Little Fiendy Whozit

Tags

acting out, children's skipping verse, don't sweat the small stuff, ego, Elaine Stirling, humour, passive aggression, poetry, resistance, response to bullying, rhyming couplets, tantrums

Little Fiendy Whozit has a weeny voice;
he rips away his little gifts and claims he had no choice.

Little Fiendy Whozit thinks he knows what’s right from wrong,
and he likes to teach you lessons with a big bang-bong.

Now Fiendy might be good with wood or teasing little girls,
but push him past his talent zone, you’re in for quite a whirl.

The things you ask he will not do, except to impress others;
to corner him or force his hand, it isn’t worth the bother.

He’ll drag his feet and raise a stink and sooner whack than kiss ya,
then polish up his nasty sticks, insist he doesn’t miss ya.

We’ve all a Fiendy Whozit in our little bag of tricks;
he feeds on disappointment that he fashions into bricks.

The thing you must remember about Fiendy Whozit’s wall
is there’s nothing there worth nothing, so don’t make him crawl.

The time may come when Fiendy finds his R and L,
but until he shows up friendly, let him stay in…well,

for now, let’s keep on skipping rope and holding hands for joy;
there’s plenty good and plenty more for every girl and boy,

And should you meet sweet Whozit on your ever-loving way,
please tell him that I’m sending only happy thoughts today.

And if my little horns and tail occasional appear,
they’re nothing much to fuss about or fear, my dear.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
–Photo of children skipping by Diamond Mitch
from besteducationpossible.blogspot.ca, 2011

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Les Miserati

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Gatsby, Hemingway, La Belle Epoque, Les Miserables, Les Miz, literary salons, narrative poetry

We met in a gentrified garret
off the Boulevard Saint Michel
every Thursday, gentilhommes et

I dedicate this whimsy to the Man Himself, Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

femmes with our Berlitz and high
school French in the company of
repros of plaster molds of death
masks of Flaubert and Voltaire.
We sipped warm Remy,
semi-talents demitassed, half
empty in our cups but upright
in our way, for all that.

Disappointment was our app
and our emollient; our lives, as
one, we’d disappeared like those
old dirty war generals chasing
upwards, our mobility half gone
we now lay chastened, though
not chaste. Can’t recall a one
of us who hurried down that road.

I remember best Psycho Fanny,
sycophant who nipped at heels
of rivals in talent and appeal, and
tripped newcomers unawares with
overtures of Debussy and her cold
blind trust. There was gay Perry,
accent where it ought to be, younger
than us by a decade or three, whose
biceps we slavered on, and who
dreamed of having danced at
Les Folies. Perhaps he had.

Maritte, she tried to turn him; it was
easier, you see, than facing Chapter
3, for Hugos we would be, or Gatsby
ex-pats of the Drôle Epoque, engorging
on each other like movable feasts.

It didn’t work. Perry, he left us for
a midget mime. Last I heard they’d
designed a sleaker beaver for the
2014 Canadian dime. Oh, how we
gassed o’er our demitasses
over that one!

I would name the others, and I wish
I could, but garroting through parody
wears thin as all cheap tortures do
and Thursdays carry on, though
absent of my company. Guilt-edged
folio editions weigh a ton,
who needs them?

Of the Miserati, I will say this:
that the wishing for attention
and the dissing we lapped up
like teacup poodles brings vigour
in potential to the right-sighted mind.
I learned to little mind the apparency
of things. Yes, Fanny still flaunts her
psycho love for captured Beauregard
(not his real name), and the closest
their clique will likely come to fame
is Voltaire’s pubic hair—sold at
auction, bought by the host I was
sweet on once—but even the
memory of the flare of a match
held to the Gauloises of one true
writer, centuries past, is better
than no match at all.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Nano Nano

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry, subatomic particles, you and me

Glory be, there is a stringular

Aren’t we all subatomic particles waving to each other?

unspooling these days through

the wormy holes of man kinding

his brethren and sistren, dottering

and sunning, we are all, fractal

the matter is, black wholes, double

yous, double mes, off and on binary,

depending on the whether, squirming

through tubes that feel when they’re

moving too fast like chaos.

∞

Are we there yet? Ouch!

∞

Single-headed serpent bites the tail

of the backseated question that

can’t stand the sound—it’s way too

silent—of I don’t know, so round

and round we go, no straight lines

in nature, Leo of Vinci and Mike

Angel knew that, but we draw them

anyway to keep the song going…

∞

Nano nano, nano nano, hey hey…!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

The House that Zuke Built

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Mark Zuckerberg, why we love to hate Facebook

This is the house that Zuke built.

1 billion active monthly users and growing–well done, Mark!

Δ

This is the thought

That linked to the house

That Zuke built.

Δ

This is the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the friend with the hidden agenda

That spoiled the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the group

That blocked the friend with the hidden agenda

That spoiled the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the schism

That split the group

That blocked the friend with the hidden agenda

That spoiled the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the brain wave

That healed the schism

That split the group

That blocked the friend with the hidden agenda

That spoiled the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the heartbeat

That powered the brain wave

That healed the schism

That split the group

That blocked the friend with the hidden agenda

That spoiled the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

Δ

This is the pulse

That inspired the heartbeat

That powered the brain wave

That healed the schism

That split the group

That blocked the friend with the hidden agenda

That spoiled the friend list

That livened the network

That grew from the action

That followed the thought

That linked to the house that Zuke built.

~~~ 

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

 

Death Coach, Part III

Tags

Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, dice, Elaine Stirling, poetry, Toltecs

Hey, wait, they’re all threes!
you might cry, when the death

Make death your ally, said the old Toltecs, and she will never catch you unawares.

coach she throws gator dice
at your toes, and they land
side by side like a man and his
bride in the honeymoon suite
of the great Woebetide Motor Inn.

♣

To my personal tale I shall now
turn, when the old hag she stared
at the dice till I burned. What does
sex mean—I mean, six? I inquired.
Not six, she replied, only two, ever
two—one is you, one is other, and
how you connect in one of four
ways. She made a quick dance of
her hands like mudras…I don’t
understand. Yes, you do. Top dot
is head; she gave mine a whack,
middle dot, heart; third is down there
in your twitchety parts. The other, your
world, is exactly the same—three dots,
one die, maybe come back again.
Die and come back, you get it?

♣

She cackled and hooted at her unfunny
joke, then ordered me sit on the floor
while she poked at the dice and I felt
every jab like a doll made of wax.

♣

She explained. If the dice had landed
like this, \/, twitch to twitch, you’d be
slow dancing, French kissing, and
smothered in bliss; you wouldn’t need
death coach on your shopping list.
If you and your other had landed
this way, //, you’d be pushing
toward dreams of the glorious kind.
Obversely, \\, is cruising downstream
to all worries joy-blind.

♣

But we landed this way, /\, head to
head, I said, catching on to the patterns
of diagonal threes. That you did, said
the hag, which is why you are stuck
like a truck in proverbial muck. Thinking
too much of the world and its woes forces
the world to think too much, and leaves you
no space for dreaming and bliss and for
cruising downstream like a new sunfish.

♣

So you’re saying that I…
That all I’d have to do is…
My half-assed questions remained
half-asked. I don’t know when or
how it occurred, but death coach
didn’t seem anymore so scary
and old like a big butcher bird.
In fact, she was looking like me
on my very best days, in the years
of my many and very best lives. A
warm tingle began in my twitchety
parts and rose to grow strength from
my opening heart. Agility in my head
the tingle derived by squeezing through
hemispheres of my mental divide. From
my crown it sprang out, a magician’s
bouquet, to shower petals and pearls
of adventure and joy to the world
beyond, to the other.

♣

Though I knew in my soul there
was no need to ask when I reached
for the dice, I waited for death coach,
now radiantly beautiful, to give me
her nod. Then I picked up the pair
of ever-bearing threes,
and I threw them.

♣

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Silent reader, we know what you’re going through!

Tags

book promotion, book reviews, e-books, Elaine Stirling, James McAvoy, parody

READER ALERT: The following is a parody and is by no means intended to downplay the hard work of writers, editors and publishers everywhere. It’s a comment on our times, nothing more.

~~~

Page One: Is there anything more intimate than eyes and mind upon a page well-writ, a solitary tryst where lover sheds his fear and pants, and reader licks her lips to see and feel—  

Painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Pop-up: “Hello, I’m the author! I see you’ve downloaded my new e-book. Thank you for buying. If you like what you’re reading, please click Like here.”

Click. Like.

—the scent of him upon the shirt he left, well-worn, a cambric grey with whalebone buttons and frayed tails. His boots lie skewed beside the door through which he strode, barefoot and brave with his longbow, to slay the beast that’s haunting—

“Hello, it’s me again, writer of the book you are now enjoying! Thank you for clicking Like. I wonder, would you mind posting a short review at Zamaron.com, .ca, .es, .uk, .jp, .fi. and at Bullreads? If you could make each of the reviews a little different, that’d be great! It won’t take long, and you’d be helping my sales bigtime!!!”

Click. Offline.

—and as they gazed across the rugged slopes of the Moribundo Range, he took her hand and kissed it, saying . . . yadda-yadda, nicely written, to The End.

Reader clicks off e-reader and night light, and, sighing, drifts off to happy sleep, dreaming of her hero.

Three months go by, and the author of the book invites reader to connect on Blinked-In, and she accepts because networking, as everyone knows, is important. Thirty seconds later, a message arrives at her Inbox from . . . you guessed it.

“Hello [insert reader name here], I’m so glad we have connected! My newest e-book has come out, and I thought of you because you were among the seventeen readers who bought the first one, and you were kind enough to click Like.  Here is the link to my Zamaron page where you can now buy—”

Click. Delete.

Years unfolded. The reader settled happily to past tense and watched online while the author’s newest e-book went to print, became a bestseller, was bought by a major house, optioned for film rights and starred James MacAvoy as the romantic lead. Forgoing the library with its forever waiting list, reader bought the mass market version long after everyone stopped talking about the book and the movie, at a yard sale. It cost her fifty cents. She read it in a hammock beneath the spreading branches of a walnut tree and loved every word.

I thought you’d want to know, author.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

 

 

Ra is the God of Rants and Radishes

Tags

Bill Maher, Billy Connolly, Elaine Stirling, Jon Stewart, muckraking, Ra, radical, radish, Stephen Colbert

I remember as if it were yesterday the happy day I learned that radical and radish source from the same root word, radix, Latin for root. I loved it because radish is a root vegetable, making the fact doubly so, and because radicals, at the time, scared me a little . . . no, a lot, because they tended to rant, but if I thought of radicals as red-faced root vegetables that become tasteless and woodier, the longer you let them grow, then I had less to fear from their noises. I may even have uttered “Hur-rah!” thereby summoning the protection of the patron saint of Egyptian homecomings.

Billy Connolly, my all-time favourite ranter. No woody veg grows in his lot.

I don’t scare so easy now and have also learned to appreciate ranting. I’ve come to adore radical thinkers who can, with wit and precision, fire up a head of steam and bulldoze over hypocrisies and the cheap fence seating we put up, and not give a tailor’s twiddle about how much they are liked. Billy Connolly, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart—they’ll take on all of us. They are not partisan muckrakers.

I love the emotional freedom that comes from pulling an uncomfortable topic up by the roots and brandishing it like a big fat woody radish: “Look at this! This is what we are or what we might become if we let our thoughts about XYZ grow past their harvest date.”

Most of what I encounter in real and virtual worlds, and perhaps this is true for you too, does not qualify as ranting or radical thought. It is bludgeoning, the repetitive thumping of a personal opinion, over and over, redundantly, to the point of way-too-much-kill.

What we’re mostly seeing in these instances are pout-ons, harrumphs against the world. A pout-on, unexamined, is neither radical nor rant. It’s a tantrum pulled like taffy (tapeworm would be too icky an analogy) from some long-ago thwart that probably involved not being able to play outside after dark or finding one’s refrigerator art in the garbage.

The things people did to us then, people seem to keep doing, long after the original perps have moved on, only now we perceive our thwarters as political opposition, or that other religion, or my ex, or the pain in my joints. A complaint that keeps on giving has deep roots, to be sure, but a stadium of fellow radish growers, no matter how reassuring, cannot pull the roots up for us, and the harvest will still taste like crap.

Tell me what upsets you, I’m fine with that; I will do my best to empathize. Once I’ve registered a person’s opinion, however, on a computer model or brand of beer or the issue of gun control; and if I’m not in a position to supply that person with a laptop, Danish lager or legislation, for or against, then their going on and on about it turns pretty quick to white noise. Worse, my fed-up limbic system begins to define that person by the repetitions and not what makes him/her radical…i.e., unique and lovable. It is our uniqueness that originates, I believe, that creates the change we want to see, to paraphrase Gandhi.

I don’t know if changing the world is why we’re given these revolutions around the sun, each one more precious—or ought to be—because they’re not forever, but if it is, I hope to learn from the growers of the world and find joyful, crazy-loving ways to let my personal overgrown radishes go to seed.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

When I Was Your Helium

Tags

Elaine Stirling, helium, magnetism, poetry, superfluid

I lived a noble state, inert,
imagining myself as superfluid
when you landed in my air space
thinking I was Jupiter—a common
mistake, given my alpha particles.

∞

Actually, I’m—

∞

But you wouldn’t listen. My boiling
point was low, and you were in
search of a protective atmosphere
capable of cooling what you smugly
described as your superconducting
magnetism.

∞

Lift off! I should have said, and
didn’t. My melting point is also
notoriously low.

∞

You talked a lot in our early days
about equilibrium, and while I didn’t
like the pressure much, I agreed
to liquefy, but the cooler you became,
the more I longed for those halcyon
years on Vesuvius with Luigi—
mmm, hot lava, who’s your Papa?

∞

I will never—I shouted in our
first big argument—solidify for
you! You still weren’t listening.

∞

Then came the day while trying
to escape you, that I met Erasmus
and felt for the first time appreciated
for the abundance of my high
binding energy

∞

and though I wore no nuclear
halo during our antics in Manhattan,
you and I did achieve pitchblende
of a sort; my lighter than air
matched your need to rise and
we bonded in a spectacular
nucleo-genetic bang they’re still
talking about in bars in the
outer cosmos.

∞

Alas, my dear, your continued
preference for my liquid state
isn’t good for you or me.
Push me below lambda, and
I’ll head for the exit hatch
every time. The day you woke
up and I wasn’t there, I had
already evaporated.

∞

But things aren’t all bad. You’re
airborne now, fueled by other
noble compounds, and from
where I hover, happily ionized,
I can see that planet you were
aiming for where the lovin’ is
good and the solar winds
run high.

∞

Yeah, those helium-3 regoliths
will take some getting used to,
but you and I have whipped
up some exotic isotopes in
our day—and you’ve
finally learned to listen.

∞

So go ahead and land,
pilot. You’ll be fine, and
you will always know
where to find me.

∞

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Lulu, lemme lie down: Poetry as Life

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Lululemon, poetry as life, retail, sales associates, Tallahatchie River, techno music, thankless

From promoting poetry, to promoting the poet, Oceantics concludes this three-part series with the idea of life itself as poetry. The free verse I’m sharing with you here took root a few weeks ago in my local shopping mall before the stores opened. I dedicate it to all the hard-working retail sales associates who receive little thanks, too few or lousy hours, poor pay, and dream, as I did when I put in those years, of something bigger.

The following poem contains adult content. Reader discretion is advised.

♥ ♥ ♥

Lulu, Lemme Lie Down

At the end of an eight-hour shift of
pounding techno-club, selling double
zero tank tops and short shorts to
alumni of Hello Kitty U, I figured
I was due me a stiff dose of the blues
and so I hauled my weary tight ass
down to the Yellow Gator in the poor
side of town and ordered triple shots
from Mick the barman who’d got me
through a few rough nights and prob’ly
would again if I let him. I gave him my
best come-on-but-not-really smile, then
stuffed a twenty in the tip jar when he
turned away—I ain’t no comp whore.
♥
I stared at those drinks like they
was eyeballs staring back until
the back of my throat tickled
and I thought, hell, it’s just booze!
♥
My first shot, I called Desolation. Slam!
The slow hot sting snaked through me
good. Shot number two, Resignation,
yeah! Bile pushed back, acrid, acrimonious,
thankless infantry, our bladders of gall.
However much poison it took to kill off
the rats and stifle the meek chorus with
their matching puce gowns and V-collars,
I’d take it. V stands for vile, don’t you know?
♥
I was reaching for the third drink when
a hand clamped my arm, and a flash
brighter than halogen and laser twisty-
tied together in a tunnel at midnight
swallowed, knocked me back.
♥
How long I was out, I dunno, no one
will tell me, but it weren’t no blackout,
that tumble. His arms were as real
and muscled-tender as the ones my
daddy wrapped me in before the hurts
I’d come back to fix got wind that I’d
arrived, and his kisses—well, I don’t
care how jack-dandy you think you are
between the sheets, this man raised
me up and turned me inside out of
myself and back for what felt like a
month of holy thundering Sundays,
and when we’d finished making our
acquaintance, he said to me the
only thing I’ll share with you here:
♥
Lulu, lemme lie down, I think I’ve
pulled something. And with that
he held up a thorn, roughly the
size and shape of a telephone
pole, or a cross—you won’t be
needing this anymore—and he
tossed it, smooth as glass,
into the Tallahatchie.

♥

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

When a Satyr Dances in the Forest

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Jitterbug Perfume, poetry, satire, satyrs, Tom Robbins

Don’t be surprised to find a set of pipes in your hand and an overwhelming urge to blow. After a year’s hiatus, maybe more, I’m ready to start blah-blah-blogging again, and happily many things have changed since I followed a half goat-half man into the woods at my old website www.elainestirling.com and didn’t know what to say next.

I still don’t know what to say next, and you know what? It doesn’t matter. Because during that hiatus, enough wonderful, crazy things happened to persuade me that goal-setting and visualizing, all those “process” things aren’t what they are cracked up to be. Also, our world is blessed with a writer named Tom Robbins who sits at his desk five days a week, creating the world’s most extraordinary novels without knowing what he’s going to say.

That I happen to be reading the part of Jitterbug Perfume where a satyr enters the story is the kind of superimposition I want to explore here at Oceantics. This will be a space about having fun while adding to the store of personal power we were born with, and learned to push away for a gazillion reasons that all come down to one. I will include poetry, my own, because I have learned to love the craft, and because the Latin origin of the word satire means “poetic medley” or . . . get this, a dish filled with various fruits.

“What’s for dessert?”

“Satire, dear.”

“Lovely. Pass the custard sauce, will you?”

Of course I know that the world doesn’t need more blogsays (blog+essay, plural), but I also believe that the world we think we live in doesn’t know what it needs, so every little bit of ourselves that we reclaim helps. And with that, I shall leave you with a tasty bit of rhyme and hopes that you will enjoy Oceantics as much as I intend to enjoy playing here.

Great Big Buffet

I brewed a pot of worry

on a phosphorescent stove

with potatoes of calamity

from Farmer Beaton’s grove.

***

I stirred a heap of troubles

so they wouldn’t overboil

but stirrin’ made me weary

and my life became a toil.

***

I thought I’d be appeasin’

with my ear pressed to the ground

but all I heard was wheezin’

where’s the reason to be found?

***

Your democrats, your publicans,

the liberals and cons

they’re soundin’ all the same to me

a-gurglin’ in their ponds.

***

Whoever wins there’ll be a heap

of aggravated fish

a-snappin’ at the chance

to overturn the supper dish.

***

These stones and votes I will not cast

but not for lack of carin’

this soup I stir is made of love

I’ve added peace for sharin’.

***

If you would bring the lightening

another bring the pone

we’ll have ourselves a heap of fun

continuing this poem

***

that’s made up of humanity

the whole darned human race

we’ll toss out animosity

and bow our heads for grace:

***

Dear Lord, thank you for

this great big buffet with

room and plenty for all.

Amen.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012