A GREEN DANCE FOR NOSTRA DAVUS

 Thine cigarette acanthian danglus
Nether the helixed furrow,
The Tourettian maw, gorged angrus,
Dark fleuron horripilate a-skirrow –
AND a two-by-four in hand! Thus
The threat strident synopts Corinth rusts
To effluous exculpt Thermaeus, invidious
And ichor, unequal spirits agin enlists.

Beware! Thy crepidoma as asparagus
Be clast, be caesured! Inflame us
And decoct’ll be thy lance! Is Thermae pus?
Sewage? Septic cess? And yet may frank debase,
Unthrone Corinth – and, Ozymandius, at end: you’ll
Place your ASHO vis’ down to respect, with kiss, my Thermaenus!

Copyright © 1980, 2004, 2009 K’lakokum [3 versions]

Biographical notes: K'LAKOKUM AND JAYMES HEAD WEST [1968]

Four days after his 16th birthday, Kangaroo Poet K’lakokum obtained his driver’s licence, and immediately invested $25 into a 1958 VW Beetle. The car had no working starter motor, so it had to be parked on a hill in order to start by popping the clutch, or, alternatively, had to be pushed about 40 yards in order to get a running start. The car’s brakes were on their last legs, and the engine leaked oil hideously. No horn or right turn signal. Good to go! In the days before insurance, safety inspections and seat belts became required, of course. Fifty bucks for an “Uninsured Motor Vehicle Certificate”, twelve bucks for registration and plates, one buck for sales tax; $1.29 plus tax for a guest book to be signed by hitch-hikers -- total cost to get on the road: $89.35 [didn’t have to buy the pen to sign the guest book].
At the time, K’lakokum lived in a $14-a-week room above The Grab Bag in Yorkville. The room contained four mattresses wall to wall and nothing else except the seven other tenants. Those wall-to-wall hippies included Kangaroo Poet Jaymes, recently arrived after a difference of opinion with the Draft Board in Pittsburg.
Jaymes had a hankering to see his dinosaur relatives in Drumheller, Alberta, and K’lakokum had an interest in returning to his roots in the Okanagan, so the like-minded poets set out for The West.
Near Oak Lake, Manitoba, the VW’s engine gave up. Jaymes had a cursing fit – you should’ve added oil in Winnipeg! – grabbed his back-pack and started walking to Alberta. Two-and-a-half years before he was seen again.
K’lakokum sat on the shoulder of the Trans-Canada Highway and wrote a psalm.
Writing a psalm was necessary, because with less than 50 bucks in his pocket, and all his worldly possessions within the Beetle or tied to the roof rack [over six feet high!], the situation was critical. And the prayer received an immediate answer. A farmer on a tractor had been working in a nearby field and rode over to investigate. “She’s toast, piston’s right through the block” he advised. Noticing the VW back seat tied onto the top of the roof heap [K’lakokum had removed it to make more room inside the car for valuables], he said, “seat’s in durn good shape, I need one for my car. Tell you what I’ll do – I’ll give you $45 for the car, and give you a ride into town with your gear.” SOLD! This provided enough funds for a week at a cheap hotel room in Brandon, and some duct tape. K’lakokum got some empty cartons at a nearby Loblaws, packaged all his possessions, securely taping each carton, and walked these one-by-one across the street to the railway station for shipment to relatives in B.C.  Enough cash left over for tinned sardines, bare bread and an orange per day for a week. Lucked out getting a job the next day and ended up spending three months in that hotel room. The room was directly above the band-stage of the bar on the main floor, and JOE SOUTH was entertaining there. South’s theme song was Games People Play and he finished off every night with the lines
                                                

people are talking about you and me
     but I don’t give a damn
          damn damn damn

drumbeat for each damn, shaking K’lakokum’s room, grew to hate the song with passion, greatly relieved when the racket was finally over each night so he could get some sleep, early rise to go to work.

A POLITICALLY CORRECT POETRY CONTEST

The National Poetry Contest had come down to two semi-finalists: a University of Toronto graduate, and a Grade Ten drop-out Newfoundlander.  The contestants were given a single word and were then permitted two minutes to compose a poem which contained that word.  The word given was TIMBUKTU.  After the commercial break (the contest was televised), the U of T graduate stepped to the microphone and recited:

Slowly across the desert sand

Trekked a lonely caravan –

Men on camels, two by two –

Destination:  Timbuktu.

The studio audience cheered wildly.  Surely, the Newfie would not top that effort.  There was a hush of anticipation as the latter calmly made his way to the microphone to recite:

Me and Tim a-huntin’ went,

Met t’ree gals in a pop-up tent;

Dey was t’ree, an’ we was two,

So I bucked one, and Timbuktu.

The Newfie won.

NORM ON THE NATURE OF THE POET

I suppose every person interested in poetry has their own concept as to what poetry is. For me, it is a means of communication. The most easily understood poetry (and to that extent, the best) must be in contemporary language. Rarely used and archaic words, though they may attest to the writer’s erudition, seldom contribute to the clarity of the message. A successful poem is one which communicates most gracefully and skillfully with the greatest impact. Good poetry does not arise from trite or trivial concepts. An inconsequential message is just that. A memorable poem must be one that treats the subject more deeply or deftly than has been done before. The more convinced a poet is that she has the truth in her grasp; the more likely she is sucking her own thumb for sustenance. If truth is so easy to perceive as some bland verse would have, we should all have long since been redeemed. For a poet, the paradox affirms the essential mystery. Poets of the clearest vision do not trot happily along the paths of dogma. They are doubters. They constantly strive to reach the misty heights, which are seldom attained, yet shimmer in the distance.

Norman Jakob Craven    Dec.6, 1974

HANS BIOGRAPHICAL EXCERPT FROM NEBIRU THIS WEEK (Christmas, 2004):

[FROM A REVIEW OF GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM]

……..Peter Worthington recently (Oct. 8^th, The Toronto Sun) referred to George Orwell’s Animal Farm as “…the most thorough (and effective) indictment of totalitarian horror ever done” and Peter’s view is held by many others of the over 3 million past purchasers of that book.  This is a view shared by Kangaroo Poet Karol Hans Jewinski, although having met Eric Blair (Orwell’s real name) in 1922, Hans was always puzzled as to how Orwell could have written such a masterpiece.  In 1922, the 18 year-old Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police and while in training, had a brief chess and conversation relationship with the 16 year-old Hans, refugee via Afghanistan to India from the Russian Civil War, with the latter practicing his newly-acquired English, and the former practicing his French.  Hans talked about his personal experience of the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution, but could not dissuade Orwell from what became life-long socialist views.  These were so strongly held that Orwell later fought on the socialist side in the Spanish Civil War.  Although he wrote two worldwide best sellers [Animal Farm and 1984] against totalitarianism, and quite clearly diagnosed the techniques and flaws of totalitarianism, Orwell remained such a socialist idealist, that he was unable to connect socialism with totalitarianism.  In his personal philosophy, he could not see that he was just like his pig-character, Napoleon, who felt that he knew better and was capable and justified in making decisions on other people’s behalf.  There is a very fine line between the voluntary socialism practiced by, for example, the early Christian Church, and the compulsion issuing forth from modern socialist governments.  Hans spent 88 years of his long life actively battling every form of totalitarianism, and this book comes highly recommended by him in spite of his personal doubts about the author……..

[NOTE: this item provides some of the clues needed to win free books in our LUCKY 13 contest.  See http://kangaroopoets.blogspot.com/2011/03/win-100-bucks-in-store-merchandise.html  ]

REINCARNATING THE LOST CONTINENT

The conversations around game play by the Kangaroo Poets, as they tinkered in 1970 with a runic game invented by K’lakokum, demonstrated that all of the Poets had an interest in reincarnation.  By 1979, all had gone through past-life regression to obtain more information on their personal histories, and it was discovered that eight of the Poets had lived before, in Atlantis.  JDC and Andrea had been siblings, but none of the other Poets had met in those previous lives.  Six of the Kangaroos had been animal-people, enslaved by the better-people [cf. Joseph Reiss and Edgar Cayce] at the time of the species and race wars when Atlantis went into rapid decline following extra-terrestrial invasion.  There were four distinct humanoid types embattled for control of the planet, and the weapons of their warfare were not carnal.  The reptilians won and have remained in control of the planet.  Of which Charles Fort [see Book of the Damned] comments that we (humans) keep cattle; who keeps us?  Three of the invading species raptured off the planet, abandoning homo sapiens to reptilian metaphysical re-engineering.  It was at that time that K’lakokum became the first Royal Librarian in the capital city of Atla (on the ley-line intersect which is now at Sao Miguel in the Acores).  Prior to the re-engineering which de-activated 10 of our 12 DNA strands, reading and writing were unknown and unnecessary.  We all used telepathy to communicate – letters, e-mails and cell phones did not exist.  If anyone needed particular knowledge, they were able to withdraw it from The Field – research, education (programming) and memory were unknown and unnecessary when everyone was able to access the Akashic Record.  The point here being:  all of the Kangaroo Poets have an interest in Atlantis which is reflected in their poetry.