Peer to Peer Networking: the model for a more egalitarian democracy

 Equality of membership is a universal tenet of democracy. In Peer-to-peer networking (P2P) we find a model for the implementation of this principle. It inspires a sense of equality among millions of users, and thus has the potential to aid in transforming the political and economic structure of societies worldwide (Bauwens, 2005). It also helps its users to emerge from the sway of the large corporations that strive to monopolize the supply end of the online market. While P2P is sometimes accused of violating copyrights, it will be argued here that this is a surmountable issue, and that P2P can benefit creators, the online community, and also the global village.
   P2P started as networks of computers linked by cables in the workspaces of businesses, and expanded to interactions between millions connected by the internet. In order to be part of a P2P exchange each peer needs to use the same networking program, like FrostWire. Alternatively one can use a protocol, such as BitTorrent, which allows for file sharing among peers without each needing to download a program. Instead the peers download a file extension that allows them to access a single program to be used for both uploading and downloading at the same time. This process has spawned a miniature culture within the network which compels its members to be mindful of and outspoken about the need to reciprocate (Pouwelse,  Garbacki, Epema, Sips, 2009). The use of such programs and protocols could help to cultivate in us a better sense of responsibility towards one another as citizens (Uricchio, 2004).
   Questions arise though as to whether some forms of peer to peer networking are ethical because certain of them, such as The Pirate Bay, offer without charge the intellectual property of artists or software designers. While creative output should always be the property of the individuals who created it, it should however not be a commodity that corporations can acquire and market. Creators should of course be compensated for their work, but it can be argued that such exposure as that provided by file sharing sites is free advertising that indirectly generates capital (Coelho, 2009). But if intellectual property owners require direct payment, they could be compensated through advertising revenue in the same manner that artists are remunerated by the radio and television industries.
   P2P has inspired political movements such as the P2P Foundation and the Pirate Party.
   The basic principle of the P2P Foundation is that if every home worldwide had a computer with an internet connection, everyone could potentially communicate and share files with everyone else. Such a scenario could inspire every member of the population with the sense of equal membership (Bauwens, 2005).
  P2P networking could be a powerful tool for the advancement and maintenance of democracy. It is also an equalizing element that can potentially emancipate users from their dependence upon the one-sided and often expensive server to client based downloading monopoly. The spirit of democracy is alive and well online in the use of Peer-to-peer networking.

Citations:


Bauwens, M. 2007. P2P politics, the state, and the renewal of the emancipatory traditions. Re-public. URL: http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=133
Bauwens, M. 2005. Manifesto: Peer to Peer and Human Evolution.  Wiki Commons. URL: http://p2pfoundation.net/Manifesto
Coelho, P. 2009. Paul Coelho’s Blog. From Pirate Coelho Central.                            URL : http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2009/04/13/from-pirate-coelho-central/
Pouwelse, J., P. Garbacki, D. Epema, H. Sips. 2008. Pirates and Samaritans: A decade of measurements on peer production and their implications for net neutrality and copyright. Telecommunications Policy Journal, 32(11): 701-712
Uricchio, W. 2004. Beyond the Great Divide: collaborative networks and the challenge to dominant conceptions of creative industries. The International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1): 79-90.

I was banned from the Art Bar Reading Series just for telling the host to go fuck himself?

This is how I got the news that I've been banned from the Art Bar Reading Series. Nobody had the guts to even call me after my history with the place. A history which, by the way, is longer than that of most members of the Art Bar Committee.

Stephen Humphrey wrote:

   “The issue of whether you can use a guitar to recite poems is a moot point from the moment you dropped the F-bomb on one of our hosts. Rudy told the rest of us you swore at him and your account confirms this.
    Whether or not singing songs should be part of the Art Bar open stage is open to debate and personally I can accept a reasoned critique of Art Bar open stage rules as fair comment, but verbal abuse of Art Bar team members is not acceptable.
   Yelling "Go fuck yourself" is not the language of debate and I don't see how it serves poetry.
   There's no point arguing that "fuck yourself" and other profane expressions are part of poetry. You weren't reciting Ginsbberg's "Howl". You were using words to intimidate someone volunteering his time to run a reading series.
    You weren't defending personal experssion. You were acting belligerently and spreading ugly vibes.
    What this is leading up to, Christian, is you're out of the computer. We don't want you at the Art Bar Open Stage.
    Consider this official notice. You're permanently off the list.
   However, it sounds like you won't be around the Art Bar anyway, since no public apology is forthcoming.
   I'm regret that it's come to this. You did a lot of good for the local lit scene in the 90s, but with your current attitude is doing no good, least of all to poetry.
    Whatever is going on I hope you work it out, but you can't do it in public at the Art Bar. That's not fair to anyone.
    And that, I'm afraid, is that.”

My Response:

   I told Rudy to go fuck himself after he effectively called me an asshole by implying that I was deliberately breaking the rules. I have never seen a host in all of Art Bar Reading series history get up and single an open stager out like that. He was clearly in the wrong. If a person does something positive and gets singled out through the power of microphone as an example of something negative, that person should be allowed a "go fuck yourself". It was certainly not an attempt to intimidate Rudy as you claim. It was an act of self defence. The only reason me saying "go fuck yourself" to Rudy sounded ugly was because since the audience has never seen a poet get up and play guitar at the Art Bar Reading Series, as far as they knew Rudy was actually quoting real rules by saying "Don't anyone come here and do what he did." If people in the audience knew otherwise they would have been more sympathetic to a "fuck you" in response to Rudy's narrow mindedness.
    I would argue that what I did was not verbally abusive. I swore at him. Verbal abuse is a verbal attack on a person for the purpose of hurting them. I reacted to being handed a shit sandwich.
    Interesting that I didn't cry and decide to ban the fifty or so people who swore at me over the years that I hosted the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy. Sounds like you guys are taking yourselves way too seriously if being sworn at is an issue.
    I don't know what you mean by my "current attitude". I have not changed my willingness to stand up for what I believe in. If anything I've toned the way I express protest down in recent years. If I'd been holding a beer in the 90s and someone like Rudy had handed me that kind of bullshit they would have been wearing it, and deservedly so. What has certainly changed is the Art Bar Reading Series. There was never any reason to tell either Alan Briesmaster or Pierre L'Abbe to go fuck themselves. They never mistreated open stagers, and I would bet you that if I had said it to them they would not have been so petty as to ban me.
    Frankly, I am shocked by the committee's small mindedness about this. Holy crap! Banning someone over something like this? Was this unanimous?
    I would suggest this is not about the swearing at all, but rather a simple way for you guys to get rid of the problem of someone criticizing the Art Bar Reading Series. You guys had a weird reaction to that review I wrote last year and pretended the issue was that it wasn't a poem. But really if I'd gotten up and read a three minute long essay on bees I don't think there would have been any complaints.
    You guys should really take a good long look at yourselves as a collective. You know damn well that nobody else on the committee has as conservative an interpretation of poetry as Rudy does. I hope you are awake to this and the injustice that is done to poetry by allowing him to make the type of declaration that he made last Tuesday. Okay, so you guys have banned me. You are morons for making such a decision, but you've made it. Don't go to sleep on this. If Rudy is not going to apologize to me he should at least apologize to the audience the next time he hosts for his misrepresentation of the rules. He told me that he turned away two people with guitars that night when they asked if they could perform. The three minute time limit will turn away most poet songwriters anyway. He should also apologize to Alan Briesmaster and Pierre L'Abbe for implying that they showed an impure definition of a "poetry only" series.
    I urge you to let something positive come out of all this. Don't let Rudy turn poets away just because they express their poetry in song form.

Oh How the Art Bar Reading Series has Fallen!

   I just had a very bad experience at the Art Bar Reading Series.
   On the night of September 6 I went there with my guitar like I have many times. Like I did at least fifty times on the open stage before I was invited to do a feature fifteen years ago. In this case I was doing it for the first time in a year because I ride a bike and it's a hassle to carry a guitar to poetry readings except on special occasions.
   The special occasion on this night was that I was not going to be back for a while since I was starting school again next week and so I announced on the open stage that I was going to finish my visits with a song. I did a three minute presentation of a poem in song form.
   Afterwards the host for this night, Rudy Fearon is his name, came up to the mike and said basically "I want to make it clear that we don't want people to come with guitars and play on the open stage like Christian just did."
   I said "You don't think song lyrics are poetry?"
   He didn't quite answer my question, but rather reaffirmed that what I did was "against the rules" and that it I have a tendency to break the rules and that such behaviour was not welcome.
   I felt both insulted for myself and on behalf of poetry, which before the printing press was mostly all sung. I responded by saying "Go fuck yourself!"
   He made some threat about barring me from the Art Bar Reading Series.
   I have seen features even recently bring musical instruments into their performance. Robert Priest usually brings his guitar and does at least one song. Plenty of people sing acapela on the open stage, Aton Crouton has brought a track to rap to, and Allen Sutterfield, the founder of the Art Bar Reading Series performed with musical accompaniment a few months ago when he featured there. As I said before, I used to bring my guitar every week when the Art Bar Reading Series was at Csardas and the Imperial Pub. I got the opposite of complaints from the hosts about it, and when I was invited to do a feature by Pierre Labbé I'm sure he knew I would bring my guitar that night as well. The night of my feature I performed one fifteen minute song and one five minute song with my guitar. I was also accompanied by my band-mate Brian Haddon on the recorder.
   Have the rules changed? Are there even clear cut rules about this? I'm confused.
   If everyone in charge is in agreement that guitars are not welcome then I can simply accept that I don't want to be around such a restrictive definition of poetry imposed on people who perform for free.
   If on the other hand this is just about Rudy, and he's misrepresented the rules, then I need to get a public apology from him, into the microphone. Because really, the audience also needs an apology for this.

Instructions for Electroshock Therapy

Plug the Female end of the cord into the place where it’s meant to go,
Plug the Male end into any, any, any old electric hole.
Now flick the switch,
the light is green,
we need to wait now to warm up the machine
we’re wearing white and we’re feeling clean
for shock therapy!
We strap their legs and their arms
for shock therapy!
They can’t do any harm without their memory!
Shock therapy!
And if you think someone’s insane
why don’t you drive some lightning through their brain?
They won’t remember who to blame
for shock therapy!

Undress the patient and then lay them down just like a sacrifice.
To avoid any bruises let no metal touch the skin,
that’s my advice.
Now take a razor and shave the hair
around the temples, then rub electrode-jelly there,
put some on the electrodes and we’re soon prepared
for shock therapy!
Under fluorescent glow!
Shock therapy!
You know their flesh looks so cold under that canopy
for Shock therapy!
We dance some sparks through twisted wires
and randomly black out the stars.
Best of all it doesn’t leave any scars.
Shock therapy!

Insert and fasten the mouthpiece so the patient won’t bite their tongue,
slip a pillow underneath the back to reduce the spinal motion,
now turn the shock-power-switch on
and rotate the dial to choose the voltage you want,
to serve another cold meal in the restaurant
of Shock therapy!
Let’s fry some frontal lobes with shock therapy!
Add some gelled electrodes to the recipe
of shock therapy!
But if you want to make it work
use a tight rubber belt to hold those spastic jerks.
Let’s burn up the temples and raise the church
of shock therapy!

Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold,
so start at three-tenths of a second at ten or twenty volts.
But the voltage on the screen
is not the voltage in the human being,
so let’s meditate upon the golden mean
of shock therapy:

Multiply the patient’s current by the machine’s resistance,
then subtract from the meter voltage.
Is all of this making sense?
Now push the start-shock button on,
and keep your finger there until the shock is done,
secure the jaw and force the shoulders down
for shock therapy!

We’re looking for the threshold
in shock therapy,
but if convulsive codes have not been breached
in shock therapy,
either the threshold has not been found,
or a delayed attack is coming around
in ten to twenty seconds on the killing ground
of shock therapy!

If unconsciousness follows the charge a delayed attack will come,
but if you’re looking for a grande mal seizure, just raise the voltage some.
Two-hundred and fifty volts
at point-one seconds could deliver some jolt,
so it helps us to remember it’s the patient’s fault
in shock therapy!
to get a grande mal seizure,
shock therapy,
you know it couldn’t be easier, get one right away.
Shock therapy!
Just two-hundred volts
at point-fifteen seconds makes them shake like jello,
though for the rest of their lives they will be walking slow
from shock therapy!

For details on injections of amytal and other drugs,
just in case you want to reduce the violence of these convulsions,
refer to current literature,
so now we’ll open our books to page thirty-four
as we all join together now to sing a prayer
to shock therapy!

Dashine

The streetcar is dragging my dead heart home from a minor romantic defeat.
I was standing along with a nervous line,
legs anticipating a seat,
when in front of the firing squad of my eyes
walked a beautiful African girl.
My eyes bounced to and away from her
while my lips tried to jump-start a smile.
Then suddenly and so effortlessly
she poured me a long, sweet smiling drink,
and suddenly I had the ability
to smile back at her, though it was weak.

But what I should’ve done is said,
“Don’t smile at me
unless you wanna have sex with me!
Don't bend that lovely bow to use my heart for target practice.
Don't smile at me unless you wanna have sex with me!
Don’t make my hormones go and then tell me you’re just an actress!
Don’t smile at me unless you wanna have sex with me.

I was far too shy to approach her there,
but I swore that I’d talk with her soon.
I would sit by her side when the streetcar arrived
and I’d start with a “Hi, how are you?”,
So I went to get gum at the Garfields
to chew it and mask my bad breath
in breathless preparation for
a moment bringing rebirth or death.

The man at the counter asked how I’d been.
I told him that I’d been okay.
He said, “Is that why you look so cheerful then?”
and I asked, “What did you say?”
When I picked up his friendly sarcasm I was about to justify
why I don’t smile, when I suddenly saw that the streetcar’d already arrived.

The girl with the smile was just ahead in line
but somehow some other man
had me beat for that sweet seat beside her,
though without any romantic plan.
I was about to turn around to sit just ahead and across the aisle,
when she pulled that red bow of her mouth once more
and unwrapped me another smile.

So I thought, “She must really have liked me
to smile sweetly two times in a row,
so I was determined to talk with her shortly
or else I might not ever know.
I decided to ride until she got off,
to catch up and then talk with her then,
so I stayed in my seat and I missed my stop
because I might not see her again.

As the streetcar came closer to Parkdale
I was ready to spring for the door,
but my matching that place with her sweet chocolate face,
was it racist or merely a bore.
At Spadina I expected this angel
to descend into some trendy hell,
but if tempted, she didn’t show it,
her hand never reached for the bell.
At University all of the Shriners
who’d gotten on at the Motel strip
stumbled drunkenly out into their parade,
but she still continued to sit.
When Yonge street came she got off the car.
Would she go into the Hudson’s Bay?
“Oh, Goddamnit no!”, I had to pay again
just to follow her on the subway.

I followed her, fifteen bodies behind
and caught up with her on the platform.
“Hi”, I said, with relief in my voice
and she gave a “Hi” in return.
I told her she was very beautiful.
“Thanks”, she said, kind of indifferently.

“What’s your name?”, I asked, and she said, “Dashine.”,
showing pride that her name was unique.
“I’m Christian”, I told her, with even more pride.
She said, “Hi”, one more time to my name,
then I said, “Hi”, in response to her “Hi”,
just to balance that stale greeting game.

“Do you work out in the west end?”, I asked.
She said, “No, that’s where I live.”
“and where are you headed for now?”, I asked.
She told me, “I’m meeting a friend.”
“Oh ya”, I said, for the sake of response,
as the train slid up, packed end to end.
“Oh, shit!”, she said in response to the crowd,
but we managed to squeeze our way in.
As the train jerked itself into motion, I asked, “Do you go to school, or do you work?”.
“I work”, she said, and she seemed annoyed,
asking, “What are all of these questions for?”
“Oh!... I... ah... oh... I’m sorry!”, I said.
She told me that it was okay.
“I need to ask questions to talk”, I said.
She said, “I’ve had a trying day”.
“Do you always smile as sweetly as that
when you’ve had a trying day?”, I asked.
She rolled her eyes in response to that
like she was taking both of those smiles back
on a web running back to her spidery guts
which had spewed them out with so much art.
Now both of those smiles she had given me
left a sour aftertaste in my heart.

I hung nervously from the overhead bar
while the cookie that is my poor heart
was crumbled in the grip of the moment
and it fell to the floor of the car.
I tossed her a couple of whimpering smiles
without daring to look in her eyes,
but the limp smiles that she handed back to me
were just anorexic “Good-byes.
At Wellesley Station she got off the train.
I followed, but got washed far behind
by the counterflow of the passenger flesh
descending to get on the line.
I tried to intercept her
by ascending a clearer stairway,
to explain why I’d taken such trouble,
but by now she was too far away.

But I should’ve found some way to tell her.
I should’ve climbed on a transfer dispenser and shouted.
I should’ve hijacked the fucking public address system and screamed this message out to every post pubescent girl and every woman there with their chromosomal licenses to tease:
“Don’t smile at me unless you wanna have sex with me!
Don’t bend that crimson bow to use my heart for target practice!
Don’t smile at me unless you wanna have sex with me!
Don’t make my hormones go and then tell me you’re just an actress!
Don’t smile at me
unless you wanna have sex with me.

Hello?

My penis
is the hot-line
to the red phone
in the White House
of my heart,

and my penis is always ringing,
but whenever I pick it up
there’s never
anyone
at
the other
end.

Sixteen Tons of Dogma

Well distant early warning
says, “The Blues are on their way!”
Your e.s.p. deception almost
had me fooled today,
but I drove here in my karma
and I smashed yours along the way!
See, I was late for my fate,
and time was thick today.

Well I’ve got to get some exorcise,
my Spirit’s running low.
The vampire and the succubi have gotten me in tow,
so I’d better get my crucifixed
and spit a shine on my halo,
‘cause I’ve got sixteen tons of destiny
all ready set to roll.

I took my crayons to a seance
and I drew the Queen of Cups
She said “If you don’t know the law, you’ll have to make it up”,
so I said, “Demonic possession
is nine-tenths of the law,
and I’ve got this itch that needs a’scratchin’
by some devil-woman’s claw."

Way back at the astral-body shop they’re gassing up my rig,
the fuel-trend is now anti-pain though pro-pain once was big,
yeah they are putting in new chakras
to bounce that sixteen-ton payload,
so that my eighteen wheels of fortune
will be soon burning up the road.

I forgot my catechism,
catechism got my tongue,
so I smoked pranayama cigarettes and coughed up one more lung
and then I played akashic records
until they warped in space and time, then picked some grapes of wrath so righteous
off the un-clinging Divine.

Well its so fun to be mental, funtobementalism’s in,
I have spent my life contriving an original sin,
but the Devil filed a lawsuit,
it was a copyright case,
so my sixteen tons of destiny
had a setback in the race.

I dialed up the Dalai Lama for our daily dialogue
and I detailed my dilemma of a dogma dealing God, but he kept calling me Delilah,
and dug me with his transcendental drill,
then he injected me with Mercury
‘til my aching truth was filled.

I’d trade a million inno-dollars for a hundred innocents
to fill the u.f.o. collection plate and pay for the event
of the second coming sequel
to be broadcast both dead and live,
while I sideswipe a satellite,
sixteen tons in overdrive.

Reincarnation! Holy ‘vaporated Ghost
is crossing Channel-Five between two bodies’ flesh wrapped coasts.
I have been down this road so often
I almost know myself by now,
but once I finally get the “who” down
I’ll need the “where and when and how”.

Then some soma smoking, cattle roping Buddha knocked me down,
some sumo-wrestling, comet-rustling, rodeo clown
hog-tied me with my kundalini
and then weighed me on the music scale,
He said “You’ll need a harder highway
for them sixteen tons of mail.”

In some fifth-dimension living room the angels watch t.v.,
scanning seven-billion channels of
sub-reality,
they’ve got this one
cult favourite,
its a kind of slapstick comedy
all about the dark night of the spirit,
and the lead looks just like me.

Well, rolly-polly poltergeist,
yeah, Casper goes to bat
up against the Holy Trinity
in a strange ménage-a-quatre,
him and ectoplasmic Gumby,
Wendy Witch and Doctor Strange,
while my sixteen tons of destiny
shoot the rapids in God’s veins.

My shaman, Shamus was ashamed
and said "You need a vision quest!",
so I checked into his perspiration lodge/optomitrist's
where I fasted 'til I puked up
the purest form of hydrogen
and then found out my spirit animal
is just a homeless dude named Glen.

Sixteen tons and what do you get?
Another incarnation, but your not home yet.
Hey Siva don’t you call me, 'cause it just won’t work.
They crushed my soul in the Robot Church.
Amen.

Spool of the Moon

Baby’s black
and I am white,
two shades of blue sometimes,
and braided around
an orgasm
that we have at the very same time.

When we make love I both murder her
and revive her from the tomb,
stitching my spirit tightly to hers
with a thread from the spool of the moon.

and when we touch,
when we really touch
we make a mountain out of a moment,
although the elevated view it doesn’t mean that much
‘cept from the viewpoint
of
descent.
That’s why it’s so much fun to slide down moment mountain,
sliding to the bottom of our love.

The bottom’s the
foundation of
the pleasure and the pain,
and the bottom’s where
we do the work
so we can build that mountain again.
But a mountain range
of moments falls
behind a wisp of cloud
and we forget
that they were there,
all of these moments so tall and proud.
and yet when we touch, when we really touch
we make a mountain out of a moment,
although the elevated view it doesn’t mean that much
‘cept from the viewpoint
of
descent.
That’s why it’s so much fun to slide down moment mountain,
sliding to the bottom of our love.

History
is time condensed,
the future’s thin as steam. We cannot move
in either place.
The best we hope for is to sleep and dream.

We tend to look beyond
the moment that
we’re in and won’t allow
the fact that everywhere
we’ve ever been
is radiating from the here and the now
and that when we touch, when we really touch
we make a mountain out of a moment,
although the elevated view it doesn’t mean that much
‘cept from the viewpoint of descent.

That’s why it’s so much fun to slide down moment mountain,
sliding to the bottom of our love.

Beacons on the Inner Highway

I gave up on the road for the very same reason that I gave up smoking weed,
because both of them are windows but not doorways to identity,
and travel for the sake of travel reaps very little at all of value,
unless we are a place in steady motion like a river.

Our human roots gasp in the highway’s hurricane of accidents,
and in our dreams we hunger wide for boredom’s ordered flat-lands,
and the radios that wash them with fresh music every day,
while we work the fields of gravity to harvest weekly pay,
which sets us free to dance inside of the routines of ritual,
perfecting gestures, decorating mantras mimed habitual,
thus polishing each moment till they become events shining
just like beacons guiding those behind us on the inner highway.

The Next State of Grace

Well I’m sitting here cooking
in the stew of the street,
I’m the part that won’t ever get stirred,
and as I am boiling I drink my own broth
and bend noodles to the shape of these words:

Oh when, oh when will I ever learn?
I can’t get to heaven
with wheels that don’t turn.
I’ve got no ambition and that’s a disgrace.
Guess I’ll sit here and wait for
the next state of grace.

Well I’m dug down so deep
in the trench of my heart,
I can’t seem to climb back out again,
and my voice is so distant
it can hardly be heard
by the women who pass in the rain.

Oh when oh when will I ever learn?
I can’t drive a girl home
with wheels that don’t turn.
I’m buried with pride
when I try to save face.
Guess I’ll sit here and wait for
the next state of grace.

And my mind hangs above
this emotional wreck
like a scavenger looking for parts,
and it lives in a mansion
that’s built from the sweat
of my tar-paper third-world heart.

Oh when, oh when will I ever learn?
I’ll freeze here on Earth
with a heart that won’t burn.
So I’m biding my time here
as god’s welfare case
while I line up and wait for
the next state of grace.

My Contribution to the Gumby Bible

Children covet their parent's freedom
and parents covet their children's,
and every moment is a cross-section of eternity.
Arbitrary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
Tired and ripped and gone and wired to absence,
a clean-shaven nightmare is good as a dream,
and isn't dead dirt just a constipation of worms?
And love is just a cancer eating gravity.
Act, live, die, ride up or down, goodbye,
and seven dancing Salomes beneath a cheesy veil,
caressing voluptuous shadows,
though I never told him so,
which were large and ugly, but she liked it,
and you deserve to be lost as well.
The chiropractic monkey queen,
a new hand of cards,
I spent a pleasant weekend, but I digress,
I know a place, fourty miles.
You know how to scream don't you Rick?
Shattered chunks of God
to greet the newborn truth
with a lying lullabye
that drifts across the landscape
without a hint of bitterness.
So how can Jesus shave me?
Shaving the shadow off a moon,
revealed only in destruction,
getting blown away by piercing smiles
which sink like punctured buoys.
Unless the bull is facing west,
he skirts circular electric barbed wire orbits,
a mobile oven that toasts the air
like the tongues that lick windshields in car-washes.
That alibi if you're selling it cheap,
a loan for a lonely girl,
traded for that old borrowed lay
which I would love to rent for a weekend
that can not help but break the frightful silence of snow.
Crack the cosmic egg for a mushroom omelette,
and the opposite of radioactive is radiolazy
on its way to a damp holiday
where there is no parking from nine to five
except to turn on its axis before the revolution.
#1. Ham and eggs with estrogen
#2. Unfocused fungus pugilist pubes.
The unique snowflake misses my tongue,
video scream rattles jagged light,
and photonic slivers invade our eyes
to suck both courage and breath away.
I put my ear down on your needle tracks,
or maybe they are Holstein cows,
and deliver them a bouncing baby cheque.
Spherical coins in fountains of burning hydrogen,
money burning a pocket in your hole,
smoke or drink or put on airs,
which I still can't read cause I'm illiterate.
Angry at the cheese,
the fish danced delicious in my hand,
fishing the air like casting in rivers
for the random heartbeat of chaos, baby.
Get ready for Fall,
don't you wish he was dead
without a helium voice,

so as to appear as a watery reversal

to those who live in the colour quake

in the great extreme, ecstatic duck-blind,

and one who knows me too well.

I sewed it with passion on my underpants.

It melts in your mouth and in your pants.

Be grateful you can breath, walk and fuck

while waiting for the Saviour with an open-fisted slap.

Every morning I wake with a resurrection,

using the body of man to make an angel of mud

but when you leave, wean me slowly.

I've thrown my third sheet to the wind

so I guess I won't write anything.

Permanence prevails in absence

so stop shrinking my dick with your lies.

But I could use a vacation

buried in the banks of Cash Creek

where his voice rings in my chest like a bell

that twists and blends rainbow to gray.

But I want world peace and an atomic dildo,

so there's no need to ask “Who cut the cheese?”

in the sweet proletarian after-life,

on a runway of Blue Mountain sod.

But a good whore always satisfies a little too quickly

then waits for response in twists of hope and fear

with buns twitching and unglued,

to be alone with a Camel filter

but inhibited by division,

or the heart of the liverwurst

that makes Madonna look like a virgin.

Life is like a chocolate coated hand grenade

made from the body and blood of Gumby

that laughs luminously down the stream,

grabs its corner with icicle fingers

when its shot full of shadows,

and we bite the ancestral future donut

with a duel to the death of ten thousand sperms

and gracefully unjustify

what’s for dinner this year.

The sea doesn't scare my ass

which died from a leak of laughing gas ether,

ungrateful in this syrupy generosity thing

that is kind of what we think

of my television on a frosting rooftop.

They run the long, black tongues of their minds

over condoms and the knowledge to use

one of Christian’s tedious problems

until after the volcanic foreplay.

I will deny my erection in the face of constant rejection,

electrifying my ass as grounds for insanity.

Your nakedness hates the way you hide behind your deceptive facade.

Thank you for not damaging my precious complacency,

so high in fiber that we shit pure love

but so similar to my own that I can shut up.

What is the sound of one egg frying

where the dusts of bullets and bones merge in peace?

Would you like to pretend that you’re tired,

unless that is the ultimate aim of recycling.

Oh, how I miss my mother’s rotten cabbage,

which is all I need for my camping trip,

because only dirty women go there.

We ringed a rosy round

being a carbon copy of death,

but are you always so bumpy when people try and draw on you?

A big smacker on the dirty poo poo,

take it home, misplace it in your room

where the other seven minutes are mysterious.

Of my own borders,

until I’ve conquered my fear,

no blankness either. And they,

instead of this mandible wax job.

have to be cleaned for the wind up toy

which springs a leak and then rushes out to catch another,

before you know that the deep dish pizza is

the umbilical rendering of  not being able to move

except to reach inside your eyes

and pull myself up by a rope of eyelashes.

Shuffle hour to the Babylon 7-11,

Superman at the bottom of long deliberations

about money set deep in my chest,

blowing me out of the room to

the Dinosaur Bluesmare.

But the bunnies were restless,

the phosphorescent transsexuals

and a big bottle of baby oil

are the only truly Canadian chewing gum,

who’s been the bitch wife

of “Rosy the Perfected” by Doctor Diatrab,

very much, doggy style with astrological predictability

for the use of dissention in the rank of cheese.

But life must not include electro-shock ham and cheese,

busy helping others for Mayor of Parkdale

across her back, across her face,

from the sharp blades of judgment that

a big bloodshot eye with astigmatic aspirations

had to wash his clothes in iodine

except for one blemish in the void that

doesn't make me as frightened as the thought of

what raped the image of my anger in drag-catastrophe,

because we are all descending into the height

of not the way it happened

under an incredibly boring display of

running out of gas at the drive-in.

But Bob Dylan don't know nothin' bout boxin'

in the middle of the garden salad.

I think, therefore I'm not sure,

without the help of a power screwdriver

eating machine that doesn't taste of Mexico, sand and tequila

till the cowboys come homo

and a lounge lizard in an undersea McDonald's that

falls asleep and misses his stop

sights the target and fires at the fat little

whoopdeedoo nightmare of

of my oblong dyslexia.

It isn't, then it must be blue.

Toronto? I don't think we're in Canada any more.

Dr. Hyram B. Hornswaggle,

from his office filled with dragon-seed

sticks the modem up your ass

and then you fax yourself to a Martian Abicidanian burlesque.

Yes, me too. I wonder if the animal isn't filled

from his most recent sex-change in the

brutal, undying love of hamburger dystrophy,

but the vegetable magnetism leaves a

sheath of Christmas that covers my birthday cake

and melts the unparticular sign

that can make me not pull a raindrop

from my spoonfull of  fat, sunburned rodeo clowns

on my broken TV that cleans your ego’s bowels

with sex-lax so my key punch imagination,

only previously used by a brandy sniffing dog

who danced inside it as I bumped up

my vehement pecadilios

down from their aerial watusi

to a ham sandwich or a piece of rocket slime.

The universe is not ticked

by my backward talking phonograph

though you are silly and maybe just little,

and my pipsqueek animosity compels me

to Jamestown Racetrack, five miles low

where we are lost in the presence.

But then what’s his job?

And because it doesn’t seem that the brakes

are filled with enough Jonestown Kool-Aid

that went unanswered since he’d shacked up with Venus,

rocket fuel took off while she hung on to my

paroximatic hemodorphins

till it got to the St Lawrence

and then danced the watusi in a tu-tu.

It’s more like the stoplight at the corner

of College and Kindergarten

is the funkiest thang you can do with

multitudinous masks 

that plunge like lemmings over the cliff

of your back with a pirate’s hook.

Skip across your discarded containers

of alligator meat and categorize them

at the Io Dining Room, take three tequila enemas,

and handwriting improvement courses.

I still I can’t put my own cancerous carpet lilies very well,

not without meandering with a half-eaten Edsel

and a prawn in the game of oceanic

sedated orange segments of no particular apocalypse in the

Anticlimactic Doodah Band at God’s barn-dance in the

testes of the particular.

Give birth to a souped up and ready

1957 ideal of heaven

that goes home without its jammies on

and discusses more of the mummified turnip

in your climb to the highest toothpaste tube

until acid induced, dyspeptic paraphernalia

of an undying aim amplifies specific intentions

into an exquisitely voluptuous shade.

Now there’s nothing worse than Charlemagne reading

free tattoos for everyone,

except for my body

which will exhume itself in the wake of

a want to be clothed in community.

But the Tibetans have turned death into a theme park

in the Grand Poobah’s castle

that tastes so yummy with man-made mayonnaise.

But her job is handing out free samples of soya-caviar 

that double as laundry detergent,

so why don’t you put some of those

ironed curtain sidekick discoveries to use

by whipped cream, nipple shish kabob

and the man in the moon,

who is showing his age,

but staggers homeward, spitting broken glass and teeth

that you think I need to count,

you discombooberated excuse for a release.

Then we’ll die and find out what happens

on moonbeam injections of “Yes”,

I answered, “But love is more specifically

what that energy does to your will.

Arise from the ashes and sit

suspended between two hallucinatory trees,

by your nose with a pair of rusty forceps,

after gang-raping Little Red Riding Hood

in tangy whatchamacallits

that are studying the mating dance

of the anal swallow at the Gladstone.

At least whenever Nick goes

to the Squeegee Kid’s Barbershop and Sex-Change Clinic,

where the new Banik burger with extra dog

and surgeons with scalpels

on the ends of our nunnery with a hard-on

conjures up the masturbation fantasy

of  counting our wrinkles with a catheter

and expunging the memory that the truth evades, even the most dog-like.

And whenever I see a rapist I get a hard-on

that’s just not as strong as the astrodynamic gardening

of red, understated to the extent that my extension

of pre-teen Madonnas with very large smokes

through a mercury-thermometer-hookahs,

integers, tetrahedrons and all of those

were murdered by the pope

because they were about to give birth to

shit-bricks in my attic

and then fall into ambidextrous escapades

that survive even without a smile,

which is just a frown that’s been tortured

by not quite sanitized proper proportions

of a stark, lifeless mall that stands

like a truncated drawn up document

declaring that all hippopotami

must existentially  meander,

and only offered in their place

the four names of Prince’s little animals

from the flesh of my overlapping cement sandals

that were once worn by erasers

pounded by non-teacher’s pets who were kept after

because oceans are the cheapest of all the glues.

God’s ambidextrous identity crisis

of anal Andy Griffith clones

that Ant Bee is raining monarchs

with crowns of fat three-breasted strippers

at the big Hell Supermarket, where the slogan reads:

“It’s mainly because of the three long and one short”

I pick up the phone just to eavesdrop

on the aspirations of fame and dismemberment

such as were squared to the power

of a breadpudding-headed, doe-eyed, spring-boxed

stream of conch shell’s nests

villified to the conundrum

of whimsical animated stegasaurian playthings

that wriggled like they weren’t on tiara-firma

or even like a blast of heat from a shot of licorice whisky,

or like gymnastic mice round a ring

that wriggle like amputee strippers

on the stages of the cross

that form a Mafia Don Valley expressway to go.

Or is it just the exclamation

that I can’t seem to trans-channel CITY TV anymore?

I only do that on Sundays

because mud cakes for Mesopotamian archaeologists,

big and dressed in smart little two-piece Chanel numbers

with the most darling weekends on a leash,

on a cross that confines them

from the dyspeptic and discrete parenthetic mistreatments

of of a friend of mine who had this amazing ion

that tore through the bastions

and overcame the indignation

about the death of the daytime drama.

Afraid for their privates in the face of razor-blades

are the the words: “Have a Coke and a smile!”

and shut or merely arrive at a vague semblance

of an insignificant steroid on Queen street

that doesn’t always shave me

to a fine, harmoniously underdeveloped peristalsis,

like an upstream salmon sandwich

with a side of bread and water for fourty days

of being always and ever on the lookout

for fresh serials to kill with Godzilla’s testicles,

while he hangs off of the the suction cupped replica

of the sacred bleeding heart.

I’d be ready and willin’ ta rassle with the biggest of ya

if ya’d only do me a favour and participate

in the hazing of freshmen angels

which invade the stomach in a continuous stream

of the current craze of bungee jumping

while smoking something similar to that

in a sidelong touch of cyanide

for a happy suicide which doesn’t holocaust a penny

in the inner sanctum where blue is green,

and well man, the poor appear to be bobbing.

Who carried the trail for the girl from coitus interruptus

on a big plate where circumcisions are a dime

as she pressed her firm hard

up the ladder of the corporate begotten

without any sordid harmonica fodder

that isn’t manned without a name

because the gaseous fertilization

of flatulent shit machines does the system.

Opiates blossom like pubescent Girl Guides

until they die of cockroach over-dosage

without the satanic reign of Honest Ed, Mel Lastman

and the rest of the ark that floats Archie through an arch

that Betty, my mother, didn’t teach me about.

No goddamned approximation of trailer park emancipation

that to a misty melodic ghost of Heaven

absolves itself in a glass of my pompadour.

Then step on the gas like it was a swerve to avoid it

and my car spins out of  its lips so luscious

that my cock remains hard as it deep throats the rust

but unfortunately misses the whole tractor pull festival,

which is the main, for a little while,

without regression or even a post-hypnosis

about tractor wheel filo doe

such so that they were supple and bouncy enough for me

with their web designing butts,

which had dropped a bit

but then anybody else with

half a rancidly reminiscent sewer

of waygull defractories

would disseminate semen wherever.

Temporary Eternity

On a warm night

in July in

Nineteen Seventy Two,

five teenagers

and a dog went

down to Lake Ontario,

caught a taxi

to the Island

from Toronto’s harbourfront.

I was with them

and the others

were Dave, Jim, Max & Mark.

and all

of us

were temporary, yet precious ornaments,

in style for just one dirty summer on those bright

Toronto streets.

Half an hour

just before that,

after all night panhandling,

we’d all managed

to buy ten hits of

“Green Frog” blotter acid.

We dropped two each,

And walked down Yonge street

to begin our adventure.

 

and all

of them

were only visiting their minds, but I was on a mission of experience, and I may have hoped, but I didn’t know that I would never be the same again.

As we stepped from

the floating taxi

onto Center Island’s dock,

paid the driver,

and faced the greenery,

we were starting to get off.

and it started

when everything seemed

to be made out of microdots,

and as I watched them

they started moving

around each other in orbits.

First there were two each

in simple circles

until more and more joined in

and the orbits

became more complex,

like mandalas in motion,

then turned to objects

I recognized like

trucks, animals and people

rising out of

that central whirlpool

of dancing electric shapes

to the center

of my vision,

or was my perceiving eye

being drawn out

into the traffic

of these shapes outside my body

through the tunnel

from which they came on

a conveyor belt of dreams?

And all

of us

stumbled like children onto their first playground,

that had been waiting through the silent and empty ages

just for the five of us.

Me and the others

wandered into

a maze made out of hedges

that had been used by

many millions

but we knew it had been built for us.

Mark and I pushed

one another

back and forth through the foam thick air,

both of us laughing

hysterically,

our backs cushioned by the hedge.

But then suddenly

a push sent me

deep inside of the hedge.

I let yourself pour

into the mold of

a long delicious descent,

and ended up stretched

on my back between

the hedge and the metal fence.

and all

of me

stared like a boy up from a summer hilltop,

but this sky shivered that nervous crimson that illuminates one’s dreams.

With a softness

excruciating

that sky unfolded back,

and behind it

was one more sky

even truer than the last.

and its zenith

was a crown like

a pulsating breathing gill

(Since I was virgin

 I didn’t recognize

that it was something more vaginal)

and it opened to let my perceiver through to the next sky, the next and the next and the next until I knew that all of existence was made out of worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds...

and all

my mind

was clear and my heart felt flutteringly pregnant with a caterpillar fetus that held a butterfly within.

and all

my Mind

fell through one last sky that was calling your name like it knew me and I felt so recognized. It called      Christian!

Christian!

Christian!

I heard

my name

like a bell that was ringing from the core of reality,

but the calling became more desperate

and the voices more familiar.

Then all

the voices

became the shouts of Dave, Jim, Max and Mark as they searched the rapids of paranoia in panic for my body.

So I got up

out of the bush

that had burned with so much calm,

yet also frantic

as a beehive

made from swarming electrons.

All my friends were

on the outside

running around and shouting,

calling my name

like they were hawkers

with only my absence to sell.

I felt Christlike,

very peaceful

on emerging to greet my friends.

Mark approached me

and my arms reached out

to receive his fond embrace.

But both

his hands

came lunging angrily to grab my throat, I fell back with him on top,  his hands were tightening around my neck.

Cause he

had been

the most emotional about my absence,

and when we get that concerned our egos get addicted and start to use that emotion to define ourselves,

so when

the one

who inspired concern shows up unscathed we feel cheated,

this source of energy melts before our eyes like that witch in Oz and for the sake of survival all we know sometimes is that its time for us to attack.

But this trip was

so much larger

than the elements it contained,

every moment

a steamroller,

a massive, snorting machine

with yellow body

and flashing strobelights

shushing around the bend.

It was monstrous,

otherworldly,

like nothing we had ever seen.

So all

of us

panicked and scattered into separate directions, and I ended up standing in a tulip garden whose painted lips had beckoned to me.

On electric cords

they were waving.

I stood over one of them.

Coloured energies

ascended in waves

that were bleeding up through the air.

Petals opened,

a tongue was revealed,

though not a human tongue,

but the real tongue

of a flower,

I got down on my knees.

  

I stared

inside

down a ridged stairway to a sugared cavern,

and there was bleeding sex in its open mouth that pivoted above gravity.

I placed

my eye

to its luminous mouth like a telescope and saw the boneless chasm to orgasm that were its vaginal insides,

then I felt

my nipples

turn to petals, then from my cock there sprouted a tulip, red that opened to spill its seed and the cycle went on and on, and now that I was thoroughly part of it I had the right to leave

Walking onto

a tiny bridge that

crossed a swan sailing stream

I stood there watching

the lazy water

while the bridge was swaying in the breeze.

But thought: “Wait

a minute!

The bridge is moving!”, I grabbed the railing and hung on for my life as the bridge began flapping as if it were a flag in a storm!

  

I was terrified

that it would throw me in the water below,

forgetting that the water was probably only less than five feet down.

Beyond panic

it came back to me this was just an acid trip,

and I was only hallucinating because bridges don’t flap in the wind.

It subsided,

I walked off the bridge

and rejoined all of my mates

who said they’d just watched

all of Toronto

sink down into the lake,

except that Max claimed

it had gone up

like a hat on a mushroom cloud.

We all wandered

to the harbour

to wait for the first ferry.

When it came we

took the top deck,

but they sat further away.

On the way back

they started playing

those goofy acid freak out games.

They were sitting

at an angle

and Dave was pointing at me,

nudging the others,

wagging red eyebrows

and that’s when I started laughing.

 It

 possessed me!

I laughed and laughed while they poked their fun at me

by simply just looking at each other and then mugging back at me.

I couldn’t stop

As the ferry kept floating from island to island,

 it was starting to hurt my stomach and yet I couldn’t hold it in.

I tumbled down

an endless spiraling stairway of laughter.

The conductor came and you kept on laughing as he kicked us all off of the ship.

He told

us all

that we’d been riding from city to island maybe three or four times back and forth and it was time that we got off.

Just behind them

I was following

with both hands on my belly,

but couldn’t hold

in the laughter

all the way up Yonge street

as I walked on

a mosaic

of interconnected frogs

I was laughing

up to Wellesley

and over to Queen’s Park

to the lawn where

all the tents were

pitched in front of Hart House

I collapsed then

on the grass and

went to sleep for twenty hours.