THE KAFKA CHRONICLES (a tale of degredation, horror & love.)

You can’t be angry! They don’t want your passion! Your truth! All they want is your identification number.“4X73277XPYQ?” “Yes?” “Shut up!” And so you wander in alienation desert under a cold alienating moon. You bastards! I only wanted to be one of the crowd, happily dumbing-down to mindless piffle. Happily making war on people who do not share my ethnocentricity. (I.E. Little brown gits.) Happily screwing my Mother’s corpse in the name of…….Comedy!!! But it was not to be. And so I wander on the banks of bitterness river. And so I totter on the edge of twisted abyss. And so I limp through ‘You ***-king bastards!’ car-park. And there in the portakabin is the man himself! King Cockroach in person. KAFKA!

 Cah! It’s all your fault, I shout at him. You made alienation cool! You gave cockroaches a good image! You put the good into guilt! You flap eared twat! Kafka puts down The Sun and looks up. (Jewish accent.)“Listen already. You think I don’t know that? On my mother’s life. Why didn’t I stick to the Insurance? Oh, what a schlemiel I was. Curses on me!” And he takes out the Torah and starts beating himself over the head with it. Yes! That’s it! Go on! Make up for all those Morrisey fans! I feel exultant. Justified. Like an X-factor judge who has passed an I.Q. test! Kafka has now beaten himself down into a small pile of dust. It forms into a small whirlwind and spins across the car park. I run after trying to grab it so I can strangle it. Get rid of my rage, it but it slips through my fingers. Crap!!! Why can I never get hold of my bitterness and resentment and just kill it? Dead! But I can’t. It is too real. And so I wander through reality dream, (REALITY DREAM) convinced of the realness of stuff.





Like this six foot white rabbit standing next to me, surfing the net, wearing a pyramid shaped hat with the phrase, ‘WAKE UP’ stencilled on it! Or this group of FHM babes strutting in stilettos on a giant erect cock made of condensed diamonds! Or this Government Dream Warning Poster, which very cleverly says, WARNING! YOU ARE DREAMING! But I know I’m not because I have my pain and it’s…mine!!! I put a lot of effort into getting it. I can’t just give it up now! That’s insane! Give up my passion? My passion for collecting Victorian hat stands? Are you mad? They wouldn’t listen to me before. Well they will now. They will when they see I have the complete collection! Including the ‘RAJ’ hat stand. The ‘GENERAL CUSTER’ hat stand. And AND! The ‘WINSTON CHURCHILL’S ARSE!!!!’ hat stand. That one’s a complete rarity. To me years to track of of those down. But now I see a thick black line on the floor. On one side, printed along it are the words, REALITY DREAM. And on the other, REALITY NIGHTMARE! I step over. The atmosphere changes. It’s suddenly much more Art’s Council Lobby. I see a group of Goths starring in incomprehension at a cuddly toy. It makes no sense to them. It’s meaningless. A Night ….. No it isn’t! It’s not a nightmare!!! I think quickly. It’s cool to be a Goth. Dress in black. Listen to the Cure, and enjoy it! Inhabit a section of society revered for its complete pointlessness. That’s the meaning of cool! But then I see Hannibal Lecter, Michael Meyers and Freddy Kruger, dissecting Bambi with rusty knives. Aaaaaaarrrggghhhh! It’s not true! I am living the dream, NOT the nightmare!!! Simon Cowell is not the Anti-Christ!!! My bitterness need for self-aggrandisement and self-blindness, DO! make sense! They do!!! Ask Ben Elton! I mean, he wrote that Queen musical, ‘WE WILL FROCK YOU!’ Ask David Cameron, I mean, he was buggered at Eaton, by Boris Johnson! So it is justified. True. Right! My birthright, raison d’etre, and lumpy gravy, and I will not let go of it!!!! But then there before is…..THE HORROR PIT! (Blaring horror chord!) I peer over the edge. A vision of utter horror greets my eyes, so horrible as to be almost quite a bit horrible! I see, a group of happy people dancing freely in a circle, and around them a force field of pure love, ah. Outside of which, like in Forbidden Planet, is the twisted bitterness and denial monster, which tornadoes round and round in rage, crashing into the force field, but always bouncing off, for it is made of love. AAARRRGGHHH! This is the ultimate horror. To be like those dancing fools. Free at last from all your self-defeating and self-deluding shit! To dance and feel love. LOVE. AAARRGGHH! I wake up in cold sweat and of course instantly forget my nightmare, my dream, everything. All I remember is, YOU CAN’T BE ANGRY! THEY WON’T LET YOU! YOU BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!





IMPRO & THE COMPETITIVE MINDSET

AAARRRGGHH!!! impro comedy agenda! bad!

If you go to an impro show in say London, Paris or New York, you will see something that is extremely funny and slick, but is also, being now a standardised comedy product, rather predictable. The performers have internalised the comedic responses to well known things, and out they come at the push of a button. Scenes are never set in recognisable realities. You set a scene in a goldfish bowl. Or inside the mind of a Fascist Dictator. They are set in comedy hyper-reality. Nothing normal or boring is allowed to happen. Everything is spun, tweaked and generally perked, in the direction of hilarious comedy. Stories are mechanical, predictable, obvious. A lonely woman dreams alone in her room of romance and possibly sex. The floor opens and out jumps an available man! End of story! Which is of course funny, in a mad sort of way, but what relation does it have to the truth of life? In this story, it is as if we have life, with the feelings removed. Well, the negative boring feelings removed. Feelings like the frustrations inherent in actually being on the dating scene. Having to go and actually look for a partner. It not being, instantaneous.

So, funny and entertaining as it is, it is a dysfunctional model, which is presented to us. Like someone who ignores your sensitive feelings because they find them boring. An autistic sort of person like say ‘Sheldon’, in ‘The Big Bang Theory’, a very good comedy show on T.V. It is a bit like Frankenstein’s monster!

It has all the bits or mechanical parts, but lacks a soul. Frankenstein cannot function as a real human being. When in the movie he throws the child in the lake, a scene censored at first, it shows the monster’s complete lack of understanding of the human condition. What it means to be human. And yet. Yet. The monster is human, inasmuch as he is made out of the human. i.e., bits of people, and so he elicits our sympathy and compassion. He is like us, and yet he is not like us. Just to kill the monster seems somehow wrong. Unsatisfactory. And yet the monster is a monster. An aberration of nature. And this is not acceptable either.

Paradox.

Irony.

Dilemma.

The irreconcilable zen koan of existence. And we must start to solve it by accepting that the comedy impro Frankenstein we see on stage is our own creation. We made him. We can un-make him.

"Who cares if it rots your brain, saps your will and atrophies you soul?We all need a good laugh!"

(In the sense that we do need comedy, it is very important to laugh, but we must see there is no shortage of comedy, and it would be better if there was some balance in the impro world. A balance that meant there were shows that didn’t just go for the mindless comedy option. A product there is no shortage of! But allowed impro to examine some deeper more resonant themes.) And the place to start doing that is to look at our automatic competitiveness.



AUTOMATIC COMPETITIVENESS

(Impro Station Master.) "Look at this big comedy impro carrot of ego gratification & impro kudos! Yum!"

For some reason, everybody on stage wants to be the funniest person on stage, and it is unconscious. Automatic. It is as if all the performer’s were hypnotised by Derren Brown, before the show started, and now they simply have to compete. And it’s this which forces the performance down its predictable lines. Like a bunch of Darwinian cave men, all chasing the same Darwinian Carrot, and destroying it, and themselves, in the process!

And what is behind this. This hypnotism.? This automatic competitiveness? This Derren-like insanity? The answer is of course, FEAR. Fear of not being funny. Of not being good. Of not being useful to the group. Our peers. Whatever. Fear. FEAR!!!!!!!!

It’s a cut throat environment. Its dog eat dog. If you don’t get the knife in first, someone else will! Which is absurd really. This is after-all, the theatre world. A place exempt from the normal rules. Here we can be different. Experiment. Have fun. Relax. Let go of the conditioning and explore the unknown, for a change. We don’t of course. Our fear of not being funny or ‘good’ compels us to turn everything into a competitive exercise in funniness. The idea that performers are inherently good, is absent. Put another way, the idea that we have value, simply in ourselves, before we have done anything, simply because we exist, is absent. We can’t, as performers, have an inner value. Our only value is what we force an outer world to accept by virtue of being ‘good’ at something. It’s like our exam system. Businesses only perceive applicants as good, or worthy, if they have passed the right exam. They would never value an applicant, simply on his or her own merits, if it was a certain type of job. (But do not think I think failing exams is a good thing. Wrong.) Meaning in life doesn’t just exist, for itself, it must be created artificially; like…

Frankenstein’s monster!!!! Unless we find life, or performing, a painful struggle, we are not getting it right! (On the apprentice one guy got fired by Sir Alan because he was being nice to people! You can’t be successful at business and be nice to people as well! But why not?)

Now competitiveness is not bad it is good. It’s healthy. The thing is though there are two kinds. Unconscious and conscious.

Or automatic and considered. When we compete simply for the sake of competing, we act robotically, without feeling. When we are consciously competitive, we are empathetic. We act with feeling. The unconscious model is like the cave-man model, and it’s the one we are born with. The conscious model, the alternative model, of the ‘ideal realising person’, is our latent potential. We not born with that one up and running. We need to cultivate it. Nurture it. Work to make it a reality. All true learning is forced.

Now you may well say but why should I think about this? If I am happy with the impro I see, or with the impro I perform???

Well Horatio, you must understand that the thing that drew you towards impro in the first place. That very first impulse that made impro attractive to you, that thing still exists, and yet it has been over-ridden. Overlaid by another agenda. Yet it is still there. Under the surface. And this is fact that impro is essentially to do with freedom.


FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM


This is what first attracts us to impro. Not the idea of being funny, but the idea of being free. Free from a script for example. Free to do and say anything we like without some director telling us it is wrong or inappropriate!!!! Free to be stupid. The freedom even to do something meaningful and uplifiting! Something self-developing. Something not necessarily 100% obvious and understandable to an audience!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this is what the comedy demon feeds off. Your freedom! And do you want that? Is freedom really so unimportant to you????

Is it?????????

The answer here is that you have simply never thought about it.

Or never really allowed yourself to think about it. You were hoping that these things were just inbuilt into the whole scene and you would just get them automatically like presents under your bed at Xmas! Doh!

Following on from this, you could say that impro such a minority thing that it can’t have such far reaching implications!

(Freedom? But it’s impro! It’s just fun!)

And in view of that we should look at something more conventional and common. In response I’d like to draw attention to 2 things one of which I already mentioned.

1. SPONTANIETY

Obviously the main thing impro hopes to recover is spontaneity.

How successful it is at doing that is another issue. Question is though, what is spontaneity? Why is it so important? To answer that we must look at no less than creation itself. According to the Big Bang theory, (A very funny T.V. comedy!)  the Cosmos suddenly jumped into being from nothing. When I say nothing I mean from a place or condition that didn’t even contain nothing. Something we really struggle to conceive of. Yet out of it sprang creation.

BINGO!

Now I am not a Cosmologist and my description is a bit weak, but nevertheless, we can all see that in this model, nothing actually made it happen. There was no preceding cause that instigated the coming into being of creation itself. It just happened! BINGO! Which means of course, life the universe and everything, WAS SPONTANEOUS!!!!!!! And so spontaneity, is built into the fabric of existence itself. It is our heritage. It is what the Cosmos built on! So no matter how stuck, atrophied, inert, fixed we become, the ability for us to regenerate still exists, as this spontaneous coming into being is the first condition of everything! A fact of course, that being in life quickly dissuades us of, and yet it is nevertheless extremely true. Which means of course, if we can work at our impro in a disciplined way, for a period of time, with the right guidance, we can and will get back in touch with really what is the centre and essence of it.

With the spontaneous freedom of being!

2. THE SCRIPT.

Obviously the other main thing is to work without a script. Again FREEDOM! Now what is a script? What does it stand for? Well ultimately it stands for something set in advance. A self protection device. It protects us from the uncontrolled. The spontaneous unpredictable stuff that life is made of. The fact that scripts, like Shakespeare, can be extremely good, is a separate issue. If you have a script, no matter what it is, you are constrained to follow it. So fact is that scripts preclude any kind of spontaneous development simply because you cannot write a script for reality, for say going to the shop. You could get close but you could never get it right, for even though it always contains say 99% the same elements, it will still never happen in exact same way twice. That annoying 1% is bound to crop up. Reality is spontaneous. Self-generating. It is un-scripted! Now as I said, it’s not that scripts are bad. No. It’s just that we are very imbalanced. Before we started impro we were in a position of everything being scripted! Everything! It was all planned in advance. Then we did impro and it all became unscripted! All of it! Now this is an imbalance. What it should be is 50% scripted and 50% impro. That would be balanced. In this way we would reincorporate the spontaneous element in our work and not lose the obvious benefits of working with scripts. What happened was we through the baby out with the bathwater! It’s simply the seductive power of anything new. Any script ever written was improvised as it was written. Again polarised thinking demands that these things are entirely different. Script and impro.


As a footnote one example occurs to me. Experts studying fire disasters came to the conclusion that people were killed because they followed an internal script. In one case people suffocated in a restaurant because their script said you cannot leave until you have paid the bill and yet unfortunately the manager and staff had fled so they couldn’t. In another example of a tube fire people insisted on taking a certain escalator because their script said so. This again led to the loss of life. Here it is having such complete confidence that following script the only way to do things that proved disastrous, for the time came to drop the script but it didn’t happen.

But then of course, we do need scripts! We need a script for example in a restaurant. Without it, it would be just chaos! The problem occurs when we become too strongly identified with that script. For it is only a script!!!!!!

Bad script thing: You are constrained to follow it.

Good script thing: It forces you to channel ‘deeper’ less acceptable feelings.

Good impro thing: It can go in any direction.

Bad impro thing: It encourages playing everything just for ‘fun’.

So we can see, in end, it all swings and rounabouts.We can see that the ‘bogus entertainment agenda’, in impro, is that if we take things at face value, and do not make any effort, for personal reasons, to look below the surface of a particular thing, we are endangering our freedom!

FREEDOM

And freedom is precious!!!

TREVOR THE SPASTIC ANTELOPE

Trevor the spastic antelope
struggled down to the waterhole.
All he wanted was to be happy.
Some hope.
The other jungle animals
we’re very nice to Trevor,
they didn’t mock him or mistreat him.
They just didn’t want to be around him.
Yet Trev, so desperately wanted to be ‘normal’.
Why did it make such a big difference
if he had five legs?
two of which were twisted stumps?
People stroke animals, were just so heartless!
But then Trev, found the Spastic Animal Benevolent Group!
He went to a meeting.
Whilst explaining his plight
he burst into tears, much against his will;
but the consoling looks and sympathetic vibes
came flooding his way.
Even in the midst of his grief
he felt gratified.
Yes! Trevor the spastic antelope
for once felt it was ‘ok’, to be a spastic antelope!
Filled with this realisation
and not really concentrating
on his way home from the meeting he was hit,
by a speeding bison, and killed outright!
But! But! But!
But!
Even as he died
he had the consolation of knowing
it was OK!
to be, a spastic antelope.
OK!!!!!!!

THE CHEKHOV IMPERSONATOR

bad drawing Chekhov

The story goes that Chekhov was on holiday in Yalta when he was spotted by a fan who had seen all the Moscow Art Theatre productions. The fan resembled Chekhov and started to go to Literary gatherings inYalta, claiming to be Chekhov. Whilst there he would rubbish Stanislavski, saying his beard was too big and that he couldn’t act, and that his books were incomprehensible at best! This got back to Moscow and Stanislavski, usually a mild mannered man, is on the next, NEXT, train to Yalta. He knows where Chekhov is staying. Knocks on door. Yes? Punch. Chekov unconscious for three whole days!

Now whilst he is unconscious he has a recurring dream about a street, which he walks down, again and again, always passing a lamppost with a broken base, and a blind accordionist playing a sentimental tune and then passing a row of single story houses, all of which have red doors. Strange! And then, walking towards him, is him! Himself! CHEKHOV! Impossible!

He awakes, on the third day, in a sweat. He remembers being punched, but no idea why it happened, so he questions people. They explain how he rubbished Stanislavski. His beard? Incomprehensible books? Chekhov mystified. But I didn’t!!!

Angry and depressed Chekhov wanders the streets of Yalta obsessing over the whole strange business. When he eventually takes note of where he is, he sees a lamppost with a broken base. A blind accordionist walks towards him. He is opposite a row of single story houses which all have red doors. And out of one comes… HIM! CHEKHOV!!!


It is of course the Chekhov impersonator, who on seeing the real Chekhov is overcome with remorse at the foolish prank he played and prostrates himself before him. Forgive me Master! I’m not worthy! Chekov is bemused to say the least. Then he is overcome with a terrifying anxiety and turns to run but the impersonator has him round the ankles!!!! You see dear Listener, in Chekhov’s mind, it is his death, no less, that has grasped him and is pulling him down! He falls. They roll in the gutter. The accordionist appears and plays a sentimental tune over them. What a nightmare! At last Chekhov frees himself and runs for his life!


Still contrite the Impersonator writes a letter of apology and explanation. Chekhov at last enlightened! Olga his Mistress points out that his dream foretold the future, and that this conclusively proves that the spirit world and its attendant stuff like ectoplasm, fairy lore and occult bananas, must be true, as she has always maintained. But Chekhov, being a bloke, a rationalist, and a Doctor; flies into a rage, the result of which is that they are not on speaking terms throughout the whole run of Uncle Vanya!!!

And the Chekhov Impersonator? What happened to him? Well. He moved to St. Petersburg. Opened a pie shop. And did very well. Meat and potato!!!

Yalta!

PREVERB REAL IMPRO WORKSHOPS (at The Ship, Borough High St, thurs 7.00 - 9.30)

socially conditioned man with door on the top of his head Mother!

In the group we put the empahasis

on working together.

It not really about talent.

It more about having fun and

expressing yourself. In our

group the way we relate

 to each other is the key

issue. The group feeling. Are we

happy together? What comes first?

The group or our

own ego? I mention this because

theatre groups have such a poor record in

this area. Obviously performer's are

very competetive, even if they protest

otherwise. So in our view it is time

for theatre groups to go beyond this

competetive model. But this still a

very difficult thing for most actors, who, let's

face it, simply want to be brilliant in

some production or other, and that is

enough. Why think more deeply about it?

Especially if you are talented????

Oh well. We have found a few people

 now who share this view, sort of, and that

is encouraging. And the result is that doing

the workshops people have enjoyed

themselves immensely and also not felt

they were somehow incapable or not good

enough. In other workshops you often

get the emphasis on individual performance

skills and not on the group dynamic.

It will attract performer's who are obviously

very talented impersonators, good at doing

accents and imitating clelebs and

genres, and of course here is a chance for them

to prove they better at this than you,

so you can end up feeling a bit over awed. 

A bit incapable.What must be realised

is that this kind of performance doesn't

spring from an authentic feeling, but is a

manufactured product designed to impress

others. And in this sense it is not group

supportive

GROUP SUPPORTIVE!

 only individual supportive. It's based on

a narrow view of life being just about

your needs as opposed to a broader

more transpersonal view of life which is about

seeing things in terms of society. Or in

terms of relationships. Of course this almost

impossible to explain to people who are

determined to be successful at any price!!!!

The proof though is in the pudding though, as the

old expression goes so come along and find

out for yourself!

IMPRO & THE QUANTUM LEAP

The hard thing to see is the lack of freedom contained within things. When we live in such an abundant world, where instead of starving, or being harassed by some brutal regime, we can fool around doing impro, or write and read poetry to an appreciative audience, or post our music on Myspace, isn’t that enough?? Taken at face value it would appear to be. If, if, it wasn’t also a truth of our world that no matter what supposed freedom we do have, unhappiness is still very common. Almost normal. Our freedoms do not make us free to enjoy our world, it seems. So ultimately, the ‘sensitive’ person, the ‘enquiring’ person, is forced to ask, is our concept of what freedom is, really correct? Is it helping us?

Well this is a very big question; so let’s narrow it down to the impro world for simplicity’s sake. To do this we will look at an obvious and common example, a thing we are often asked to do in impro, which is to play the stock character, the TV PRESENTER!!!!!!!

So what kind of TV PRESENTER you play, is up to you. Now. Let’s say you have done your homework and you’ve noticed how false and facile the average TV PRESENTER is, so you mimic that. All well and good. Everybody happy. What’s the problem? Well…..there is no problem except, EXCEPT, that if you could stand back from the impro world and see it more objectively, you’d realise that everyone does the TV PRESENTER in this way. It’s invariable. Because this is after all true! This is how they are, and who can disagree? So. Doing it this way is in a sense, ‘getting it right.’ And isn’t that the name of the game? GETTING IT RIGHT!!!

Or is it?


We are in the impro world, THE IMPRO WORLD, remember? Hear strict definitions of right and wrong no longer exist. For this is, how can you say, is a more fluid space. This is ‘story world’, OR ‘imagination land’, (as matt and Trey put it), where one moment murder may be wrong, but then the in next moment, murder may be right! Not that murder can ever be right in our normal world, but this is THE IMPRO WORLD!!!! It is a fantasy! Projected imagination! It made up mother!!!!!!!! So we could say, just to get it right, isn’t really enough. It’s also true, that for freedom to exist there must be choice. Variety. The freedom to choose between, is a major component of freedom. But in the example we have given, there is no variety. No choice not if everyone does the TV PRESENTER exactly alike, None whatsoever.


What this essentially shows us is that we are all stuck in the same track, and this is somehow a product of our rigid insistence on one thing being ‘true’ or ‘right’, and another being ‘false’ or ‘wrong’. And where does that ultimately spring from? Answer is that it is a product of putting a lot of faith, in thinking. Rational analytical judgemental processes. We think,

‘this is right and this is wrong’.

We don’t feel it. If we felt it we’d realise that this is right the way it feels now, and this is now wrong, the way it feels now! Crazy but true!


So let’s stop and (irony) think. Is it really necessary to play the TV PRESENTER in the way we have?????? Could we not drop that? Play the TV PRESENTER as say,

1. A Tramp!

2. An Ostrich!

3. A Forgetful Professor Type.

4. An Old Testament Prophet.

5. A Judge.

6. A famous Novelist.

7. A tyrannical Dictator.

8. An old Etonian.

9. A fool.

11. A Magician.

12. A piece of furniture.

13. A… and so on.

Would this really be so impossible????? Someone or something is forcing our TV PRESENTER interpretation choice to go down this one track. Something which was in place before we even began to improvise. Something causes this emphasis we have in terms of the faith we have in the mind’s judgements. In mind as the sole arbitrator of things.

The answer is of course, social conditioning.


SOCIAL CONDITIONING

excerpt from 'The House In Dormer Forest' by Mary Webb

Which is what? It’s really just all the false assumptions of the group mind added together since time immemorial. And that is quite a big thing, and consequently it’s no wonder we find it hard to get any objectivity on this whole issue. Nevertheless. This is the case. This is what is forcing all our TV PRESENTERS into the same damn box! And for that matter, what is forcing our entire existence into the same damn box!

For as I said before, there is no freedom in this. And why do we need freedom? Well, in impro terms we need freedom so we do not end up boring ourselves with the predictability of what we do in impro, thus eventually making us throw in the impro towel in disgust! Herummph!


Now there may appear to be a contradiction here, for the attentive reader, for I have stated in an earlier post, that impro is always the same stupid thing it was, when you first began, which may appear to conflict with the idea of avoiding predictability. What we need to see here is that we must now discriminate between two things. The first is the medium we express in. The second is the type of expression occurring in that medium. So as I’ve stated, the impro medium can never become more sophisticated. However we can change and vary what we express within that medium. So you can now see, there is indeed, no contradiction. THE TV PRESENTER!!!!!!!

Taking impro now as a microcosm of the macrocosm, we can see the same trend of lack of freedom causing predictability and therefore feelings of hopelessness in life itself! leading to the much more dire consequences of wasted lives, and lost hopes, and the like; and I say this to show that working with an impro discipline has much greater ramifications, that would at first appear.

Finally, you may perhaps feel very strongly that everyone must play the TV PRESENTER in that exact same way because this is, after all, right! And that is what people expect, so that therefore that is the intelligent option, and the way to succeed and be successful, and a great improviser. All I can say here is that we can take what we feel at face value, or we can at least try to look below it, as it were.

THINK!

Obviously social conditioning does work because it IS a very strong feeling and it has, the consensus! To go beyond it requires something new. Something unknown. Some kind of quantum impro leap! So can you do that? Can you be one of the few to make that quantum impro leap?

Well. If you have found your way to reading this post. Maybe you should consider it.

THE FEMININITY VIRUS

Big John Wayne is lecturing Edgar Allan Poe

about having a better posture,and a more positive attitude to life,
& while Poe sulks, and scuffs his toe,
Bluebeard’s in the backroom, doing something with bones.
(He’s probably sorting them into different categories.)
But the Mad Scientist, (you remember him?),
down in his underground bunker stroke lab,
is unaware of what Bluebeard is up to,
or Poe for that matter,
deafened by Wagner,
as he labours over his ‘creation’,
a giant multi-dimensional real stroke virtual PENIS!!!
that can only cum once, but when it does,
it will drown creation, in radio-active jizz!!! Ha,ha,ha!!!
He doesn’t notice, however, scuttling invisible
under the benches, of his dismal workplace,
a Lovecraftian – Horror – Entity!!!
A little hairy abortion, escaped from the repression dimension,
to spread the evil stink of unknown chaos & Kafka bug lunacy
amongst MEN.
Mere MEN.
Not desperate housewives,
MEN.
We’re talking MEN here!!!!

Those stern upholders of patriarchal domination,
grit & grimness.
Those iron expatriates of God’s green Kingdom.
Those bull fighting bravados of cockerel Kudos!!!!
controlling all with their machine like will,
calmly and soberly standing steadfast in the storm
of weak-willed feminine emotion and feeling,

I MEAN! JUST BECAUSE RICHARD DREYFUSS COULD
ONLY CRUSH A PAPER CUP
DOESN’T MEAN WE, WE, WILL SUCCUMB
TO THAT MOST EVIL THING EVER KNOWN TO MAN!
NO!!! IT WILL NEVER BE IN US.
THAT DAMNED FEMININITY VIRUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That touchy feely fabric softener rom-com evil
that would reveal to us
in all its painful reality
our lack of inner feeling literacy warmth & human empathy!
AAAAAAAAARRGGGGGH!!!!!!

Keep it back! Keep it away!
It will infect the inner male abbatior stroke abortion clinic,
with interior – fucking – design!!!
& then we’ve had it!
We cannot be!

Oh pity the loss of the ‘male’ man,
his letter addressed ‘masculine domination’,
can be delivered no more
& we, we drink the dregs,
as we skulk off into the night,
our tail, firmly, between our legs.

MEDIOCRITY (A Story)

An insipid man who worked, in a Dry Cleaners, is tricked by a friend into attending a party at which he gets into an argument with a superior poet, who accuses him of mediocrity!

The insipid man broods over this for weeks. Everyone he talks to agrees with the superior poet. No getting away from it, he is mediocre.

Then one night, the insipid man wakes up at 3 a.m. inspired. He writes ‘The Poem’. He enters it for a big poetry competition. It wins! Things escalate quickly. He is invited on ‘Poetry Now’. The Poet Laureate comes in the Dry Cleaners! He is offered the part of Oscar Wilde by Kenneth Brannagh for his new film, ‘Oscar wasn’t gay!’ His new poem, provisionally entitled, ‘the next poem’, is to be published in The Sunday Times! He sits down to write it. He takes out Oscar Wilde’s pen, given to him by Kenneth Brannagh.

Nothing comes.

Not a single word phrase or line. Nothing. He spends a restless night pacing. Smoking. Agonising. The Times call. “How’s it going?” “Oh fine. Fine.” Finally it becomes clear there really is only one option. He will have to go and see the superior poet.

Swallowing disgust, revulsion and hate, the insipid man knocks on the superior poet’s door. “Oh it’s you. Yes?”

He explains. “I see. Well you better come in then.

After a long lecture on mediocrity they get down to bizznizz an thrash it out. ‘The Next Poem’. And it’s good. Very good. The Times editor is very happy. Wonderful work! In fact, it is so good, the insipid man is hurtled into that poetic stratosphere inhabited only by poetry giants, and the inevitable happens. They fire that Duffy woman, and make him Poet Laureate! He moves to primrose hill. And there he is, all set up for the poetry high life.

There’s knock at the door. It is the superior poet. “Well. Quite the little poetry nest eh? What’s this? A first edition of Paradise Lost. Very classy.”

It was very simple. Payback. The superior poet moved in. As long as the insipid man shines his shoes, laughs at his jokes and cooks his dinner, his secret is safe and he can go on living the poetic high life. He can’t though invite any poetry groupies back to his place because it’s like he has the picture of Dorian Gray in his attic! And the superior poet won’t even work on a new poem, provisionally entitled, ‘The Next Next Poem!’

The whole situation is becoming intolerable. Then after a friend has been over for liqueurs and quatrains, he takes insipid man aside and say, “ Err…. Haven’t you noticed? Your superior poet lodger is looking a bit off.” Back home he suddenly saw it. Yes. Some kind of awful change was…but…

Six months later the insipid man comes back from a Foyle’s Literary Luncheon and a ‘thing’, slithers across the carpet towards him. Can this really be the superior poet?

He has turned into a grotesque entity. By what though?

Then he realised.

By poetry of course!

FUCKING POETRY!!!!!!!!

The whole scene had done for him. But why had the insipid man remained untouched? The answer was, because he was!

MEDIOCRE!

Ah ha! Saved by his own mediocrity! Touché!