First written down by the French monk Gustavius Petitgrand, this well-known rhyme royal depicts the Battle of Camembert Castle in 1599. Beheaded by an angry mob of lettuce cutters in the streets of Paris, Queen Amie de Chateaubriand's head had to be used when the French cannoneers ran out of ammunition. The Queen's head landed in the officer's tent where British commander Lord Bupkus Kewgarden-McWeatherstone, Second Earl of Weevilwiggen was dining. The head is said to have spoken to him, though the exact words have been reported differently by various sources. In any event, so terrified was His Lordship that he immediately surrendered his army as well as his collection of chessmen carved from candle wax. This battle and the resulting French victory was a key turning point in the Twenty Minutes War and insured that no French child would ever be named Basil again. Vive la tete! (Alouette!) Ahhh!
On the set of the submarine movie, famous actress Natasha Krinkova is having an argument with the director. He says the other actors have complained about her three pet porcupines, Fremont, Lodi, and Malibu, who accompany Ms. Krinkova everywhere, including the cramped quarters of this undersea adventure epic.
"The fucking things stink," gripes one of the other actors, a man known for playing kindly uncles and benevolent bosses, but who could curdle milk with his off-camera personality.
"They're wonderful, gentle creatures," protests the famous actress, tilting her chin as she did in Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire, a meandering detective yarn in which she played an extraterrestrial hooker.
"They should be shot," says the kindly uncle actor.
Yesterday was Fremont's birthday, though it's unclear how she knew. She set up streamers and had a concert pianist pop out of a giant birthday cake to play the Beatles ' Birthday for the rodent as it sat there twitching its nose like a palsied bunny with very sharp fur.
"Go play in traffic," sneered the kindly uncle. Fremont raised his quills. Lodi had an accident in the radar room of the submarine set. Malibu wouldn't come out from under a pile of Natasha's kimonos. The concert pianist segued into Octopuses' Garden.
Ms. Krinkova demands that the porcupines be written into the submarine movie. The kindly uncle shoves Lodi into a storage hatch and turns the latch. A fire breaks out in the torpedo bay, which is actually made of painted cardboard. There is panic and the sound of fire extinguishers. Somehow, the actress playing Lieutenant Mitford gets quills in her ass. There are tears and accusations.
Watery Grave is never completed, and sinks the production company. The director's drinking gets worse. The kindly uncle actor wins an Oscar for his work in a subsequent film entitled Lassie In Space. Natasha Krinkova sells her gowns from the musical Chiffon Switchblade and uses the money to set up a trust for Fremont, Lodi, and Malibu, but unfortunately, Lodi wanders off somewhere and Ms. Krinkova sees to it that the nanny never works again. This series of events is hotly debated on line at Am I The Asshole?
quill is sharp but pliant
porcupine enjoys cherry blossom
but stinks like dumpster
(Excerpted from Hollywood Haibun: An Anthology of Japanesque Poetry From The Shelves of The Screen's Biggest Stars by Babs St. Argent, Pompano Publications, 2021)
This beautiful arrangement created by Penelope "Pippie" Zugronski.
Notes: My entire life has led up to this poem. It is a form called Intestin Bloque, which means Interesting Stanzas. This poem is included in my collection The Very Interesting Poems of Gladys Schlump and also appears in the November 1956 issue of Detached Retina: A Compendium of Torpid, Impenetrable Verse. Finally, this poem won the prestigious Itchy Rash Award for Poetry, given annually by the Debilitating Head Injury Guild of Stockholm, Sweden. Enjoy! (but not TOO much. It's unseemly.)
Actor John Agar with his collection of irrelevant booshwah.
The lead singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins reports for his autopsy.
Electric bone saw in hand, the medical examiner for Los Angeles County tips up his protective face shield and speaks:
"Mr. ..."
"Lo Bo To Me," says the rock star. The medical examiner seems confused, so he adds, "I used to be George Binker, but changed it to Lo Bo To Me back in '97. You can call me Lo."
They then spend several minutes discussing the fact that the rock star isn't yet dead, to which he points out that VGA's radio exposure is down to almost nil, and years of various drugs, questionable sexual practices and a love of In-N-Out Burger has him as good as, so why procrastinate?
They begin.
"How did you get this scar just here, on your shoulder?" The medical examiner touches it with his finger as if summoning an elevator from inside the rock star's body.
"A groupie with a hatchet freaked out and thought I was a ghost trying to suck out her soul through a twisty straw. She thought my strawberry shake was the essence of a previous victim, her stupid friend Pamela. So she tried to off me, but only cut me a little. I threw the shake in her face and then she thought she was an ice sculpture. She was catatonic for ten years after that, and when she woke up she screamed 'Where is that bastard?' and then fell over on the floor. A roadie told me all that. I guess he married her or something."
The medical examiner suggests that the autopsy be postponed. George Binker a.k.a. Lo Bo To Me responds with a non sequitur, asking the M.E. if he's ever heard VGA's song "Clogged Synapse Fantasia."
"It changed my life," he admits sheepishly.
"A fan! I knew it! Hey doc, what's that thing?"
"Why, a twisty straw, of course. I use it in my work."
The singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins sings:
Bay-beh do me do you!
Like a reptile crawling inside my heart,
layin' eggs of love that 'splode apart
in crazy fractals like La Jolla ocean blue!
Bay-beh do me do you!"
Later that day, reports of the passing of Lo Bo To Me, lead singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins, dubbed "Lo, the Noble Savage" in an old Rolling Stone article, spread across social media. Fans hold candlelight vigils and sales of their songs on digital platforms exceed all previous markers. The medical examiner for Los Angeles County holds a press conference, expressing, between sips of a strawberry milkshake, the exact circumstances of the singer's death. "The main cause was tooth decay, exacerbated by poor posture."
The most famous work by the celebrated American poet Aldous W. Bates. The poem first appeared in Popular Metallurgy in the June issue for the year 1913. Bates was, in fact, married to what we would now refer to as non-bio companion named Alice Menzies, who had previously been part of a steam engine. They had one child, a boy, who the couple named Boot. The child showed early promise as a can opener before succumbing to an over-fondness for WD-40 and dying in obscurity in 1957. A full account of the life and work of Aldous W. Bates is available in book form under the title "Hard and Steamy: A Love Story" 353 pages, Slagheap Press 1931. The volume is renowned for both its fearless eroticism and the inclusion of a formula for what was, at the time, a newly discovered alloy.
You three. Come to me. Open this box. Take out a fox. They are color coded. Don't tell me you didn't know this. Now here's something you may not know: Two are real, one is faux. Ever wonder how this came to be? What I'm saying, what I mean, Is the thing that I most want to say: ever wonder how a faux fox fffff-finds its way? Okay, back in the box. Come back next week--next week, ducks. ______ foolishness for Sunday Muse #102 and day 13 of my 39 poems in 39 days. Photography by Anatasiya Dobrovolskaya
The wind was such that it lifted my house creating a mouth which spoke. "See the woman inside the fledgling and its mother's beak preventing its fall? See how earth and sky court you as the sun brings chrysanthemums to egret and bamboo shoot?" The wind was such that it lifted my house into fits of Eastern pretension but soon, the West wind's anger was spun by the East into silks of silence. (Sum Dum Luk 1684-1729) _______ poem #4 for my 39 in 39 days.
It's like being a fag hag except with space ships. Oh yazzzz, I love a man with a literal heart on his sleeve. I love a woman with spots down her spine and two tongues. Who's a girl got to kiss around here to meet a Venusian?
Problem is, that cute double-brained hottie with the exoskeleton flinches when I reach for him. And my burbling hydro creature recoils when all I want to do is kiss her delicately foamed lips.
Ugly bag of mostly water, they say. Weird split biped without means of unassisted flight, they sneer. Hey, so uggos don't need love, too?
It's like being a fag hag except they don't appear as dancers in revivals of "Guys & Dolls" and get me tix and they don't "Oh honeyyyy" me when I'm down.
Still, I don't think they really mean their GTFO's. Do they? ____
Watching too much Star Trek on Day 4 for Wordy Thursday.
The following is a selection from Miss MacF-P's collection "Poesy In Pastels."
Barcarole for bathtub; glub-de-glub-glub! A perfect place to place my posterior.
"Neath the the window! 'Neath the glass! An arboreal assignation for my ass.
Knock knock! Who can it be? A husband, a child, or some vagabond needing to pee?
Here, with ferns and candles and easily accessible senior assistance handles, I sit and sing (my words taking wonderfully to wing!) my Barcarole For Bathtub sung by me to my knee. _____
Note: Millicent MacFarquhar-Pellington's masterpiece "Barcarole For Bathtub" was published by Snoot & Sons in 1923 as the centerpiece of her fifth collection "Poesy In Pastels." Millicent's first four volumes--including the celebrated "Mongoose Sonnets" sold more than 3 million copies and have been translated into German, French, Urdu and Icelandic. A two-time winner of the Blemish Prize For Literature, Ms. MacFarquhar-Pellington remains beloved today, twenty years after her passing from combination skin in 1998.
They'd come a long way just to see him, these believers. "Everybody has done us dirt-- taken our shop, our church, our children right off of our laps."
They'd hung on for a long time, getting angrier every year. "Where are we supposed live? What has happened to the world, while we were working? Who are these strangers? Does anybody care how we feel?"
All they ever got was:
Look certainly at the end of the day freedom constitution committee values God tradition questions concerns contribution stand for investigation thorough Americans protect promise taxes statement position this office bluh-blah bluh-blah bluh-blah.
So they voted for someone else.
They'd come a long way just to see him, these believers, only to find the barn door closed and Wilbur under investigation and under house arrest.
They can hear him talking (and talking and talking), but he's turned the wrong way, this equine head in the bed of state, just a new horse's ass doing all the speechifying now. ___________ for Camera FLASH! at Toads.
Today, not many people remember the story of Sigmund "Slats" Stuffenberger, a major league baseball player of the 1950's. Other things command our attention, such as earning a living, watching "Celebrity Karaoke" or fighting corruption charges in federal court.
But Slats's story is worth remembering. Born in Pigslop, Kansas in 1935, Slats was named Sigmund by his father, a poor but hard-working tenant farmer who admired 19th and early 20th century Austrian academics. Slats's father, Bifford "Pea" Stuffenberger, had high hopes for his only son to become a concert pianist, but young Sigmund wanted only to play big league ball.
Sadly saying their goodbyes on a train station platform in Phlebitis City, in the rain, wearing torn coats, and not having bathed in weeks, the elder and younger Stuffenbergers parted and Sigmund rode the train to Corn Corners, which at the time had its own Class D team, the Corn Corners Shuckers.
Shuckers skipper Ernest "Mad Dog" Mumford didn't think much of the green kid fresh off the farm, and refused to play him at all until the day when the team's star, Ragland Dollie--who had once batted twice for the New York Giants in September, 1905--broke his femur when he fell from the center field clock tower at the close of a cocaine-inspired spree. "You're in there, kid!" cried Mumford, and with that, Sigmund got his chance.
He tore through the minor leagues like there was no tomorrow, hitting a combined .439 for five teams, each one in a higher league than the one before it. He pitched, too, compiling a log of 31-3 on the mound. It wasn't long before scouts and telegrams from as far away as Cincinnati and Boston, wanting Sigmund--now known as Slats, for having once hit a grand slam home run with a bed slat to win a game for the old Oakland Oats--to come play big league ball began to arrive.
Bright lights, big city! Slats arrived in Boston to play for the Braves on a June afternoon in 1952, when he was just 17 years of age. The veterans on the club gave him a warm welcome, setting his suitcase on fire and pouring itching powder into his jock strap. Undeterred, Slats got into the game as a pinch hitter and belted a line drive double down the line. Spurred, perhaps, by the itching powder, Slats showed speed nobody could remember seeing before, at least not in Beantown.
The next year, 1953, saw Slats traded to the Phillies, where he hit 62 home runs, won 14 games as a pitcher, and spent the winter playing pro basketball "for fun." He met a young woman named Betsy Helgenshooker, and married her. "I'll always remember what she said to me at the church altar on our wedding day," recalled Slats some years later during an interview for the Philadelphia Phrenology News. "She looked so beautiful. She smiled shyly at me from behind her lace veil and whispered to me that she was 'pretty sure' the baby was mine."
Perhaps tired from changing nappies, Slats slumped to only 47 homers in '55, and then 31 in '56 as the Phillies dealt him to the Pirates for Spook Jacobs. In Pittsburgh, Slats became a Buddhist and renounced all material possessions. Converting to vegetarianism as well, Slats hit a meager .213 in fewer than fifty at bats before being shipped out to the Elmira Elephants of the Barnum & Bailey League. Playing center field and shortstop, as well as filling in on the flying trapeze, Slats whiled away the time until he could return to the bigs.
But he never did. Georgia Alabama, the circus Fat Lady, entered Slats's hotel room one evening and shot him in the abdomen with a revolver. "I loved him," she explained to police, as Slats clung to life at Hobgoblin Hospital in Elmira. Though the brave young man tried a comeback, first with the Elephants and later with a succession of 'bush league" clubs, it never worked out; Slats became an alcoholic bum, sleeping on cardboard boxes over steam grates in downtown Philadelphia.
Despite his sad end, the memory of Slats Stuffenberger's exploits as a lad in 1953 is cemented in Phillies lore forever. As his widow Betsy said--with Slats's son Jamaal at her side--"Slats always saw the best in people, and in life. He was a good man." A good man who once swatted 62 baseballs into the seats in the summer of 1953. ______
There is a diner where the waitress lets down her hair, despite Health Department directives, or fevered men with their angry wives.
Each table has a miniature juke box with songs on a flip wheel, 25 cents a number. "Mister Sandman." "Brandy." "Spirit In The Sky."
You can order eggs, but the cook is loathe to break them. He says he is haunted by the birds, silent and accusing about their unlived lives.
At night, after closing, the cook and waitress go home together, and take menus with them to remind themselves that everything has cost. In her dreams, the waitress has an operatic voice, and can fly. There is a clock in the diner, advertising a particular soft drink. At exactly noon, the waitress stuffs napkins into a dispenser until it is full to bursting. She hates a mess, that's why. Come to the diner. Take the bus, avoid the downtown rush. Bring a good appetite and order pancakes warm and brown as the waitress's eyes. _______
