Celebrating Misery And The EU

Stairway To Heaven

Are you suffering from Led poisoning? Get the goddamn Led out of your ears and focus on the truth in media. Why do we want to hear about unhappiness? We want to hear Stairway To Hell in a heavy metal jam. You want to learn about my feelings of great distress and discomfort of mind and body. From territorial pissings to when I'm going to climb that stairway to heaven and sing about misery a final time. I can almost hear the organ now.

MISERY’S SONG

You’ve heard a song

     that’s had a struggle before,

     where twinges meet to adore

an admirer or half-

     faced rock star in a cloud

     of smoke. Yodel louder

than that melody

     within her soul -- tormented in

     anguish from lies and sin,

as lovers cross a corner

     of time like rubber-stamps 

     of harlots and tramps

that play a painful piece

     in rump-fed hearts to go

     or follow. Winds will blow

with me as I travel

     to it; a slow under-

     current as they were

   

in waves to throngs of folk

     gone fly-bitten to the ground

     where sounds do pound

like euphoria! What concert

     went astray in sadness

     to bring a heart-filled bliss?

The rolling thunder goes

     gaily, the listeners join free

     to pass in mirth of glee

from a paradox. A fool

     went through just yesterday

     to hear the dreary music play!

Misery brings joy. The Raptors suck, but the Cavaliers rock. I want to go back to Cleveland to see the Indians play at Progressive Field. I want to hear the blues when I think about Cleveland. It's been a long time since the Indians won the World Series. It's been a long time since Indians won anything. Lately, I've been thinking about how to make sports better. Las Vegas needs a hockey team. There needs to be another Indian team to help the Blackhawks. Professional wrestling needs to play a bigger role in Bollywood. Let's face it, wrestling is not on the map like it was years ago. Bollywood needs to embrace old-school wrestling. There needs to be a Bollywood Hogan of wrestling to start a new era in sports entertainment. How can Western Culture better embrace Indians? Start by celebrating Ramadan and misery. Ramadan is a time for reflection, giving, and being truly charitable.

1. Refrain from consuming food until after midnight
2. Refrain from a cold beer until after midnight
3. Refrain from smoking until after midnight
4. Refrain from sex until after midnight
5. No sinful behaviour that may negate the reward of fasting
6. No listening to WOW 87.7 
7. No listening to WRICH 109.9 
8. No listening to AM 2200 
9. Don't wrestle until after Ramadan
10. Don't insult Catholics until after Ramadan
11. No opening Doors or listening to Jim Morrison

Vive la France. Euro 2016 is here and my eyes shift to Britain. For a long time, we had a Game of Thrones in Europe. They couldn’t get along and there were border wars and then we created something called the European Union. And it’s grown to be a huge market in many countries. Europe was starting to compete on a global scale and now Britain is going to decide whether they stay or leave the European Union. Some people might not think it’s a big deal, but it is. Start on the business side, twenty percent of our exports go to the European Union. We want a healthy EU because it’s good for us. Oscar Wilde once said “Britain has 42 religions and two sauces.” Right? It’s not a place of passion. But you cannot believe the passionate divide, and it is too close to call on whether they’ll be division. A lot of people are saying let’s have Britain just be Britain. That's great, but therein lies the debate. It’s important to you because if for some reason the EU falls apart, we are going to have to spend a lot more money, a lot more treasure, time and maybe some of our blood to try to put Europe back together. If the EU holds together, it’s good for us economically. It’s bloody good for us, because if they hold together, armies can mobilize on other parts of the planet. It relates to us and we need to join in celebrating Europe's utter misery.

Long Live Misery

All The World's A Stage Of Consciousness

My consciousness scares me. This is heaven, not hell. This is opening The Doors and finding me listening to a religious experience happening every Sunday in the church of my basement. But there's a beginning and end to everything. He rises again.

Fare Thee Well: Celebrating The Grateful Dead was a series of concerts, but never say goodbye if you still want to try. Reincarnated in my basement, I don't want to try and I'm waiting for the end of The End. I'm listening to blessed Jim, and The Second Coming gives me new life. I turn out the lights in the basement and hear my heartbeat as the music rudely stops. Finally. Skedaddles everywhere. Just the pussycat as a screensaver on the computer and it's on the chair. I throw her off the chair and Iook around, but there's nothing but darkness in a cold, dark basement. Who's really watching Sin City on Netflix?

The Basement

I close the door to the basement and exit the house. It's just after eleven at night and I'm heading to the nearby woods. The forest is quiet. My skin is cold. There is darkness everywhere. There is just utter darkness and I'm thinking I'm miles away from the laptop and cat. I look up at the stars. We're going to be landing on Mars in eleven years and we're going to have driverless cars in twenty-two years. Everyone will be reading instead of watching TV. It's going to look a lot different. I sleep under the stars and when the sun comes up, I'm a day older and praying to Jim Morrison from a new religion and a new era of time where there are no doors and everything is wide open to anyone who can read. Who's actually reading books or hearing a story?

Credit Valley Footpath

be·yond

bēˈänd/

preposition & adverb

1. 1.

   at or to the further side of.

   "he pointed to a spot beyond the trees"

   synonyms:

   on the far side of, on the other side of, further away than, behind, past, after

After normally goes before a noun, like after midnight when I stayed up all night and all day writing and revising because of my passion. And there's no replacing feeling good. Sometimes a mean piss just feels so good. 

Do You Know How Much A Gorilla Is Worth?

Too Not Good To Believe

But this is not time for change. I don't want this to fool you, so I’m warning you that this blog would be better if I was fully conscious and if I was writing from the perspective of a gorilla. If I was a gorilla, I would be blogging from the top of the Empire State Building in 3-D. I want to set up a Gorilla Academy as the last new school available to mankind.

Speaking Gorilla

This phrase stemmed from a period when the American legendary wrestler and great commentator, Gorilla Monsoon, spent time working in the city of Bern, Switzerland at a Cuckoo Clock repair shop. The clockmaker would insist on cleaning the face of the clock after the necessary adjustments had been made. On the point of sale with a receipt in the hand of a customer about to exit, Gorilla popped up from the workshop, located at the back of the store, and declared: “He just got his clock cleaned!” It was charming at first, but Gorilla did it every time with every customer after that, and soon it began to tire and he was fired from the job and banned from Switzerland. Whenever I’m asleep, it’s like I’ve been punched out by a gorilla in the middle of a monsoon. The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people. For some reason, lately, all of my dark thoughts are with axes.

It’s like I’m drugged out of my mind, but my head feels lighter than a cloud of alcoholic vapor. Turning onto the other side of the pillow, I wake up still drunk. The alarm goes off and it’s the sound of a soothing jungle, but something seems a bit wrong and everything doesn’t quite add up. I’m confused and laughing at my mistakes. Dreading going to work without taking a shower all weekend, I’m feeling the static electricity pulling at my hair, causing it to stand up. Everything seems crazy and it’s even more weird that my dreams are becoming real. Quickly, I grab a pen and paper and write at a time where I’m feeling sheer panic and I’m at the height of paranoia. Popping a few bedside pills, I write more and feel relaxed in the darkness of thoughts.

I put down my writing devices and check my phone. My phone has pictures of trees from The Enchanted Forest. As I check my Facebook profile, there are links to the Hole problem. I check iTunes and my playlist is everything Nirvana and the Hole dark romance. The ape truth.

The Hole Problem In A Nutshell

I’m stuck in the 90s but Home Improvement is real and no longer a show on TV (my wife called to have renovations done to the bedroom bathroom). As I turn on the TV, the enlarged picture of a dead gorilla is staring me in the face. Kurt Cobain’s suicide is not being reported from Seattle. 

(But The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is still a funky fresh flashback. The morning news is live from a zoo in Ohio. But why do I care about a fucking dead gorilla? And why am I scared I won't be able to afford banana bread when I'm free to write about the jungle of life? The lost banana?)

I’m bad axe throwing every Saturday and convinced I need to take the sharp axe to the talking tree in The Enchanted Forest on the edge of reality. I’m reading The Legend Of The Wicked Path while passing out staring at a can of Coke beside the night table of the bed. My head falls backward onto a pillow. I close my eyes and want to take an axe to the forest and chop down the talking tree from my fucked up flashbacks. Running faster and faster, sweat is running down my forehead. I’m madder than a gorilla with a sharp axe, but without bananas and fearing death from the animal response team. I’m looking behind me and see nobody. I’m alone in my dreams. I look up and see the tree that’s been talking to me. I hear voices, but the animal response team probably think I’m causing a riot on the golf course. Just because Hunter S. Thompson would golf on acid doesn’t mean I enjoy hacking. I fooled the animal response team. My eyes open; now I hear the sound of a ringtone. It’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and With A Little Help From My Friends. I’m listening to a high-pitched radio frequency in my mind with nobody around. I grab my phone, playing fucked up Beatles music, and I throw my phone against the wall. It smashes and the music stops and there's nothing but the legendary silence of darkness.

Unpublished on most planets

The Edge Of Reality: Can't You Smell That Smell?

Credit Valley Footpath was quiet and I was quietly lost in the middle of nowhere and there was nobody and it was awesome. All of a sudden, a tree started talking to me. What the fuck? I wouldn't talk back to it and it wasn't Skedaddles the Cat, but wow, it was a fucking big ass tree staring at me with wooden eyes. Looking down at me, it wouldn't leave me alone. Its leaves were huge, tree trunk enormous and round with roots spreading out, dominating the forest -- there was nowhere to hide.

The tree said to me, "You don't have the credit to be in the valley of my footpath." The tree was right. I had blown my savings on Amazon, betting on Indian sports teams, Nyquist as the Triple Crown winner, and NyQuil. I wanted to go home, but I was curious about the talking tree.

"How did you know that?" Maybe the tree put on a suit and tie and worked at RBC when nobody visited him. Everything was trippy.

"I've read your diary," the motherfucker echoed. "You're a poet." Shit, I had Lionheart Leaks and unreleased installments. It was worse than the Sony cyber attack. I was going to sue his goddamn wooden ass.

The tree grew a second face with three eyes bugging out at me, another mouth formed under its two noses and it grew nine branched-out arms. It was the most wood that I had ever seen. It tossed my diary at me with two of his hands. His third arm reached out and grabbed a fat joint underneath a log. Buddy was into the herb and Indians.

Indian Teams

Buddy rolled another joint. I took a mean piss on his ugly roots. It felt good to relieve myself and I wanted to piss off the tree. The tree tried to grab me with his arms. Wood was flying everywhere, but I escaped. I started running away. Stopping once to look back, the tree turned around and mooned me with his wooden ass. His deep crevice spat out birch bark, but I was beyond his teepee and the edge of the magical, enchanted forest filled with giant mushrooms and eleven-leaf clovers.

Credit Valley Footpath

Urn Your Way To The Top

Get Rich or Die Tryin' was a hip-hop biopic crime film starring 50 Cent. I couldn't reinvent rap or the steel, but I wanted to help the economy by shopping at the LCBO. I bought a shitload of liquor and brought it home. I opened up one of my half-pint bottles. I drained it in one continuous shuddering swallow, licked the mouth of the empty bottle, buzzed wildly and imagined I hadn't just drained my bank account like I was a professional wrestler feeling hard times. The TV was on The Kentucky Derby and I had sports on my mind. I drank Tennesse Whiskey and I was ready to wrestle my inner demons whilst wearing my Undertaker T-shirt. 

Downing the NyQuil™ felt so good after the whiskey, and shit I was tired, but it didn't take long to watch Nyquist win the fastest two minutes in sports. Blasting WOW 87.7 FM and roaring louder than Chewbacca on a heavy dose of wookie steroids, I obsessed over the female form. I went to bed and groped my wife and woke up the next day around noon in a sticky mess. Feeling nauseous, I turned my head and puked in a stylish cremation urn next to the bed. It would help if I knew the professional and functional purpose of the urn.

Heavy Metal

Lo And Behold Bisons And Good Drinking

Bisonmania

The Blue Jays and Herd have been streaky. Batters are getting time in the cage and pitchers are pitching a lot of innings. LeBlanc has been hot. The beer at Coca-Cola Field is top notch; and I'm urging anyone who likes to drink ten or eleven or twelve beers, and is not driving home, to go see a Bisons game and power drink.

Buffalo, New York

We went to see the Bisons on the same day that we went to the Burlington Humane Society and picked up our new cat. We took our cat to the game. Ten or eleven beers later, it was the seventh inning and I skedaddled to the car to spend quality time with Skeddadles, our new cat. It was around this time, I started tripping out, having acid flashbacks, hungry and craving metal. I needed loud music. I put the key in the ignition, ran the battery in the car to power up the stereo, and pumped WOW 87.7 FM in the Bisons parking lot. I was hungry for heavy metal music and so was Skedaddles. To hell with the Herd, I wanted to be alone with the cat because we were craving loud, headbanging music.

Skedaddles the Cat

Heavy Metal Awareness

My wife was sober when the game finished and she joined me in the car because it was time to go home and the Bisons won, 2-1 over the Syracuse Chiefs in a nail-biter. My long nails were scratching the cat as my wife drove out of the parking lot. We were listening to WOW 87.7 FM for the drive home. My wife was driving; I was buzzing badly and repeating the same things over and over to myself. "Wow," I said to my wife. She just looked at me and said, "Wow." All of a sudden, I realized there needed to be a week dedicated to metal awareness. I was like a heavy rolling stone and my head was weighing a ton, but we couldn't drink in the car. Cranking the sound up in the car, I was thrashing my head side to side and pretended I was writing deeper than a rolling stone writer too good to write for the magazine. Wow.

Heavy Metal Appreciation

La Buena was so good and I started thinking more and more about Lionheart Leaks and holy shit it was like a religious experience in the car going over the Skyway Bridge, driving from Hamilton to Burlington. WOW, it was so good and I didn't want to get out of the car when we got in the driveway, but my wife reminded me that I had to work the next day. WOW....

Lionheart Leaks

Acid Flashback No. 55

The Blur

Deer Creek Golf & Banquet Facility, Ajax

I'm going to warn you up front that this blog will offer little of value. You won't find much focus here. I don't have any fantastic takeaways. I don't have any solutions. I sit here between the polar forces of optimism and rage, trying to reach for one while shielding from the other. Part of me wants to retreat from conversation entirely, to escape the culture and to settle down in a castle and sit on a throne and put on headphones and just wait it all out.

The culture I'm talking about is geek culture. Nerd culture. Pop culture.

Really, our entire culture, because our entire culture is pop culture these days. Geek culture is dominant. News is entertainment. Nobody wants to smell a fart, but they want to hear about it. Wow....

I'm looking out the window. Taking time to contemplate the existence of free writing at The Ontario Writers' Conference workshop begins to conjure deep thoughts. My thoughts are heavy, but my head isn't in space. I'm not going to meet Bowie. My mind is focused on metallic minerals and I'm thinking about the richness of music, a goldmine of sound deafens my existence. The music of Metallica causes a headache within, but I don't have Advil in my pocket and I can't steal the pain reliever from the person beside me. Thrashing my head from side to side looks silly, but now Anthrax and AC/DC are penetrating a heavier beat in my head and it feels so fucking good. I take a sigh of relief that would make the makers of Advil jealous.

I'm thinking to myself how faith requires an irrational belief.

Jesus Jim, the weakness overcomes my mind and soul as the music stops, I'm not finding strength from Monday or looking outside at the pretty golf and country landscape. I need to resurrect my creative thoughts from ancient times. The workshop is over and I'm being told to leave. I'm being told to get out.

I'm opening the door and it leads outside into the wilderness. I'm in the middle of nowhere and trucking home might take two hours if I drive above the speed limit. I'm sitting in the parking lot imagining my failure. 

Exiting Ajax, Ontario

Driving home, I put the pedal to the metal. I'm going faster and faster and my mind is tripping higher and higher thinking Beyond the Blue Kite. My latest reader had a couple of thoughts and told me to take it with a "grain of salt" because he mainly reads mysteries for enjoyment. 

"Good use of language to convey emotion. I would guess that you have an academic background because of your phraseology and the quality of writing."

I can almost hear the stranger's voice after he read my novel.

"In general I felt it was well written. The last quarter of the book was brimming with excitement -- well worth the read."

But it's never enough. Talking Heads greet me in the driveway.

"And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself: 'Well.. how did I get here?'"

"I don't know," I tell the empty mailbox and open the door. The spirit world welcomes me home. I'm terrified about rejection from my first manuscript from the literary world, but there's Voodoo or Nirvana or The Doors. But I slam the door and go to the bathroom. At the very least, let this be a call to do better. Burn the rejections, toss them in the toilet, rain my piss upon their parasitic heads, and say bye-bye as I flush the bowl with clean water once more.

TOILET BOWL BLUES

The scene is a crowning glory

From the roof to the toilet,

I'm sorry I can't show you

Since it ends with a story.

From the bowels of my soul

To die of a massive coronary

Without even knowing it, 

Shit, to the toilet bowl --

I hear Mozart, my good dog:

"Pay no attention to whatever,

To anybody's praise or blame."

I mostly enjoyed a modest log. 

It'll send your heart reeling

If you follow a true feeling.

Old Study: Insects Are The Great Survivors

A fucking big Dragonfly

Giant insects ruled the great prehistoric skies during periods when small and ancient Earth's atmosphere was rich in oxygen. Then birds came on Earth. Then after the evolution of birds and humans... dragons ruled with dinosaurs. Insects reached their greatest sizes about 300 million years ago, during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. This was the reign of the predatory griffin-flies, giant dragonfly-like insects with wingspans of up to 28 inches (70 centimeters)... and the flying insects got bigger and bigger! They got so motherfuckin' big that the bloody insects took over my mind. I envied insects and wanted to be like one.

DRAGON FLY

At night, I'm a dragon that breathes smoke,

At daybreak, I’ll sleepwalk with human folk.

I saw Mr. Charles Darwin at an orphanage,

Over institutions of my fen-raged dreams,

Off coast-lands of weedy-soaked serpents,

The sea flows from sorrow of storage.

An attic within a cave conceals me for a while.

Then I arise, alone of scales, spikes of style,

I rage with madness at my seventh horn.

As my three eyes weep at unseeing dark,

Nightfall of stone-blind infectious sharks,

Swimming with ailing evil, I’m reborn.

I snarl and gnarl at a trapdoor of rocky bars

As a fire-breathing monster bleeding scars,

Craving for a sea nymph to set me free;

Sharing darkness with an immortal breeze

I breathe flames with venomous steam,

I kill a Raven and eat her in the sea.

These cages kill the memory of a stranger,

Of sunshine and days loving Amy Granger;

When daylight struck my brow for sight,

Though here I dwell as a disfigured reptile

Hurting with hunger to walk as a human,

But I’m lizard-like, slithering with fright.

There beaming in the horizon gleams her,

Beckoning for me to drown in slumber,

To nap with wet dreams of a heavenly sky,

To forsake burning desire of unholy fire

And to end nibbles of dog-hearted fancy;

In place of evolving, as a creature I’ll fly.

Photo courtesy of The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor

What Are 11 Types Of Writer's Block?

Writer's block is a creative slowdown. It's just about the least fun part of being a bloody good writer, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks a lot of big businesses face with content marketing.

Refer to me simply. 

Who's Your Captain?

What you probably don't realize is that writer's block is a great subject that I am going to tackle in a great way. I'm going to steer you through the various forms and overcome the obstruction reminding you that writer's block can happen anywhere, especially when you're on vacation in Cuba. Why did I go far, far away to the island? Because the dead of winter in Canada is best celebrated in the Caribbean.

A BROKEN RECORD

The voices spin and spin

Like a tired, old record 

Within

And within I'm full of sin. 
I carry my broken memories

Within.

Where once I would grin and grin,

Playing a repetitive song

From a soundtrack within,

But now I drink rum, vodka or gin

While too happy to sleep

To sing a song within

From the Caribbean.

Cayo Santa Maria

Sometimes poetry is the best way to deal with writer's block in a serious way when I'm finding it impossible to go beyond the rum diary. The flight home from Cuba would have been better if we circled the moon while listening to the Lionheart Network. Now I'm back home and I'm plagued by the cold and 11 types of writer's block.

1. Cuban withdrawal syndrome
2. Swimmer's ear
3. Lack of ideas
4. A lack of language
5. A bold beginning with multiple endings
6. Emotional block
7. Separation block
8. Erratic over-editing
9. Procrastination
10. Flat World
11. Leaking Lionheart Leaks is a novel idea about struggling employees working at a failing company, but I need to continue working at a job that's not failing because getting pissed won't help to get back to Cuba.

Cayo Santa Maria