Contemporary Puke

German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run through North London
 

Page seven - I've had enough of Being and Time

and of clothing. Many streakers seek quieter locations

and Marlborough Road's unreasonably quiet tonight.

If it were winter I'd be intellectual, but it's Tuesday

and I'd rather be outside, naked, than learned -

rather lap the tarmac escarpment of Archway Roundabout

wearing only a rucksack. It might come in useful.

I can't take any more of Heidegger's Dasein-diction,

I say as I jettison my slippers.

When I speak of my ambition

it is not to be a Doctor of Letters

or to marry Friedrich Nietzsche, it turns out,

or to think better.

It is to give up this fashion for dressing.

It is to drop my robe on the communal stairs

and open the front door onto the commuter hour,

my neighbour, his Labrador, and say nothing

of what I know or do not know, except what my body announces.

 

I step out into the street and a puddle meets my feet,
a puddle not of rain, but of hypodermic delight.
Where are you off to?
says a bobby, slapping my bare hind.
I'm reminded of Coach Diddle,
the way he used to pat me so.
Cats in the alley sing a dirge in honor of fallen human knowledge.
I feint a nod of approval.
Oh, the humanity, such losticiousness!  
 

And thus I find myself,

with the bark of the Labrador,

clobbering that bobby around the auditory devices

with a copy of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy.

I do not think better.

Cold snakes encircle my wrists,

my feet are muddied by the puddle,

as the bobby says,

"Anything you say may be used..."

I blank out the rest, too focused am I 

on the sight of a crow ensnared in the 

plastic handcuffs of a pack of coke.

I feint a nod of approval and ask the bobby

for pen and paper to make a note of the moment

for a later poem.
 

I am located to a maximum security cookie jar by my friend in blue.
A prison of both the body and the mind.
But especially the body.
Speaking of bodies, the inmates googol at the still nude mine.
The tried method of quoting Aristotle proves ineffectuative.
If only I'd equivocated my paternal,
who vocated science would make a better mistress.
Gentlemen, let me be frank, I say.
Frank, you're gonna learn to butle like a butler, say they.

'I find your discourse quite frank,' I say.

'Who's Frank? Why do you keep talking about him?' they recall.

I tap my ofalctory device, driving them insanier.

The bobby, too, is spiced by this.

Ah, my great teachers, how you would be proud of me, 

for I have stumbled upon the lynchpin to my freedom.

Behold, it is not streaking, but Frank.

I bargain with the bobby.

He is easily won over, the mystery of Frank burning

his seat.
 

Blackmail and bribe, working together
for a colon good.
Mayhaps the Germanians aren't so bad.
In a my the house home apartment
I now streak only
in the
closet.

Look What the Wind Blew In

 There once was a lizard named Slim Lizzy. She wasn't popular amongst other lizards, because she did a standup comedy routine once and accidentally offended the black lizards. So she made friends with the ants and lived under ground with them. 

 It was all going pretty well, and she made a friend called Adam who was an ant. But soon the ants' weird cultural practices became apparent.

 Late at night, when no humans were looking, they all voted on the ugliest ant in the colony. The unlucky winner was then tied down and tickled with its own antenna until it died from laughter.
 "That's horrible, Adam," bitched Lizzy. "How can you guys let something like that happen?"

 "Jeez," said Adam. "Don't be such a party-pooper. What's so wrong about laughter?"

 "What's wrong is it's only one letter away from slaughter. You should be more ashamed of yourself than usual. Hmph! If anyone needs me, I'll be drowning my sorrows in wedding cake." She slithered off.

 So Slim sought a new culture to slip into. She found a termite mound and gave them a go.

 However, just in the introductions stage it became obvious this wasn't for her.

 "Hi," said a friendly looking termite. "My name's Gjklajgrelbob."

 "Er... I'm sorry, I left a... food... in the oven. Bye."

 "I don't belong anywhere. This cold world and I just aren't compatible. Ooh, that would make a great Livejournal post."
 She sat by the garbage cans and cried, hoping someone would hear her and come cheer her up.

 The wind said, "I still love you!"

 But the wind didn't have arms or a culture she could get hugged by. It was also cold and annoying.

 Just then an eagle swooped down and grabbed her.

 "This is it," she thought. "This is how I'm going to die - by being fed to hungry baby birds."

 The majestic eagle flew at mach 3 towards the magnetic north pole for what seemed like hours. But in what scientists would classify as "one mofo of a coincidence," the eagle was penetrated by a stray cosmic ray and died in mid air. Lizzy fell to the earth, hundreds of miles away from everything she'd ever marked as her territory.  

 It was here that she found a culture to which she belonged. And it involves lots of cute things like baby seals and polar bear pups, yay!! But first, a 5 hours interlude where she watched the aurora borealis (that's the north pole, right?) and totally didn't die of cold being cold blooded and everything.

 "Welcome to our land!" welcomed the elder penguin. "I am Walthrick. I rule this--hey!"
 Lizzy marked Walthrick as her property. He should have thanked her. She didn't understand what he was getting so pissy about.

 Walthrick said he was going for a swim, and he expected her to be ready to apologise by the time he got back. Lizzy din' got time for dat though. She moved on and met a bunch of seals looking all cute and helpless and waiting to be eaten by a killer whale.

 "Hello, dears. What are your names?"
 The cutest of the seals spoke first. "I once picked my nose 'till it bleeded!"

"Did you? Well that's very good. Have this snowball as a reward."

"Yaaaaaayyy!" said the seal. "This is the best day ever!"

 It played with the snowball for half an hour while Lizzy and the adult seals got better acquainted (if you know what I mean, huh, huh? No okay there was no sex).

 They hit it off like a house on fire. That was when the iceberg they were floating on decided to catch fire.

Everyone died in a horrible firey drowny death, except Lizzy who got rescued by the wind.

She checked off 'seals' from her list of possible arctic cultures.

 The wind dropped her on an igloo. She went inside to keep warm and maybe find something 50 times her weight to lift—lizards are showoffs like that. Inside she saw none other than her long last ant friend. It was a heart-throbbing reunion.
 "Adam! What are you doing here?"

 "Ah, Lizzy. I couldn't stay away from you forever." *SMOOCH*

 They built themselves a little igloo on a hill, and lived off snowflakes. Things got a bit confusing when Lizzy got knocked up with ant babies, which grew inside her and would burst through her skin to hatch. But they worked through it. She just got a hell of a lot of stitches, and everyone lived happily ever after.

The End.

The Shoes Maketh the Monk

 Once upon a time there was a pair of red shoes. They had been handcrafted from finest leather by monks who lived in the mountains high up in the clouds. They smelt of leather, surprisingly, and because leather is one of the better smells in the world, the shoes were much sought after, and went on to have a long and eventful life.

 They were first bought by a sweet transvestite, Patrickcia, who climbed the mountain to prove his love to his boyfriend/girlfriend/something, Renando. He brought them back as proof that he had met the monks, but also because they looked pretty hot and would suit Renando's glamourous outfits. Renando was wooed by the gift and they had some pretty hot sex that night. However, the relationship did not last long. Turns out Patrickcia got off with one of the monks after he bought the shoes. Distraught, Renando threw them out of the third story window in his/her anger.

 The shoes waited patiently on the pavement outside under the streetlights, wondering what would become of themselves.

 

  The shoes sat for days. All manner of interesting characters passed by, but none of them stopped. They had better stories to get to. Finally a toothless woman from Arkanhoma found them and grinned a toothless Arkanhoman grin.
 "I gawt me sum  wawkin' apparatuses!" she exclaimed.
 She brought them home to their trailer. It was quite ghetto. Even the concrete blocks supporting it needed supported by concrete blocks. Billy Bawb was inside trying to pick up a channel—any channel—with a butter knife as an antenna.
 "I do say, my good woman, whence came such lavish footwear?" 

 'Nawn a yaw fookin bidniss!'

 She superglued the shoes to her feet, just in case, and propped them up on the coffee table and went 'aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh put the kettle on'.

 That night, Billy Bawb snuck into her room with his butter knife. The Arkanhoman woman sighed and rolled over in her sleep. 'Bunnies,' she said, and smiled.

 Billy lifted the sheets slowly, his toothless grin shining in the moonlight (don't question it). He brought the knife down in a flash of blunt metal and sawed the shoes off her feet.
  'Aaaaewkelwaht eilwa;y joa;'roiewaslkyhnaewl'tj klasjkl;eawj kl;eajklreiytopajt!!!' she screamed. All the birds woke up and flew away screaming from the trees. Billy Bawb held the shoes up by their laces, went 'durp durp' and fled the caravan.

 

  It was well past sunset at this point. The world was dark and foreboding. Yet there was a sense of excitement to it. Billy Bawb could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. In fact, now that he thought about it, he'd never really seen the town at night before. He went to the local high school and played on the playground.
 Little did he know this area had a higher crime rate than Central Park. A group of 10-year-olds who were up to no good started making trouble in the neighborhood.
 The munchkins gave Billy Bawb a savage beating and claimed the glorious red shoes for their own. It wasn't a story he'd be telling his kids some day. 

 

 But Peter and Tony were little munchkins, so they couldn't decide who should have the shoes. They didn't want to share, because that was for pussies. So Peter knifed Tony in the face and claimed the shoes for his own. 'My preciousssss,' she said. Then Tolkein came back from the dead, just for the purpose of suing him. Then he went back to being dead.

  Peter played on the swing for a while, holding his feet out in front of him to admire his shoes in all their glory. Everything else looked grey in the streetlight, but the shoes were still a shameless strumpet red. Like a whore (people can be red, right?)

  It got chilly, so he took a walk. He made his way down the avenue round the back of his house, appreciating the way the new shoes cushioned his feet and made him feel like he could run forever. Then a black cat fell out of a dustbin and into his face. It started hissing and scratching and biting and other ings.

  The cat was actually his sister Rae, transfigured by a witch, trying to communicate with Peter. She figured the best way to get him to understand was to act exactly like a real cat.
 "Aw, geez, get off me! You're worse than my sister!"
 "Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow," said Rae.
 Peter gave the cat a kiss to shut it up, because his mom told him every problem could be solved with love. Then much to his surprise she transformed back into his sister.
 That night Rae borrowed Peter's red shoes while he was busy playing his Colecovision. She wanted to wear them on her date tonight with a handsome monk she met on a dating website.

 

 She primped and pouted in the mirror, applying MORE lipstick and MORE eyeliner, because she wanted to look as pure as the dawn (lulwut?) She snuck out of her window, climbing down the tree outside, and laddering her tights in the process.

  She met Humphrey in the graveyard, because that was as close to  getting into a church out of hours as you can get, but also because it makes a spooooooooooooky setting wooooooooooo (ghost noises). 

Humphrey's eye twinkled when he saw her, and not because she looked like a prostitute, but because he saw the shoes he had sought after for so many minutes since Patrickcia bought them off him.

  They sat down at a table and waited to be waited on.
 "So tell me, Rae, what do you do for fun?"

 "Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow," said Rae.

 "...Okay."
 They sat in silence for a while. The zombie patrons laughed and enjoyed their evening, which annoyed Humphrey because it reminded him of all the times he was excluded in school by his zombie classmates and zombie teachers. He'd had just about enough of this date. He lunged forward and snatched the shoes and ran off. Rae turned back into a cat, due to a typo in the curse agreement forms. The witch fired her secretary. 

 

 Humphrey continued to do the only thing that could be done with the shoes, to stop their curse of leaving behind a trail of dead or injured people. He fed them to the offspring of the very coat that produced them. He was a monk, so he didn't have any moral quirms about the weird cannibalistic nature of this gesture.

  He sat back, relaxed, sparked up a cigar, and patted himself on the back. Good job, Humphrey.

The End.