"The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil."

Oh Cicero, shut the fuck up.

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

Oh God you were so beautiful that night.
I came out of the ground and I could hardly see anything.
Like Plato's cave allegory, Like Jason's Argonauts; astronauts.

I worked with a candle on my fucking head.
In methane pockets.

I am dirty but I just want to see the bluebird sing.
Hear it chirp and watch it love; nesting.

I came out and am free to watch love build life.

Touch that.

"...there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep."

Yes.
I am yours. Your sweet bluebird. I am yours.
Put out the seed, fasten the feeder, I am home for summer; hungry and thirsty.
Yes, I am your bluebird.

I whistled at you today but you were busy, I guess.

I pecked at your window today but you were busy, I guess.

I fucking died for you and screamed your name and cried and drank and fell and stood up again
I wept and wailed, failed and fluttered, and even waited for God, sometimes.
I kissed death and swam with monsters
but you were busy,

I guess.

I am your bluebird and the summer is so strange without you.

"It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry."

Drugs. Insanity.
The battle and the victory.
MDMA, cocaine, mushrooms, exctacy, speed, mary-jane, beer, whiskey and tequila.
Eating, fighting and winning.
Thanks, kids, for the win.
In my tent I fought it alone, as usual, and won.
There was one who helped me, though.
A strange angel from the past.

She took me down through the mists and gave me socks to wear, even.
I loved her hard, but I could not be a lover for her.

You see, those trips, those tastes, those sick fucking wastes
I should be alone, I said.

Again, heart broke and face pouted.

Sorry.

But you know me, by now.
Burning through, ripping through, loving you.

I never knew you, too.
But I love you still and your Vietnam-chopper whinge.

The last one out.

Are you on it?

Toronto, September 2008, drunk lines on a balky typewriter

DOWNSTAIRS

Brown is a short man;s world

Dragging a bulldog that,s don

done walking

Hot dark eyes and hot pink bo

ody

ITHINK I LIK E YOU

The body lushes lesgs blush

arms blush face blush feet bl

blush but eyes eys eyes eyes

black black

black black

black blck

FOR 30 YERSS AND COUNT

ANDD COUNTING

Obscurity rules: Live A Live

Caveman, cowboy, kung-fu master, robot, ninja, cyborg, wrestler, knight... how's that for a who's-who of escapist badassery? Or maybe, I keep thinking, they form the nucleus of an all-new troupe of Village People, an expanded travelling revue that takes the stage along with a pirate, a drill sergeant, a viking, a voodoo priest, a regular priest, a chimney sweep and a trucker in an all-singing, all-dancing cavalcade of camped-out cliches. But I'm getting two fantasies ahead of myself. Those eight stereotypes are in fact (of course) the stars of a video game, and not just as sidemen or companions; in Live A Live, an obscure Japanese title from the Golden Age of Super Famicom RPGs, each of these dudes takes his turn as the main player character.

Yes, it is very weird, which would explain why nobody was much interested in risking the money and time to give it an official North American/European release back in '94. A strange title in a niche genre, kind of a compilation album of short but fully realized RPGs, each conceived by an individual artist whose fame and cachet ended at Japan's 12-mile limit, linked by common themes and concepts, coming together in the conventional sense only in the final, symphonic "tracks." Interesting, yes; a minor masterpiece, maybe; marketable to the SNESheads stateside, busy going gaga over Super Metroid and Mortal Kombat II? Not so much.

Live A Live, a game so obscure that -- unlike other Japan-only RPG classics; Sweet Home, say, or the legendary Mother -- I'd never even heard of it until it... well, it came to me in a dream. Woke up one morning with the name "Shimomura" rattling around in my head. Making coffee: Shimomura, Shimomura. Walking out to get the mail: Shimomura, Shimomura, Shimomura. What the hell? I came back with my stack of overdue bills and consulted my dream advisor, the modern-day Daniel of Googlipedia: Yoko Shimomura, Japanese video game composer and musician. Lots of credits. Kingdom Hearts, Parasite Eve, Street Fighter 2 (wow, cool)... Live A Live? Never heard of it. Click. Caveman, cowboy, kung-fu master... OK. OK; I know a must-play when I see it...

A moment, here, to give props to all the world's fan translators; high-five, you beautiful nerds. Thanks to your awesome efforts, unpaid, translating and localizing the scripts, going into the ROMs and monkeying around with fonts and files and sprites and whatever other arcane shit you have to deal with, folks like me get to experience this otherwise apocryphal stuff in which the beancounters (rightly) didn't see enough of an English percentage. Gideon Zhi and Aeon Genesis, domo arigato. And beyond games, back to the fan-subtitlers who slaved on those anime VHS tapes we'd trade and copy until generation loss made them unwatchable, back before the North American anime boom: you are loved.

Anyway. Live A Live? Highly recommended to all curiosity seekers; the patched English ROM and emulators with which to run it aren't hard to find. Each character's chapter has a distinct look, feel and sound, yes, but beyond that each has a distinct thesis, a distinct soul, its own approach to how the rather formal genre of the Japanese role-playing-game might be approached. I started off my journey, kicked off what would eventually add up to a few dozens of hours of play, at what I figured would be the chronologically sensible point: back in the old caveman days. Ninja games, kung-fu games, even cowboy games... these, I'd played quite a few of; cavemen are still quite a novelty.

The idea of Live A Live's caveman segment is that the culture is pre-verbal, or at least pre-abstract-speech; there's no dialogue, only pointing and gestures and "speech" balloons containing pictures of discrete concrete objects. Never mind that these prehistoric people obviously have a material culture and social organization that'd be impossible without sophisticated language; it's still fantasy, after all. The gameplay gimmicks here are item-crafting -- you gather bones and rocks and animal skins to make the stone axes and hide robes that are the caveman's arms and armor -- and scent-trailing; pressing X causes little clouds to appear and drift around the field, the spoor of animals and men. Following these scents -- and/or avoiding what you're smelling -- is key to moving through a plot of primordial knight-errantry.

And this continues, very different gameplay variations through ages and universes. As a ninja you'll use stealth and guile to move through an enemy stronghold, making the choice whether to slaughter those in your way or to slip by like a shadow. As the gunslinger cowboy, you'll instruct beleaguered townsfolk in the setting of traps and pitfalls in order to even the odds against a bandit gang. The sci-fi chapter involves almost no combat, instead following the adventures of one little robot as he moves through a claustrophobic, shipbound mystery-thriller filled with murder and betrayal. As the kung-fu master, last of your lineage, you will recruit and train a trio of disciples and ultimately choose a successor. The wrestler works his way up the ladder of the world's top martial artists in fighting-game style, learning his opponents' moves as he goes. Each segment is its own little gameworld... until they're all brought together in a very satisfying crosstime struggle against ancient evil.

The world of games -- especially Japanese games -- is much bigger, so very much bigger than what the English-speaking markets have been officially allowed to see. Check out Live A Live and then by all means go further, down into the hidden byways of concepts and creations within another culture's canon; it's the videogame equivalent of getting into French film, Argentine literature... a trip into another world of worlds. Worlds that just happen to contain ninjas and cyborgs...

On watching Cheap Trick at the Thunderdome, Edmonton, 1997

In Edmonton did Doctor Paul

A stately Thunderdome decree:

Where Rock, the sacred music, ran

Through speakers measureless to man

Down to a black-lit sea.

So half a block of fertile ground

With beer signs and posters girdled round:

And here were riggings bright with synchronized strobes

Which spotlighted many a classic-rocking band;

And here the servers, scanty in their robes,

Went running cool drinks with steady hand . . .

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil dancing,

As if this earth in tight hot pants were prancing,

A mighty rock band momently was forced,

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge anthems vaulted like rebounding hail,

With crafty notes 'neath Robin Zander's wail:

And 'mid the dancing rockers at once anon

They flung out immediately the sacred song.

Six words meandering with a crazy motion

Through guy and girl "I Want You to Want Me" ran,

Through those speakers measureless to man,

And pumped the tumult in the lively ocean:

And 'mid this tumult I heard some talk

Ancestral voices prophesying rock!

A guy with six or so guitars

Was playing in that place:

It was that Rick Nielsen fellow,

And his playing was real loud (not mellow),

And one axe had his face.

Could I revive within me

That symphony and song,

I'd be so glad (like Steve Albini),

That with music loud and long

I would build that 'Dome in air guitar,

That smoky 'Dome! those babes so nice!

And all who heard should see them kick,

And all would chant, Cheap Trick! Cheap Trick!

Their brand-new songs, their classic licks!

And though I'm poor, can't pay my lease,

and barely keep myself well-fed,

I'll be happy, now, when I am dead:

'Cause I've heard the chords of Dream Police.

On buying bread from Wink's, June 15 2009

Don't know what you did to me;
Wish you'd do it again...

Fire in the belly
Fire in the blood
Fire's on the mountain
Run, boy, run!

Chick's in my brainpan
Pickin' out dough
Granny am I all right?
No, child, no!

Don't know what you did to me
Wish you'd do it again

At night, the demons come and become me.

We stood against those gray-slate walls, tough.
On Younge Street, like that.
We made trouble and we made this place. This fucking country.
Yeah, we were all tough. Tough babes. Babies.
But we took that shit down and combed our hair like that, fixed our cars like that.

I had a straight-8, Roadmaster. A Buick. When we revved that engine I swear to God everyone fainted and the chicks all came in thier tight, pink panties.

I knew some girls and we took them out sometimes and necked-down with at least some heavy-petting in the works, and on the menu.

I remember my good buddy, at Danforth Tech.
He died in my arms at lunch after a knife fight one day.
Just like that, lights out.
Many friends died on me those years.
I left high school and bought a pop-truck, worked it like that.
Scams and shams.

I started selling drugs soon after and got hot.
It was 1971 and I was driving down the Don Valley Parkway with $10,000 in my underwear.
I bought a new car that day.
Cash.

A year later I gave my girl an ounce of coke for Christmas.

She was pregnant in the fall and had a boy in 1973.

We were tough like that, against the gray walls on Younge Street.

We used to push the freaks into the lake, off of the end of the pier, into Lake Ontario.

We were tough, once.

Ixtab: Goddess of ropes and snares.

The hunt went poorly.
Ab and Ben fought over the heart.

But Ixtab, could she be appeased?
With rope or fire?
With human heart, blessed by Exsama, of early mists?
Are we caught in the webs of Exjade, like morning dew?
Or Ah Zhez, Master of cold?

Will you release me on Albertan soil?
Like Exjunchan, The Dangerous One.

I will be
Ah
Pook.

The Destroyer.