It's A Dead World

The Great Irish Famine was a catastrophe that hit Ireland in the mid-1840s, caused by a fungal blight that destroyed the potato crop. It's not likely to ever happen again. I'm not likely to create another website ever again. There are pros and cons to calling it quits. Thank goodness.

One thing is for sure when the writing ends, there's more time to spin dead records. There's more time to make friends with the devil. The Grateful Dead made some of their best music live. Sure, Jerry Garcia had a touch of grey. There should've been more, but I'm eternally grateful.

I'm Beyond The Rum Diary if you're nasty.

It's a dead world after all.

Obscure Reality Tour

You've landed in The Great Beyond. I'm your tour guide. Nothing beyond you. That's a joke. A big year for the annual Cougars Eating Urine Popsicles party. It didn't happen. The church is quiet. 

Lean into the world outside of the church, and music is the window into the world beyond. For years and years, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" has been the most-played song on most rock radio stations, both locally and nationwide. Towards the bitter end of the Technossance, alternative radio formed, a comic music magazine emerged and there was change. Lesser-known Led was re-discovered. Earth sweat, AC/DC rocked, music moved me and literature re-popularized itself 'til the end of time. Amen.

It's a great world after all.

A Found Story: What Do You Say About It?

When you're done talking to the tree, say "Hello!" and go fly a kite. When you leave, remind yourself one great book is better than two crappy books. Fall asleep in your chair and fart so bad that you question the very concept of writing blogs. The Stoned Theory Of My Own Destruction doesn't suck. 

Read some of what Juliette had to say. She's read my story. Someone else who read my story is Jerry, and he's a little like me, but a better conductor.

I'm self-publishing next year, because it's publish and perish.

A Lost Story: Knock Down That Tree

The schizo stood and shook my hand in a forest. “Years ago,” he said, “when you lived a lifetime beyond sun and moon in a basement, or maybe Africa -- one day you promised, when you had become a crone, one who could only hobble, totter, drabble, dribble and leak, you promised to return from The Great Beyond. And you did. You are here. You told the congregation listening to your poetry and stories that you would take schizos into a forest and shout at them with a noble voice: ‘Nazis, Russians and friends. You were my neighbours and chose to murder my soul.’ You lived many lifetimes and yet you have returned. You have returned from The Great Beyond. You have returned with your broken, desperate heart. And you have lived beyond time.” And then the schizo finished speaking and slowly sat down to rest.

“I have returned to talk to you and to the dead, also,” I said. “To tell you that I have lived. I have lived to write many blogs in The Great Beyond. We mourn and we remember a past precedence. Those buried in the soil beneath these living trees. We live in the name of schizophrenia, mental illness and addiction. And we remember the names of unborn children. We take you as the example and then elevate you above the forest, because without you there cannot be a future.” I handed him some cold fast-food.

I turned around and then I turned on the ghetto-blaster. The rich music sounded magnificent. And then he sat more comfortably and took a bite of the Big Mac and tore a piece off the bun of the burger. “But I’m imagining that I’ll live beyond the end of a new tomorrow,” he said, “where there are no schizos.” He finished the end piece of the burger and chomped vigorously on the bun. Drool began to fall from his lip.

“Ronald McDonald is a clown and schizophrenia is an illness,” I said. “And you are as branded as McDonald’s and unless you can split that tree…” I pointed at the tree behind him. "There's no other way you can rid yourself from the clown within. To split means you must cut down the tree from the tree of loneliness and contempt.

He turned his head. “No,” he said, “I do not wish to split wood.”

“Then you would do well to hide from the world,” I said.

A Poem Without An End

Inside a haunted forest,
bruised lonely trees.
Inside a beaten tree
is battered wood.
Inside tree-parts
is a heart,
scared of an axe
beating faster
out of control
with fear
and me
cutting down
the tree,
ripping out
the roots.
Forever.

Richard Tattoni

Obituary For Donald J. Trump

"And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth." -- Revelation 11:18           

The Secretary-General of the UN is a noble person of moral standing and good ethics. But news about climate change burns a page of madness on the cover of the last available newspaper, as ashes for mankind. (Don’t mistake this for Bi-Polar Blues or God Kill The President.)

The marching band marches with their heads cut off.

Bill Clinton has difficulty getting it up with Viagra.

Internet hacking creates a job market for toddlers.

“Here lies a dead president,” the killer said, before blowing his brains out. I am truly sorry about writing a premature obituary for Donald J. Trump. What you stand for is dead. There is no brotherhood of ISIS from the needle in a haystack or flies to the wildebeest or skinheads to Nazism or godfathers to the horse’s head. The intended result of Trump defeating the woman, Ms. Clinton, occurred in the last American presidential race. Nazism is better for it. Trumpism is a crude form of American fascism, but Canadians are not better or worse for it, and we do not care. Canadian boys are buying Russian-made laptops, dying in the face of retarded politics after losing a pay check to on-line dating websites run by elderly Ukrainian women sending selfies of a czarina on the toilet in a melted igloo of the Northwest Territories in the money-grubbing north.

Excuse me. Excuse me, but there are many Canadian presidents (of companies including a President’s Choice empire). NAFTA might loan a chef’s hat to fit over a better machine-made rug before tweeting pics of another fake Don to inspire hiring and firing at the Food Network. The Don is alive in well in Canada, but it has got nothing to do with Donald Trump and we are damn busy studying The Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco and The Sopranos.

President Trump can go straight to corporate hell, as the rich tax fraud he is, and always will be; and I would not know the difference, and I could care less. And what if President Trump is reading his death and I am writing this for him? What would I write for a delusional mind? I would go to Trump Tower and Skype him ways to improve the dictatorship and absolute rule.

Do you call yourself a true Republican? Shame on you after opposing Richard Nixon and dodging the Vietnam War. Do you really control the city states, inner cities and campuses across your vast empire? And why do I waste free time? There is no better justice than killing you on paper (or the screen of a computer will do). You unapologetic bastard-ass Republican mule. Actually, Ivanka looks pretty hot dressed in all-black. If there is anything I can do to dig a hole, great enough for your mountainous rug, please let me know, because I would work on it in heartbeat. But it’s not over ‘til the Rosie sings. 

There are walls to be built, speeches to make great and fake news to give to your people. Party in the glorious paradise of hell that you have built, and then tell them that the apprentice sent you. There is work to do, conspiracies to build around a wall, and your ego to grow impossibly bigger. And you are not actually Donald Trump. It is your fake alias name. A stage name to make yourself into the president ass-clown of a nation. Chinese talk shows are waiting.

Please remember me when you are on your knees begging to Satan and asking to apologize, begging for mercy, as your first and last act of forgiveness in the Chinese ghettos of morbid hell. There is a special kind of hell for you. Only the good presidents were fondly remembered with untalented speeches before a greater wall, greater fake rug and greater dreams to deport your soul to a black hole in space. It’s aliens thinking huger. Trumpism ruined the common dream, and dreamers are pissing bigger puddles in the back alleys of streets (soon to be named after Scott Baio). Make drugs great again, before escaping into Trump Tower and hiding from the embarrassment and shame after selling out America. You shall be missed. There but for the grace of God, goes Donald J. Trump.

A Day In The Life Of An Earthworm

What’s punk without the soul of grunge and the spirit of funk? A heavier world includes blues-inspired grunge metal as the perfect sound for earth and dirt and worms. Nothing in the world could stop me from worming my way in. Flashback to a West Coast mid-summer’s night in 1994 after Kurt Cobain’s stupid death.

He was fondly remembered. I wrote him poems as a die-hard fan and I liked his music. I saw a few of his first gigs when I visited my aunt and uncle in Seattle. Across the street played my childhood idol slowly losing atoms to chaos amidst the indifferent mountains and hardcore punk rivals. Piece by piece he’d give his soul. Piece by piece I’d join him. And then I went back one last time. To say that I wasn’t part of the whole problem was like not believing Green Eggs and Ham and Fried Green Tomatoes could be made into cool rhythm and blues.

One memorable night in Seattle, I took a page out of the post-grunge post-death of Kurt Cobain. Tilting my head back, the glass of scotch had given me a huge buzz, slowly focusing my eyes at the vaulted ceiling, posters of The Doors and Black Sabbath, but Kurt Cobain was to-die-for. Freely visiting from Burlington, Ontario, Canada and I'd made it inside a rich penthouse in Seattle, Washington to join in on a party dedicated to Kurt’s sick memory. Courtney Love walked over to me and the black leather couch, beside the rustic bar area. She was pale. She wore a long black dress with gold beads draping down from her neck. I'd never forget her don’t-fuck-with-me attitude and sexy, bitchy, out-of-this-world, whore-like attraction almost as though she'd just come off the set of Casting Couch.

“Never-mind the suicide note,” she said.

            

“What?” I asked. I actually never saw the note.

         

“Kurt really wanted to go to Starbucks with you.” There was a tear in her eye.

            

“What? How do you know this?” I asked.

            

“I talked to him on the phone before he got stoned and took his life.”

            

“Seriously?”

            

“Kurt read Earthworms Squirming On A Fishhook and he liked it.”

            

“Thanks,” I said, “I wrote the poem after getting high on a fishing trip.”

            

“A lot of good that did,” she said sarcastically. “What difference does it make?”

            

“Earthworms breathe through the skin and they can’t stay outside in the light for more than hour or they will die. But they don’t feel pain.”

            

“Kurt was a worm,” she said.

            

“I know,” I said and sighed.        

            

“He needed help.”

            

“I’m sorry.” Holy shit, I thought to myself how suddenly I’d become a part of the whole fucking problem. I stared at her sad eyes and her freshly powdered nose.

"You're not sorry." 

Hole's troubled star singer turned away. Her bleached clothes, dyed-purple hair and watery eyes made me think maybe poets were Brothers In Arms and maybe I’d listened to enough Suicidal Tendencies mixed with a twinge of Nirvana. They opened the door to me, so I could join the party and I was grateful. My eyes were wide open watching everyone with drinks in their hands and stoned frowns like the world had ended. Sir Paul McCartney stood in a lonely corner.

Courtney rudely ended the conversation and went to the bathroom. Background music of The Doors whisked her away into another room where she closed the bathroom door. Roadhouse Blues got louder and louder.

The more I got drunk, the more I thought (and believed) how I was separated at birth with Kurt and owed him all apologies for not sitting down to talk over Zen Green Tea and a good old-fashioned orgy of poetry.

I shook my head (almost like I was listening to AC/DC) and just thought wow the whole night.

Have Yourself A Very Chaucerian Christmas

Image Courtesy Of Pixabay

A Very Brady Christmas is cool and learning a Brady has died really gets you into the holiday spirit. But I just believe today’s BS news spreads differently (whether it gets under your skin or not, everyone is on Facebook or Twitter or Jeopardy). Everyone is following Chaucer Doth Tweet @LeVostreGC or more importantly your friend becoming famous right in front of your biased eyes.

My studying of poetry evolved over the years. I went from olde Shakespeare to Kerouac and everything in between. I wish I could get paid to edit Mexico City Blues. It started in high school, the curriculum was saturated with Shakespeare and it enriched my life, but that’s just the beginning. Unfortunately, I'd keep reading the poison after high school and the last Shakespeare book I read was Twelfth Night, a romantic comedy. It’s dead winter and I’m scum for just thinking about a Midsummer Night’s Dream to the point where I’m going to spew this for what it’s worth:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Mohawk College, Indian Summer, Indian Fall, Indian Winter then reading the Miller’s Tale and portions of the Canterbury Tales and Tennyson’s Idylls of the Kings and that’s my new adult life in a nutshell. My favourite Tennyson poem is the Lady of Shalott which is narrative verse. I also like a lot of Robert Frost’s reflections and traditional verse from Donne to Keats to Poe. Lately, I’ve been reading more free verse. I’m in the middle of Jack’s Mexico City Blues. I’m done reading Margaret Atwood’s The Door and also another Canadian Alison Pick’s The Dream World. I also got back into to Flowers For Hitler after learning about Leonard Cohen passing away. My favourite Cohen song is Closing Time. What’s my favourite Christmas radio show from Slaughterhouse-Tuesday, aka The Death Of Terrestrial Radio, aka Lionheart Leaks? I’m leaking this out for what it’s worth (despite its inappropriateness).

Why are stores not adapting or why is media not evolving to modern times? Because they’re closing the doors, closing shop, they don’t have time to fight the Industrial Revolution of this century. The Middle Ages, a time of political turmoil, unstable economies, and significant social changes, didn’t see Indians or cold weather in Canada, so what the fuck did Chaucer actually know?

Busy with his duties, Chaucer had little time to devote to writing poetry, he'd write poetry in his spare time, and instead, Chaucer spent most of his time eating and drinking. He would feast on the earliest known hot dog to man and make time for lasagna, breaded pork chops and Caesar salad in no particular order. Simply attempt writing Chaucerian stanzas or rhyme royal and bring back #ThirstyThursday because prohibition hasn’t started again (yet).

Worst 11 Modern Drinks From The Middle Ages

1. Honey Wine

2. Barley Wine

3. Beowulf Vodka

4. Canterbury Whiskey

5. The Geoffrey Chaucer Special

6. Mild Ale

7. Amber Alert Ale

8. Exotic Lime Ale

9. Toxic Blonde Ale

10. India Pale Ale

11. Thee Olde Dark Ale

Oh, “The Father of English literature” spent a lot of time writing, but doubtful it had anything to do with blogging daily writing tips. Literature is mostly the same today. Except in modern times, writers are more skilled at writing better beer names. My #AuthorLife is more balanced and I write poetry, prose, and blogs. December is going to be heavy then finish it all off with devilled eggs and Dinosaur cookies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream in winter?

Reading Miniature MidSummer Night's Dream