Complaining with Kay, Episode 29.5, Literary Supplement: In cold blood.

IN this episode:
- In cold blood
- Awkward love
- He sits
- Dead sea scroll.
Music: Excerpts from “Cephalopodae” by Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip, performed by the Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra.
Link.

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Complaining with Kay, Episode 27.5, Literary Supplement: The Reject Cast.

The literary supplement returns with some stuff that either got rejected from other stuff or that Ben rejected as PRO lyrics.  As my friend Alex Eddington says, “Beautiful writing is all very well, but people need to know what the f*ck you’re talking about.”
In this episode:
- “Is it too much to ask?”
- Revenant
- “I was [...]

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Dead sea scroll

What you write goes out in the world.  Whether you like it or not, it travels.  Mostly not very far, but sometimes very far, very far indeed; and when it does, you no longer can stop others from reading into it what they want to see.
“No,” you can say, “no, that’s not what I meant.  [...]

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Podcast podcast podcast!

Complaining with Kay, Episode 24.5, Literary Supplement: Lullaby for Gus.
In this episode:
- Melancholy Inventory
- Tie the knot tighter
- Lullaby for Gus
- You don’t have to put on a show.  You’re already my friend.
Link.

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Melancholy Inventory

Today I did something I’ve been putting off for weeks.  I wrote the third of my opera libretti (librettos?  whatever), the one about Edith Sitwell.  Here’s a little excerpt, in the style of Facade:
Melancholy Inventory
The gilded bee
The satin sea
The black sun rising over me
The honeycomb
The marksman’s tomb
The exit from the morning’s womb
The sheep-like crowd
The laugh [...]

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Tie the knot tighter

This poem is part of my response to Kathryn Joyce’s chilling book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.  I’m not sure about the semi-rhyme structure – I may rewrite it into fully rhyming stanzas.
Tie the knot tighter
With love, humility, trepidation
Innocent-hearted they met at the altar
To take on that weight, that heavy expectation:
man and wife, a [...]

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Complaining with Kay, Episode 18.5: The Literary Supplement

I read some little things I’ve written – some prose poems and one, um, poem poem.
“On one of the streets near where I live…”
First Love
Ground State
“Will you say to yourself…”
Music in this episode:
“Kornblumen” (Richard Strauss, performed by me and Ben – recorded live at Hart House last November)
“Fleurs” (Francis Poulenc, performed by me and Ben [...]

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For Ada

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, which celebrates the contributions of women to science and technology.  If you don’t know who Ada Lovelace was, look her up.  She was a very gifted woman with interests in mathematics, poetry, music, and technology.  Oh, and she DIED in 1852.  And she was Lord Byron’s daughter.  Overall, she was [...]

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Threshold problem

In a dim room far from my usual haunts
you’re playing the piano, very small and far away;
I hear you, but all around me rise
the waters of noise.
Your inventions compete with the chatter of the world,
the first dates, the drunken fights,
people living loudly and without reflection
as a hockey announcer duns into their dull heads
an excitement they [...]

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OK, not really

Serves me right for starting the day by blogging about how happy I feel.  Anyway, I’m not talking about it now.  Maybe tomorrow I will come up with an elaborate metaphor to explain everything, but I don’t have the energy right now.  Anyway, here’s a nice pessimistic poem.  
The sun still shines
The sun still shines,
the [...]

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