Phoenix Psychology

Somali catechism

2011-09-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

This ak47 keeps jamming, but it might work. Do you feel lucky, effendi?

a nascent phoenix

2010-06-26T15:48:00.001-07:00

The Bleedin' Sparrow

2010-02-21T03:54:00.000-08:00

Audio file
and another one with more 'ows yer faver

We 'ad a bleedin' sparrow
wot lived up a bleedin' spout
one day the bleedin' rain came down
and washed the bleeder out

and as 'e lay half drownded
down in the bleedin' street
'e begged that bleedin' rainstorm
to bathe 'is bleedin' feet

and then the bleedin' sun came out
dried up the bleedin' rain
so our bleedin' little sparrow
'e climbed up 'is spout again

but O, the cruel sparrowhawk
he spied 'im in 'is snuggery
'e sharpened up 'is bleeedin' claws
and ripped 'im out by thuggery

just then, a bleedin' sporting type
wot 'ad a bleedin' gun
'e spies that bleedin' sparrowhawk
and blasts 'is bleedin' fun

the moral to this story
is plain to everyone
that them wot's up the bleedin' spout
don't get no bleedin' fun

Not Going Anywhere

2009-12-17T00:32:00.000-08:00

New Life

2009-10-31T04:33:00.000-07:00

New Life

The future begins here.
Crow claws clutch the carrion:
Denied access to the womb-door.

The holy spirit descends as
volcanic ash.

I have read and understood the terms
of this agreement.

Confirm. Deny.

Your news has gone before you across
the Western World and now
this pixilated logarithm;
15 minutes of fame done and dusted.

Breathe, Milly Rose, we’ll hold ours.

Button nose, turned down
mouth, cherub cheeks;
you momma been negotiating
with Walt Disney?

Sleep. Suckle.

We’ll be there.

How They Know What to Eat

2009-08-06T03:01:00.000-07:00

This will have to be work in progress, but I think I may have discovered why those labels that supposedly tell us what plants are called, are always written in some code that is altogether too obscure for those of us who are not insects.

2009-06-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

Analia Retentov’s Revenge

To each of us is given a Calvary proportionate to his or her powers of endurance and capabilities of self perfection. Aldous Huxley

Bring them to the vertex
where vectors of sanity and normalcy
are in conjunction.

Abandon those who go too far.

Take care of those felt
by their proximity.

Proximity fosters influence.

Bring them by due process
to an equilibrium of conformity
whence they may seed the environment.

Cut them where they lie
and where they lay;
in rows and columns, quarterise
and bisect their colons:
give each and every artist a Calvary.

And to the righteous a cavalry.

Things that are what they say they are.

2009-06-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

One from a series of one.

Standing on the Corner

2009-05-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

watching all the girls go by...

If I wore my Special Hat, Could I Come in Then?

2009-05-10T01:48:00.000-07:00

Colonoscopy

if necessary consent to surgery, the last resort of the gambling man - John Cale

You are what you eat
and drink
and breathe
in the everyday miracle of assimilation.

Each waking hour
and when you’re sleeping, too,
messages flash
around the organism.

Cells allot other cells
to functions of sorting,
moving,
breaking down
and refinement.

Magnificently,
the deconstructed argument
of all that you consume
is reconstituted
as you

until only
the finale awaits.
The complex society of cells
that you have made into you,
now search and destroy,

or at least reject,
those elements that do not,
or will not assist
in the creation
of you by you.

Because what you shit
is what you are not.

There, where what you are not
moves away from you,
something else that you are not
must move in, seeking
the aberration of you

in you that has become
what you ought to be
or ought not to be.
That is the question

and whether it might
its quietus make
with something
marginally finer than
a bare bodkin.

Genesis

2009-03-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

Tentative Deoxyribonucleic acid spirals, destined to form the basis of Peter Stewart Richards, once extricated themselves from a primeval slime. They have striven to retain the discrete identity thus established.

Opinions draw fire. An open mind is like an open sewer and every bit as acceptable in society.

Cleverly passing off autobiography as fiction has lasting survival value, although it must be said that survival value that doesn’t last is another thing entirely.

Why chimpanzees ever decided to leave the fruity forest environment to which they were peculiarly suited and wander out over savannas and seas is not immediately obvious.

Along with changes in the external environment, maybe, things like a sense of humour and/or mild mental imbalance come to mind.

One is always nearer by not keeping still.

Getting Down to It

2009-03-13T16:07:00.001-07:00

The author of this blog in a paroxysm of sanity, as captured by an admiring student.

2009-03-07T03:08:00.000-08:00

Not only in the madness of this night
I feel the boulders of my conscience coming down
I watch the neon burning in the light
Hear the sirens in the virus of this town

Fashionable insanity.

2009-03-03T01:01:00.000-08:00

Madness could almost certainly do with a lighter and more popular side.

Ici Arthur:

2009-02-27T13:48:00.001-08:00

I found this English rendition of part of a letter from Rimbaud to Georges Izambard via Google. I made some adjustments of my own after having read the French text below, which I assumed is faithful to the original. Link above the French text.

The poet makes himself a seer through a long, prodigious and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons within him, keeping only their quintessences. Ineffable torture in which he will need all his faith and superhuman strength, wherein he becomes the great criminal, the great invalid, the great cursed one and the supreme Savant! For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, which was rich to begin with, more than any other!
He arrives at the unknown: and when, half crazed, he ends up losing the understanding of his visions, he has seen them! So he succumbs, diving into those unutterable and innumerable things: there will come others to work in those horrors: they will begin from the horizons where he has fallen.

Rimbaud en ligne

Le Poète se fait voyant par un long, immense er raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens. Toutes les formes d’amour, de souffrance, de folie; il cherche lui-même, il épuise en lui tous les poisons, pour n’en garder que les quintessences. Ineffable torture où il a besoin de toute la foi, de toute la force surhumaine, où il deviant entre tous le grand malade, le grand criminal, le grand maudit, - et le supreme Savant! – Car il arrive à l’inconnu! Puisqu’il a cultivé son âme, déjà riche, plus qu’aucun! Il arrive à l’inconnu, et quand, affolé, il finirait par perdre l’intelligence de ses visions, il les a vues! Qu’il créve dans son bondissement par les choses inouïes et innombrables: viendront d’autres horrible travailleurs; ils commenceront par les horizons où l’autre s’est affaissé!

Smiling at the postman

2009-02-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

One of these days I'm going to wake up mad.
I'll lie inert, staring fixedly at some point in the room,
muttering about clouds,
the brightest bulbless lamppost
and the wall, in its own ordained sequence
will sing to me with each brick
as it flaps its myriad ears in a bright breeze of laughter.

I will laugh also sometimes as I mutter
and shriek occasionally; it is no feather bed this madness
nor always easy to fulfil.

There is probably no one to hear the initial reaction
but I will go out in time to find my way about my mad world –
smile at the postman, fearing an accident
in the black well of my gaze
and loosely
grinning teeth.

You know it makes sense

2009-02-23T12:54:00.001-08:00

Outside a lunatic asylum one day,
As I was breaking up stones,
Up pops a lunatic and said to me
Good Morning, Mr Jones
How much a week do you get for that
thirty bob, I sighed.
He looked at me, began to grin
And this is what he cried.
Come inside, you silly bugger, come inside,

I thought you'd have a bit more sense.
Working for a living, take my tip,
Act a little barmy and become a lunatic.
Oh, you get your meals quite regular
And four new suits beside.
With your Thirty bob a week, and a wife and kids to keep
Come inside you silly bugger come inside.

Come on in, the fire's fine.

2009-02-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

Drop in any time or make an appointment. Give us a call on 666 666 666 DCLXVI - we've got your number anyway...