Midnight Jolt Run

It was such an inconvenience. To kiss.
Oh, what of my breath? Oh, but I just ate!
My gum, my lozenge, the Colgate!?
So we made easy fair of simpler things.

Holding hands and warm, endless hugs
We regulate. Much easier. Much safer.
Brief touches, smiling glances, gentle advances
even what the Eskimos are said to do with noses

But I must admit, I still long
for that inconvenient sweet.
That salted, half-bitter mocha is what I yearn for
the pressure of your lips, and the hunt for your tongue
Silky and pebbly, and coated with the memories
of what may have beat me to your mouth first
but what I intend to make you forget

And the danger of kissing too deeply, or not deeply enough,
wisely and chastely, passionately and with the intent
to rob the very breath we both must seek, but both must deny to give back
in gasps and laughs and sighs and promises of more…yet more…
I can think of no greater thrill than the hunt of the kiss.

I miss kissing you. Like I miss hairpin turns a little too fast
a mad dash braking before breaking, or a wall an inch too close…
close calls with sharp-toothed bites and rabid eyes and snarls abundant
and saving, savoury, angel dances at the edge of a flight of steps
half a heartbeat before down into the oblivion we all must fall…

Ignorant of garlic or spice. Mint, oil, acid, sweet, or the tang
of sharp wisdom, warm whispers and shivering whimpers
I’ll gladly taste it all. False or true. Great or small.
So long as it comes from the mouth of you.

Yes. I must admit. I still long for that
inconvenient sweet.

These are the days where it feels like herding cats would be easy;

like all you have is a group of wildebeests and a narrow path through a china shop and they expect you to smile as you drive the throng into the greased up isle with nothing but a bullhorn and a shoehorn. It tests your mettle and blunts the blades of the knives and swords and Swiss Army implements you never thought you’d need to grow and never though you’d have, but somehow it never seems like you have enough. It ends up being that the most powerful doomsday bomb in your arsenal is just to get through the day, knowing that the self-prescribed reward is on the other side of it all. They say it’s bad for you, like they do to all the things in the world that make the world worth livin’ for, and deep down you agree; but it’s either that or another vice that lines up to take the edge off of the naivety that you signed up for this willingly. You slithered down the isle with all that mattered pushing you forward, making promises of the white picket fence and the whitewall radial swing hanging from a chunk of proud oak, or maybe it was birch, you don’t quite recall after two years of diapers and five years of sleeping lighter than your wallet. And when you do stand at the bar with the fellows you recognize as other soldiers in this war, you joke about all those dreams with them and inevitably there will be one that gazes down at you through that thousand-yard-stare and manages a pity laugh before asking in that knowing, rhetorical way: “Why didn’t you choose Poplar?” like anything else you’ve built out of those dreams is just waiting for the final lighting bolt to put it out of its misery. And as you trudge away from that damning bit of friendly assistance to head to ballet practice or soccer or was it baseball this week, the missus lets you know she’s sick and it could be the kind that leads to babies and for a moment you have faith stronger than the pope simply because you know the devil isn’t that cruel and God’s sense of humour is par for that kind of joke. And maybe there’s a few moments you pass out and gather your wits long enough to hit REM for a cycle or two, but they wake you up with demands for a bedtime story and you wonder if you had a chance if you’d sock Doctor Seuss right in the mouth or embrace him in a hug because at least the little buggers listen to his rhymes. Two fish, blue fish later, though, and they give you your dose for the day; that damning drug that puts cocaine to shame and: “Thanks, Dad.”

Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so bad, and herding cats seems like a lot of extra work in comparison.

=-
Studio Shinnyo 2015.  Khattam-Shud, EOF.

A wild maiden aimed to settle down

So she let it fly at the pub in the town:

She’d an ale consumption contest

To determine the hardiest best

And would present to that man in a gown.

Many confident men came a calling

For her beauty they drank until crawling

But the maiden had a trick

A candle and magical wick

To allow her to keep drinking without falling!

Now Sir Fry was a humble young knight

Who had loved the sassy maiden – first sight!

And so when it came to his turn

Beneath her skirt he did adjourn

And the maiden’s face became surprise and alight!

Onward the night progressed rather swimmingly

Her opponents challenged her contest willingly

But a quarter to seven or eight

She stood to announce her fate

“I’m afraid none I see survived winningly!”

“You all showed yourselves quite able

And drank enough to enter into a fable

So to you, I cannot lie

The winner must be Sir Fry!

For he drank me right under the table!”

=-
Studio Shinnyo 2014.  Khattam-Shud, EOF.

She bundles up in the cute stuff
Armoured in nylons and grey fluff
And an outer balloon jacket far too flat
To hold even a warm breath for more than a dozen heartbeats

Out into the cold she awakes
The one day a year she forsakes
The weather channel a dozen times
And her sudden accidental bravery makes me smile a dozen more
Read the rest of this entry »

Strike Fiss’ Manifesto

March 2002

Ho ho ho and a hee hee hee!

If I am the Jester, who might you be?

I am the soul who pokes fun at the world

Who pokes fun at our troubles, to make them unfurled !

The silent and meek and downtrodden unite!

We will all laugh together when we cannot fight

And when we cannot fight, we cannot win!

Yet in one jolly soul, Victory can begin!

So fear not,

fray not,

fade not,

want not!

I’ll tell you a story, a city, far under the cloud

A copper, a silver, and I’ll make you laugh out loud

A fee fee fee and a rhyme in time!

Can you recall who you were in Nineteen-Ninety Nine?

I know not who you were, but I was myself

Look at the boys in the sandlot, beating themselves!

A Fireman afraid of fires, a robot afraid of tin

But strangest yet are those world leaders with their beards on their chin.

Or that one over there, with the wavy gray hair

Slant eyes and bad breath and their bombs in the air

Who has the bombs?

He has the bombs!

She has the bombs!

I have the bomb.

But bombs and guns are so out of style

Why not use hate to wage war for a while?

A fum fum diddly fum, on the street, kick a bum!

No bombs in the air, no war in your hair, kick them all to kingdom come!

Look across the railroad tracks! That side, Skins, and the other all blacks!

They’ll all try to burn, they’ll all try to rape, they’ll raise all the tax!

Disappear inside the home, and watch the children play!

Under the crucifix!  Under the cross!  Watch the parents pray!

My God is better than your God.  My Home is Holier than Thou.

So long as the kids aren’t queer or swear, their souls won’t burn for now.

Queer kicked down?

Gay she found!

Faggot he found!!

Penis envy all around!

Oh, but all that is such, wonderful old news!

So what will be the next joke that we choose?

Terror is a wonderful path, for just souls on the way to glory!

Believe in it!  Die for it!  Want for it!  Bathe in all the gory!!

If one can kill ten, and in a fashionable way

You can even watch on TV as the cadavers decay!

Heart in it’s place!  I walk around town with a frown on my face!

Blow up the mall!  Blow up your soul!  Two megatons in your suitcase!

Wash your face, tie your shoes!  Don’t be late for the 6 o’Clock News!

If you don’t, twill be the history books and truth that will choose.

Magazinable!

Flammable!

Damnable!

Withstandable!

And once the visions of fires all fade into the movies in your mind

We have so much more joy in a war of another kind!

Look over there!  See that man walking into the office?

He is the richest man on earth!  Money pours from each orifice!

He once had an idea, one wonderful dream!

And crushed other ideas by putting his on your screen.

Look over here!  In this very town!  In this exact pub!

You’ve been hunted to extinction as you hunted with club!

Your hard-working farms, your down to earth fears

Just did not quite fit in with the budget these years

Money begets

Never forgets

Power corrupts

I can’t forget

And while fat cats choke on the mice they consume

Their fat little children will prosper on your boom

Hay day! Hip-Hip-Horray!  Jump in the acid rain!

Peel off all your wisdom, for it can bring only pain!

Join this Jester for whiskey, display a gold and down it goes!

We’ll joke, we’ll sing, to heal our hearts and drown the woes!

Love thyself!  Love thy friend!  Love thy soul!

For no matter how many rainbows you see, the sky is black as coal.

And maybe, in the depths of our drunken hazy

We’ll see why the whole world has gone quite crazy.

Joke about it!

Sing about it!

Wish about it!

Get out of it!

And we can all wish for the bombs to kill the foolish men

And we can all wish for the dicks to compare and get over it then

And we can all wish for the terror to be with only those who desire it

And we can all wish for the money to go back in it’s place

And we can all wish for the races to join hands and embrace

And we can all wish for heaven on earth, instead of living in hell.

But, oh well.

And my opinion means nothing, I am but a fool.

But I know who I am.  Who the fuck are you.

Strike Fiss, Studio Shinnyo 2002.  Khattam-Shud, EOF.

Strike Fiss’ Manifesto

May 2001

Air

I still feel the flight.  Like some kind of warm blanket around my sense of Earth, Gravity and Reality.  When you can feel the 737 line up for it’s attack into the sky, you know it’s real.  Maybe it’s the white checker-stripes of the runway as you slide down it.  Or maybe, and I hope this is the truth, you can feel it inside of you.  The aircraft aching to fly…to do what it was created to do.  I dare say that the feeling resides in me for the same reason.  Maybe us all.  The acceleration snaps you back to it’s own world.  The haze is gone, but leaving things changed in it’s wake.  You feel speed.  Energy.  The sky along your body, coaxing you up.  I should be scared, but nothing would make me so right now.  In fact, I can only urge the process forward…faster…lock me into the seat and take me higher.  The Earth slips beneath us, but we are still attached to it; until the moment it washes over you…

You’re flying.

It’s the incredible, smooth, first heartbeat I love the most.  When you can feel air all around you.  A cushion lifts you up and presents you worthy to the heavens.  It is as if you’re home.

The ground turns into a toy chest.  A fortune in model buildings, dinky cars, and farms of ants marching to their own music.  Next, as toys turn into coloured patterns, the agricultural jiffy-markers paint across an endless green and brown scrapbook; only to slowly fade into an organic brain-like scribble that melts in with silicon wafers and endless memory.

And then, as the ground slips below a white heaven…  Blue.

The most amazing colour you’ve ever seen.  More blue than any ocean, and so much different than what you see when you look up from the Earth.

It’s a dream you are part of…and all it takes is some wings.

Strike Fiss, Studio Shinnyo 2001.  Khattam-Shud, EOF.

Strike Fiss Manifesto

February, 2000

LED switches

red and green traffic streaks

nobody ever sees

multimedia hearts and soulless eyes

where nothing’s ever right anymore

cause proof is just a belief-flavoured message

that you can choose with your socks and your Danish this morning

Serenity comes to be between 7-11’s

caffeine octane maim brain

Wouldn’t trade it for the world

but I would for a kiss

of something more than pixels

both on and off the Liquid Crystal

Frantic for a rest

not sleep. Sleep enslaves too much these nights

robs me of useless time

I’ll cling to with my last breath

I’m too tired to sleep

Maybe tomorrow

Just enough

Fill my head up

top off my tanks

charge my cells

wined my springs

Just go.

I don’t know where.

At least not yet.

Go.

Strike Fiss, Studio Shinnyo, 2000. Khattam-Shud, EOF.