BAD ADVICE FROM A GOOD FELLA -- GREAT HANGOVER CURE!

　

A business partner once walked in to my office +

workspace + cockpit for the Mindship...and he said

to me: "LOOKS LIKE A MADMAN LIVES HERE!"

Well, I must have hired the same interior decorator

as five years ago. Because this place looks exactly

the same right now. And it's not even the

same place!

*

It looks like Beirut after a bad weekend

and everybody got bombed!

*



O.K. That's a bad joke, but it does look like

an anti-personnel device was tossed in through

my window. And I've been trying to clean this

place up. Everything I do just makes the rubble

worse.


GREAT HANGOVER CURE
_________________________

______________________

Fuck it! I'm going to have a drink - a fine

concoction I devised with cheap fortified wine,

half a liter  of ice, frozen in the bottle,

one lime, and just four or five

drops of Jamaican red pepper extract.

After a major swig of this plastic bottle,

your vision clears, your ass starts to burn,

your ears start to ring, and you'll have

to do some fast cross-field running to reach

the bathroom on time.


*

Bert used to say, "I've got a little something

I mixed up. It'll either cure you or kill you. I usually

give it to animals, but I think you need it."

*

Oh yeah, before you drink down the

whole bottle with one swig - it's best to eat

several cloves of raw garlic.

*

If this cure doesn't move you, you're

dead from the ass both ways!

*

If this is the case, my advice is to funnel

about 3 ounces of clear full strength white

Wray and Nephew Jamaican rum. Drink another

liter of the concoction with the 190 proof

white rum added... If this doesn't change

how you feel instantly or in at the most 15 minutes,

well then you don't live on this plane of

existence.

*

Or you're dead entirely and you just

don't know it.

*

I have just had my first half litre of this mix

and my eyes have cleared entirely. I'm sitting

straight up in my chair. My spine is erect.

And I'm starting to receive telepathic messages

from across the ocean.

*

I'm not saying the cure will do the

same thing for you exactly... you might implode

and find you have the consciousness of an ant.

But I doubt it.

*

I'm sitting down in my Captain's chair.

In the "Cockpit for the Mind Trip". I'm surveying

all my instruments. I have almost achieved takeoff

velocity, but I'm just going to sit and relax here.

This place still looks like a bomb went off,

but I don't give a shit.

*

It works! The hangover cure really works! This is an important bit of information, if people tend to visit you with bottles and drinks.


　
                                          *   *    *



Please note - this article repeats itself several times... Why?  I don't know.

　

A business partner once walked in to my office +

workspace + cockpit for the Mindship...and he said

to me: "LOOKS LIKE A MADMAN LIVES HERE!"

Well, I must have hired the same interior decorator

over the weekend. Because this place looks exactly

the same right now. And it's not even the

same place!

It looks like Beirut after a bad weekend

and everybody got bombed!



O.K. That's a bad joke, but it does look like

an anti-personelle (SP?) device was dropped through

the window. And I've been trying to clean this

place up. Everything I do just makes the rubble

worse.

Fuck it! I'm going to have a drink - a fine

concoction I devised with cheap fortified wine,

half a litre of ice, one lime, and just four or five

drops of Jamaican red pepper extract.

After a major swig of this plastic bottle,

your vision clears, your ass starts to burn,

your ears start to ring, and you'll have

to do some fast cross-field running to reach

the bathroom.

Bert used to say, "I've got a little something

I mixed up. It'll either cure you or kill you. I usually

give it to animals, but I think you need it."

Oh yeah, before you drink down the

whole bottle with one swig - it's best to eat

several cloves of raw garlic.

If this cure doesn't move you, you're

dead from the ass both ways.

If this is the case, my advice is to funnel

about 3 ounces of clear full strength white

Wray and Nephew Jamaican rum. Drink another

litre of the concotion with the 190 proof

white rum added... If this doesn't change

how you feel instantly or in at the most 15 minutes,

well then you don't live on this plane of

existence.

Or you're dead entirely and you just

don't know it.



I have just had my first half litre of this mix

and my eyes have cleared entirely. I'm sitting

straight up in my chair. My spine is erect.

And I'm starting to receive telepathic messages

from across the ocean.

I'm not saying the cure will do the

same thing for you exactly... you might implode

and find you have the consciousness of an ant.

But I doubt it.



I'm sitting down in my Captain's chair.

In the cockpit for the Mind Trip. I'm surveying

all my instruments. I have almost achieved takeoff

velocity, but I'm just going to sit and relax here.

This place still looks like a bomb went off,

but I don't give a shit.

It works!


 

THE POETIC PROCESS - RHYME - RHYME IN THE RHYTHMIC FLOW

axe

　

THE POETIC PROCESS

__________________

Let's talk about rhyme.



The most recent insight I have had about

rhyme came when I was playing jazz with some of

the best instrumental talents of Canada, who'd come

into the Zanzibar tavern in the afternoons

to get up on stage and play.

It's appropriate to play jazz in a Strip Club.

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that the word

"jazz" derives from the word, "jizz". Hot music

has always been associated with sex. So it was

fun playing sets between the acts of the strippers.

It all became a flow experience, the music, the multi-

coloured lights playing on the bodies of the

women dancing, the smells of food cooking downstairs

and the glint of the sun coming in off the chrome

of cars passing on Yonge Street.

The sour aftertaste of beer spills, my vodka and

tonics and the bitter taste of a stimulant burning in

my nostril. Joe, the silent but

efficient bartender working along the long bar. The

gleaming of sun from the front window - just a narrow

slat of a sunbar making a golden stripe on the red

rug.

Listening to the notes, sometimes discordant

sometimes in sweet harmony. It all seemed like

a poem to me. The rhyme of sounds

came in a variety of unexpected rhythms.

And this is the way to use rhyme in a poem -

sometimes unexpected, a play with words,

in the flow of words, rhymes sometimes dicordant,

some words merely suggesting a rhyme with

another word that sounds a little like it.

Its a flow and a dance... It's a sudden

JOKE; it's a resolution. The rhythms always

must come round to the starting pint - then

fall away into the multicoloured lightning

cymbal flash of night.

Darker still towards the stairs in the back.

Learning rhyme is an art. And its an

art that you never finish learning. You

can't really talk about rhyme without

rhythm. Because rhythm determines

when the rhyme will come.

Just like in jazz, two harmonic notes

sounding together - fall away into something

else - silence, the ringing of a bell --- darkness,

darkness... then slowly light emerges out

of the black hole in the poet's mind, twisting,

circling up like a spiral, like DNA - a drumbeat

sounds, and then come the horns - bells and

horns drive away doubt.

You step forth into certainty, certainty

of the dawn rising in the mind of our artist,

circling round, a spiral out of the darkness,

up, up, up into the cool of the blues. Most

reggae songs start with the sound of the

horns... and then comes the rhythm,

sharply defined.

I can't differentiate between music

and painting and poetry - the structure

of all three seems strangely as one to

me - in the darkness of the mind,

I see all three spiraling together,

weaving together like the strands

of DNA, like the threads of the Fates,

like the involving ties of love,

all one roar of the river.

The river is within. And

my form of meditation, of dreaming

while awake I call "RIVER-WATCHING

MEDITATION". You let the river of your

thoughts, emotions, memories and

feelings, pictorial visions - let the

river flow by within you - you don't

attempt to achieve silence - you don't

repress, you let the vision river go,

you do not grasp or hold.

And eventually the river will clear

and you will see yourself in its

reflection.

It's all one process, as far as

I am concerned. It's all one

undulation, tension and release;

and the clarity of watching this

river flow by down down into the

past within you.

This way the clear-eyed

watcher learns about him-herself,

always the river within coursing past.

And there is no need to grasp,

no need to try to possess.

Because the river comes round

within you.



THE CONSCIOUS MIND REMEMBERS TO FORGET

BECAUSE THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

WON'T FORGET TO REMEMBER.


*TEN THOUSAND PATHS TO DAWN ON THE PEAK OF THE SILVER MOUNTAIN





(C) 2016 by W.G. Milne
　

　

　

　

　

　

　

WHAT'S THAT? ASPECTS OF THE POETIC PROCESS

I've been working on a long poem for years now,

but there were stumbling blocks - because of my

poetic theory - which was to echo the waves of the

sea, rising & falling, ebb and flow tide...My theory

didn't allow for any characters, any narrative.

A flux of rhythm and rhyme was my goal. And I

achieved that.

The problem was, no one wanted to read it.

It was necessary to work a story in as well as

poetic themes.

I needed an omniscient observer in my poem, but I couldn't

figure out who it could be. The man of many ways

had been used. Treisias had been used...What to do?

I had to change my thinking... and line up my symbols

like ducks in a row in my understanding. It took a long

time. I must be stupid, I thought.

My psychiatrist informed me I was a long way from

being stupid. They had done several I.Q, tests on me because

they didin't believe the results of the first test.

Dr Ben informed me that when Einstein lived in

row housing - he had to paint his door red so he could

find his way home.

I'm not sure how that helped me. But let me say,

an epic poem such as the one I'd been writing for decades,

a poem has to grow organically and it will reveal

itself when it is ready. The poet has to grow at the same

time and make himself ready to see, ready to receive

the divine message that he hopes to express.

The poet must empty out a space within himself,

so that when Grace touches him, he has a place

where Grace can come. He has a place, or no-place,

where inspiration may reside.

He must become an empty vessel in order

absorb the lines, in order to encompass the emerging

reality of the poem - to allow the symbols & characters to dance

with one another in his 'dreaming while awake'.

I can't explain the process. All I can do is

point a finger at the moon. All I can say is

it happens... how... is mysterious. But the poet

must be patient. He must be ready to wait,

and somehow dream while he waits.

Some of the poem the poet does himself.

Some of it is given to him. Even as Grace is given

to the pilgrim monk.

TEN THOUSAND PATHS TO DAWN AT THE PEAK OF

THE SILVER MOUNTAIN.

I made that one up myself. With a lot of other people

who have attempted to write on the same subject in

the past. We are all monks looking to see

the secret meaning, the meaning of the eternal.

But nobody sees the obvious. What is right before

our face is too difficult to absorb. An old Tibetan

saying goes like this:

"THE SECRET BOOK COULD BE LEFT OPEN ON THE

KING'S HIGHWAY, AND NO ONE WOULD READ IT."

That fits right in with another one of my favourite sayings.

I didn't make this one up:

"THE GREAT WAY IS EASY FOR HE WHO HAS NO

PREFERENCES."

The Sixth Patriarch



　

I got off the subject again, but who cares!

Who makes the rules? We do!

　

　

How will I find a title for this?

　



　

(C)2016 by W.G. Milne

Lord Melody "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" (1957)