility Verb Volunteers from the National Bard excavated the area and rescued the buried anthologies not ten minutes before the ground gave in, swallowing high literature in a single belch of banality.

Throughout the imagine nation, the poetariet celebrated; units of verse of the unitverse gathered in a Million Muse March to pressure the Poetburo to designate the trio as the Blonde Bitches of Blake. The following year later the bitches were promoted to the honoured poetsition of providing escort services for visiting artist dignitaries from other creative sectors of the imagine nation. The bitches began their careers in Poettsburgh, Poemsylvania distinguishing the distinctive scents of ubiquitous free verse, the boozy breath of limericks, the delicate fragrances of rhyme schemantras and the brittle odour of aging sonnets. Their tight familial bond provides a visceral collaboration that transcends all previous pack conjunctives.

They achieved the highest level of success for the Lost and Profound Dep’t of the Poetection Agency of Poempeii where they had been employed for the first half of their career. There are numerous instances each year of poetry and portions of poetry being windnapped out of a child’s careless hands. Random breezes will swipe a first draft rhyme, as easily as a fully developed sonnet.

Poettsburgh authorities released incident reports for 2008 revealing that 16 limericks, 4 quatrains, 2 rhyming couplets, and an entire sonnet had been swept away by wind. The Blonde Bitches of Blake were known to be able to follow the traces of imagination regardless of where the poems had been flung by intransigent gusts.

The bitches also served in the Sub-verse Dept for a handful of years. This is an odious but necessary service for the imagine nation – the search and seizure of doggerel from the pulp friction industry.

JENNIFER LYNCH TEXTUAL PREDATOR

2009-08-26T21:03:00.001-04:00

The Poetburo of the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry announced that Mz Jennifer Lynch, head honcho of the bureacrazy of bloated bland glands known as the Canadian Human Rights Commission has been convicted on several counts of textual assault without a Poetic Licence. It must be understood that the imagine nation is the ultimate State of Diversity and it will defend its turf against the textual predators of political correctness.

PREVENT MEDIOCRITY, BE POETICALLY CORRECT.

The state has no right to be in the bedrooms or mouths of the imagine nation.

SANDING IN ART

2009-08-26T12:01:00.000-04:00

BELIEVE IN IT

2009-07-25T14:56:00.002-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

Amendments to the Poetic Licencing Act

2009-07-24T15:02:00.000-04:00

KATE MARSHALL-FLAHERTY READS "TAKE NOTICE"

2009-07-18T13:36:00.003-04:00

July 16, 2009 Kate Marshall-Flaherty arrived in Cobourg with a trunk full of poetry and charm. She warmed the audience a Meet @ 66 King Street, the monthly venue of poetry readngs, third Thursday of each month.

Summer Sale @ POEM Building Centre, Poettsburgh

2009-07-11T16:25:00.000-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

2009-07-09T10:26:00.001-04:00

video platform video management video solutions free video player

POETENCY PLACE OPENS IN POETTSBURGH

2009-07-07T15:18:00.002-04:00

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Christopher Hitchens & Free Speech

2009-06-30T23:25:00.000-04:00

WANTED ON CHARGES OF TEXTUAL ASSAULT

2009-06-27T23:46:00.000-04:00

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Allah is Theological Totalitarianism

2009-06-26T15:19:00.000-04:00

COMING SOO TO A CITY NEAR YOU

2009-06-26T15:18:00.000-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

FREEDOM FLAG OF IRAN

2009-06-24T12:28:00.000-04:00

Maple Leaf Butterflag

2009-06-24T11:54:00.001-04:00

Freedom For Iran

2009-06-24T01:07:00.000-04:00

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The Battle of Ballad Bunker

2009-06-11T11:33:00.004-04:00

'FREE' FOUND SLAUGHTERED

2009-05-16T23:20:00.001-04:00

FREE (to Abbie Hoffman) by Robert Priest

2009-05-16T21:46:00.001-04:00

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TREE OF LIFE, BUDAPEST

2009-05-05T21:44:00.003-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

I took this snapshot in 1985 of a work of art in the courtyard of the main synagogue in Budapest. It was financed by American actor Tony Curtis, who has Jewish Hungarian roots. Aside from the aesthetics of this silver weeping willow, there are thousands upon thousands of silver leaves, each one bearing the engraved name of a Hungarian Jew who had been murdered in the holocaust. A far better photo of the sculture can be seen here. I have returned several times to Budapest over the years, and often to go to this memorial.

FREEDOM SONNET

2009-05-01T03:38:00.002-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

A sonnet to live by. It follows the rhyme schemantra of a Shakespearian Sonnet (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). Each word means freedom; from top to bottom (Czech, Russian, French, Polish, German, Hungarian, English)

ROLLING STONES 1965 ticket stub

2009-04-22T20:48:00.001-04:00

For Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada. Note the price $4.00.

Debris From a Well-Hung Imagination

2009-04-17T12:42:00.000-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

SHAKESPEARE FOUND GUILTY

2009-04-16T12:44:00.002-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

William (The Bard) Shakespeare was found guilty of all charges pertaining to his involvement in organized rhyme schemes. He was declared,“the Poetriarch of an Elizabethan rhyme family whose influence continues to reverberate throughout the Anglosphere.”

The Final Report of the Commission On the Causes and Manifestations of Divergent Think Procedure Concerning the Origin of the Apoetheosis of Organized Rhyme Throughout the Anglosphere delivered its findings to the Poetburo of the Peoples Republic of Poetry last month. It was released to the public at an impress conference held this morning in the grand chambers of the House of Uncommons.

The 392-year investigation conducted by generations of Rhyme Scheme Investigators from the Creative Intelligence Anarchy, (CIA) declared that Shakespeare, was the undisputed “Poetriarch of organized rhyme.” They compiled considerable cause to support the centuries’ old contention that Shakespeare had attempted to conceal his involvement in rhyme.

“The CIA does not deliver any new material to the light of day,” said Wally Keeler, Poetician 1 of the Peoples Republic of Poetry, “A re-examination of all the poetagonists and accessories to Shakespeare’s prolific rhymes did bring a refreshing new perception to his activities. Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing when he was committing these rhymes. Fortunately for English literature, his attempts to cover-up his iambiguity activities failed.”

The Final Report, unlike Interim Reports I thru LXVII, focussed exclusively on the primary evidence of 154 sonnets. Shakespeare committed most of his rhymes in sonnets.

The Report declared that “Shakespeare's poetency was so fecund that his rhyme schemantra of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG became the stanza operating procedure that pollened through the ages by swarms of ambitious little pick-poets bent on rhyme-sprees of poetical proportions. Generations of poets became addicted to the form, trafficking it through countless anthologies and chapbooks that eventually found their way into school systems. The Sonnet came to bear his name and dominated all other sonnet rhyme schemantras. This rhyme-spree eventually lost its pre-eminent position when a school of literatistas implemented a Rhyme-Stoppers program by importing outside agitators, especially vers libre from the francophonie.”

Poet Keeler extolled the breaking of the grip of this rhyme family. “Shakespeare remains omnipoetent. His poetry prevails. That was never the problem. It was the unrelenting collateral damage from his white lace collar rhymes that began to choke creativity; it was that which needed addressing. Vers Libre liberated the Imagine Nation of Poetry.”

“Thankfully, most pulp friction relating to the rhyme-a-dozen ilk found a place at the local Five & Rhyme of the greeting card industry, instead of in the literary circles and triangles of the modern age.”

Emerging poet, Jim Johnstone, questioned the Final Report, asserting that it “…appears to be nothing more than a War on Rhyme. Rap revivals of recent years have found a new and vibrant niche for African-American rhyme families. The prevalence of White Anglo-Saxon Poetestants has exhausted itself. The Final Report is nothing more than a autopsyturvy of ye olde case rhymes."

Poet Keeler said the Peoples Republic of Poetry has “no exclusionist or segregationist policy concerning rhyme. We are aware that African-American rhyme families are currently on the crest of a new rhyme wave. We exclude nothing from our domain in the Imagine Nation except mediocrity.”

The Final Report went on to assert that history has amply proven that never has there been a rhyme family unlanced by a leak sooner or later. Shakespeare’s extensive attempts to keep knowledge of his sonnets restricted to his Elizabethan rhyme family was first betrayed in 1598 by Francis Mere in Palladis Tamia. A year younger than Shakespeare, Mere described himself as “Maister of Arte of both Universities” and lauded Shakespeare‘s plays, declaring; “As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis”.

These comments did not trouble Shakespeare. He had already entered his first poem, Venus and Adonis, into the Stationer’s Registrar, April 18, 1593. His second poem, The Rape of Lucrece, was registered May 9, 1594. Without irony, William Leake, a well-known stationer at the time, obtained the rights to publish Venus and Adonis in 1596, but refrained from publishing it for several years. The reason for this delay remains a mystery. Mere’s betrayal was his reference in Palladis Tamia to Shakespeare’s “sugared Sonnets” which he shared only “among his private friends".

Biron gave voice on behalf of Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost: IV. ii, “I am betrayed by keeping company with men like men of inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?” It was noted that Shakespeare was not making any admission of involvement in organized rhyme; nevertheless the challenge was put forth.

Shakespeare’s rhyme schemes were first exposed to the public in 1599. Without authorization, two sonnets were leaked and published in The Passionate Pilgrim. No records exist to describe the breadth, depth and height of hurt and rage that swooneth directly the hearte of The Bard at this personal exposure. Shakespeare declined interviews and spoke only through the proxy voices of the characters in his plays: “Men of few words are the best men". Everything indicated that this was the personal credo of Shakespeare.

Once again Biron spoke up to defend his author: “I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy.” Shakespeare’s voices were offered up to spin the yarn that he was beyond himself, that other powers drove him to rhyme. King Ferdinand of Navarre also spoke up with a back-handed declaration, “I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion.”

Mistress Quickly, a frisky frolic from an Eastcheap tavern, supping a cup too many at Dr Caius’ house, attempted to pass the rhymes off on fairies, “Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme.”

Shakespeare regarded his deeply personal sonnets off limits to the public; they were addressed with unrestrained passion and intense intimacy to a “fair youth” and later to a “dark lady”. Shakespeare was meticulous about concealing the identities of these two accessories in rhyme. Despite all attempts, Shakespeare successfully befuddled the rigorous research of the Oxfordians, who were devoted to discrediting Shakespeare as “bequeathing a doggerel’s breakefaste for all the ages.”

The Federal Bureau of Inspiration, which often collaborates with the Creative Intelligence Anarchy, found that gossip amongst some literatistas suggested Shakespeare had bitextual tendencies and that the fair youth was a boy lover. It is certain that the Poetriarch was smitten by the youth, but evidence of The Bard’s bitextuality remains inconclusive. By contrast, his later sonnets addressed to a dark lady, committed stimulating sex rhymes.

In either case, the “fondling hearte was a-throbbin’ with a clan destinie” outside the marital embrace of the mother of his children, Anne Hathaway. This was likely the prime motive explaining The Bard’s reticence to expose his romantic rhyme spree. There is no evidence indicating that Ms Hathaway got wind of his rhymes; her reaction remains a matter of speculative fiction.

After the brief outing of two Sonnets, the issue of Shakespeare’s organized rhymes remained quiescent for several years. Rhyme Scheme Investigators stitched a scenario from Shakespeare’s characters that may explain this period when a blind eye prevailed.

Shylock announced, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" This was followed by Dick speaking out in King Henry the Sixth, Part II (Act IV, Scene II) “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". Obviously, Shakespeare was not to be trifled with concerning his rhymes, and the Sonnets remained within the tight embrace of the Elizabethan rhyme family for several more years.

Nevertheless, the “daggers in men’s smiles” glistened again. A large number of Shakespeare’s rhymes were published in 1609, again without authorization. This was a major breech of omerta poetocols of Shakespeare’s concealment activities. This publication was the beginning of establishing him as The Poetriarch of the rhyme fraternity that continues to this day. Nevertheless, attempts at concealment of his rhyme spree continued with varying degrees of success.

Scholars have fingered and theorized the fact that the 1609 edition of his poems was dedicated to “Mr W. H.” as “the only begetter” of the poems. Thomas Thorpe, the publisher, failed to reveal if this dedication was written by himself or by Shakespeare. William Jaggard, had a 20-year involvement with The Poetriarch, printing poems and plays. Marchette Gaylord Chute, in his 1949 study, Shakespeare of London, wrote, “William Jaggard was in general a reputable printer and it was only when he was dealing with Shakespeare’s work that he became at all unethical…”

Shakespeare’s grief at this exposure of his intimate passions was unbearable. Dromio of Syracuse lamented Shakespeare’s pain in The Comedy of Errors: II, ii: “Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, when in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme.” Shakespeare presented his case best in As You Like It, III, ii, when Rosalind posed the defence’s question, “But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?” and Orlando spoke for The Bard, answering, “Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.”

Shakespeare’s First Folio survived only as a fragmentary copy -- the date of publication lost forever because of a missing title page. The Final Report compared many of these unfortunate happenstances with the Watergate activities of the early 1970’s, in particular, the clumsy explanation of the 18-minute gap of a telephone tape recording of U.S.A. President Richard Nixon’s cover-up activities.

It is certain that Shakespeare wanted his rhyme schemes concealed from the public eye and when this failed, there is sufficient evidence that clumsy attempts had been made to redirect and obfuscate responsibility for the rhymes. Other elements of the Illuminati du jour, who also dabbled in rhyme, ran interference, but ultimately failed in their task.

Samuel Pepys ruthlessly described the 1595 "A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream" as "the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life."

Voltaire stepped into the fracas, asserting that "Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada." If that were not enough, he added that "Shakespeare is the Corneille of London, but everywhere else he is a great fool". This was later divined as inadvertently prophetic, because the Poetriarch of the rhyme family became not just the Corleone of London, but of the imperial Anglosphere.

The spread of The Poetriarch’s omnipoetency eventually morphed into unbridled Bardolatry. In 1769, David Garrick, a renown actor of his time, whose mouth has been “bruisethed all tendermess in the tendril’s of rhyme” of Shakespeare, unveiled a statue in Startford-upon-Avon and read a poem crescending with:

“‘tis he, ‘tis he
The God of our Idolatry”

Not the be outdone, George Bernard Shaw, in 1901, took responsibility for coining and embedding “Bardolator” in the preface to his play The Devil’s Disciple. Other notable accessories to rhyme are Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, William Hazlitt, and Harold Bloom, among countless others.

Rhyme Scheme Investigators found over the centuries that poetry circles and triangles have been praising the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time and concluded that William (The Bard) Shakespeare continues to be the “Poetriarch of organized rhyme.”

Shakespeare was confident of the everlasting poetency of his organized rhymes; addressing the fair youth of his affections in Sonnet LV, The Bard declared: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”

Ezra Levant: Not a Nerd from the Herd

2009-04-15T12:40:00.005-04:00

So this is the man who is a menace to the fabric of Canada’s society. Yes, yes, he’s holding his book upsidedown like a salt shaker, a clever graphic device. And don’t let the happenstance of “& Hot” in the background over his head mislead you – unless it was put up there by his wife. But it is the face. Look at it. He’s got that nerdy, somewhat clownish/mischievous look on his face. And the complexion, sheesh, it’s so well-bred white-bread baby’s bottom cheeks – if only he had ears. He’s just too damn cute to be a hero; it’s incongruous. One would expect a free speech crusader to be gruff, ill-mannered, much like Bukowski, or Hitchens or Choamsky, but not a nice lad from law school. And if you ran a big bad bold bureaucrazy, wouldn't your take on this guy be that he is a pansy pushover.

Ezra Levant embodies the truism that FREE SPEECH fits all.

BLAND LAND BLASTS POETRY

2009-04-14T12:26:00.004-04:00

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Late last night, Poet Jim Johnstone, was arrested at a poetry reading on charges of conspiracy to commit chemical catastrophe.

Mundane Intelligence 5 arrested Poet Johnstone on an outstanding warrant issued by the Banality Boner Bureaucrazy of Bland Land. The whereabouts of his detention remain a matter of speculative fiction at this time.

In a Declaration of Dreck & Droll issued this morning by the Prosaic Parliament of Bland Land, Poet Johnstone has been charged with “conspiracy to smuggle and distribute chemicals with the purpose of disabling the production of mediocrity."

“The aggressively expansionary policies of the United Imagine Nations must halt. The Imagine Nations are constantly overthrowing the peaceful complacency of the established order with new ideas, new concepts, new precepts, new thisism and neo thatism. Give it a post-retro rest!” declared the Dreck & Droll Declaration.

“We have arrested development of any further sub-verse cursive activity from the Peoples Republic of Poetry, a particularly odious state of mind renown to infect the deepest recesses of human sensibility, inspiring people to rebel against the “status quota.” Poets are always defaming mediocrity, preventing it from entering their precious anthologies and literary journals. They are a Discrimi Nation. This blatant blandophobia must stop.”

Poet Johnstone, second place winner of the 2008 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s annual literary awards, was reading material from his recent book, The Velocity of Escape, at Yawning Heights, an austere cafeteria in the community centre of Mediocrity Mall when agents from MI5 took him into custody.

MI5 rubber-stamped Poet Johnstone, releasing a greyscale mugshot displaying a piece of ‘compromising evidence’ which appears to be the formula for the velocity of escape written on a napkin that had been “secreted inside the empty barrel of a ballpoint pen” in Poet Johnstone’s lab jacket.

The Poemland Security Department of the Peoples Republic of Poetry immediately issued a purple prose alert to the poetariet, advising of the current danger of travel into the vast arid flatlines of Bland Land.

Poet Edward Nixon, raconteur and host of the Livewords poetry reading series said, “I’ ve collaborated with Poet Johnstone many times in recent years. The charge reeks of set-up. It is stanza operating procedure for Poet Johnstone to have a few nerdy behavioural manifestations. After all, he molests intestinal tracts like a sushi salad in pursuit of his educational ambitions.”

“The Bland Glands have bloated themselves to an explosive extreme.” declared Poet Wally Keeler at a hastily called impress conference. “Their Banality Boners need to stanza down and release Poet Johnstone immediately! There is no need to take their current crisis out on Poetry.”

Poet Keeler was referring to the outbreak of writer’s blockade that has spread through all genres of Bland Land in recent months. This unique drought of mediocrity was especially pernicious in the pulp friction industry, with the closing of several publishers of romance yarns, grocery store tabloids and other sources of crap.

Poet Lionel Kearns reported last week that the vast Clone & Cliché recycling industry had been experiencing a precipitous drop in supplies and was “unable to meet the heavy demand of the bored and brainless.”

Poet Joe Rosenblatt threatened to swarm Bland Land with delirious dithyrambs of business bees. “There are billions of them all over, ready to serve Poetry at the drop of a grain of pollen. Their business is the promiscuous distribution of fertility, and god knows, Bland Land is in need of that.”

Poet Keeler added, “The social sedation of The Bland with a balanced and regular supply of medicinal mediocrity appears to be breaking down in our troublesome neighbour, Stag Nation.”
Poet Keeler continued,“The insufferable boredom caused by chronic reprints, reruns & recycling is causing textonic shifts in the flatline of their general somnambulence. Totalitarian torpor is losing its power. They’ve no creative class providing fresh ideas. They’re fucked.”

A dimmed wit who works for the Band of Bland Glands said Poet Johnstone is accused of leading a team of Pharmaceutical Performance Poets and post-retro deconstructivistas to develop an antithesis-elixer to Write Away, the renown decongestant of writer’s blockade. Poet Johnstone was a member of the team developing the decongestant. The warrant application accused Poet Johnstone of acting in concert with other emerging poets and polluting the River of Rhyme with this antithesis-elixer. The river flows through Limerick Land into Bland Land.

Technical documents released by MI5 assert that the filtration devices installed up stream to retain the most nutritious rhymes from the river had been:

(1) tampered by the installation of typewriter ribbons from Poet Joe Rosenblatt’s early typewriters and that the said ribbons had been

(2) dipped into the nectar of fragrant yellow flowers plucked from the Quinte Hotel poems of Poet Al Purdy and

(3) infected with the in verse ingredients of Write Away

(4) with the purpose of congesting the output of mediocrity from The Bland who rely on the River of Rhyme as a supplementary nutrient to their generally impoverished diet.

The Peoples Republic of Poetry has denied any program exists to contaminate Bland Land with the purpose of shutting down mediocrity. “We are fed up with their scurrilous blanders against Poetry. In an ideal world mediocrity would not exist. Our policy is one of Mutual Cold Exist Stance” declared the Minister With Poetfolio.

The Peoples Republic of Poetry is preparing to review the viability of its outreach programs. The ten-year outreach program sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Inspiration of the Peoples Republic of Poetry is expiring later this year.

The outreach programs of the PRP are meant to attract and identify those with underdeveloped bland glands and to offer them assistance to immigrate to the United Imagine Nation of their choice.

Last spring, the PRP announced the fast-tracking of refugees from Grief and defectors from Despair to become full members of the Creative Class. This provoked a brief dipoematic spat with Bland Land at the time, but nothing more came of it.

“We are cognizant that emerging poets sometimes supplement their income with the export of doggeral to the existing glut in Bland Land. The importation of mediocrity into the Peoples Republic of Poetry is restricted for research purposes and exploitation by collagistas. The trade imbalance with Bland Land will continue,” declared the 366th Interim Report of the Commission On the Causes & Manifestations of Divergent Think Procedure Concerning Dipoematic Relations With The Menace of Mediocrity.

Police Report Missing Quatrain

2009-04-06T15:13:00.002-04:00

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. . . Police in Poettsburg issued a pastel alert for a missing quatrain, last seen yesterday morning in the vicinity of Alliteration Ave and Bryon Blvd. The missing quatrain is the second stanza of a passionate love sonnet being composed by Ms Emily Thickenson for her lover.
. . . The missing quatrain is in cursive hand-writing on unlined desert-beige 20lb bond stationary. The quatrain is on a piece of paper, torn on three sides. It can be identified by the last line, “… loving your blue lies in bluer eyes.”
. . . Ms Thickenson has offered the reward of a three volume-set of pre-Columbian Arctic Erotica for information leading to the whereabouts of the missing quatrain.
. . . In an interview yesterday evening, Ms Thickenson described how she had been sitting on a outdoor bench in the upper best side district of Poettsburg, sorting papers for an upcoming anthology, “when I was swarmed by a swirl of reckless breezes that carried off several loose pages, including the torn pieces. I spent the next half hour recovering everything from the nearby park and field, except the missing quatrain.”
. . . Ms Thickenson’s bff, Ms E. B. Browning, VI, requested that the media be sensitive to Ms Thickenson’s obvious embarrassment about tearing up the sultry sonnet by mistake. Ms Browning VI said “I thought it was the piece of doggeral doo she had written for the bastard who had overcharged her for the half dozen rhyming couplets she told me she had purchased at the Five & Rhyme store the day before."
. . . Ms Thickenson interjected, “My anger got the best of me. I tore up the sonnet in error. I had been composing that sonnet for my lover’s birthday next week.”
. . . She realized her mistake of tearing up the sonnet and placed the pieces between the sheets of her manuscript for safety, but it turned out be for irony when they were tragically wind-napped that morning.
. . . Ms Thickenson’s concerns are deeply personal. She explained, “I was looking forward to go a-roving late into the night with my lover, because my heart is still as loving and the moon remains as bright. My sheath is always resilient; my soul is just as strong. The night was made for loving and I want to sing my song.”
. . . “I’m not a woman who practices safe text; I failed to make copies and I failed to memorize it. I can only recall that portion of the last line, ‘… loving your blue lies in bluer eyes.’ That quatrain means a lot to me, to my man, and to poetry. A lyric lost, lessens us all.”

SHAKEDOWN by EZRA LEVANT: a Book Review

2009-03-29T15:37:00.002-04:00

SHAKEDOWN,
How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In the Name of Human Rights McClelland & Stewart Ltd

216 pages, $28.99

ISBN: 978-0-7710-4618-6

Ezra Levant’s recently released book, “SHAKEDOWN, How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights” is necessary reading for every Canadian with concerns about the most fundamental human right of all -- Free Speech. It should be required reading in every one of Canada’s secondary schools.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Levant mentions me by name in the book and lauds my “biting graphics and posters” that serve the cause of free speech. There is no conflict of interest; quite the opposite.

Levant‘s book is a highly readable compendium of the corruption and abuse of fundamental human rights committed by the political appointees to the Human Rights Commissions across Canada. Levant is composed of the holy trinity of being a lawyer, political activist and journalist. Oh, did I mention that he’s a Jew?

Does that matter? Yep. It affords him some minimal protection against the full-force wrath of the Human Rights Commissions because he is a born member of a “protected minority” whereas a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant like myself, is a born-target for an apology-flogging and as an easily-milked compensation cash cow. The HRC’s do not exact justice for individuals, but for groups. Individuals are mere representatives of groups.

Levant’s research reveals that the evil perps of human rights crimes consist almost to a person of white skinned, Christian, heterosexual people. Meanwhile Tamil extremists, Sikh extremists, Islamic extremists, just to name a few, who have been recorded in the public domain espousing hateful things against other groups, notably white-skinned Christian straights, get a free walk.

Another interesting phenomenon of HRCs is the 100% conviction rate. There is not a judicial court in the land with a perfect rate of 100%. Not even the Supreme Court of Canada has issued 100% unanimous findings of law. No other government agency has ever achieved such perfection. You’d have to visit North Korea, or any other totalitarian regime to find such 100% perfection.

We take pride in Canada’s checks and balances of our police and judicial systems, especially search warrants. These are not needed for HRCs. Newfoundland’s HRC has the power to “enter a building, factory, workshop or other premises or place in the province a) to inspect, audit and examine books of account, records and documents; or b) to inspect and view a work, material, machinery, an appliance or article found there. The person occupying or in charge of the (inspected) building, workshop, premises or place shall c) answer all questions concerning those matters put to them; and d) produce for inspection the books of account, record, documents, material, machinery, appliance or article requested.”

The offices of the local newspaper can be entered by any HRC officer to search and obtain all letters that have been written to them over the years, including unpublished ones. The editor and staff would be required, under penalty of contempt, to answer all questions about their personal knowledge of the seized letters. The HRC could go to their homes for material that may have been taken there. No warrant necessary. Unlike the police, there is no independent civilian oversight, nor internal monitoring to admonish an officer who overstepped an ethical boundary.

Unlike other government departments, HRCs have no ethical guidelines in place whatsoever.

This has led to considerable corruption of HRCs. An officer of the Cdn HRC became a member of several neo-Nazi internet groups and under various pseudonyms, posted anti-gay, anti-semitic and racist comments in order to heat up the hate of other homophobes, anti-semites, and racists to make their own hateful remarks. These same HRC officers think nothing of hijacking an innocent citizen’s internet account to make these hateful postings, and to do so while on payroll and the premises of the CHRC. They even hired a disgraced police officer who had been dismissed from her job for just cause -- just the kind of person that fit’s the needs of a Human Rights Commission.

Raja Khouri, former president of the Canadian Arab Federation complained about Canada putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list, then later wrote in the Globe & Mail, that it was “shameful” that Canada put Hamas on the terrorist list. Three months later he was rewarded with an appointment to the Ontario Human Rights Commission where he can pass judgement on the case of an Ontario Jew accused of Islamophobia. Partiality anyone? The OHRC is run by the same Barbara Hall, who, when she was Toronto’s mayor, had banned the Bare Naked Ladies from playing in Nathan Phillips Square because of the sexist name of their rock group.

Levant delineates numerous outrages of these HRCs, which came about, in part, because a complicit and complacent news media failed to do their job as scrutinizer of the state. They were mesmerized by the magic words, “human rights”. It’s secular church.

Ezra Levant, was the only publisher in North America to take the courageous responsibility of publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons for the very simple reason that they were a major international news story, and his readers deserved the right to see the primary documents of the news story. He became the only publisher in the world forced before a government agency to answer for his publishing “crimes” on this issue. The rest of Canada’s news media saw no problem, nor did they care a wink about the erosion of democracy’s most fundamental right -- free speech. They irresponsibly aided and abetted the implementation of sharia law on blasphemy throughout the Western world.

The news media ignored HRCs because only right-wing nutbars were having their rights trampled, so yawn, ho hum. It was true, of course, that the overwhelming targets of HRCs were marginal basement apartment neo-Nazi wing-nuts with double-digit followings. The HRCs noticed the complacency, and after decades of accumulated media fawning, they became a law unto themselves, bloated with the disease of political correctness and mediocrity, which has also contaminated the editorial offices of news media across the land.

While hundreds of thousands of newcomers arrived in Alberta, its HRC experienced a 15% drop in complaints in a year. Its own stats found that it took 7% longer to resolve a complaint. What would happen to a business that lost 15% of its customers and provided poorer service? It would have to drum up business fast. So Alberta’s HRC published 60,000 easy-to-read booklets encouraging new immigrants studying English as a second language to learn how to file complaints. The illustrated examples in the booklet demonstrated that no matter how trivial or speculative the problem, the newcomer “should always assume the culprit is racism” and that the HRC is there to fix it.

Levant asks, “why new Albertans are being conditioned to expect the worst of their fellow human beings. Do they (HRC) think its good for national morale when taxpayer funded agencies portray Canada as a country full of racists and teach newcomers that bigotry lurks in every coffee shop?”

Rev Boissoin was busted for authoring a letter which was published in the Red Deer Advocate. His letter contained his Christian religious belief that homosexuality is an abomination, as clearly stated in the Bible. After finding Boissoin guilty, the HRC wrote, “In this case, there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward.” There was only a theoretical victim, and that was good enough to punish Boissoin with a life sentence of censorship.

Boissoin was ordered to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” The lifetime ban wasn’t on hateful or discriminatory speech, but on “disparaging remarks.” He could not indulge in the same kind of disparaging remarks that gays are free to make about themselves in their own publications.

If anyone knows the tyranny of state censorship, it is the gay community. Egale, Canada’s largest gay advocacy lobby, stood in favour of Boissoin’s free speech, and told the Alberta HRC where they could shove the cash that they extorted from Boissoin. Egale “argued that a government that punishes a Christian for his views is no different and no better than one that punishes gays on the same basis.”

On of Canada’s most renown civil rights activists, Alan Borovoy, general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, was once an advocate of HRC’s, he has since become repelled by them. His most notable observation is this: “while abusers of civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s came from the right, today, they’re more likely to come from the left.” Borovoy’s book, The New Anti-Liberals, documents that pathetic transformation.

The great poet, John Milton, wrote one of the most important English documents against government censorship, The Areopagitica, 1644, wherein he wrote "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat … Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties ... though all the fields of doctrine were let loose to play on earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”

NICEBREAKER EZRA, NATIONAL POST

2009-03-28T22:50:00.003-04:00

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Three Romantic Poets

2009-03-23T10:49:00.000-04:00

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The Politics of Spring

2009-03-19T12:01:00.000-04:00

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BLAND LAND SLAMS THE IMAGINE NATION

2009-03-18T11:36:00.008-04:00

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“I’ve heard Poets in darkened backroom cafes describe how they tortured whole phrases into submission to satisfy their poetic needs. They amputate innocent redundancies. If a word in its natural appearance fails to suit them they sometimes neologize them. The consent of the word is disregarded.”

Thus spake a surprise witness who appeared yesterday before the ad schloc committee investigating so-called inhuman w/rites abuses in the Imagine Nation of Poetry.

Winston Smith Jr., whose father had been tragically tortured by the unrelenting mediocrity of Newspeak back in 1984, appeared before the committee set up by the Govern Mental Bureau Crazy of Bland Land as showcase for the dreck and droll of their bloated bland glands, going on and on a whine-spree of prosaical disproportions.

Prior to this appearance, ++unpoet Smith Jr had been provided with life-time residency in Poetry in deference to the tragic love affair that had led to his father’s premature mindlessmess while in the custody of the Mediocrity Militia of the Inner Party of Bland Land.

George Orwell’s poetic licence had been amended in 1948 to facilitate Smith Jr’s later defection from dread, after it had been discovered that his mother, Julia Jameson nee Jones, was booked for a follow-up series of sensitivity training in Room 101.

When Smith Jr came of age he had been sinecured as a tour guide for the retro-dystopian display at Totalitarian Towers Exhibition Hall on Memorial Mall in the Province of Poemerania. He was reported missing three months ago, his whereabouts unknown until his appearance at the ad schloc committee hearings in Bland Land.

Poet Wally Keeler, addressed the Imagine Nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry with a prepared statement early this morning.

“The Poetburo is dismayed by the apparent defection to despair by Winston Smith Jr. It is an exceedingly rare occurrence. The Imagine Nation is the most dynamic state of mind known to humankind.

It is unfortunate that he has joined the banality boner set and sought to curry favour by blandering the emotivation of the Prime Policy of Poetry Proselytization and Proliferation.

The Poetariet know who they are and make no apology for their individual, creative states of mind.”

Winston Smith Jr. testified at length at the committee hearing. Herewith is a selected montage of his scurrilous remarks; reader discretion should be exercised.

“There are roving gangs of limerick-louts blue-lining obese prose everywhere and smearing unwanted words and phrases with white-out in an attempt to obliterate them from the pages of literature. The Poets use strike-outs, write-overs, even complete erasure. It’s not a pretty sight and it‘s not just happening in Limerick Land spread along the lyrical banks of the mighty River of Rhyme, but throughout Poetry.

“The Poets call it culling the word. It’s verbicide. It’s forbidden by international flaw.”
“I saw first draft debris on many cutting room floors. It was an abattoir of avarice. Adverbs and adjectives were especially brutalized.

“Words are treated unequally in Poetry; they have a class system wherein verbs and stand-alone nouns are highly prized; other word functionaries are generally treated as second class at best.

“The unilingus rules of grammar w/rites that proclaim the equality and worth of all words in Bland Land, is constantly ridiculed and violated in Poetry.

“In a May 23, 1954 letter to Richard Eberhart, William Carlos William wrote, ‘I have never been one to write by rule, even by my own rules.’

“Wallace Stevens, wrote in Adagia, ‘Ethics are no more a part of poetry than they are of painting.’

“W. H. Auden declared, ‘All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.’

“This is the kind of mind set that continues to assault Bland Land. The Poets are proud of their textual assaults and widespread ink-letting.”

“I present exhibit #4891 produced by one MORIN, Bruce Gustave, aka 72-05-112959, a known genre-straddler of the Creative Class. This violent and hateful image that he created with his own hands is an example of the perversonality of many other units of verse of the unit verse. The image was distributed through a publication called A Penny Dreadful put out by Insomniac Press. It is a graphic incitement of violence against mediocrity, portraying the wild butchering posture that too many poets apply to their uber lit."

I assure this committee, the Poets do not act indiscriminately. To the contrary, they discriminate, and proudly so.

“In Toronto, Canada, for example, Poet Edward Nixon, Poet James Dewar, and other collaborators hold monthly workshops where they publicly and collectively discuss butchering criteria.

“The Poets claim this barbaric act is sanctified by the holy scripts and poems of William (The Bard) Shakespeare who had set the example, coining many new words. It’s sickening.

“Shakespeare, it must be remembered, is the poetriarch of an Elizabethan rhyme family. His leading involvement in organized rhyme was so powerful that a rhyme scheme was named after him.

“If Poets refuse to respect the harmless laws of grammar, how can we expect them to respect any other laws of civilized behaviour.

“Poets chronically denigrate the rhymes generated by our greeting card industry. These are victimless rhymes. They harm no one with their sentiments. Yet the prime target of the Poets remains their discriminatory assault against mediocrity on all fronts. It is unpoetic injustice.”

“There is a powerful Poetry lobby that has managed to take control of temporal government agencies in many parts of the world … arts councils and such like, finance this textual assault against us. There are writer’s unions, Poet leagues, and other conspiratorial agencies of influence and largesse. They have siphoned off all money, leaving nothing for mediocrity, controlling the literary media world wide. It is disproportional to the nth degree.

“The details of this threatening situation can all be found in “The Poetocols of the Learned Elders of Poetency, reputedly written by that anti-mediocrite, Wally Keeler”

J. Edgar Prufrock, currently on life support, testified by video from his hospital bed the previous day. Prufrock claimed that his personal life had been ruthlessly exploited to serve the poetic needs of Poet T. S. Elliot.

“He was merciless. He laid my etherised life out on a table of contents and autopsied me alive, in front of an audience of literturistas. To this very day my invaded privacy is on display in perpetuity“

“His channelling of stream of consciousness was for me a scream of consciousmess that he used to kick off his career. The first publication of this violation of my privacy was done in collaboration with that other Poet, Ezra Pound.

“My most intimate moments were revealed to all in Prufrock’s Pervigilium. I never wanted my story told. I wanted it kept private just as Guido da Montefeltro wanted his, but Poet Dante ignored this plea. The Poet was merciless, ++merciless.”

Richard Cory, III also testified to the violent ruthlessness of the Imagine Nation of Poetry.

“Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson exploited the deeply personal tragedy of my grandfather and set it to rhyme. It was flogged throughout the literary world in countless anthologies and was further exploited by Simon & Garfunkel, Van Morrison and Them.

“David Martin went on a rhyme spree against Richard Cory, penning three blithe stanzas in a poem titled The Richard Cory Effect;

This quaint little tale has been put to ill use
By media defenders of power abuse.
Placing their shroud over obvious crime,
They blithely refer to the Robinson rhyme.

He went on to further exploit my grandfather’s suicide, making a mockery of it by feigning empathy..

We hired a good hit man, and the boss didn't know it,
But I even sprung for a slick-writing poet.
As soon as the boss seen how good that it went
He called it the very best dime that we spent.
Now youse have all heard my gospel-truth story.
Too bad what we done to that slick Richard Cory

My grandfather’s suicide is even distributed to the desktops of adolescent children throughout the school systems of the Anglosphere.”

The ad schloc committee hearings are expected to drag on for another weary week of hack writers and bloated bland glands scraping their violin strings.

I DON'T HATE ALL N-WORDS

2009-03-16T22:28:00.000-04:00

I Don’t Hate All N-words, But I Do Discriminate Against These:
(dedicated to the female doggerel, Jennifer Lynch, Cdn Human Rights Commission)

No
Ne
Na
Nu
Nil
Nie
Nay
Nao
Non
Nem
Niet
Nein
Nyet
Neitun
Nijedan
Nihilistic

BANALITY BANDITS

2009-03-15T06:39:00.002-04:00

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VIXEN OF VERSE

2009-03-15T05:48:00.000-04:00

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MEDIOCRITY MILITIA

2009-03-15T03:50:00.000-04:00

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SCREAM of CONSCIOUSMESS

2009-03-15T00:34:00.001-04:00

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POETRY LOVERS FOUND DEAD

2009-03-14T17:20:00.004-04:00

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Two poetry lovers were found dead early yesterday after neighbours reported the stench of banality coming from a third stanza loft.

Rhyme Scheme Investigators from the Department of Sub Verse Activities were called in to conduct a critical review and quickly quarantined the second floor of the third stanza in the up-scale Towering Sonnets complex on the upper east side of Canto City.

Residents of the 14-story structure, noted for their formal discipline, were emotionally distressed and expressed concerns that a serial pulp fiction writer might be stalking blonde metaphors.

The Sorcerer of Symetric Sonnetry, who wished to remain pseudonymous, said that three blonde metaphors had walked into a bar last week and were accosted by a rabbi, a priest and an imam. “This is no joking matter,” he emphasized. “The metaphors were accused of being similes in disguise to better infiltrate the theological totalitarian foundation of regimes in the Realm of Religion. They threatened to make them footnotes in a third rate essay on depression era pulp fiction.”

Poet Mojgan Navidi, a refugee from the realm of repression of Iran, suggested that appropoetic authorities should investigate a possible connection to the dark side of Dread.

“These deaths are similes of what befell Parvaneh and Dariush Forouhra in Tehran.” she said. “They were also poetry lovers as well as dissidents of Dread until the banality of evil struck them down.”

She then recited some lines from one of Parvaneh’s poems:

Let us clear this dark trail
with the chimes of our hearts.
Let us sing the song of life
in the path of freedom

R.S.I. directors quickly set up an impress conference at the Ministry of Extraordinary Affairs, to allay the concerns of the Poetic Community that the farces of mediocrity and agents of repression have launched a new textual assault on organized rhyme in the Peoples Republic of Poetry.

The Ministry declined to identify the deceased for insecurity reasons, but neighbours say the lovers are Elizabeth and Robert Downing. Both were defectors from Despair in the process of writing their final Poetic Licence Exam for citizenship in the Peoples Republic of Poetry.
R.S.I. agents found several journals indicating a relatively swift deterioration in the poetic output of the lovers over the last two weeks.

“The journals had been chronologically dated by the poets. The deterioration appeared to began when the lovers began writing limericks, then descended to doggeral within days,” said Douglas Curran, director of the Forensic Foto Force. “The doggeral was quickly followed by an abundance of advertising copy. The last three dated journals contained only blank pages, with the exception of a single ellipse on the opening pages.”

Terry Woolf, an award winning videographer brought in by the R.S.I., said, “when I recorded the scene there appeared to be no evidence of overt violence, either on the bodies of the poetry lovers, or the premise. To say anything more would be transgressing into the realm of speculative fiction.”

The head of state of the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry who was attending a monthly poetry performance hosted by a leading Proselytizer of Poetry, James Dewar, assured the assembled units of verse of the UnitVerse that, “unlike composers of unfinished symphonies, Poetry will make sure that every sonnet has a rhyme schemantra. We will get to the bottom of this.”

The death of the poetry lovers who were affectionally known as a charming pair of rhyming couplets in the sonnet community came as a shock. Elegies and messages have been penned and pinned to the door of the lovers.

“LIVE UNCENSORED” declared one card. The ubiquitous “POETRY IS POETENCY” stickers were found everywhere in the neighbourhood.

WRITE AWAY Promises to Break Writer's Blockade

2009-03-08T12:09:00.001-04:00

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WRITE AWAY a Decongestant for Writer's Blockade

2009-03-08T11:45:00.002-04:00

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