poetry, quirkiness, and more music

while yoshimi is battling the pink robots (the flaming lips) on my media player and i am so not in the mood for prep work, i might as well update my blog, right?

so: i have made it to day #9 of 30/30, and i am almost done with today's poem, too! i am proud of myself, i must say. only 21 days to go now ... *waaah!!*

the weekend brought me not only a couple of very co-operative sessions with the muse, not only the pleasure of reading some very good poetry at the forum, not only laughs inspired by her royal quirkiness, ms arlene ang, but also the joy of email communication with said ms ang. i think when it comes to being weird, we inspire each other and egg each other on. i am very proud of last weekend's collected emails of angela and mikey, our alter egos (don't ask). the whole conversation had its roots in arlene's recent poems, and "her" erotic supplement over at poems niederngasse - since that time, arlene is seeing sexual symbolism everywhere, picking up sexual innuendoes that, frankly, are not there (yeah i know what you will say to this, ms ang!), and she claims that i have "a recurring problem with length". 'scuse me! EXCUSE ME! it's not what you think: it is about poems! honestly! because i did it again - wrote a poem for a contest which was too long, over the limit of 20 lines. (yes, i deserve to be hit over the head. thank you.)

anyway: to give you an idea of our wonderful and highly intellectual (that is when you sit in front of the screen shaking with laughter, right?) communication, here are a couple of excerpts (and yes, i did ask arlene and her spam assassin very nicely if it would be okay to post this here. they said fine, the spam assassin with a mad smile on his, er, face):

mike,
getting all these valentine spam on viagra and cialis isn't helping the situation. i'm seeing sexual innuendos everywhere! help! ...
did you read that essay in the png erotic? ... i think it's hilarious. it would be funny to interpret every poem phallically, wouldn't it? ...

from me:

the length problem, in my very humble opinion, is totally underrated and widely ... ignored. i don't know what to do about it other than perhaps raise awareness of it in my ladies' high tea meetings on friday evenings. of course one could always ask the women's institute for assistance. ...

i finally feel like i have found someone i can talk to about all these erotic, dare i say it, even sexual symbols i see everywhere, every day: in the milk, in the tea leaves, in my neighbour's face even!

i must confess i thought that these emails about viagra etc were specifically aimed at me, and i even suspected the neighbours' teenage daughters of being behind these jokes after that one blunder when i thought out loud into their father's face, asking if he had inherited the family phallus. meaning his nose. *blushing up to my pink curlers*

then my email was identified as SPAM at arlene's end of the line. tsk. how rude is that? this of course called for action of some sort:

i think i will have to do something about this, perhaps set the lovely ladies from the women's institute on you, get them to call you at every hour of the day and night and moan into the phone. yes, that could work.

arlene pretended to be brave in the face of this terrible threat:

mikey, your women don't scare me... because i'm protected by (on reading closer) the spamassassin 3.1.0. unless you've got 007 women, no one can beat that. teehee.

but do you think i was scared? pah!

tell the spamassassins that they have no chance. a word that includes TWO asses and not merely one can have no hope of frightening someone like me and my combat WI squad. they are getting ready while i am typing, putting their curlers into silk-lined boxes, worrying the ozone layer with cans of spray.

in the course of the email exchange, arlene was careless enough to promise an interpretation of my poem of the day as - and i quote - "a female chauvinist lust poem". boy. what a promise. not that it was too difficult, since the poem took half its inspiration from our wacky emails. but arlene did a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL job. again, i asked her very nicely, and she said i may share some of it here. first, though, the whole poem:

conversation with a tea mug

along with the appetisers, titbits of cheese and grapes, pricked
and speared by bored toothpicks, they offered me this man.

manners are really not what they used to be, nowadays it's all chip
and charge, no one has time for dumplings, watercress garlands.

had it not been for his frog eyes, the frightening curve of his
nose, i might have overlooked the faux pas of olive stockings.

even so, you have no idea what really hot means, breaking
into a sweat at first contact, and the smell, the smell!

perhaps levitra cookies, viagra burgers might cure his shocking
dress sense, the need to rub his hands up and down my arm.

quite endearing, your total lack of self-control, your insistence on
misinterpretation. the cookie monster could help, handles and all.

he said his sister dances the fandango on fridays, behind fuchsia walls,
torn veil dragging on concrete floor. appalling how f-words induce ptyalism.

wait until the women's institute hears of this, they'll scratch out your
lifeline, classify you as ****SPAM****, perhaps take me away on parole.

jotting a fake phone number - bell-bottomed sixes, headstrong nines -
brought out his squint and he crossed himself in all the wrong places.

i understand craving for latex gloves, ripples on a sunday surface.
whatever your score, leave me out of this, don't say i didn't warn you.

when the black-haired girl swung in through double doors with an aura
of aphrodisiacs gone haywire, i dipped chocolate in chili sauce and ran.

there's always something at the bottom of things, perhaps a bag
to trip up the assassins. they'll come. the great suspender will snap.

here's ms ang's take on a few not so private parts of this offering (shame you can't see the perfectly chosen emoticons!):

about the beginning:

hmmm... TITbits? then, "pricked and speared" -- that sounds very phallic. what am i to do with you, girl? *Shaking Head* toothpicks indicate a preoccupation with length... no getting out of that hang-up now. *ROFL*

re the lines about the phone number:

very fine illustration of the 69 position -- now i know where the bottom and head have to go *Harharhar*!!

and re the closing lines:

the sound of a great suspender snapping is a wonderful metaphor for orgasm. yes, yes -- you can't hide that from me, especially when placed so near the "bottom" of things.

if you made it this far: congrats. you are allowed into the club of sillies. spread the quirkiness!

music: my mp3 player is now officially in love with joana newsom's inflammatory writ (and quite frankly, how could anyone not be, especially fans of the quirky and wacky) and melys' your 'fuck me' eyes.

still, the song of the day is neither of those two but madrugada feat. ane brun - lift me. thanks for the tip, ida @ the richard hawley forum!

and hello to rachael, if you ever read this stuff: thanks for the wonderfully uplifting (and also partly zany) chat on saturday morning (your night)!