Wire Face - A Poem

Her belly was full and sore and misshapen. 

Her throat was bleeding. 

Her teeth were chipped and broken. 

Piano wire stuck out from all corners of her face. 

She had really really really misunderstood what the legendary keys man had meant when he said 'if you want to be a great piano player you have to have piano inside of you'

I mean what a moron.

Who eats a piano? 

It's just dumb.

Clearly he meant figuratively. 

This chick was dumber than buying a dog in hope to use it as a housecleaner. 

Her plan was as foolish as saving up trillions of dollars to buy the Great Wall of china to try and stop Shelly in accounting from using your teacup. 

She was stupider than covering your testicles in honey next to a fire ant nest hoping that your screams in pain will attract a crowd that you can now sell encyclopedias to. 

She was more idiotic than covering your front lawn in green plastic army men with the intent of their heroics inspiring you to finally tell your boss that you think we're all made of fairy dust memories and that therefore you should be able to howl at clients if you desire.

She was as doltish as your average chalk eating, glass monkey sculpting, tennis lawyer

, who thinks waxing stations would make good money laundering traps for warmongering toy yacht enthusiasts.

Ok that one's actually genius.

But SHE was just imbecilic.

Although she does now make a killing on the competitive eating circuit. 

I guess the lesson is raw talent matters. 

Tough Times - A Poem

Madeline Richter had a problem.

Her newly invented laser device, the Funger, was so powerful and useful (it could erase memories, it could erase buildings, it could erase governments, it could erase cellulite and it could even erase blame!) that it seemed like she pretty much had to take over the world now. 

Because otherwise her invention wouldn't live up to its potential.

'Ah man, I'll have to pick a second in charge' she thought 'Stephie's my bestie, but Karen is far better at paperwork, typing and unyielding ruthlessness, how do I pick?' She thought.

'If I pick one, the other will get pissed off, and I'll already have the 4.3 billon people who will survive the "great erasing" super angry with me' She thought.

Being a leader sure is hard. 

Plus she wasn't happy with the name she'd given her invention.

Funger? What the hell is that? 

So she had two problems really.

Oh also her friend Tracey had borrowed her Game of Thrones season 2 DVD and neglected to return it within the agreed upon time frame, and she was now going to have to make an awkward phone call.

So three problems. 

Oh, and she was getting her period.

Four problems. 

Although she took offense to a man writing that. 

It's not up to him to declare whether or not her period should be considered a problem.

Sure it's not pleasant, but it's a natural part of her body.

Then again so is snot, that doesn't mean having a lot of it is not a problem. 

Oh so now he's implying there's a LOT of her period?

I know he's not literally saying that.

But implication can be powerful. 

So that's now five problems.

Plus she was having trouble keeping count of all her problems.

So that's eight problems all up. 

She really was having a tough day.

But it wasn't all bad.

Her annoying ex, Greg, had mysteriously disappeared. 

So that's good. 

'And tomorrow it'll be a similar tale for every building north of Arizona' she thought.  

Fly, FLY!

I had an interesting chat today with my good friend Reven, the Bear Headed Raven. 

Well 'chat' is too kind a word, it was really a debate, and by debate I mean vicious argument that had us both bleeding from the ears, and mind you, that's not an entirely awful thing, I wasn't sure if Reven had ears or not. I mean he physically has ears, bear ears, but frankly I'm never sure which parts of him are crow, which parts are bear and which parts are just for show. But that's just part of the parcel in befriending one of these modern hybrid animals. Some mystery, some intrigue, some 'what the hell is THAT oozing from THAT thing'. 

Its fun, it keeps things fresh, but you really hope and try to keep those unique elements to the physical, physiological and phycopathic levels, you don't weird shit oozing from their weird orifices, and other bizarre hybrid animal activity.

Well, you all know how it goes, I don't need to explain it, your bunny faced Salamander drowns, and suddenly you were supposed to 'know' it couldn't breathe in full cafe sized tub of Nutella with no holes poked in the lid? I'm not a scientist friend. Well I am, but I mostly focus on the social sciences, like sociology of personality judging, chemistry between chemicals dueling over a girl, the physics of hat hair, biology and the mathematics that defined the Beat Generation, so I can't be expected to also understand biology! 

Anyway, Reven and I were watching an action movie, where the hero was using action to defeat the bad guys.

Sample dialogue: 

Bad guy - 'You won't stop me!' 

Hero - 'Yeah I will!' 

Bad guy - 'Oh yeah, how?'

Hero - 'Talking!' 

Bad guy - 'That doesn't work on me, look try it'

Hero - 'Ok, um, give yourself in and you'll get a slightly smaller sentence!' 

Bad guy - 'No'

Hero - 'Ah shit, that was my big move' 

Bad guy - 'I know, that's always the big move, that's why I said you won't catch me!' 

Hero - 'Ah yeah? Well, I'm going to dig deep within, and even though I'm normally just a file clerk, it will turn out that I can run fast without instantly snapping my hamstring, and if I can do that, I can take you down with ACTION!' 

Bad guy - 'Not action?' 

Hero - 'Yep.... Action!!!'

Bad guy - 'I can't handle action, I give  myself in!!!'

It was a kick ass movie. Until the debate began. 

Me - 'You know what'?

Reven - 'What?'

Me - 'If that guy hadn't given himself in, and had instead of gone out on a ledge to get away, but then discovered that the ledge didn't go all around, it would have been kick ass if the hero then yelled "your shit out of ledge", right?'

Reven - 'Um, NOT right, why would that kick ass?'

Me - 'Cause it's like a pun on "shit out of luck"'

Reven - 'But he wasn't even in a building'?

Me - 'Yeah, but if he had have been'

Reven - 'But he wasn't!'

Me - 'THAT's NOT THE POINT, I'm saying IF he was you dick!' 

Reven - 'Well if he was, then he he could just fly off the ledge'

Me - 'Yeah, right. Cause flights a thing that exists in the world'

Reven - 'I can fly!' 

Me - 'No way'.

Reven - 'Of course I can, I'm raven bodied, you don't know me at all!!!'

Me - 'Ok, well what's THAT oozing out of THAT!' 

Reven 'It's goful wax oozing out of my glendlehyde'.

And that's when I shoved him in he Nutella jar. Yep, friendship sure is hard. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, who wants chocolate pancakes, I have secret ingredient! Zing.

Monster Castle - A Poem

Wally was starting to feel foolish.

For sixth months now he'd been living in The Gothic House, or 'Monster Caslte' as it was known to locals. 

This was the dog-house sized medieval castle within Tovella Fountains.

Located in Killkenny Park, in Danga Danga, New South Wales Australia.

It was known as 'Monster Castle' not because of the gargoyles that anointed it, but for the fact teenagers used to trick younger kids into climbing inside to 'see a monster' only to often find themselves walking in on a 'circle jerk' session by the local football team. 

All in all the town were largely happy with how they'd spent their entire millienum arts budget.

Tourists did flock by to see it in numbers occasionally reaching double figures a year.

And after the bank of port-a-loos were installed adjacent to it, it now was only urinated in a dozen or so times a day. 

Wally cared not for any of that though.

The football players had stopped coming by to watch each other jerk off after he had discovered the funnel-web spiders nest and trained the babies to be his penis charging army.

And the teenagers had stopped tricking younger kids to go in there after Wally had built a shield made from the peeling testicle skin of dying football players.

And so now all that he needed was for 'Heltro - The Magic Wizard Warlock' to show up.

He'd been promised by his uncle Johnson that if he moved into the castle Heltro would show.

No time frame was given at the time, but Wally had begun to have doubts after four months.

And now six months in those doubts had evaporated and formed into a cloud, that now rained a feeling of foolishness on him.

Wally no longer believed that Heltro would show. 

But leaving without seeing him was a failure he couldn't face quite yet.

How would he explain what he'd been doing all this time with no end result to point towards? 

His attempts to think of a saving face solution were also a failure.

He was instead becoming bitter.

At the town.

At the fountain.

At Heltro.

But mostly at his uncle Johnson who had made this promise.

Wally knew he should never have trusted him.

He didn't have an uncle Johnson for starters.

Plus uncle Johnson was a sheep, and as far as he knew he didn't have sheep in his family tree.

Although his Nanna Gretna had looked a little Marinoesq in her last few years.

He carried around a handkerchief knitted from her chin hairs to remember her. 

Now that he thought about it the first time he'd seen uncle Johnson was when he had that flu, and was pumping himself full of meds and blowing his nose like crazy into Nanna Gretna's handkerchief. 

Maybe this was all Nanna Gretna's fault? 

'Oh screw this' he thought.

'I only wanted Heltro to show so I could ask him to send a message to Nanna Gretna'

'But THIS is how she repays me?'

Right then and there Wally threw his handkerchief out the window, where it flew like a Frisbee, and then lodged itself in a tree like a ninja star. 

A bird came and perched on it.

Then immediately puked.

And Wally finally left 'Monster Castle' cursing under his breath 'fuck you Nanna, you sweet old cunt'.

On his way out he tripped on his twelve inch toenails.

And suffocated in a massive puddle of years old football player splooge.

Knowing things is good

'Alloying of the human torso had become rife. I mean not as bad as the pearling of the human foot, or the humaning of the average monkeys pearl collection, but still significant enough to be mentioned in magizines. Sure they were niche magazines, with tiny readerships, and sure in those ariticles the alloying was treated with disdain 'sure it looks cool, for an hour, and then you realize you're too heavy to ever stand up again, unless you've really been doing your leg exercises, and let's face it, most people attracted to the alloying lifestyle have not' would scream the headlines. Single handily making the alloyers seem dumb, while also making the editors in charge of the magazine's headlines seem unwilling to cut down to managable, and intelligent sizes, while also reinventing the term 'single handedly' to mean multiple handed things, but only if you interpret them strangely' I said to my boss. 

Seconds later my 'personal day' request was honored! It was totally worth the six months research into weird sub-cultures and niche magazine history too. Cause guess what I did with that day off? Yep. I TOTALLY tried on pants. Didn't buy any, cause they looked dumb, but how'd I have known otherwise? 

Revenge

Mal was pissed off at his next door neighbor Glen.

He decided to take matters into his own hands and stole something from Glen's backyard. 

But Glen appeared not to notice. 

So Mal stole another thing.

And then another.

And then yet another. 

And still another.

It turned out that that Glen hadn't actually liked or wanted that tractor tire, dilapidated barbecue pit, old clothes horse collection, Elk boneyard or black widow spider's nest. 

Glen came to the fence to thank Mal.

And as Mal looked back over Glen's yard he couldn't even remember what about it had so pissed him off these past fifteen years.

And they became friends. 

And one year they even took a vacation together. 

Where Mal killed Glen for stealing his toothbrush.

After its theft had reminded him that the real reason he had been pissed off at Glen small that time was that Glen had stolen his wife. 

He'd blocked it out after she had died the day she left him.

From a black widow spider bite. 

The Ghost - A poem

Jake was telling everyone he knew that he'd made love to a ghost. 

His wife was horrified.

He'd cheated on her. 

She left him.

She sued for divorce. 

She found the best lawyer in town.

She was willing to do anything to stop people finding out that was just what her fake tan looked like under a black light. 

So ARE you a cow?

It happens to all of us occasionally, some of us almost regularly, we wake up in the morning with grass between our teeth, with a bell around our neck and a hankering for a fresh glass of milk, and we think 'holy shit, am I a cow?' 

For most of us this panic lasts a few hours, we'll stare in the mirror for while trying to spot human characteristics, we'll jump online and do some research, we'll eat something and see if it feels like four stomachs are working rather than one. But you can never really tell, and you just want someone to give you a definitive list of ways to tell if you are in fact a cow, but it doesn't exist. 

Well that is, until now!

How to tell if you're a cow: 

- Your childhood education went basically like this: 

'Mommy, where do I sleep'?

'You're standing on it'

'Where do I shit?'

'You're standing on it'

'What do I eat?' 

'You're standing on it'

Then your mother got turned into a purse.

- Last time someone was sucking on your tail they exclaimed 'mmmm tastes like cow'.

- All 8 of your dicks are leaking milk. 

- Whenever you are racist people say 'ah I can't be mad, you're black AND white..... Although not brown, you racist'.

- You're named 'Daisy', or 'Driving Miss' or half of any Morgan Freeman movie, 'Shawshank' or 'Almighty' or you have Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box in your closet. 

- When people do a Christopher Walken impression near you, you can't help but be all like 'more cowbell? I don't gotta have more cow bell, do you know farmers use those so they can keep a track on us at all times? And also that they're uncomfortable and sometimes smell like rust?' 

- When they inevitably switch to Walken's watch monologue from Pulp Fiction, you're now all like 'oh a watch in your ass? You know how I get artificially inseminated? Farmer sticks his whole arm in my ass, I've got like ten watches back there!'

- Whenever you're eating steak part of you is thinking 'why does this taste like that one time I vomited so hard flesh came out'?

So there you go, finally a definitive way of finding out if you are, or are not a cow.

So how'd you go? Are you a cow? If so can you stop texting me, I don't swing that way, anymore, plus your hoofy typing leaves you WAY over punctuating, oh also, your vomiting flesh? That's not right, go see a doctor, or a vet, or just a barbecue, let's face it, that vomit you did tasted awesome!! 

Mix This

Confession time - I've never been to a goat herding themed croissant mixer.

Now I know what you're thinking - 'you Dave? You've NEVER been. That's madness. That seems right up your alley, WAY up your alley. Nice alley by the way, you keep it nice and tidy, I'm into that'. 

And first off, thank you, I have long kept a nice clean alley, but I wasn't aware anyone had really noticed, which can be frustrating at times, because it certainly doesn't clean itself, there are always fast food wrappers, and sometimes old tires, I don't know how they get there, if you're going to dump your tires why bring them to MY alley you animals! 

And secondly, you're RIGHT! It is up my alley, WAY UP my alley. And I'll tell you it's difficult living a life that's devoid of the memory of going to goat herding themed croissant mixer, there's like a shadowy area in my memory where that should be, and frankly that area is scaring the crap out of my memories of being a child. 

Oh sure, I could glue together memories of the many goat herding themed bars, restaurants, hatariums, and reptile zoos I've been too, and memories of the dozens of croissant mixers I've been to, hosted by everyone from everyone's favorite fence mender Harold Deesh to my local rock merchant Norm Stone, a man who just does NOT stop loving people saying 'well you're certainly in the right line of work' despite stones and rocks being vastly different things.

But why should I glue memories? I'm down there every day cleaning my alley, with goat herding loving croissant mixing people right up my alley, sure it's WAY up my alley, but I make it up that far occasionally when the weather is nice. And I want in.

Here's what you can do to help:

- Are you throwing a croissant mixer this weekend? 

- Probably. 

- So consider adding in a goat herding theme.

- I mean really consider it. 

- It's starting to sound pretty good isn't it?

- Well done for thinking in sound.

- But also think of the visuals.

- Goat herding shirts!

- Goat herding shoes!  

- Goat herding HATS! 

- Goat shit everywhere.

- Goat shit on goat herding hats! 

- Alright, so it's settled, yay, you're throwing a goat herding themed croissant mixer!

- Congrats!  

- Now invite me PLEEEEEAAAASSSEE!

- Wait I forgot, goat shit on goat herding hats! 

- Oh I'd said that already. 

- Don't let that take away my invite. 

- It was just a mistake.

- Am I still getting an invite? 

- Well you know what, fuck you!

- And also if you're currently thinking the old tire you wear as a necklace is going out of style, then stay the fuck away from my alley!!! 

Compliance - a poem

David, a semi-regular writer of poems.

Challenged himself to write a whole poem in the time it took to get from Sydney's Town Hall station to Central station.

On the train.

And that's only one stop.

And he was already on the train.

So he did not want to dilly-daddle.

Wait is that the right term? 

Yeah I think so. 

His random word offering app gave him the word - compliance - as inspiration.

I guess this poem fits that definition.

And the train has only just started moving.

'Damn'

He thought. 

Sure it technically complied. 

But its nothing super special, probably only regularly special. 

'Hmmm' he thought. 

'Hmmm' he added. 

'Um' he pondered.

'Fuck it, I've got a minute or so' he declared out loud, making fellow passengers fear he was about to do something rash. 

And we was. 

He wrote this.

Michael, a lawyer who specializes in arbitration between tenant and landlord disputes. 

Took a shit on his neighbors porch.

He had absolutely no beef with them.

So he was confident of getting away with it. 

He was happier with this one.

Cause it combined two of his loves.

Shitting in strange places. 

And the law. 

Yep this one really was super special. 

In the eyes of the beholder - a poem

Grant was hired to work in a store selling human eyes to people who had lost an eye in some sort of accident or fight.

Very early on he realized that human eyes super grossed him out.

So he began to substitute in 

monkey eyes, dolphin eyes, giraffe eyes and occasionally even pheasant eyes.

The customers always seemed pleased with their new eyes.

None of them made complaints.

But Grant never felt safe.

Because on the way out they always looked at him funny. 

Signs you're currently locked inside a small cage

I know what you're thinking - ‘my life feels small, tight, enclosed, almost locked away, but maybe it's not my life, maybe it's just my body, as perhaps I'm currently literally locked inside a small cage, but how could I possibly know?’

Well I feel your pain. I know you're headspace, I've been there myself, that's why, and this is a Fleeting Forever exclusive, I went out and did the research and found out just how to tell if you ARE currently locked inside a small cage.

After several years of testing, experimenting, surveying and even imagining (that was Einstein's method so you can trust it) I have discovered the following three ways of knowing definitively if you may currently me locked inside a small cage:

1. You were recently deeply entrenched in a dispute over who was next in line to buy gelato, after the physical brawl, where you lost an ear, but the other guy lost a fibula, the manger finally decided to make a decision, but not wanting to get in the middle he delegated the role to the new girl who works three hours on every Tuesday and Thursday that her tennis coach is in jail, which has been six straight months now, she really should look at the piece of paper that the judge sent her detailing his conviction and sentence, although it should be noted that his conviction was due to a drink driving offense, and he never acted inappropriately towards any of the girls or boys he coached, it's a shame that needs to be said, but maybe clichés exist for a reason, and of course this does not in anyway diminish how bad drink driving is in itself, and we should all be thankful that all he did was knock over a mail box, then drive into a pool, and again when we say 'all he did' we do not want to take away the pain of the pool boy who was scooping car parts out of that pool for weeks, once the school girl had fruitlessly made a facial expression suggesting that she did not want that responsibility, that she  then looked over at you holding that guys fibula, and it reminded her of her 86th favorite movie, the Burbs, staring Tom Hanks, Corey Feldman and possibly one of the Quaid brothers, and is possibly about a man who's dog digs up a fibula from the backyard of his neighbors, and the neighborhood start to suspect them of being killers, although she's not a hundred percent sure, and in fact what she's calling a fibula maybe is actually called a femur? I mean fuck off, she's 16, she doesn't know all the names of bones, and in fact it would be weird if she did! In any case she said 'I guess the guy holding the leg bone can go first' and as you started yelling 'woo-hoo' and began to use his leg bone to play drums on an overturned empty ice-cream canister, the other guy suddenly said 'oh yeah, go first if you want, but just see what will happen?' And then you replied 'why don't you tell me, I respond to threats layered with specificity way more than ones leaving me to fill in the gaps, because at the core I'm an optimist, and I tend to fill in those gaps with balloons and trips to the zoo' and he replied with 'ok, fair enough, well I have a small cage at my house and I will put you in it' and you were like ‘alright man, that doesn't sound that bad, could be an adventure, or at least lead to a good story to tell, hey girly, hit me with a scoop of vanilla bean, and what ever this guy wants, and be snappy I want to get into this cage quickly, before I lose my nerve'. And this all happened about how long it would take to get from the gelato store to the guys cage, plus a minute or two of shoving time, then you may well currently be in a small cage!

2. If you yourself ARE a very small cage, and the store selling you has displayed you inside a slightly bigger cage to conserve floor space, you may currently be in a small cage.

3. If all sides of you seem to be entrapped between the walls a small cage, you may currently be in a small cage.


So that's it, that's the three ways to know if you may currently be in a small cage. I hope you got lucky and are in one! That is if that's what you were hoping for, and if it wasn't, what's wrong with you? Why don't you want adventures or fun stories to tell?

Burning down the house

I like to think that if my house was on fire the following things would go through my mind.

- Oh no, my house is on fire, boo.

- This sucks. Did I say boo yet?

- Oh I did? 

- When? 

- Oh right, right, right, right, right. 

- Ha ha, that's fun to say over and over, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, ha ha, it never gets old, right, right, right, right, I could seriously be here for a long while, right, right, right. 

- What do you mean, snap out of it because my house is on fire? 

- Oh no, my house is on fire! Boo. 

- Oh wait maybe it's just smoke? 

- It could be couldn't it? 

- Maybe this could be just a really badly burned toast scenario?

- I don't have housemates, so I guess it would have to be a ghost.

- But that would explain the burning, cause he's trying to hit eject on the toaster, but his hand is going right through it, and that means it's going through the hot part too, which would hurt BAD, so I'm not going to chastise him for a little smoke.

- Can it be just smoke if there are huge flames bellowing out of he windows? 

- Nope? 

- Damn it. That means it's fire? 

- Boo.

- Wait, unless it's steam?

- Can it be steam and have bellowing flames? 

- Damn it.

- Is bellowing the right word? That's more for smoke than the flames right? 

- No I don't know either, that's why I asked dick. 

- Although if it WAS steam, that would be badass, because it probably would mean that a steam powered time machine has arrived! 

- It could be a messenger from the future just for me!

- Do time machines ever emit fire? 

- You know what? Probably! 

- Cause steam isn't going to be powerful enough to get you through time.

- The steam-engine probably just powers up the flashing lights that make the machine look all spacey.

- Wow, a time machine, in MY house! 

- This is mad!

- Do people still say 'mad' meaning 'rad'?

- Do people still say 'rad' meaning 'good'?

- Is 'good' still 'good', I mean it's not 'awesome', or even 'great'? 

- Maybe time machine person can tell me about mad new words from the future! 

- Wow.

- I wonder if one will be 'hertja', that'd  be rad. 

- I wonder why I was chosen? 

- What's special about me?

- Do I have anything that people in the future might need? 

- I still have my old high-school text books that have all the key sentences highlighted so that only the most useful of the endless lines of uselessness need be read? 

- Nah, I don't think they need those. Plus I've got doodles of boobs all through them. In the future they probably have virtual reality doodles of boobs! 

- My detailed knowledge of beetle attitudes towards various types of human could be valuable? Maybe in the future they're all unsure about certain beetles and their relationships with Asian women?

- But nah, they'd probably just chuck a bunch of beetles into a pit with a bunch of Asian women and observe themselves. 

- My ability to be a corporate stooge while simultaneously being a corporate stooge for the original corporate's corporate rivals is still strong? Possibly. That is pretty valuable.

- That kind of extremely loyal lack of loyalty may help thwart an intergalactic disagreement?

- But then again if there are intergalactic battles going on they probably WOULD want my boob covered book on the Iranian hostage situation from the 70s or whatever, I never read it, and we've already established that they have virtual reality doodles of boobs.

- So what do I have that's valuable?

- Oh holy hell.

- My god. 

- I know what it is! 

- I just bought a new box of ice-cream sandwiches, oh my god someone call 911 - I'm being fucking time robbed!!!!

- And they're burning down my house to cover up the evidence! 

- Which means even if they don't discover the second batch of ice-cream sandwiches I hid behind the frozen apple pie they may end up melting! 

- Those future mother fuckers. 

- Oh wait.

- I just remembered something. 

- I don't own a house. 

- Or live in America, so 911 won't do shit. 

- Also why am I holding an industrial sized bottle of kerosene and some extra long matches intended for lighting barbecues? 

- Oh that's right, I'm an arsenist, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, seriously ENDLESS fun. 

- I wonder if anyone did call the cops? 

- Oh fuck, RUUUUUUNNNN!!!