MUSE SWINGS THE BUS !!

My muse has swung into a deep black well. I can't do a feckin thing. I hope it fecks off this heavy dark cloud. They've changed my medication, could be the prob?.

Yesterday I got so old I felt like I could die...

MUSE SWINGERS BUS

No, it's not what you think. Can you believe it's that time again already? Just as you've managed the last one there's a new one. But that's what keeps us goin!

ANd Here it is http://muse-swings.blogspot.com/2011/03/monday-poetry-bus-ride-is-on-muse.html

This week tiz the turn of Muse Swings who got her name from her days as top batter and pitcher for the 'Pennsylvania Fifty-sixer-and-a-nickel-poodle-pups' baseball team. She became famous for her mean throwing and batting action accompanied by improvisational stream of consciousness style poems used to intimidate and distract the oppostion.For those of you who don't understand Baseball, the rules are quite simple .


Play starts with a cat batter standing at home plate, holding a baby cat. The cat batter waits for the pitcher of beer and a plate, and attempts to hit the cat with a bat. The cat catcher catches the kittens that the batty batter does not hit—as a result of either electing not to swing or failing to connect—or being an animal lover.

At the beginning end of each half-ending inning, the nine hundred players on the fielding team arrange themselves in ballet positions around the field looking for mushrooms. One of them, the pitcher, stands on the shoulders of another.
The pitcher begins a pirhouette delivery with one foot on yer man's head, pushing off it to gain velocity when throwing a meat pie toward home plate, knife, and fork. Another player, the crapper, squats on the far side of home plate and does his business, facing the pitcher. The rest of the team watch TV, typically arranged as four hundred infielders—who set up along or within a few yards outside the nearest bar and picture imaginary zig-zag lines of transcendental meditation between first, second, and third base with their girlfriends —and yogic flying between the three hundred balletic outfielders.

In the standard arrangement, there is a policeman positioned several steps outside the bar as lookout to the left of first base, a second caveman to the right of second base eats a hot dog, a shortstop to the left of second vase of flowers wears a big hat and lifts in his baseball boots to make him look taller and a third milkman to the right of third base falls asleep. The basic outfield positions are right fielder,wrong fielder, and I told you so fielder.

A neutral umpire sets fire to himself up behind the crapper with some toilet roll...

A batter who hits the cat must then drop the cat and begin running home, at which point the player is referred to as a bastard for hitting the cat (or, until the play is over, a ****). A cat batterer-runner who reaches first base without being killed is said to be safe, but isn't really .

An anti cat batterer-runner may choose to remain at first base or attempt to destroy second base or even beyond with a pogo stick and a flame thrower.. A player who fails to reach base despite proper roadsigns has recorded a hit. A player who reaches first base safely on a hit is credited with a hit single, like Jedward.

If a player makes it to second base safely or hospital as a direct result of a hit, he gets a double brandy, third base, a triple. If the cat is hit in the air within four miles of the entire outfield (and outfield fence, if there is one), it is a home run the batter and any runners may 'free-base' ie may all freely circle the bases, each scoring a nun. This is the most desirable result for the cat batter, and the nun.

A player who reaches base due to a fielding mistake is not credited with a hit—instead he is shot twice in the legs with a pump action rifle.

Any runners already freebasing may attempt to talk to the man in the moon, or contact the ground, in fair territory, before or after the eagle has landed. A runner on first base must dress as a halloween pumpkin to advance if a cat lands in play. If a cat hit into play rolls over and dies before passing through the infield, it becomes glue and any runners must return to the planet they came from they when the world began.

If the cat is hit in the air and caught before it lands, the batter has to play three rounds of truth or dare and any runners on base may attempt to advance but only if they have legs.

Runners may also attempt to stick their fingers up the pitcher's nose while he is is in the process of delivering the cat to home plate—a successful effort is a 'green sticky'

A cat that is not hit into the field of play is called either a twit or a twat. A batter against whom three divorces are recorded strikes out. A batter who has four balls is awarded a base and a free advance to the clinic. (A batter may also freely advance to first base if any part of the batter's body or uniform is struck by lightning before the batter either swings a cat at it or it contacts the ground.) Crucial to determining balls and strikes is the umpire's jumper which is used to warm the strike zone, a conceptual area 3 miles above the atmosphere extending from the midpoint between the batter's shoulders and down to the hollow of the left knee.

I could go on all night, but in short...

someone throws a ball, someone else hits it with a stick and everybody goes home.


They've already got me, And I've said it before, but I'm saying it again: BEWARE OF THE FLOWERS BECAUSE I'M SURE THEY'RE GONNA GET YOU...YEAH!

Uiscebottlers Bus

THis weeks task was as follows

1. Go somewhere new.

2. Experience it.

3. Write about it.

If you like, you can write about an old memory that comes to mind while there (this often happens when somewhere new- if it doesn't, just write about the experience)

And you can link the experience and the memory if you're feeling adventurous.

The poem cannot be more than 40 lines long

The poem shouldn't rhyme. Aim for similar line length, giving a nice shape to the poem.

See full details and udder passenglos HERE

I've been nowhere globally but everywhere locally except the local Protestant Church. I was curious for a goo inside but never made it.

We haven’t a prayer.

I wanted to go to the ‘protestant’ church

And I wondered of the etymology of the word-

Highly uneducated brain being paradoxically,

my deepest sorrow and greatest gift-

I wondered if I wanted to make a ‘protest’

A plea for reformation

By entering where my mother and father joked, or believed,

They would be struck down.

But I didn’t go.

Instead I went to mass-

I feel I should confess that I still go to mass

(I fear it may be a crime)-

And we had a missionary priest

Asking us to open our hearts

And I was thinking that our poor Catholic hearts are broken

that it’s our eyes that we need to open.

He quoted Chekhov

(Well it makes a change from poor fuckin Paddy Kavanagh)

about Uncle Vanya and his dysfunctional family,

The ‘Cool factor’ of atheism, and the alienation of Catholicism.

And I’m praying to God this ordinary man of God would find a mirror

See the ultimate dysfunction of his global family

And thus an answer to his unrealized confusion.

And I told him this on the way out

in the few seconds that I had

For that is all we are afforded

And I felt good for 5 minutes,

Self-righteous and brave and smart,

then I just felt bad again

And all I wonder

As I’m not yet atheist

Is what else for now and at the hour of our death?

Amen.

Rattle me grottlers, TIZ Da BUZ!!

HERE

THis week it's the turn of Uiscebot or as he's listed in The Golden Pages 'The singing plumber'
There is much competition among all the trades in Dublin with the recession and all, but Uiscebot has cornered the market in a newly created niche , singing plumbing.

WEll versed in pop, rock and opera , Uiscebot can belt out the tunes of your choice while he plumbs the depths in your new bathroom suite .Bathroom tiles and floors provide excellent accoustics for his rousing renditions of 'Nessun Dorma' and 'Ave Maria'

For an extra €50 an hour Uiscebot will bring along his famous dancing Orangutan 'Charlie' who is a talented Sean nós (old style) dancer as well as being a dab hand with a monkey wrench. You have to keep an eye on Charlie though as he's obsessed with obsolete equipment, water levels and heat conservation, before you know it he'll be fiddling with your ballcock and lagging your cylinder.
And if there is an old boiler lying around he can't wait to get stuck in.

Uiscebot and Charlie are very conscientious, a lot of plumbers when they try to fix a blocked toilet are just going through the motions but not these two, they like to see a proper job done, even if it turns out to be real big sticky job, something they can get their teeth into. When other tradesmen are all at sixes and sevens, our heroes stick to number ones and twos

But the only blockage on the agenda this week is writers block and Uiscebot has just the cure, so get over to his blog and check out the inspiring challenge for this week's world famous Poetry Bus.
Go on ! Fuck off out of it now and get creating!

Ps I should also point out the little known fact that today ,between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, is the longest hour, being 60 minutes and one 'leap' second. This phenomenon occurs only once every 650 years and is all to do with the Earths orbit around the sun and the moon's gravitational pull. Due to a very large hotspot or 'solar flare' on the far side of the sun, the Earth thinks 'Feck that's a bit hot!' and deviates slightly off it's normal course creating an anomally in the time/space continuum.

This anomally must be corrected or the entire planet will be plunged into eternal darkness as we fall from our orbit around the sun. The moon is like a giant magnet and the earth a giant spoon and if we don't keep our course and speed constant then the centrifugal force keeping us on route will diminish and we will be playing pinball with the planets as we spin out of control.

The extra second makes the Earth think it's bit late on it's route and encourages it to speed up by ignoring the pain of the extra heat and sticking to it's normal course, but this only works for 650 years till the Earth thinks' feck this !' and deviates again.

650 years may seem a long time but relatively speaking in the ancient cosmos it's only a fraction of a second. So don't waste it,this leap second, take it as time to do something special with family or friends, after all we may not be here for the next one.

For the day that's in it.

When I think of St Patrick's Day, I think of exile, I think of days away, I think of those gone before, I think of THE DUBLINERS!

I think this is my favourite quintessential Dubliner's song, pure Dublin irreverence and the Legendary Luke Kelly in his prime. I'm half bogger but I KNOW the tune!

My favourite song of exile

The Watercatbus DLTBGYD!

DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN!

I'm not giving up
though I'm never gonna win
maybe they've given me the best view
from the outside looking in

Yes, it's that whacky time of year again where the arts money is distributed by the local arse council. Last year I didn't get any for the soon to be LEGENDARY Poetry BUs Magazine.
Stupidly, perhaps even naively, I worried that maybe I hadn't done a great application, that I hadn't adequately conveyed the special brilliance of the magazine, that I hadn't spelled it out, that I perhaps mistakenly thought the brilliance of the mag shone through and spoke for itself, therefore I hardly needed to speak at all.

So this year I went to town,there would be no margin for error, this bus would be watertight, like a duck's arse. I gilded the perfect lilly, I dotted every i for idiot and crossed every T for Twat, I spent 18 hours in total on putting together a beguiling and cast iron case for funding, I included a copy of the first issue in all it's glory, I included artwork and projections and poems from issue two. I included a copy of Popshot magazine to shop how the mag could look if I got funding.
In short I presented the perfect application, I thought of everything, I thought of things I hadn't even thought of! I fashioned a beautifully impassioned argument for funding as eloquent and convincing as Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech.With all due modesty it was perfect and irresistable.I had no doubts and no regrets.

Unfortunately I also had no funding either as my application was routinely rejected.

I have deleted/censored most of the rest of this post but If you had got to read it and enjoyed it even half as much as I enjoyed writing it, then you'd have LOVED it! Venting your spleen can be very therapeutic.

I know that there are people out there who believe the arts world and it's establishments are well meaning and fair and do their best in difficult times with limited funds. Igenuinely wish them luck in their belief.

I was bitterly disappointed but also see it as a silver lined cloud. To be blunt I needed their money but deep down I didn't want it. It may be a lucky escape, I'm not sure that I will apply for funding again,but I am honest enough to admit to being a well meaning but weak hypocrite. I really know I shouldn't apply again, and not just because of the fact that I would never get any. That isn't a good enough in the real sense of 'good'
The truth is I have always been on the outside looking in, usually critically, it has made me ( both good and bad) what I am.
The day that I am accepted is the day I lose everything. Fuck them.



And also talking to myself I would have to say to me, in order to get a bt of world perspective here, in my decadent luxury,that if , for argument's sake there is a God , TFE, which I believe you still believe there is, despite total disillusionment bordering on revulsion with your Catholic faith, what will you do when you die (if you die,- you may be the first being to live forever) and you are up there , wherever that may be, being 'judged' and' somebody', God for instance, he or she says to you,

" Well TFE, look at you there in March 2011, you look a little fed up, unhappy wth your life and the way things are going"

And you reply" Yes Boss, truly terrible, I didn't have the Porsche 911 I always I thought I'd have by the time I was 30, let alone 40! And also I didn't get funding for my lovely poetry magazine!"

And God says , somewhat ironically,
" My god! That's awful! Poor you! And did you know that at the very same time children were living in sewers in Brazil because they would be shot if they didn't, and that other children around the world were were dying by the minute of starvation, and that thousands of families and homes had just been wiped out in Japan?"

And the reality of my dichotomy is that I'm caught between the divil and the deep blue casket, that I'm a little bit of this, I'm a little bit of that, if I smoked I'd have a' crushed up Carrols packet in my hand' and that if I was MOR pretend mock rock megastar I'd contradict that' Hearts of fire' NEVER' turn cold'.
But mainly I'm just pissed. In every sense of the word.

Feline Waterbus!

Yes it's that (random) feckin time of the week again! Spot on to the nano second!
For those busy beings and tjose who hate wading through pissed pretensious piffle the poetry Bus prompt is by The (World Famous) Watercats! HERE

THey think it's just beginning. It is now! I'm even writing Haihooey, I really must be fluthered.

Bonsai tree dead-leafed,
mescaline Muscadet muse,
must haves -the haves not.

Sorry,It just slipped out, ooo-er Matron. Lucky it was only a little one.

But now, come here to me, listen, do you hear that? It's the sound of magnificent,benificent bicycle wheels zinging down the tarmac at top speed, pell mell, harem scarem, flat out, baldy perished tyres and down-to-the-metal brake blocks, heading for brick wall, red and crumbling and warm and imminent and... Ten green bottles sitting on the brick wall like crickets, rasping for the sunshine, waiting for the impact, waiting for blood,waiting for the great leap forward..

We are never too late until it is too late, so, get off your bicycles, brush off your poetry boots and get kicking arse.

Quicker than you can say 'Quango' get out there and Tango, dance the light sabre fandango, fantastic, Plastic Bertrand? That'll do for me, 'Ca plein pour me another en watercat coleur' for the good times ,your head not yet upon the pillow, the wee small hours, the mind journeys without a single step a thousand times a thousand and more miles than lightyears the Buzz of light ears, and a bus will follow... follow, try to remember and if you do then follow me follow down to the hollow of your heart where it must all start, us rag and bone men and women with or without a ladder, let words be your steps from sadder, the moon light to guide us till a bus will lead the way, headlights like mighty luminous lemons squeezing through the night air, cutting the dark into two giant gin glasses, turbo tonic symphonies from our knees we rise and rise like steam from the heavy horses piss as the dawn breaks and... if...if..if.. the answer is 'I don't know' then the question must be 'Why?' But why is that? I don't know.

But I do know THe Watercats are from Obscurity in North West Texas ,US of A. They wanted to leave Obscurity behind and head for Glory in The Appalachian Mountains but turned left instead of right at the little town of Indecision Idaho and ended up at the foot of a mountain in Waterford Ire Land which is in the ancient county of Europshire.
The Watercats were still known by their original name of Pa Burke and The Middle Digits until they came up against The sheriff of Waterford ,Captain Louis Mac Blodstayne , who used to round up all the unlicensed kittens of the county and drown them in Lough Upyadortas.

The newly arrived animal loving band immediately set to work writing a protest song to inspire
and unite the good people of Waterford against the evil sheriff.The resulting song 'Drown another kitten and I'll twat you' proved to be so popular that as a charity single it raised enough money to buy a license for every cat in the land, not one single kitten was drowned and the band became known as 'The saviours of The Watercats' or The Watercats for short.

Now they want us to help them write another protest song. Don't say ' Me? 'How?' say miaow!
Don't say 'I couldn't' , say ' Of course' for we are off course, on the one road singing along, singing the poets song.
All together now, shooby-dooby-do-wah-wah-tercats!

GOULDING'S GOURMET BUS!

And the inertia and the fog and the certainty of confusion
And the loss of control
And poppies grow do poppies still grow
And there was a gene there is a gene
Gene Pitney 24 hours without a drink
Would be a personal best
Georgie Best I spent a childhood in adoration
In the aim of the father and the son and the holy spirit
Uisce Beartha,

Would water by any other name taste as sweet
And I supported Northern Ireland
Because of him, a prize Plastic Paddy In Noddy Land
Red white and oh so blue,odd fish was I without blessed water
And I wore plastic football boots because of him
Bled because of him,
And I never saw him despite hundreds of miles travelled

I wished I was in Carrickfergus
I belonged,I should have been in Clonony
Where the castle looks out for me
I played hurling in the road
Before the big trucks came
Only for nights in Ballygrand
To Old Trafford and to Wembley
Always away was he

And then In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
He was there a lifetime too late in Manchester
Yards from me walking with Rodney Marsh
And I left the van and I ran
While horns blared I didn’t care
It was after the bomb
And I had lived
Still my ears rang racist taunts
And I ran like I had run from school to always just miss his soccer skills
And there he was in the flesh and I ran
And life unwound in every step
And reality tore my lungs and within ten feet I looked and saw and
Turned away
The world fell like scales and everything meant nothing.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
I lay on my back with the radio
Crickets sang
And the sun aglow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Low lie the fields
Gone are our fields, my fields
Mushroom and thistle cow shite
House ,turf bog, memories in the dust.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
The enemy within
To you from failing hands we throw
He was my cousin my best friend
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We all die and this too shall pass
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
will always grow in Flanders fields.

BUS BUSINESS

Okay, by now if you have followed my orders/ commands/ ordinances/diktats, you will be in current posession of a somewhat excellent 14 line poem.But now what to do with it?
Should you hang it on the washing line with an odd pair of socks and a lettuce leaf and call it art? Name it Michael and introduce it to your friends down at the pool hall? Should you get it tatood acxross your forehead for the world to see, one person at a time? Or should you stick it in drawer in the spare room never to be seen again except by small spiders and the burglar?

NO! None of these things,or at least you don't have to, for usually there is madness in my method but this time, dear friends, there was method in my madness. Now, if you feel like it, you can send your 14 line meisterwork to this magazine HERE The choice is yours, be brave!

Now for this weeks task self deprecating poetry genius Peter Goulding has lain before us a sumptuous smorgesbord, a veritable cornucopia of tempting prompty treats
HERE

Pete owns Irelands oldest inland lighthouse built in 1923 after Ireland suffered one of the wettest summers on record. People feared that by Christmas the whole island would flood and be only navigable by small boats and dolphins and that many national treasures might be bumped into and damaged just below the water. Pete's 30 ft lighthouse was built in seven hours at a cost of 36 shillings and stands beside the magnificent GPO (Generaly Pissed Office) on O'Connell street.A slight miscalculation in the plans rendered the lighthouse 150 ft shorter than the GPO, but luckily the dreaded floods never came.
Old fears die hard though and an unmanned lighthouse called 'The Spike'was unveiled on O'Connell street at the turn of the millenium and towers over the GPO and the whole of Dublin, ready and waiting for wettest of wet times.
Pete lives happily in the old lighthouse with his 3 wives and 23 children

Oh, and dont forget Monday is Oven Monday, so be sure and get your oven blessed.Traditionally the oldest female member of the family carries the range or oven to the local parish priest where she cooks for him and all his family and friends a magnificent meal and in return he blesses the oven with left over sunflower oil, before the woman, usually tiny and in her late seventies,heaves up the iron aga onto her aching back and carries it home again (being careful not to scratch Fr's brand new 4x4!) her wizzened little old face beeming with varicose veins and gratitude. And even if she dies on the return trip, as they often do, at least the lovely priest has been fedand she can die happy in the knowledge she has earned a plenary indulgence of 10 mins off eternity.

But if she dies on the way to the priest, well that is a mortal sin and she will go straight to hell wearing brillo pad knickers and a hairy shirt There she will spend eternity scrubbing a never depleting mountain of cookers with her arse while listening to 'All you need's a glove' by Those loveable loonypool mop tops The Brutles.