Knitting Ferocious Spiders

My father arrived the morning of the 22nd promptly. Early, actually. He's always early. I had been at Brown Owl's the night before for a fantastic dinner, a long overdue visit, and the breaking out of the single malt. Which, in retrospect, was what made that Sunday morning not necessarily painful, but, ahem, still rather drunk; and smelling of spirits. To high heaven. It's 9am. "Hi, Dad." But I was functional; and surprisingly organized. We got all my belongings loaded, stacked and snug in the back of the trailer: the bed, the books, the shelves, the sofa and the table; all in about half an hour. Tarped it. Tied it. Off we went. On the 401, a corner of the tarp in the trailer started to flap up in the wind. "Oh, look. I wonder if that's going to be a--" My father went dead silent, and quickly pulled over to the shoulder of the highway. The wind had got under the covering, and then presumably under the dining room table, which then took it like a sail...

As I wound down my career as a registered burlesque entertainer, I gave pause to consider what I learned from my time in that dim corridor. 1. The combination of prodigious amounts of steroids and equally prodigious amounts of cocaine, do not a charming fellow make. Intimidating, but not charming. 2. Socks are expendable. 3. Whatever is said while you are undressed, turgid and frottaged against a stranger, is generally more amusing if you imagine it being said by a character in a sitcom. Your choice. 4. No matter what you look like, someone thinks you're the hottest thing they've ever seen. Patron and performer included. 5. Flirtation can be a weapon. 6. Laughter can be permission. 7. Silence is deadly. 8. Money is the dirtiest word of all. Nudity, and lewdity , are permissive; it's monetary greed that's the most offensive, especially if it invades a fantasy. Stripping is fantasy, and when there is disquiet, when there is a PROBLEM, the imaginary quality dissolves, and ...

It's started. Last night at the club, there were not one, but two men sporting cowboy hats indoors. I didn't try and count the number of snappy, snapping cowboy shirts. You have to wonder if there is an inherent flaw in the gay male brain, one that thinks the physical appropriation of an element of style actually translates us into the object of our desire; or better, into the object of everyone else's . Urbanites who have never seen a cow should not, NOT, try to look like they just got off the ranch. Especially fellows who are liable to flee at the site of manure.

So, lost, angry, and scared , Quorum came down to Parvenu, for the first time since he had lost Celeste. He looked around, and made his inquiries. He took a back room off from the baroque labyrinth of parlours and corridors. He lay down.... Many, many nights later, it was ‘lu himself who battered his way through the heavy curtains of the Salon’s smoke filled rooms to sit down beside him. He waited patiently for Quorum’s sight to come into focus, and coolly regarded the youth’s confusion with heavy-lidded eyes before reaching out to put the pipe aside. “Do not,” he spoke precisely, “confuse curiosity with concern... but these past few days you have not been so much chasing, as fleeing. You’ve not been one of my solitary guests before now. Something has changed.” Quorum struggled with the receding fugue, grappled with the tangle of emotion that was knotting itself back into his chest. A ragged sigh shuddered him. “I want out. I don’t want to be stuck in this hellhole anymore.” “Tha...

Querken. Pribble. Viripotent. Rannygazoo. Vitrescent. Rutilant. Periplum.

the centre of the Earth, and you'll find me on the other side in 13 days! As some of you know, and as some of you possibly don't, I will be leaving Canada shortly. Although I'd like to pretend that this is because the Conservatives look to be taking power, in reality it's because I'm afraid of our neighbours to the south. They're crazy. So, I'm moving to New Zealand; and then, when they kick me out (deport me -- whatever) I'll be heading over to Australia, to see how long they can take me before foisting me back to North America. It should be great fun. Now, in the interest of demonstrating that I love you all, and that you should all strive to keep in touch with me, and never, ever forget me, Mustardseed and I (who will be traveling together) are hosting a Drop-In Drinks Party at the beautiful (and tasteful) *** pub, at ***. Under no circumstances are you to bring any small trinkets, nick-knacks, or power tools which will put me over my weight limit on...

Thanks to Ted Hughes (see below). And thanks to Alex Boyd for doing the legwork. Because it is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something - perhaps not much, just something - of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are...Something of the inaudible music that moves us along in our bodies from moment to moment like water in a river. Something of the duplicity and relativity and the merely fleeting quality of all this. Something of the almighty importance of it and something of the utter meaninglessness. And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment of time, and in that same moment make out of it all the vital signature of a ...

As I'm sure some of my stylistic choices make apparent, despite the fact that I try to ignore the fact, and noticing that I have posted a few verses, here and there: I am a poet. A Touchy-Feely-Unpublished-Poet. Actually, that's not true. I am published. That was just my Wu Tang Clan name . Spooky. Besides the fact that the English speaking world seems rather intimidated and disdainful of the word in stanza, and convinced that you require a supernatural passion for the language, a prodigious understanding of culture and history, or a masters degree to enjoy or appreciate it, poetry really is supposed to be the language of the blood: the visceral, the intrinsic. And your mind is allowed to wander into possibilities. That's what the form is actually for, the reader and the writer both. In any case, I'm not going to use this space to lecture on the cultural relevance of poetry; but I am going to post one. Another piece of paper I've come across in the moving preparatio...

I've been going through my papers. My mountains of papers. Trying to cull. It's like digging. Archeology, like. Look what I found. It's lyrics. From the Muppet Show. It works best in vaudeville cockney. Our House Oh, a man came into our house, our house, our house, A man came into our house to sell us some brooms. So, we asked him to come in, and we hit him with a hammer And we hid him in the closet in my father's room! Chorus: But you're always welcome at our house! Anytime of the day, Yes, you're always welcome at our house, And we hope you will stay. Oh, a lady came to our house, our house, our house, The lady came to find out why I was not in school. So, we asked her to come in, and we gave her some poisoned lemonade And put her in the freezer where it's nice and cool. (Chorus) Then a kid came into our yard, our yard, our yard, A kid came into our yard to get his ball. So, we asked him to come in, and we took him in the basement And we sealed him up insi...

"Say something funny." "No." "That's not funny." "From here it's hilarious." "Refusal is just annoying." "Really? It makes me feel smug." "You're a right twat sometimes." "Don't make me start humming. It'll drive you mental." "Too late. I'm contemplating putting you in a box and sending you to Africa." See? I can't even talk to myself right now.

I've mentioned it before. I'm not systematic. Though I sometimes like to pretend. What I am is at that stage of moving... Yes, that stage of moving... Where things are in slight disarray. And when I say that , what I mean is that I think I've forgotten which way is north, weather gravity pulls or repels me from the earth, and if clothing really is nessessary in a different hemisphere. I think I might just burn it. Burn it all.

What I'm actually suffering from right now is the plight of having a little too much to say: the mind struggling with all the little ignitions, sending my consciousness quaquaversal (you know how hard it is to find a use for that word?). I have little treatises forming on all sorts of wonderful topics, very few of which have anything to do with anything besides procrastination. As "The Date" gets closer, I feel more and more harried (harangued, halted, hysterical), although I can really only get so much done in so much time, and I'm on schedule far as I can tell. I spent this morning walking around in circles, attempting to determine some sort of direction to focus my attempts at organization, and instead bottomed out and read a quarter of a novel. The cats are now gone, and I'm suffering their phantom presence. Much like losing a limb, I'm still making room for them about my legs on the sofa, checking to bat them back when taking ham out of the fridge. Their ...

The following is a dream that I had in May, 2004. It came up again in a conversation, recently, and luckily I had it written down. I love my brain. The end of the world came: judgement; and those blessed with a heart lighter than a feather were given a golden key on a ribbon that spun in the air over their right shoulder, and propelled through reality to a shimmering beach bordered on either side by a iridescent, aquamarine sea, all in perpetual twilight. The beach was a sinuous sand bar, reaching from horizon to horizon, and filled with people. Wandering there I found (these I remember for sure) Mustardseed, Satan’s Little Pixie and Kengee, but continued to look for others, sure that they might appear somewhere. As more and more people arrived, we speculated on whether or not this was the afterlife. It was, after all, very nice, but undoubtedly would become quite boring. All this under a constantly changing sky, stars moving like water currents. Finally, a being appeared to speak to u...

And there were documents lost, and paperwork re-routed; and errands that needed to be performed again; and the liquor store had to be raided for boxes, boxes, and boxes. Life needed to be coaxed and cajoled into storage, while mounted upon the wall, a large clock had been fastened, always tick- tocking it's heavy gears closer to that line, past which it all changes: location, location, location, the ultimate differential. The hands of that time-piece will not be altered now, finality's course is staid, now watch the metaphysical teeth of its inner workings grind the future closer... there is still so much to do; but, by heaven, the time for filling out forms is past. I'm not signing one more piece of paper.

Oh, and happy 2006, by the way. It's going be a goody, I can tell. This one's even.

Get between me and my coffee, and we're going to have a problem. The same thing goes if you happen to occulde that neutral zone that stands between me and the bar. Trouble. Just sayin'.