My head is throbbing like a car stereo, there’s stubble on my tongue. Last night, I invited Slim and the rest of his Poet’s Circle over for a few drinks to celebrate the end of April-Month of Slim and it was quite a night, or at least, I think it was. It began relatively smoothly with an intense discussion about accessibility (no surprises there) and I remember making an emotional speech about the end rhymes in “Suzanne”. Then the conversation moved on to verse forms – cinquains, tankas, sestinas, halibuns, what happens if one turns a haiku upside down -fascinating stuff. Then Slim chimed in and asked where his own invention, the slimverse, fitted in to this pantheon. There was an embarrassed silence. Eventually, one of the poets – the one we refer to as The Accomplished Poet -spoke up. I should add that he is indeed accomplished and his compact vivid poems , mostly about his garden, have been widely published. He politely suggested that perhaps a 3 syllable line was too limiting, that making music with such a restriction is quite difficult. Now there was another kind of silence, the kind that ensues when a lion tamer drops his whip. Slim says quietly “fuck you and your fucking garden” and aims a punch at The Accomplished Poet’s head, who, perhaps because of all that work in the garden, turns out to be quite agile. He ducks Slim’s punch and kicks him adroitly in the nuts. When the applause died down and Slim could speak again, he uncharacteristically apologized and gave The Accomplished Poet a hug, a doubtful pleasure given Slim’s personal hygiene issues. The evening ended on a happy note with a raucous rendition of “Suzanne”, everyone hitting the end rhymes hard.
But before we wrap it all up, just one more po-faced gem from Slim.
The Universe is Unexplainable
like a frog
down a well
we only
know the walls.
Maybe it’s the hangover but I am having an adverse reaction to that last poem.
For Chrissakes
doesn’t that
make you want
to smash a
garden gnome!
Before this deteriorates let’s turn to my good friend, Snoop D Doggerel, currently on tour in Southwest Ontario, who took time out to pen this following opus which I think puts it all in perspective.
COMING UP SHORT
aphorists
are gnomic
the dwarfs of
lit’rature
And that’s it! No finer ending!
I would like to point out that no animals were harmed in the making of this month of blog posts, although a few (a frog, a bull, dogs, mice) were shamelessly used as props or on the business end of a simile.
What Can I Say
to leave no
footprint we
must fly but
never land.
