Large Fierce Mammal

This poem has been marinating for a while. It came to be from observing the self inflicted misery of several people – two in particular – and is presented here by special request from Mrs. LFM. I can deny her nothing.

Suffice it to say that we’ve all met people who bring ugliness into the world because they feel the happiness of others exists for the express purpose of highlighting shortcomings in the lives of the less fortunate.

And so I present, on this auspicious Day 13 …

Joan

By LFM

It’s said that beauty’s just skin deep,
While ugly’s to the bone,
But what’s outside shines from within,
Read on, and learn of Joan.

She was seven kinds of ugly
In her body, soul, and mind.
She looked no better from the front
Than looked at from behind.

Where a woman’s face should be,
She wore a hateful scowl,
A face from twisted mating of
Butt ugly with an Owl.

A trollish lump to gaze upon,
With sullen, baleful glare,
While others brighten where they go,
She casts a shadow there.

Women who are happier,
And men with pretty wives,
She loves when bad things happen to
Upend their pretty lives.

Now, strange as it may sound to say,
The harpy’s not alone.
Romance finds root in sourest soil,
And so it did for Joan.

There came a new young barrister
To practice in the town.
He hired Joan to help with files
And take dictation down.

She drove him to appointments
And she helped him with his life,
Until one day he asked of her
If she would be his wife.

You’d think this would have changed her
For the better, but not so.
She did say yes, she planned the day,
And couldn’t wait to go.

You’d think that such as she might carry
Happiness from there,
When Fate grants title such as
Mrs. Barrister to wear.

But sad to say, it isn’t such.
Joan hates her life the more.
You see, there’s something in it now
More hurtful than before.

Though married to a barrister,
With all that it conveys,
The money and the social place
Lift not her darksome days.

You see, her husband’s uglier
By twice as much as she.
A thing so odd I can’t believe
It ever came to be.

But worst of all, her years of spite
Earned karmic sting for that –
The only one who’d marry her
Is blinder than a Bat.

Back in the last century … I’m talking WAY back ’round about the autumn of 1975 … I was studying alchemy and arguments for and against the Earth being round, along with staying one step ahead of the Inquisition, at Nova Scotia’s prestigious Dalhousie University. Costly and time consuming as it was, most of what I learned there was never delivered by the classes I was paying for, but would have been delayed in their delivery had I not been where I was at the time so I won’t be looking for a refund of any kind.

Case in point – the room I shared with two mates in venerable Howe Hall overlooked a narrow expanse of grass that was separated from the traffic of Coburg Road by a rustic stone wall built of slate. Within that narrow expanse were a couple of stunted Apple Trees that I prefer to believe were tenacious holdovers from more pastoral days, and on the day in question, each had dropped an assortment of fruit that had lain upon the ground untouched for days, fermenting … until this particular day.

On one Sunday afternoon I’d been studying with all the venom I could summon, and decided at one point to look out the window to rest my eyes at it were. Venom is very eye tiring. Anyway, as I stood at the window of my debauched monk’s cell, my attention was drawn to a Robin that was pecking at a somewhat shrivelled Apple on the grass of the afore mentioned narrow expanse. This went on for a while until a Cat came along. To my amazement, the Cat was able to stalk to within less than three feet of the now obviously shitfaced Bird before the Robin suddenly burst into a takeoff that intersected the ground twice, and ended when it flung itself headlong into the stone wall. Fluttering feebly on the ground, it was promptly set upon by the cat and carried away from my sight.

That alone was worth the year’s tuition.

Murder by poison has a long dark history. For example, whether historically accurate or cooked up by rivals, the Borgia family name is indelibly stained with it. Poison is less used today for killing things that walk on two legs for reasons well presented by Esther Inglis-Arkell in her article The Deadliest Poisons in History (And Why People Stopped Using Them). Go and read that. You’ll enjoy it, and might even avoid arrest thereby. Major thanks to my Esteemed Friend Jim Keating for bringing it to my attention.

In this iteration of Dark Sentiments, we’ve already looked at one poisoner in my poem Laura’s Pie back on Day 2. You will recall that Laura liked to lure men with her mysteriously long lasting looks, charm them with her skills in the boudoir and kitchen,  and then kill them with her Hemlock laced pie. Her motives were obvious to everyone but her hapless victims who were all thinking with the wrong head.

Today we’re going to look at Bertram, who is a poisoner of a different sort. A restaurateur of renown, he reserves his deadly delicacies for entirely different reasons. Regardez …

Bertram’s Restaurant

By LFM

Bertram has a restaurant
He’s built for thirty years,
From ashes of six marriages,
Secured with sweat and tears.

The place is dark and trendy.
It is famous far and wide,
And might give Bertram every cause
To bust a gut with pride.

Where once he’d kissed the public’s ass
To get them in his door,
It now is Bertram’s ass they kiss,
And even beg for more.

He’s thought to be quite satisfied,
With everything he’s wrought,
But Bertram wears upon his soul
How dearly it was bought.

More and more, and year by year,
Resentment marinated.
The sauce of passion boiled away,
Reduced to blackest hatred.

Then, like a bolt the answer came,
One lonely, darksome night,
The gas valve lever in one hand,
The other set to light.

He didn’t hate this thing he’d built,
But felt he’d played the whore
To each and every monied cunt
Who came in through his door.

In truth, he’d come to hate them all,
So each and every May,
He soothes his savage breast
By taking one of them away.

All throughout the other months
Good Bertram plays the host.
Sifting through his guests to find
The one he hates the most.

And so, although a millionaire
Purveyor of renown,
His menu serves a darker dish
Less known about the town.

Bertram makes the dish himself,
And takes exquisite care.
He seasons it with pain and death,
And serves it up with flare.

The “special” only comes around
Each twenty-fifth of May.
His regulars all mark it down
And fill the place that day.

As lambs to slaughter, every one,
And not a one suspects
That wealth and privilege won’t save
The one that he selects.

For Bertram makes a special point
Of knowing all the needs
That might affect the length of life
For everyone he feeds.

His vengeance may take many weeks,
His timing’s gauged with care.
On any list of suspects you
Will not find Bertram there.

The lucky winner finds his death,
But not an easy one.
Make your reservation now.
Come in and join the fun.

My father used to say that you could make a shit house look like the Taj Mahal if you shot it from the right angle, explaining why some people looked great in pictures but like ass in person. Those were the days before Photoshop.

This was supposed to be two articles, but try as I might, they kept melding so bugger it. Obviously I’m having a two for one sale.

This is not a test, and you are not seeing things because of angle or a trick of the light. Mount Rushmore is NOT a Natural phenomenon. Somebody did it on purpose.

Pareidolia is a phenomenon of cognition in which perception of a stimulus becomes connected with other present or remembered stimuli so that a pattern emerges in the mind of the observer, whether or not any connectedness or pattern actually exists. A famous example appears at the top of this article, and an exceptionally common expression of pareidolia is recognizing a face in the bark of a tree, a rock outcropping, a cloud, or any other non-face wearing thing that comes into view under the right combination of form, illumination, and angle. It is not restricted to humans. Our brilliant Dog Cinders once came out of the house to pee on a Hallowe’en night many years ago,  only to find herself confronted by a lit Jack-o’-lantern. Its fiendish visage was quickly met with one of her own, and only when I stepped up to knock on its head did she relent, sniffing it before returning to the house, tail held high in derision. (more…)

Our next featured artist for 2012 has been a Dark Sentiments fixture since the beginning. Ray Villafane’s pumpkin carving and sand sculpture represent dark arts against which there is no defense.

To get the gist, watch Ray’s 2011 zombification of a couple record sized pumpkins for the New York Bontanical Gardens –

You can also read more about Ray’s NYBG exploits here.

Since we last looked in, Villafane Studios went whole hog as Ray has assembled a team of talented artists to aid him in his quest to keep the pumpkin guts and sand flying. They include Andy Bergholtz, Trevor Grove, Chris (AKA “Ninja Chris”) Vierra, Alfred Paredes, and Patrick Burke.

I’ll let their work speak for itself by turning you loose to drink in some real nasty eye candy. You’ll find The Pumpkins here, The Sand here, and the Toys by Ray over here.

Every year I come back to Villafane Studios I get more impressed, and clearly there’s no end in sight. This sure ain’t your Grandpa’s Jack-o’-lantern – it’s Art that transcends this earthly gourd!

I’ll close with a sneak peek of what’s in store for Hallowe’en 2012 at the New York Botanical Gardens, courtesy of the Villafane Studios facebook page with the caption, “If you are in the New York City area the weekend of Oct. 20th you should stop by the New York Botanical Garden to watch a pumpkin carving display like no other unfold before your eyes. A life size, free standing pumpkin zombie pulling others right out of the ground by their stems! Its going to be creepy:) Live teaser in Grand Central Terminal Oct. 19th but be sure to see the entire display rise from the earth in the Bronx. Zombies will be returning to NYC!”

Click the picture to enbiggen.

Children like to dabble in seances and Quija boards. They shouldn’t, but they do. I myself was once present at a seance in a grave yard that ended suddenly, and more than a little strangely, but that’s a story for another day. Nevertheless, there’s a little of that experience woven into what follows.

The Attic Room was inspired by a phenomenon that caught my attention in the course of doing routine property checks on a big old vacant house in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. Under an agreement with the owners, we monitor and maintain the electronic property protection systems and go to check the house regularly. Houses that were once Homes are moody things that, not unlike dogs, begin to pine when left alone too long. This one is holding its own for now, and the family that owns it are slowly restoring the place in anticipation of it once again being lived in. Maybe that’s why it’s been able to keep its chin up after so many years.

In the course of our inspection routine, I generally check the basement and attic while Mrs. LFM inspects the spaces in between, looking for signs of vermin, water leak damage, and anything else that might cause grief if left unresolved. The basement door is always locked for security reasons, as one would expect, but I came to notice that the one leading up to the attic was also secured, even though there is absolutely no other way to get there, and small children are not a part of the equation. The skeleton key was always in the lock, and if I left the door unlocked and the owners came by in between our visits, I always found it locked again. Joking with Mrs. LFM one day, I suggested that the lock was there to keep something from coming down, and so, notwithstanding that the house itself has absolutely no whiff of evil about it at all, I was inspired to write this.

The Attic Room

By LFM

In the old town stands an ancient house,
Where once three children played.
Two daughters of a Vicar,
And the boy child of his Maid.

The house it is a towering pile,
With many a lofty room,
In one of which the Maid’s boy slept
The night he met his doom.

That day the attic playroom was
The scene for something queer.
Three children chanting, holding hands,
To catch a spirit’s ear.

And catch an ear is what they did,
But not the one they sought.
Instead of dear old Auntie May,
A demon’s ear they caught.

Summoned to the attic by
Unwitting childish joy,
It came into the room unseen –
And singled out the boy.

Nobody knows the demon’s mind,
Nor why it chose to spare
Two tender girls to focus on
The only boy child there.

But on its whim,  that very night,
Downstairs without a sound,
It came unheeded, waking not
The Vicar’s sleeping hound.

And as it crawled along the wall
It seemed to change its mind.
It loomed a while above the girls,
Then left them both behind.

It fell upon the sleeping boy
And ripped his soul away.
Dead beside his mother’s where
She found him in the day.

In dawn’s grey light, not pride and joy
Found she upon the bed.
A thing from blackest nightmare
Lay beside her in his stead.

There are no words to soothe the soul
Of one so sore bereft.
Left shrieking out a mother’s heart
O’er what the demon left.

Because of that, the Vicar stood
Dumb struck without a sound,
Glad he’d bade his daughters stay
Away from what he found.

The visage of the ravaged boy
Bespoke a tortured tale,
Of torments so depraved to make
The Inquisition pale.

For though the kill seemed quick and clean,
That’s not the way it was.
We tell time by sun and clock –
No demon ever does.

The screams began at midnight next,
And lasted all night through.
The Vicar moved his fam’ly out.
He knew nought else to do.

The house has stood unlived in since
For none can stay the night.
What echoes from the attic room
Puts every one to flight.

A massive iron lock and bar
Now guard the way upstairs.
No key exists that opens them,
Because nobody dares.

The lock’s engraved with magick runes,
Now crusted rusty brown.
It’s not to stop things going up;
It stops them coming down.

Of no surprise to my readers will be the disclosure that my brand of humour veers sharply toward the dark side. My dance card of funeral attendance over the years includes both my parents, four uncles and one aunt, an assortment of friends and the parents of others, and that’s just the humans. If memory serves, I have also officiated at or otherwise participated in the last goodbye to five dogs, one horse, one cat, three hamsters, at least six birds of various species, a similar number of reptiles, and one monkey. Species be damned. Grief is grief.

As I’ve gone through the grieving process myself, and watched others do the same, it has become clear to me that, in the end, the power and joy of a life well lived is not diminished by the final footnote that it came to an end. That grief is a path leading to a place where, without trivializing our loss or assuming a pretense that the one departed isn’t missed, we can once again think and speak of them fondly and often, without spontaneously melting into a weeping puddle of goo. That their lives will have meaning as long as those of us who remember still draw breath. ~ Die My Dear? Why That’s the Last Thing I’ll Do.

If you’ve ever lost someone who mattered, regardless of their species, you have experienced grief. If you haven’t so far, then you eventually will, because all relationships in Nature come with an expiry date. Neither good nor evil, it’s the way of things, and grief is the process Nature has given to some of her creatures (not only humans) to permit adaptation to getting on with living.

A conceit of modern society is that no hurtful thing need be tolerated. All you need is a lifelong contract with a “therapist” and a vial of pills. These days, if a school age kid dies, his or her school is closed while everyone is given the option to meet with a grief counsellor. What this has led to is schools full of kids who burst into paroxysms of tears at word of the death of someone they barely knew. This is not grief. It’s conditioned response cultivating weakness of character. It’s OK to cry, scream, and rage when it really means something, but without sincerity it’s just noise and you really need to shut the fuck up.

One can’t always walk in the sun, and there are times when navigating the darkness  must be done without a light to see by until the day it comes, as it is meant to, from within. I’ll leave you with that thought, and close with one of my favourite quotes from James Tiberius Kirk, spoken in a pivotal scene from Star Trek V – The Final Frontier:

Damn it Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. [to Sybok] I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

We first met Stella last year on Day 30. Her saga continues.

Stella On Her Own

By LFM

It was a day in August when
Young Stella got the word –
“Report thee to thy dream job lass,
The sooner is preferred.”

The night before she moved away
From home at twenty-one,
Stella kissed her parents both,
Then went to clean her gun.

Stella’s parents worried,
In the way that parents will,
Even though they knew she was
Possessed of lethal skill.

Her first time living on her own,
Stella took a flat
On the third floor of a brownstone,
And she got herself a cat.

Each night before her sabre drills
Her parents she would phone.
On Sundays at her pistol club
Her shooting skills she’d hone.

A woman of attentiveness
Who wasn’t built for prey,
Stella walked with confidence
Through every single day.

Yet something preyed on Stella’s mind,
And made it hard to sleep.
She’d rudely be awakened when
Her heart would take a leap.

It didn’t take her very long
To realize the cause.
Blessed sleep’s not found behind
A portal barred with flaws.

The locks upon her door were tough
But Stella needed more.
No woman can sleep soundly
When she’s stronger than her door.

So Stella bought a door and lock,
The strongest kind they had.
The kind that could withstand the zeal
Of any strapping lad.

Now, understand it’s not to save
Herself from harm and sin.
She seeks to save unwanted “guests”
From she who dwells within.

On Day 23 of last year’s Dark Sentiments, we looked at issues surrounding the announced discovery of what might be the first known artifact to bear an inscription that refers to the Biblical Christ. Here at LFM, we enjoy a good mystery as much as the next bloke or blokette, and today we’re going to focus on forbidden knowledge.

There is a distinct difference between “secret knowledge” and “forbidden knowledge”. They are not the same, although they can be considered as two sides of the same coin. When knowledge is secret, the fact that one possesses it is withheld from all but a select few. When it is forbidden, its possession by anyone outside the select few will invite dire, usually mortal, consequences, and woe betide he who permitted or otherwise facilitated its dissemination to the free range hooples.

Many will be familiar with how Bruce Lee was taken to task by Masters who sought to restrict training in Asian Martial arts to Asians alone, and nearly lost his life in a contest to defend his persistence in teaching anyone who wanted to learn, regardless of race. Less known is the ongoing tale of the as yet unidentified Master, who today flaunts his vows to promise this – (more…)

I first heard, indeed first heard of, The Burning Hell only last week when Stuart McLean played their song When the World Ends to end an episode of The Vinyl Cafe. Give it a listen and you’ll get a clue why I was instantly hooked, and why The Burning Hell is the first featured artist for Dark Sentiments 2012.

According to the band’s website –

The Burning Hell is the alter-ego of songwriter and ukulele-slinger Mathias Kom. Loosely based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, The Burning Hell has toured back and forth across Canada and Europe since 2007, playing everywhere from festivals to bars to living rooms – and once even a mental asylum in rural France. The band has garnered acclaim for their hyperactive live shows and their caustic yet sincere lyrics, believing as they do that songs about the inevitability of death can also be fun to dance to.

In 2012, The Burning Hell both made AND broke a record: the band recorded their newest album ‘People’ (to be released in spring 2013) in Berlin with producers Norman Nitzsche and Ramin Bijan; later in the summer, The Burning Hell set a new world record, playing ten shows in ten countries in less than 24 hours. But the band isn’t tired yet, and 2013 promises to be action-packed. Join us and live forever.

“… songs about the inevitability of death can also be fun to dance to.” Sweet Jesus, what’s not to love, even without the Newfoundland connection? The work speaks for itself.

I’ll close with three more illustrative and uplifting ditties. First, from the Tick Tock album, Here’s Dance Dance Dance.

Next, from the Happy Birthday album, here’s Grave Situation Pt. 1 –

Lastly, and so as not to leave you hanging, here’s Grave Situation Pt. 2 –

Just for fun, here are the lyrics to that last one so you can sing along!

See my skin peel away right off of my head
Look at my cheeks all pulpy and red
They’re the same cheeks you kissed when I was a kid
So long, so long ago.

See my little shriveled hands like the claws of a bird
I know it sounds crazy, I know it seems absurd
But they’re the same hands that touched you and drove you insane
So long, so long ago.

These bones: take them in your arms
This skin: touch it one more time.
I may be dead, but you’re still mine.

See my curled up lips pucker up for a kiss
See my brittle little hips, see my bony fingertips
These same fingers were crossed when I said ‘til death do us part’
So long, so long ago.

And look at my hair – it’s out of control, it keeps growing and growing and oh my soul
Is trapped in this box and I can’t do nothing, I’m down in this hole
My eyes may be gone but I can still hear every word you whisper in some other ear
But soon you’ll be down here and we’ll be together again.

These bones: take them in your arms
This skin: touch it one more time.
I may be dead, but you’re still mine.