These Are a Few of my Favourite Things

I wanted to imagine what "A Few of my Favourite Things" from the Sound of Music would be like if written by the richest man on the planet. Here's what I got.

Back breaking labor for 9 cents an hour
Making sure corporations have the power
Paying off presidents, leaders, and kings
These are a few of my favorite things

Being the one per cent of one per centers
Owning the networks and squashing dissenters
Abusing the power that this power brings
These are a few of my favorite things

Running the banks to our selfish advantage
Using your armies as cops to mismanage
Helping Monsanto to grow all those things
These are a few of my favorite things

When the people rise. When the riots start. When I'm feeling sad.
I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so baaad!

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I sang it at the slam on Monday. Here's the footage.

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Vancouver

The other night, we had a night of improv and poetry at Cafe Deux Soleils. A poet spoke a poem, then an improv troupe did an improv based on that poem, then a poet did a poem based on that improv, then the improv troupe did and improv based on THAT poem, then another poem, then another improv, and so on. It was fascinating.

Here's an amalgamation of some of the poems I wrote into one poem. It's mostly about Vancouver as were most of the sketches and poems.

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Vancouver. This is about Vancouver.

If I could run five hundred miles, I wouldn't be the mayor of my own heart. Each newspaper headline would bicycle across my perfect ass every summer as I jogged in record time across each delivery ward. I am not running for office. I am running from office. The best Vancouver can say sometimes is that we're not Toronto. Green grizzly will tear apart this temporary campsite we call Vancouver while David Suzuki laughs and laughs. Each starving bear that can't eat meat wheezing across the finish line of horrifying sun runmarathons for survival.

Photo shoots makes us look as real as possible. Fashion is a better existence pushed on all of us like a drug we can't resist. We are fierce and perfect as long as we're adapted by photoshop. Every single one of us looks better with stirrups.

Fresh fish glow Fukushima in the dark. rave sushi. Soy sauce. Soy latte. Soy, el genda troy, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you move to yaletown. My girl friend has a purse dog. I am her purse man. Yoga prepares me for sex in a car to go. Lets get all bonded in a bonafide festival. We're all tied to each other. The rich, the poor. We're attached. And it's not always consensual.

Vancouver. We aim for the heart and miss.


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I spoke this poem on Monday at the Vancouver Poetry Slam. Here's the footage.

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Doctor Love

I’m a doctor cutting into leftover heart tissue that's been microwaved into jerky and then left to harden in the hot sun of heartbreak.

It’s open heart perjury. It’s a life-saving amputation. It’s a vet putting an animal to sleep.

Love can be a courtroom spelling contest sometimes. Spell definition. Spell loyalty. Spell pause. Spell break. Spell still not getting it. Spell being the last person to figure out that I’m single now. Spell drinking.

Love is blind because it’s locked in a chest but because love is blind, it can see in the dark. It does keep bumping into people, though. And falling down stairs. Love is blind but it has the most powerful eyes since justice.

Each surgery is just a doctor’s best guess with the best training we have to offer. Question: What do you call a doctor who nearly fails his final exam? Answer: Doctor.

If this love is a math problem, then let it be algebra. If you are my ex and I still can’t figure out why, then let x = y.

We are all doctors operating on each other without the benefit of schooling, only on-the-job training. Veterinarians know what the most merciful choice is sometimes. Anesthesiologists put each other to sleep on the last week of school so they can see how it feels and dentists numb each other’s mouths.

So doctor, reach into the hole here that doesn’t beat anymore. Dentist, reach into my chest cavity. Veterinarian, prick my non-existent phantom-limb heart with a needle and pet it like a pet until it goes to sleep. So that it’s numb. So that I can’t feel anything.

So I can learn, too.




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