Girlfriend Doggerel: II. Dolly the Doll

Dolly the Doll

My girlfriend Dolly was a doll,
I dated her on & off for a decade.
She wasn’t petite, but she was small,
She was in season in the late fall
When color from the aspens starts to fade.

She wouldn’t blow mine, but I could sure blow hers.
She was as temperamental as the temperature.
She was especially slippery in the showers:
I could lather her up for hours,
And she would wash away with soapy water.

My girlfriend Dolly was chaste as a box of crayons,
And she was as queenly as a royal mustard.
As arm candy, I would take her to St Johns,
Where the vicar told me she looked like Beyoncé.
Afterward, she let me lick her all over covered in custard.

She wouldn’t show me on a map where she was born,
So I never told her my real first name.
We had a relationship of trust & scorn,
She came as early as songbirds in the morn,
And she could flee as fleetingly as celebrity’s fame.

My girlfriend Dolly was a duck in the pond:
She could be monogamous but was also a bit wet on the bottom.
The roots of her hair were sometimes blond,
But her split-ends stretched to the great beyond.
She was all-in-one a John, a whore & a madam.

She wouldn’t blow me, but I could blow her up.
She was as temperamental as chocolate’s temper.
Like an overproduced musical, she flopped,
And last month when I poked her, she popped,
And they don’t make them anymore like her.

Art by Olaf Mary from www.liamgolden.com

Girlfriend Doggerel: I. Fontelyn Brotemy

Fontelyn Brotemy

A girl called Fontelyn Brotemy was my lover in 2010,

She had legs that went all the way down to the floor,

She was easy to please, but she was also easy to bore,

And she knew me as well as she had known plenty men.

I would rather have Fontelyn Brotemy than none at all.

I once asked her if she dreamt in color when she dozed,

And she told me she couldn’t see anything with her eyes closed,

And then she tied me down & did naughty things with a snake's rattle.

I took Fontelyn Brotemy to Ohio to meet my parents.

They asked her why she had dropped out of nursing school,

And she told them she believed in the golden rule,

And since no one had ever nursed her, she couldn't be bothered to care for patients.

I would rather have Fontelyn Brotemy than an open flesh-wound.

She brushed her teeth five times a day to fight off plaque,

And she had curves like an ATV race track.

She liked to role-play as Ahab & Moby Dick, & be repeatedly harpooned.

I took Fontelyn Brotemy to Rome to meet the Pope.

He asked her if she always met the leaders of world religions wearing a bikini,

And she told the Pope, I wanted you to fully see me.

She left Rome with a decent tan & a purse full of the hotel’s complementary soap.

I would rather have Fontelyn Brotemy than a bottle of Fernet.

When she left me for a Republican Congressman from Utah,

I asked her if she had used me for my oom-pah-pah,

And she told me keep my tuba in tune: I hadn’t heard the last of her yet.

Art by Olaf Mary from www.liamgolden.com

Three Years Ago: The Seven Deaths of Mrs Hallam's Seven Sons

This ongoing series celebrating this blog's longevity, THREE YEARS AGO, reposting posts from exactly THREE YEARS AGO, continues now with a nonsense poem - The Seven Deaths of Mrs Hallam's Seven Sons:

______________________________________________________________

My dog rolled over on his other ear when an infant yell shook up the night,
And ambulance sirens, a roller coaster,
Or was it the Cosa Noster?
Michael was scheming vengeance gainst the professor who rusticated him for plagiarism.
The men in the hummer understood
That usually it was a pretty safe neighborhood.
What the devils thought was God defenestrating a bastard baby was just a meteorite.
Luckily, Mr Hallam was able to return to work six weeks after his New Age Aneurysm.

The girl in brown who walked into the coffee shop on Thursday Morning had the eyes of an octogenarian.
In memoriam, it was her royal belief
That nature & nonsense could console grief.
She sat way over in the fifth corner & wrote hurriedly a novel about shiteater bunnies & testicles.
Robert's rhymed dissertation was tit-for-tat,
So why do the gay young men have to dress like that?
A father of such potency should have, quintessentially, been a Mormon, not a hippy, you know,
For every December there had to be screaming arguments about iconography & revolution & tinsel icicles.

Governor Schwarzenegger was sitting across the aisle at the afternoon baseball game;
Henry had brought his antique Daguerreotype,
But overexposed the governor amid the hype,
And a question materialized from the tainted folds about the longevity of ancient mammals.
When the tumor squeezed the trigger,
Where in hell was this sad figure?
Ah, Mrs Hallam, your late nights in the confessional have become the vicar's nostalgic shame:
Henry's Roman nose was among his final thoughts when he cast off their earthly shackles.

In the basement bathroom, she blew him like desert dust.
Joseph's immortal ill will be
Never finishing his Third "Lost" Symphony.
He was reanimated like Erasmus Darwin's electric rocks on the steps of city hall.
And the newt's tail in her cauldron
She might never feed to her great-grandchildren.
The judge was a welder of finite proportions, preserved as a marble bust,
But I cannot be expected to remember the details of an artistic perjury trial that pitiful.

I hear George hearing a megaphone announcing Mr Hallam missing in the circle of Willis.
I never meant to be mean,
But I ended that relationship in the Oligocene
When six ton ground sloths swatted down magnolia trees like horseflies.
A naked newborn problem
Is no reason for a pogrom!
His youngest sister Phyllis had diatribed seven reasons not to kill us.
You see, George has waited his whole life to find the woman with the largest sagging breasts to demonize.

There were no towels left in the closet in Autumn 2006 when Mrs Hallam finished taking her last shower,
That moment the twelve-part crowing of Chanticleer
Marked the beginning of the getting filthier.
Is it unprofitable to put her in your bonds & use her remaining labor?
James has eaten elephant slugs & slumber slugs
And wallaroo slugs & cucumber slugs.
And the fallen leaves know more about higher powers than any higher power.
Chastise me, heretics! for the watchers grasp the invisible agony of the Stellar's Jay roar.

It was James who mistook his brother Daniel for a tasty underground network of mycelium,
A brigade of saviors will balloon us
Out of a lifetime of boredom in Khan Yunis.
Overpopulation & underpopulation are twin issues to be discussed at next year's global summit.
Daniel has become allergic
To the mosquitoes bred in the oil slick.
His antepenultimate act of indecency was attacking his mother with an Ego Paintball Gun loaded with Berkelium.
So they chose art & science over procreation, they all sold off the family stock before it was going to plummet.

______________________________________________________________

That poem is included in my 2009 illuminated nonsense poetry collection, Prophecy & Doggerel, for sale for $2.15 at scribd:
S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009

Three Years Ago: Three Lamer Doggerels

And now, back to THREE YEARS AGO: this blog's ongoing series re-posting posts from EXACTLY THREE YEARS AGO, as a perpetual celebration of the fact that it has survived more than three years (with the occasional furlough.) From August 11th, 2007, we present Three Lamer Doggerels:

______________________________________________________

It's a shady Saturday, & I'm looking thru an old notebook before heading to a wedding reception. I found one old poem scratched next to a picture of a cowboy entirely of beard & hair, below bumpy onboard reflections of Futureman's MIDI percussion playing from the 90's (The "Synthax Drumitar").

Two men use their talents:
One buries his money,
The rich get richer,
but bees make honey,
& ain't that funny
if you're a bunny,
sonny?

I think I really solved some of life's mysteries with those rhymes. The second poem I collaborated with Mr Hadar Hart on a walk up to see a 70's b-movie about smart killer bees ("Phase IV" by Saul Bass), after discussing how it's too bad the Homeless Newspapers don't have creative writing:

Haiku About Homelessness & Heartlessness

Home's where the heart is,
Homes is where the heart is where,
Therefore, I'm heartless.

Kind of Gertrude Stein meets Wayne & Garth. This last doggerel is a fragment - instead of blabbing on about Orson Welles & the thinning of themes, as Christopher Hitchens did today in his review of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, I just wrote a short poem thanking our beloved author:

Thank You to J.K. Rowling

Thank you, J.K. Rowling, you've made the Bush years more bearable,
You've made 800-page novels more carryable,
You've made wizard cloaks more wearable,
And you've made Hollywood more Harry-able.

Never on Sunday Song

Don't you know humongous jackalopes roamed Pangaea,
Yes, their fossils test our faith, my girlfriend, the restless feckless,
In her rich aunt's necklace, she looks like an old ornamented manataea,
Yes, & the jackalopes would have eaten that creature for breakfast.

Never on Sunday, she said, & wave your underpants in the wind
Like the Union Jack--, about my girlfriend I'll wind a lengthy vignette.
Winded from two too many hookah bowls last night, her voice sounds tinned
As she complains about the President, but the history's not in yet.

Time, gentlemen, please, to ask to shake a nation,
Long time, yes, & they missed the lost Zephyr train from Truckee to Sacramento,
Time to wait, eat a veggie burrito, & time for self-flagellation,
Yes, & if it comes, she'll be waiting by the tracks, now with several more babies to attend to.

Never on Sunday, I'm like a Remittance Man in a time of peace.
I'm a spy in the vestibule of my girlfriend's filthy caresses.
She left her locket unlocked in case you forgot your keys,
As a favor, rung-in & sung, every night when she undresses.

In the midst of a crooked & preverted nation,
Yes, even you, & my girlfriend, stand up, as lights of the world,
The restless feckless, she's what's left after nature's creation
Has been recalled, yes, & infidelity with angels, with all the right curves, & garlanded & laureled.

Never on Sunday, she said, sleeping like salvation never does,
The perfect day for mimosas & whores cloistered in pavilions,
My girlfriend is like a rainbow after the gay bar closes,
My girlfriend is like a lost lottery ticket worth millions.

Time, gentlemen, please, papers scattered from here to Samoa,
Curse the fin de siecle for its redundancy,
Repeat yourself & remember yourself & mispronounce tomatoa,
Yes, not once ask a nation for clemency, deeper than naivety but still not fancy.

Never on Sunday, I'm like a Remittance Man in the Pacific Theater,
After the terrific belligerents have gone home. Bear witness
Of that light, specific that light what shines on my girlfriend's dumpster-diving career,
Bear witness that this aperitif has undertones of mermaid foam--, but is otherwise hit or miss.

Don't you know the Colorado Locusts will return,
Yes, and then our farm subsidies will be dwarfed by my girlfriend's climax.
Lay up nearer, brother, ask nicely or she'll never learn,
Or about the humongous ancient mammals, yes, we're all vulnerable to mothership attacks.

Never on Sunday, she said, but who finds time to read the moon's latest runes?
Colonel Qaddafi can pitch his tent in my girlfriend's studio apartment,
Every enabler by his own standard, & Sunday Morning Cartoons,
Every conservative by his own camp, & never a camp misspent.

Time, gentlemen, please, finish your pints & find your graves,
My girlfriend, yes, her vocoder thru a groundhog tin-can hogphone,
Can't stomach another four years if the President misbehaves,
Yes, & echo back, in a tin room, like dating your own clone.

Never on Sunday, I'm like a Remittance Man up a Jackalope's colon,
But you will repeat me, you will remember me?
Never on Sunday, she said, well, what are we allowed to do for fun?
Manuia, gentleman-- remember me when the seagulls get seasick & declare victory.

Special Agent Francis' Prayer

Composed at the oriental cafe in Bucharest, July 2009

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, as Special Agent Francis knows,
And the sea goddesses don't know,
And he eructates on the verandah, as disposable as his roast beef toes,
Before he's dislocated, like one of his talking animals,
I snogged him in the gazebo.
And we snogged wearing pajanimals--,
And if I wasn't indispensable, as much gum cancer as you can handle.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, if you can believe it,
Nor without the yellow blackbird,
Neither wear your cap crookedly unless you see fit.
Special Agent Francis hears our fates clearly in our coffee grounds.
He's heard the opiated herd
Has become Trieste's hellhounds,
Unlimited & undistinguishable--, grant him peace to hear his gladly solemn sounds.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, or without nutella banana crepes,
And Special Agent Francis:
He was a silent lover I stole silently from Miss Lousera Comasquerapes.
Dirty mermaids from the Black Sea, like poop droppings from a Hoopoe,
Silent my agent prances,
Like sirens don't know,
Today if not only yesterday Francis promises at deepest a furlough.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, pray for war.
His elephant, my mosquito--,
His male elephant seal washing up dead on the shore, my prayer for nothing more--,
I have a dream of outfitting my whole family in white cotton.
Still I can't forgive his veto.
I don't regret his wet body rotten,
Rotting moistly, mostly unforgiven, choicely on the verandah & unforgotten.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, rustically but alone but for the trepan
And the filthy sea goddesses.
Elle Mary has the bladder of an eighty-year-old man,
And I suspect already that we'll smoke this last one till the choking fine:
Mutated mammal kisses,
And with mammals drink lilac wine,
Like Special Agent Francis suspects the divine, & I'm still here as a dry Hoopoe unripe on the vine.

Remember Artie Wongay

This poem was writ on the bus from Rousse to Sofia - - - - - & here it is now!

I.
Remember Artie Wongay? refusing to write another Latin opera,
He spilled himself another tall glass of Terra Firma.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Your highest note is my most guttural,
You may be an archvillain but you'll never be my motherall.

Remember Artie Wongay? the same galactic superstar from our rediscovered kingdom--
The same false prophet of the ancients has been lurking home.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- The forest set cyclically on fire,
Balancing on daffodils like a whale on a wire.

Remember Artie Wongay! & don't forget him!
He'll follow you in your dreams, eat you as an obese madam.

II.
Remember Artie Wongay? the flames? & the rodeo disco stirrapes?
Are you paying attention to this, come ask her apes.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Now don't let's repossess,
Flight of the flammivomous scarecrows, loser, a coma, scary piss.

Remember Artie Wongay? like swingers, we'll swing from here to there-ish,
Tangents that come out of everywhere like a coked-up priest coming out of his parish.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Your lowest note is my most pathetic.
Spiriduş, spiriduş, you go thru me like a big borscht diuretic.

Remember Artie Wongay! & don't let him be forgotten-- --
Till there's cucumber sandwiches in summer & highways are made out of cotton.

III.
Remember Artie Wongay? the tobacco brush combust again,
The tobacco brush in & out of love, but I mustn't complain.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Tell it to the whores of night justice,
They'll spill for you another tall glass of the earth's crustice.

Remember Artie Wongay? today I've virulent & vital.
I'm the vanguard seer of capitalism, I'm the actuary's meat-hole.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- You're a mixture of scum & bismuth,
We will do vorpal battle except for from Thanksgiving thru Chrismuth.

Remember Artie Wongay! & please don't forget him,
Lock him in gyves & smell the ocean if you've ever met him.

IV.
Remember Artie Wongay? savages fornicating on the side of the road,
He was my enemy & he will be again soon when the stars explode.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Your lowest note is my noblest nebulous,
There isn't room enough in any register for the two of us.

Remember Artie Wongay? he torched the redwood,
In a century where you could still smoke on the bus, the living could, the dead could.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- This planet is not your abattoir.
Snow on Mercury, rain in Uranus, scrape the ozone with her claw.

Remember Artie Wongay! Don't let him be forgot!
Don't let him be a robot in this wilderness of rot!

V.
Remember Artie Wongay? he wronged you too late & too little,
A villain of Marfan stature & a troublingly easy riddle.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- The embers of prudence & fortitude,
A virgin except where we couldn't see, wine & dining her with a platitude.

Remember Artie Wongay? remember his gelatinous melodramatic smirks?
I tell you what I recall, his foulest & least forgiving quirks.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Slabs of granite diving up to the jive,
Spiriduş, spiriduş, come inside of me & stay inside & thrive.

Remember Artie Wongay! keep repeating till you can't be forgotten:
The most Pyrrhic ping-pong tourney we ever fought in.

Louis Untermeyer's Song Tournament: New Style

And of course, as Mrs Kinsey points out, not all poetry in the 20th Century was free-form rhymeless depressing drivel. In our ongoing series on neglected poets who wrote with wit & timing, & lots of FEMININE RHYMES (the best kind), here is Louis Untermeyer's "Song Tournament: New Style".

Rain, said the first, as it falls in Venice
Is like the dropping of golden pennies
Into a sea as smooth and bright
As a bowl of curdled malachite.

Storm, sang the next, in the streets of Peking
Is like the ghost of a yellow sea-king,
Scooping the dust to find if he may
Discover what earth has hidden away.

The mist, sighed the third, that lies on London
Is the wraith of Beauty, betrayed and undone
By a world of dark machines that plan
To splinter the shaken soul of man.

The rush of Spring, smiled the fourth, in Florence
Is wave upon wave of laughing torrents,
A flood of birds, a water-voiced calling,
A green rain rising instead of falling.

The wind, cried the fifth, in the Bay of Naples
Is a quarrel of leaves among the maples,
A war of sunbeams idly fanned,
A whisper softer than sand on sand.

Then spoke the last: God's endless tears,
Too great for Heaven, anoint the spheres,
While every drop becomes a well
In the fathomless, thirsting heart of Hell.

And thus six bards, who could boast of travel
Fifty miles from their native gravel,
Rose in the sunlight and offered their stanzas
At the shrine of the Poetry Contest in Kansas.

(Thank you, Chris More, grandson of Untermeyer, for posting it on your University of Santa Fe homepage. When was this poem written?)

Crickets & Rats on the Brooklyn Bridge

I notice it's been a week since my political attack ad hit the radio waves - the Brooklyn Bridge: IS IT LONG ENOUGH? And yet, I haven't heard a peep from Brooklyn.

The rap battle between the New Tay Bridge & the Brooklyn Bridge can be traced to several "hip-hop" songs, all available in our 2009 debut EP, rap songs about bridges, from bridges, for bridges. They are here.

I mention this all, because I have added a poll to the lefthand sidebar, just below the tweetosphere feed, to get a feel for how the electorate is responding to the attacks, before the 2009 election. James Carville worries that William McGonagall's negatives may have been ratcheted way up after all the radio spots, but we're in crunch time here Turd Blossom.

Our friend Dr Eley-Nelson was kind enough to e-mail this doggerel in support of our hip-hop work set to classic bad 19th Century poetry about bridges:

From: "Dr. ___ Nelson" _____@gmail.com

To: "James Welsch" _@itwaslost.org
Subject: Benefactum

Nice work. I'm sure McGonagall's spirit is suffused with warm well being. Or rather,

James Welsch, you have to music put
A poem about trains and their attendant soot
Or rather of the bridge's o'er which they roll
Which strikes this writer as being rather droll
Your take on the work of William McGonagall
Will surely be well received by all.

Aunt Sally Jessy Doggerel

Look at you, Aunt Sally, you're walking around your house at midnight drinking white wine

From a large cup! Don't look up,
The bible has become your handicap,
You were always my favorite aunt after Aunt Enid croaked, & your love for the divine,
The ornaments of gold & silver & ivory,
And the dildo you hid at your husband's mortuary,
Are all become too involved in the future, let your bottom release its trenchant little whine.

Seems the trees, rectangular, nonsense, like a galley-slave repetition of alcoholic mumbles,
And of course also your disciples,
Aunt Sally, I can see your arm ripples,
Hang the synthesizer on the wall & wake to the sound of Appalachian banjos,
Jesus has gotten in between us,
Mary Magdalen, & the psychic chip in my penis,
We are collected, red whiskey & pain-free, let the trees crumble like the architecture crumbles.

Now that your husband has come home from the war, Aunt Sally, & put aside life,
Can we remember to forget the lost pages,
I never doubted the police weren't 99% courageous,
But there is a time for all things, botanical & arnophiliacal, and there is a time to be alive with your wife,
The correct hour for our reasoning,
And after that, the squid's inkiest cunning,
You & me, we shall not taste of death, till we see the Son of Man coming into his kingdom, the holy sheriff.

Thousands will know about us, thousands of people will come from faraway,
James will clear the slugs off his plate,
And see his reflection in his dinner's fate,
Drink up, Aunt Sally, I'm lost in your decolletage, I feel your decay,
Thousands of people on the internet
Have ordered a custom-made Aunt Sally Jessy beret,
Finally, suddenly, a shot rang out, fermented whale tears, the last act of the day.

Five times five times five, here beneath heaven & we take our daily doughnut,
Are you allowed to be so self-referential?
Making headlines from your prittle-prattle,
Look at you, Aunt Sally, you have become the huge spaceship that time forgot,
You've swept these meanings under your pile of rot,
You've let me hug you for too long, even after we were caught,
But he's back, he's back, he's back, thank the saints, whether I like it or not.

The Sad Narrative of the Big-Ass Beard on that Rutherford B. Hayes

Happy Presidents' Day! It is too infrequently noted that we pay too too little attention to our leaders in this country. How about a little reverence for our great presidents once & awhile! The slick new whitehouse.gov website has a fancy feature with a SLIDESHOW of the 44 presidents, they are even kind enough to crop off the tops of their foreheads for our convenience. I wanted to combine all of the things we love on this blog - Lizard People, Presidents, Beards, Fashion, & History - into one spectacular historical doggerel poem in honor of bearded lizard presidents. Kowtow to us, & spend a few moments this Presidents' Day to learn about democratic leadership.

The Sad Narrative of the Big-Ass Beard on that Rutherford B. Hayes

There once was a man named Rutherford Hayes,
A metrosexual, he shaved three times a days,
Like a baby's butt, soft as a vagina,
You could ride that wave from California to Carolina,
And he knew if he rubbed it in just the right place,
He would grow up to be elected the President of the United States.

Now one day he was walking thru the amber maize,
That gay savant known as Rudy Be Hayes,
And he came across a humble wasp called Twitty van Titt,
Let me tell you about this Twitty, he was full of monkey shit,
A bumble in appearance, but inside an evil sorcerer.
All yellow & fuzzy, he was envious of Rutherford's virgin face,
The type of chihuahua pate, if you rubbed in just the right place,
It could be stamped on the currency of the United States.

That jealous Twitty van Titt, summoned all the spirits of the days,
And placed a huge curse on the face of Rutherford B. Hayes,
He could shave it twenty times with the sharpest of razors,
But his beard would grow thicker than a NASA space shuttle.
You need a 4-D map to get out of the jungle on that lengthy face,
And you'll never grow up to be elected the President of the United States.

But Rudy Be Hayes was a gay little turnip,
And had saved for the fates a few gay little tricks,
So when he ran against Sam Tilden in 1876,
The New York Governor, with his feminine cheeks,
Won the popular vote, but was caught in the lady's lavatory huffing a whippet,
And despite the buzzing voodoo of Twitty Van Titt,
Rutherford ushered in an age of wild bearded Presidents,
Garfield & Cleveland & Arthur & Harrison,
Men of action & courage, history written bold across their pates,
Bearded & handsome, & honored forever as Presidents of the United States.

From the Archives: Mrs Hallam's Last Shower

I linked to this poem below, I thought I would quote the complete sixth stanza for context. I figure, after 18 months, I can start reposting excerpts of poetry from the archives:

There were no towels left in the closet in Autumn 2006 when Mrs Hallam finished taking her last shower,
That moment the twelve-part crowing of Chanticleer
Marked the beginning of the getting filthier.
Is it unprofitable to put her in your bonds & use her remaining labor?
James has eaten elephant slugs & slumber slugs
And wallaroo slugs & cucumber slugs.
And the fallen leaves know more about higher powers than any higher power.
Chastise me, heretics! for the watchers grasp the invisible agony of the Stellar's Jay roar.

The full poem, The Seven Deaths of Mrs Hallam's Seven Songs, was posted on August 30th, 2007, here.

Doggerel Campaigning: Tom Geoghegan

Hendrick Hertzberg pointed out these limericks from the "Tom Geoghegan for Congress" website, as aids to pronouncing his name.

There’s a place where corporate crooks are ragin’
Filled with people more slimy than Fagin
The name for this mess
Is the U.S. Congress
Which is why we need Candidate Geoghegan.

-Brian Cook

There once was a candidate Geoghegan
Whose name rhymed quite oddly with “pagan”
He battled the rich
And Blagojevich
Like Martians they fled from his raygun.

-Brian Beutler

Inaugural Doggerel: Andy Griffith's Wife's Rhymes Is Tight

None other than rapper Andy Griffith MC'd at the North Carolina's gubernatorial inauguration. The free-form doggerel his wife wrote is posted below the video of him reciting it. The strangest thing about the video, it takes place IN THE FUTURE, dated January 19th 2009. Old white men really are the future of hip-hop.

North Carolina is my home
I no longer have to roam
When I see our morning sun
I know there's work to be done
Gov. Bev Perdue is the person we choose
because there's so much she can do.
She will need our best to achieve her quest
to be the person we need so we may succeed
Please grant us the peace
to allow her to lead
God bless her and keep her
and always be near her.
As she opens a door
as never before
So as the New Year starts
let us open our hearts
As I trot out again to say
Hello to my friends
I grant I know that all will be great
For our grand Old North State.

Song of Supposition

How come I no longer carry a pen?
And where has the rum gone?
The internet is for politics & perverts,
So long as you come alone,
A song from the wino at lamplight again.

Watch me, purple princess flower, smoke only camels,
My corner pub's suzerainity,
Imagine a future without underpants,
Listen to the remaining accordion magic,
Can we continue with limited precepts to live in these cold dark shells?

How come I came to this ancient city?
It still has stretch-marks on its breasts,
Handsome young beasts & the kind starshine of ages
Will guide you outward, bounty increases
When charity is replaced by necessity & Charles has no need for pity.

I love a sporting life, & where better to have it?
I need affirmation, a lonesome eagle,
How quick you forget our adoration & our hot tub games,
Our connectivity, you living son of a seagull,
I love a sporting life - want it & grab it.

How come I sense desperation behind your prose?
And don't look for it in the rum cellar.
Keep repeating yourself on the internet,
& I will pay attention to you,
Credentials from the Institute of Pumpkin Yellow,
It's literary fraud, but the noblest kind I suppose.

Hiakus for Diane Benson's Campaign Advertisements

Diane Benson is running for Alaska's "at-large" congressional ottoman (the street term for a state with two senators but only one congressman.) Her values are your values, the lives written large in Imaginary America.

Freedom:
Soupçon of danger,
Riding helmetless towards love,
Red state turns green.

From the Wikipedia:

Benson began performance work in 1980 and has worked with most major Alaskan theatre companies in such productions as Crimes of the Heart, Wonderland, and Keet Shagoon. She taught stage-craft to inmates in Alaska prisons; led at-risk kids in summer theatre and video programs with Out North Contemporary Art House, created the first contemporary Alaska Native theatre in the state of Alaska in 1985; The Alaska Native Dance & Story Theatre; toured nationally with Naa Kahidi Theatre; directed in Canada for the Nakai Theatre Ensemble, was project coordinator for the Silamiut Greenlandic Theatre Project, several time Artist-in-Residence in rural Alaska, and wrote a number of plays including Sister Warrior and When My Spirit Raised Its Hands.

Integrity:
The Ben Franklins tempt,
Alaska's sylvan lobbyists,
Ignored & forgot.

Diane Benson's son Latseen (pictured in the truck at the top) was severely wounded in Iraq in 2005.

Honor:
Stroke the display case,
A lonesome tundra guitar,
In service of God.

The Anchorage Daily News's top three headlines on the front page on December 12, 2000, read "High Court Ruling Awaited" (regarding the Florida recount in Bush vs. Gore), followed by "Top School Post Goes to Comeau," and, finally, centered lower on the page, in equally large font, "Student Attacks Professor's Poem." The subtitle read, "'Indian Girls' described as racist, insulting." Two primary photos on the front page garnered attention, the larger being that of Elvis impersonators shoveling snow for a hockey game promotion. The other photo was the beleaguered look of a challenged local university professor postured amongst her books. Somehow, what seemed like a rather normal school semester and typical enough poetry class ended with a tidal wave of divisive controversy and inflamed a community already teetering from volatile race relations. I was central to the controversy. I was the student. We Tlingits have a story about the Cannibal Giant who at one time preyed on the people when they were weakened. The Cannibal Giant was once a woman but through evil became a monster. Even when she was seemingly destroyed by fire, the flame transformed her carnivorous essence from cannibal to mosquito, and thus she continues to plague the people to this day. Some say it is a metaphor...

-From Project Muse, about The American Indian Quarterly

Trust:
Man or Mosquito,
We all crave the cur's dinner,
But restrained by trust.

Change may take more time than we would like, but it will come. You are someone who believes in humanity. You are someone who knows that it takes caring about our neighbor next door to improve the state of the world. We know that all those who came before us; that loosened their own shackles of poverty, of prejudice, of injustice, made it possible for someone like me to even run for office. We loosened those chains a little more, and maybe the next time someone like us will win. We can change the world, but first, we must be the change we wish to see in the world. I thank you for being that change.

-Diane Benson, from http://bensonforcongress.com/

Experience:
Wisdom of all types,
Bespectacled Northern girls
Chase tomorrow's dogs.