Tag: Books

“Regrets Of The Neo -Thatcherite – The Story Of A Deeply Fazed Cookie – Part 1” (A Serialized story)

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Book cover reading "The Long Shadow and the Politics of Tomorrow" by Sarah J. Reynolds

By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

NOTE: THIS WAS GREATLY UPDATED ON 22 AUG 2026 – 1500 words were added.

“That’s another fine mess I’ve got myself into”.

Said the man who was almost next to me in the train to Nowheresville. Of course he was talking to himself – something that used to be rare in the England transport system. It was well past midnight on a Friday night. Of course drunkeness on the tube in London was the norm as people left the central drinking holes of London. He didn’t know who I was at this point – this would come a lot later on, long after his retirement from UK Politics. I would know all about him from afar thanks to my hidden recording devices. For some forty years he did not know I had existed at all. I knew everything, and I was lucky that he had a habit of murmerring away to himself as he sat at home after a hard days work.

My name was Anton Schmid and when I first saw the at-the–time thirty-three-year-old Thatcher backbencher Terrence Tipthorne – and his wild performance on the tube – I was just a twenty seven year old greenhorn. I was just a lowly telecoms technician working for British Telecom. Although I had bigger brains than my job. With my big bored brains I had used BT equipment to make the best ‘bugs’ possible – not of the crawling type – of the surveillence type. I made both listening bugs and video recording bugs. Better that state of the art – my bugs were only one cm square. I would have some great entertainment snooping on Tipthorne the man who replaced Thatcher. Yes – initially I was just having fun – although now looking back I was also working on a long term plan to save the UK from the UK that Tipthorne ended up creating during his two decade long run as PM.

This would be how I got to know about the real Terrence Tipthorn and how dark his personality could become. But for now I was just watching him from a few seats down on the tube. I was watching this drunk who I did not yet know was a Thatcher backbencher. I had simply though he was just another mid eighties yuppie. I thought he was perhaps a stockbroker from Canary Wharf or perhaps one of the millions of faceless corporates in ill fitting black suits. Terrence had gotten up and was swaying wildly while holding the hand rail above his fold out seat and started slurring loudly.

“If only I had listened to my other self before I did it”. Said the man in a loud yelp above the din of the other half-cut passengers – who later I’d soon learn from a TV news report was Terrence Tipthorn. I noticed as he pretended to read the strangely creased paper he was now frantically scratching himself. It was like he had an ant under his shirt. He also had a wild look in his eyes. Yes his clothes quite Businessman-like but his dapper-ness was ruined as he had a large patch of post-London-nightlife-alcohol-binge vomit on his shirt. The smell was mostly obscured by the ubiquitous cigarette smoke that literally hung in the air in visible layers. They were different times compared to now, that is nineteen eighty five versus twenty thirty seven.

Tipthorne’s haircut was recent and sharp. He was almost handsome but not quite, on account of his weak chin, bad English teeth and slightly wonky and ovesize nose. But he certainly wasn’t ugly and for an English Politician he was relatively good looking. He helped himself by being not so far away from what is called ‘snappy dresser’. His shoes of top quality were by the well known firm ‘Balderdashes’. Baldedashes Shoes had been to footwear of choice among the upper-classes for some three hundred years. It was highly unusual if the man in Ten Downing street did not wear them. Of course his ties were rather garish, often having little planes on them or strange patterns. In short he wanted to always look the part more than he could make happen in the real world. Well he was a Tory wasn’t he?

I noticed was the Financial Times open on his lap. The headline was

“Thatcher Cuts Red Tape – Invites More Foreign Investment”

Yes to look at him you would not know he was volatile at all. Just a typical suit who was binge drinking – like most of the Western world did after work in big cities, let alone London. But when he opened his mouth – it was all beyond doubt. He loaded up the next line by taking a big audible breath.

“It all started with Thatcher – IT’S ALL HER FAULT WE RICH GUYS WERE MUCH MORE LOVED BEFORE HER!”

He screamed as he stood up off his seat. Of course no one knew he was a Tory backbencher so it didn’t mean anything controversial. Even if someone did recognize him it didn’t matter a jott – backbenchers were seen as silly children no one took them seriously. They had to rise up a number of places to be noticed by anyone.

He was told to sit down by a few passengers. He of course did not sit down. He said the next line.

“Don’t let that grocers child pull the wool over yer eyes folks….she was and is scammer, a charlatan and shyster…and I loved her”. It was then he was semi-pelted with a few jeers and a couple of empty coffee cups, and a few scrunched up pages of The Telegraph or one of the many ‘daylies’ of the time. Back then before smartphones their were newspapers everywhere within arms reach – especially on trains and busses.

“I loved her fiery red hair just as much as her sternly and poorly veiled pomposity…maybe even more! Naaah…just kidding! Or am I aha-haha!”

People yelled a little louder with their jeers, and some more things flew. This time a few more empty coffee cups flew and some more balls of scrunched up newspaper broadsheets. Everyone else on the train was almost as drunk as this man – Terrence Tipthorne, so the tongues were firing up – so to speak.

‘Sit down you fazed cookie’. The crowd around her laughed – includign a chuckle from me. The lady that had given terrence this quip-shutdown was a sixty year old Scottish accented lady. She was loaded in cardigan and loaded with clothes shopping bags. Back then sixty was quite old. Sometimes lonely older people living on their own went shopping late at night in London.Another spoke up against Terrence’s on the face of it ‘pro-Thatcher’ words.

‘That red haired witch! She smashed he bloody unions to dust you dolt’ – don’t you remember the miners strike for fucks sake?” said the man in oily overalls who was holding a spanner at both ends. He was actually one of those on call mechanics that sometimes had to use the tube late after they had fixed another train that had broken down.

‘She believed in clueless trickle-down economics’ said the drunken London School Of Economics university student who I noticed had a Text book half falling out of her haversack. It was on the famous mid nineteenth century English PM during the Victorian era ‘Pitt the Elder and his Economic Views Of England’ by Brian Ware. I thought that was funny – ‘B. Ware’.

“OH I WISH I WAS THATCHER’S HUSBAND! BUT DENNIS THE SOZZLED GIN GOLF BOY AND HENPECKED FOOL BEAT ME TOO IT….AH HAHAHAR” Terrence spluttered out ridiculously. There was a loud groan from the passengers and again a few projectiles here and there including a mans cap. The young socially invisible backbencher Tipthorne continued his drunken verbal antics as he swayed standing of his seat and clutching the hand rail for balance.

“SURE THE SEX WOULD BE BAD BAD BAD!!!! BUT THINK OF THE FRINGE BENEFITS!!!”. This line drew some sniggers, and a few guffaws and I watched the peoples faces turn upward – he had definitely just improved his reception more than a little. People in a big dirty mega city like London love an unexpected laugh. The English are not entirely mean or unsmiling or as stuffy as is commenly thought abroad. Nothing was thrown at Tipthorne this time – other than a rogue pencil that amazingly landed in his spiffy jacket pocket next to the fancy blue handkerchief. Tipthorne seeing this improvement from the captive audience was boyed to keep going. This time as he was getting a little tired from all the excitement he was alternatively loud and then quiet.

“If I was THATCHER’S HUSBAND….. I’d take her on long holidays in the COTTSWOLDS – because Politics is a STRESSFULL GAME!!!!”.

The sniggers turned into big guffaws and claps and cetainly no projectiles. People whispered to each other along the lines of ‘maybe we’ve misjudged the fellow’ and ‘haha this suited up git’s funny’ etc. Again he kept talking.

“I would have said to her ‘HEY THATCHER – don’t offshore that, don’t BORROW from those SHADY SAUDIS YA GINGER BITCH! We can pay OUR OWN BILLS with the pure traditional hard workin’ class factory-spun-labouring known as BRIIIITISH GRITTT”.

The train was now clapping to him and listening with quiet respect. usually someone in a suit was a snob who was down on the working class. Of course most on the train were lower or middle classes, but most would have had working class parents. Of course Tipthorne – as I had found out later from my recordings of his late night whisky addled mumblings – had one working class parent and one of lower middle class and had grown up in the East End; but they were the kind that had pretended they were ‘rich’ to anyone who didn’t know them. Tipthorne had always found this embarrassing. That’s why it was a common ‘late night mumble’ of his that my listening devices – bugs – had picked up. He continued the rant as the train clacked along and as his audience listened now with quiet interest.

“I would have said HEY YOU THATCHER – I really loved your alliance with RONNIE REAGAN – after all a B – GRADE ACTOR is exactly the steel trapped mind we needed to HITCH OUR SPOTTY ENGLISH ARSE TOO” Of course he was almost certainly being sarcastic, and they all mostly picked up on it. They loved it. They were putty in his hands – although he was too drunk to see the effect.

They were all so moved a throng of the tube passengers started to sing what turned out to be a messy but ebullient combination of they old-timey songs ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ and ‘hip hip hooray’. Now egged on by these simple folk he again took a mighty big gasp to load up the next verbal quickfire rounds. He knew he was on a roll.

“Now did I ever TELL YOU GUYS about the brilliant PR MAN friend of THATCHER’S by the name of Joseph GOEBBELS?”.

But he had ruined it. The train went silent. Half drunk people in nineteen eighty five didn’t really want to remember the Nazi’s as it reminded too many of them of ‘The Blitz’ that is the bombing of London. In fact it wa only twenty five years since the last of the rubble had been cleared from ‘The Blitz’.

Tipthorne had lost Though nothing was thrown. I saw the drawn faces of the older folk. Bit no stray paper cups and no scrunched up newspapers were thrown. Though there was just a barely audible gasp of disappointment from the forty-five pluses. Of course the Englanders on this train were now used to having their high hopes dashed in a seconds notice. They mostly accepted it with stiff upper lips. I mean by this time dissappointment was the norm.

The last decade – starting with the ‘oil shocks’ of the mid seventies had been very bad times for England – and they weren’t that good before that, even though England had been on the side that had won the war. Terrence Tipthorne’s impromptu comedy act had was simply a silly diversion anyway – they were happy for it while it had lasted. Now they simply went back to amusing themselves by the usual thoughts about the dull but necessary tasks they all had to do with the usual Saturday morning chores – dishes, vacuuming, doing the washing etc.

The spiffy dressed ‘Thatcher half-loving-half-hating man’ looked around, and had seen and accepted that his last line had not landed with his captive-on-the-train audience. Later on in his Political memoirs he would reference this laughably embarrassing happening when he was simply a promising backbencher. But being a Politician, of course in the memoir he wrote he would disguise it by pretending he was watching it all from afar in the train as an onlooker – instead of the truth that he was the main event speaker making a fool of himself.

Of course he never forgot the deeply embarrassing incident – but he wrote it off to a ‘temporary mental meltdown’ which afflicted many of the young-ish career minded ladder climbers of his type.

As he now many decades later sat in his country home as a man of eighty with his pipe and The Telegraph on his lap he was still happy to delude himself about hi political life and legacy. He told himself how glad he was that he had ‘made a difference in UK Politics’. In his time as PM he had indeed copied Thatcherism down to the last thread of its threadbare ideology. Sure this had meant a terrible social decline during his reign – that is beyond dispute even among the current Tory remnant.

During his time at Number Ten the poor had all became homeless, the middleclass decimated into abject poverty and were now living in squalid camping grounds as long term tenants. However the top half of the upperclasses – such as our man Terrence Tipthorn himself – had greatly prospered out of the carnage of what had been dryly and emotionlessly referred to as a ‘K shaped economy’ by the wealthy economists of the day. He took a sip of hi neat whisky.

“I was only doing the right thing by way of Thatcherism” he said to himself trying to squash the nagging feeling that was omnipresent.

“It was the execution of Thatcherism by the boneheads in my cabinet that ruined Britain for the millions of dispossessed stupid but honorable middle and working-class ‘brokies’ – it certainly wasn’t my fantastic adroit leadership”. Again trying to squash that nagging feeling of ‘being a traitor to his people’ that would pop into his mind a few times per hour.

At about this point he realized the drink had been drunk. When he had these intrusive thoughts his sips turned to gulps. He would then get up to his liquor cabinet as the mental stress of these invasive thoughts further ramped up.

As he did every night, he would drink until he passed out on his comfortable chair and then always wake up at eleven am sharp. After all there was no one else to wake him anyway. His wife had died a decade ago and no one had suspected a thing – but of course I had my recordings didn’t I?.

TO BE CONTINUED.

“The ‘Revolutionary Speech’ That Wasn’t” (Prose)

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Older man shouting passionately with a pint and paper in a crowded pub

by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com (email me!)

Welcome friends colleagues and ardent enemies.

Let me spin a mighty tale which starts with meandering but ends with Revolutionary consequences.

And yes please drink while you listen – but try not to barf – it will ruin my train of thought.

But if you must please use the wooden buckets provided shackled under your tables.

Let me begin by talking of ‘luck’ – something I’ve heard of but never experienced myself.

Well perhaps I’ve had a little here and there but only by chance.

Why is it that when you have had a stretch of good luck –

And by ‘good luck’ all I mean is that nothing ‘really bad’ has happened for a couple of weeks.

I say this because let’s be honest –

That’s the reality of this urbano-mega-city-techno-prison most of us live in now.

Good luck is now defined negatively.

You didn’t get fired this week;

You didn’t step on some dog-shite this week;.

Your girlfriend didn’t cheat on you on her ‘girls weekend’ this time round.

Et cetera Et Cetera.

I could go on longer – but you are a street-wise audience and you catch my drift.

You see long ago ‘Good Luck’ was defined positively.

You found a twenty dollar note on the ground;

You went to a rock concert, got drunk and got laid all on the same night;

You went to the CD or record store and found a gem in the bargain bin.

I could go on and on –

But again – you fine folk will, like a fine Phoenecian sail – catch my drift.

And how pray-tell did we let this steep decline happen over say thirty years?

Your guess is naturally as good as mine and my blind furtive jabs.

But I’ll hazard a guess for perhaps one of the many multitudes of ghastly reasons –

MONEY PRINTING GONE WILD.

Yes deplorably we schmucks were slowly inflated out of our own lives.

I would say “great now we can revolt and chop some heads off – French Revolution style”.

But they ain’t so stupid to allow that stuff again –

So they became weaselly smart about weakening the masses, us the great unwashed!

They had to drug us up to the eyeballs to numb us,

In pills dished out by an army of quacks,

In our chemically laced food,

They frazelled our nerves too via our environments

Via coraling us our concrete jungles,

And the cubicle-ised our work spaces,

They corrupted the airwaves with their drone faced on-payroll mouthpieces,

They jacked up the price of beer so to close our glorious institutions the bars and hotels!

Of course they jacked up our rent too – that goes without saying.

Yep – They really did a number on us my dear souls.

And sadly as a poor but time rich poet at the arse end of the world –

I don’t have the exact solution.

I would be lying if I pretended I was Sun Tzu, Confucius, Neitschze or Kierkegaard –

But I do feel just a little like Thomas Paine of the American Revolution.

So I sincerely wonder about the following:

Perhaps we need to become more vicious?

That is to ‘fight fire with fire’ – to ‘wage war with war’.

Of course friends and adversaries – I know what you’re now asking me:

‘How do we do this given the fact – as you mentioned – that we have been so ‘beaten down’?

Well – that is indeed a good question.

The answer to that is surely what has always been true throughout of fabled History.

When someone has nothing at all to lose – the real question is this:

Why wouldn’t they revolt?

After all it’s only natural isn’t it?

It is indeed the norm of History in those first hand accounts that are being burnt by the enemy.

Yes – Revolution – even if we’ve been drugged, corralled, lied to and whipped mercilessly.

So despite appearances to the contrary –

As a simple country farmer might say to his weary and confused firstborn.

“There’s nuthin’ new under the sun, son”.

Personally, I will be revolting very soon, very revolting and very soon.

But then again I’m lucky – for my type – a writer and poet – the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’.

For those reading and listening this ‘Historical Yelp’ – I will see you at the victory party,

And naturally I promise to read a more than salubrious ‘victory poem’.

So now there is only one last thing to mention.

Hazaar to the Revolution – which starts tomorrow roughly at four pm!

I know that all of you ‘Soon to be Revolutionaries’ – are all the type to hate early starts.

Which will be perfect planning:

Our early-risers and sworn enemies will have finished their days work by then and are well pooped,

While we will be ‘full of beans’ having not long been out of bed.

Yes, I’m already liking the sound of this ‘Artists and Writers Revolution’.

Now my now half sozzled folks – may I ask you of this minor worry fleeting through my mind?

I am perhaps simply and once again, ‘delving into the realms of fantasy’ again?

No no don’t answer – I will answer myself – I know you will agree anyway!.

Surely I am not delirious – although that would be ‘kinda stock’ of me, wouldn’t it now?.

But no let me gather myself, that was just a minor crisis of confidence – I think this ale is a little off.

But I can’t entirely rule it out my dear soon to be, most likely tomorrow sometime, Revolutionaries!

Oh wait, yes you are right – I’ve been to hasty – we need to take some time on this.

After all we all know the adage ‘only fools rush in’ – we don’t want to be like the ‘Huns in thirty-nine’!

I’m sorry to say this my future valiant soldier-victor-heros…BUT…

Tomorrows ‘Revolution’ is hereby duly postponed!

Just while we figure out if we are..er I mean I am…in a ‘wildly creative but far too delusional dreamscape’,

Or are we indeed being ‘celebrator-ily rational’ in our ‘Revolution-Tomorrow-at-circa Four-PM’ plans.

I ask of you gathered here – is it not wise to do our due diligence?

The only thing worse than being trampled on hostages of our current dictators is to be Failed Revolutionaries!

So yes my future martyrs – we must simply think this Revolution thing over just a smidgen more.

Of course to do this we must stay here in this delightful ale-den & lubricate ourselves further.

So for now fellow would-be-Revolutionaries – relax, laugh, fornicate and be ‘truculently merry’.

And as we do let us all talk together with the cautious somber glee of coming iron-clad battle plans.

And in closing yes – let me quell your worried hearts by saying this:

I’m indubitably sorry for whipping you all up like this,

& I of course naturally apologize for doing this exact same revolutionary speech every single night,

Over and over again ad infinitum, and seemingly without regard for simple human decency.

I promise it won’t happen again….tonight…

But I would be calous liar if I was to pronounce that I will not do the exact same thing tomorrow night.

Now can anyone buy me my next drink? –

I know I don’t need to remind you all that I’m a truth-committed-starving-always-short-of-funds-poet?

Oh thankyou Sir – I wasn’t expecting a delicious fine ale so soon.

How verily kind of you – and that’s my favorite brand – let me read the label to you:

” ‘The Poet’s Daily Drop’ – A Revolutionary Ale?”

“Galactic Council Quotes” (Prose/Skit)

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Different alien species sitting around a table with a holographic Earth in the center

by Anton Martin Smith antnmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com (emails are welcome!)

“The passage of time has shown that we were indeed naive to think these naked apes would stop flinging poop at each other sometime around the year 2000 AD – may I suggest seeding the air with imodium daily?”.

“Yes that’s a great suggestion QwankyQwank76 – although what will happen when they finally explode? How will we explain that one away?”

“Oh great question o Wakookoodonk, chair of the Gallactic Council. Let’s pretend when they explode it’s a normal physiological ailment – we will simply create a textbook full of fake illneses and the name for an exploding shit-supernova will be called “Sudden-Fauchi-Syndrome” they won’t suspect a thing – they’re easily brainwashed boobs remember!”

“Wonderful, I agree it’s fool-prrof..er I mean boob proof! But QwankyQwank – what do we call this Textbook of lies you propose?

“Well Wakookoodonk – My great Council leader I propose something dry like “The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, or the DSM for short”.

“Well thankyou QwankyQwank76 – you’ve clearly though of everything – let the Imodium cloud seeding and the exploding boobs begin! But wait – what about those humans that call themselves ‘Doctors’ – will we get resistence from them?”

“Fine question O Chair Wakookoodonk, don’t worry I’ve been watching them and so long as they live on the hills and drive nice cars and send their chldren to private schools they are totally willing to sell their fellow human beings totally down the river! It’s quite remarkable how easily bought off they are my dear Chairman”.

“Well spank my proboscis and call me Mount Olympus! Put it in motion immediately QwankyQwank76 – and I’m goign to promot you for this fine evil delicious slice of bastardry plan!”

“Oh thank you my great Chairman – how will you do that?”

“Well you are now 75th in line to the role of Chairman of the Galactic Federation – I’ve swapped you with Wartoffaface75, it’s only fair his idea of a fake virus antidote to reduce the population of Earth was rediculious -I mean they are boobs but even they wouldn’t believe that!”

“Ah I am honored my Chairman – now I only need to wait another four hundred years instead of four hundred and seven! I am gracious as my proboscis is long!”

[mutters the words ‘you cheap bastard’ under his breath]

“Is there anything we can spray on these hairy neo-baboons to stop them stinking so much – I’m thinking of an anti-bacterium plasmoid blast from above via our invisibility cloaked mothership”.

“Those humans with the pyramids and the cats we entrusted to carry out our plans back in 5000AD were good, but their distant cousins around now have turned out to be f*cking useless. In fact I don’t know why we didn’t just put the cats in charge in the first place – after all half the galactic territory is certainly still a meow-niverse”.

“Sure the Galactic Treaty says that we can’t push this red button and incinerate them all in one go, but what if I accidently ‘slipped while I was casually finger-drinking this vessel of ka-laka-taki-blurg. If I do that and if we simply decide not to fill out the holographic logbook, no one will suspect a thing! Especially as the average age of a Galactic Council member is seventeen thousand years old!”

“Ok I’m just thinking out loud here…but we really should stop using those annoying hairy apes as Galactic Council branded butt-plugs – but then again we only use the retired ‘Earthling politician classes’ after all. And the funny thing is while they’re inserted we can still hear them complain! I set a motion that the Earth-O-Politico-Galactico-Buttplugs-TM remain! All those in favour please remove said devices and pass wind – all those against stay peacefully stoppered!”

“Well we gave Earth many chances, but they still are refusing to take the emotional intelligence leadership mentorship from the Cats – why those hairy brutish things keep screaming at each other over nothing is quite incomprehensible. And isn’t it strange about the big problems they have – like wasting their entire lives – they barely batt an eyelid. That one good one of theirs named Bukowski was good at noticing those things”

“Ok Galactic Councilors our fifty thousand year longitudinal study of the differences between the male humans if Earth and the female hymabs of Earth is in – I will summarize it:

The men while ‘getting things done’ are – shall we say – ‘always thinking and playing with their reproductive appendages’ and often also refusing to grow up entirely; While the women are still crying at work while avoiding hard labor, and fantasizing far too much about pirates, billionaires, surgeons, sportsmen, the artists, and the criminally deranged. Yes it’s sad but what can we do now? – to squash them like ants, blow them up, release a disease or put them in our soup would be far too cliché.”

—

“Greetings my fellow Galactico’s. Given that these violent bipedal weirdo’s down there have ruined the Earth-planet system – we here at the Galactic council really should have double checked our earlier calibrations from long ago. Sure as your eternal ‘Galactic Poobah’ – I agree that ‘the buck stops with me’, to use a quaint human utterance. I must admit when I was in charge back then of our Milky-Way-Life-Seeding-Project some four billion years ago, that I rushed through the design paperwork. For that I blame my three headed butler Kaboobaboob at the time who was asking me – pleading really – about if I wanted fricassee’d or deep fried three-tongued-bonkybonk. Anyway back to my mistake back then – later on found I had a remainder when designing the earth-life-system and to my shame, I kept it a secret, hoping it wouldn’t matter. I can only apologize as I correct my mistake by pushing this ‘big red button’. Then Earth will go back to’ square one’, and the correct plan of having ‘The Dolphins being in charge at the top of the food chain’ with occur – with of course the cats being their very capable second lieutenants.”

“Look Beaky-boy, isn’t it strange – whenever I go back into the time-parallax-chronoscope device and into history’s past down there on Earth, nothing ever changes! No matter who I assassinate, no matter what wars or plagues I start!. The same assholes always end up in power beyond the year 2014 – go figure!”

“Ok Ok Ok I agree – we can’t let those buffoons continue. I have an idea – maybe we should start beaming them out by the million, replacing them with equal weight ‘green algal slime’ – after all it worked back in Two-Billion-BC, why won’t it work again? Lets re-run the ‘Great Snot Replacement Theory’! Can I get a show of proboscises – hey hey now stop that Catooboosplaz I said proboscises! Now roll it back up!”

Ok look – while I agree that those apes down their are batshit crazy, ignorant, annoying, smell bad and are generally un-cooperative they are definitely very good at….uh…uh…wait it’s coming to me….uh….uh…I mean they must be good at something…..uh…uh…oh yes I have it! they produce huge amounts of methane! With their constant wind-breaking, and thanks to the ‘greenhouse effect’ – they’ve helped stop Antarctica from growing to ridiculous proportions! I mean we have to keep them just for that reason don’t we? What’s that – why don’t we just keep Antarctica under control ourselves via our advanced tech? Sure we could do that, but then what would we talk about? I mean if we got rid of the hairy farting bi-pedals we’d have nothing to laugh at on our work breaks at the Helium-3 cooler. We would be a lot sadder for that my galactic friends! After all those next smarter on the list of ‘dunderhead level sentient beings’ – those heavy set bald fuzzballs on Alpha Centuri – are not nearly as stupid as the hairy bi-pedals, it just wouldn’t be the same! Let’s keep ’em I say!

“Shipping News: Feminists in a sinking boat 0, Disgruntled Men In Rubber Dinghies 1” (Satirical Prose/Story)

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Illuminated cruise ship named Aurora Star near shore at night with two people in a small boat speaking using a megaphone

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Of course 3rd Wave Feminism hasn’t quite ruined the life of the indie-writer just yet.

But this is only because the 3rd Wave Feminists only use computers for X-rated reasons.

And since I am a survivor of the affair it is now it is possible to tell a wild mariners tale.

It all started like this….

“So all and all it was a good week for us all.

And as a bonus to the week I looked at the shipping news in the paper and it said:

“A boat load of 3rd Wave radical feminists were on a giant boat to an academic conference on hairy armpits,

But halfway across the ocean,

A storm was created by disgruntled girlboss-fired men who from the vantage point on a rubber dinghy,

Were blowing furiously upon the seawater,

In what could be described as a successful attempt to create a localized-mini-tsunami.

This Tsunami-to-order would capsize the giant feminist carrying boat loaded with giant feminists.

In a scene akin to a warped version of the sinking of the Titanic,

And Ironically by the time the third wave of the man-made Tsunami hit,

The boat had capsized entirely with no survivors whatsoever –

Other than all of the boats fifteen men who manned the engine room, the communications and the bridge.

They survived by the ingenuity of hoisting themselves up upon the giant floating mountainous pile of ‘ Germain Greer’s The Female Eunuch’ books,

That the women (an I use that term loosely) had all taken with them on the trip.

The men in the rubber dinghy who caused this mighty victory regaled the following wry-eye-witness account:

“As the giant vessel capsized we first saw a number of huge bilge rats jump into the sea followed by the male shipmen. The women just shrieked and cuddled each other. As the men and the rats jumped off the ship they all seemed to have smiles on their both little and big faces. One of the rats looked at a now breast-stroking shipmen and said in perfect English – ‘thank god we are rid of those strange ghastly ladies’. As the boat boomingly ruptured and splintered into three distinct pieces we heard the cacophony of bloodcurdling anti male shrieks. This was both on the way down, and also once sunk the lady-shrieks were also inexplicably emanating from the mile-deep ocean floor. It was almost a pity none of the women on board wore life jackets – partly on account they were not stretchy enough to get around their wastes – but mainly due to the fact they were ‘made by a evil man to trap and ensnare a woman’. We really shouldn’t have laughed and high-fived when we saw it all from the vantage point of our dinghy – but it also would have been a crime not to. Along with all the rescued male shipmen we even saved at least half of the bilge-rats, including the talking one and fed them all both full size and miniature cups of tea. Incidentally, we fed the talking bilge rat the finest earl grey tea to which he was well chuffed. In the now overfilled dinghy we paid a ceremonial salute to the fallen the now bottom dwelling and still-complaining Third-Wave Feminists. For this salute-to-the-fallen we each only needed our middle finger pointed steadfastly towards the water.

The men of the mission then celebrated the sinking via publishing an account of the fine para-military mission in a book entitled:

“When The Third Wave Hit A Good Time Was Had By All” – Especially The Whales Who Feasted On The Bloated Carcasses”.”.

Get it at all pro-male bookstores throughout the country –

That is you need to ask for my mate Terry,

Who will under cover of the night take you out to his backyard and dig out one of the fifteen plastic-wrapped hand-printed copies from out the ground.

But only if his pencil skirt and laptop wearing missus isn’t watching.

Poor Terry, but sometimes you have to take one for the team.

And that’s all from the shipping news today.

And as always for all the red blooded men in the yellow rubber para-military dinghies of the sea – always remember your pro-life jackets”

“An Ode To Intellectual Honesty” (A Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

NZ (among other nations) has an affliction much worse than The Black Plague.

It is a persistent ‘built in’ shyness.

A built in reclusiveness that is robust to attack.

As a ‘liker of ideas’ this my friends and enemies – this is no good.

I want to be able to share ideas freely.

Here in NZ everyone is too afraid of sharing intellectual ideas.

And if they do it is often corrupted by cultish like political tribalism.

This is why I saw a ‘open night poetry’ advertisement that had a warning:

(& to summarise it via paraphrase)

“We want it to be safe so no ‘hate speech’ is allowed”.

This is what I am talking about.

Even poetry – which is supposed to be the (last) bastion of any and everyone’s ‘Truth’ –

Is now casually conscripted into quasi-national-socialist-literary-Brownshirt-ism.

People who haven’t seen either a mirror or their own shadow do condemn so drop-hat-ingly.

I see it as a total fear of having your mind changed by someone different and original.

And until NZ allows its artists and writers to ‘do art’ and ‘write words’,

We will continue to wallow in backward socio-cultural-mediocrity-land,

Where you dare not question the censorship laced tired dull unoriginal tribal company line.

One day people will wake up to all this.

My optimistic guess is sometime in the year 3036.

Where it will be safe to go to an open poetry night,

And share your mind freely with a wild array of formerly unacceptable conjectures,

And neither be applauded roundly or chastised drably.

You will simply be listened to and then a fantastic member of the audience,

Will be interested to purely and intellectually talk of their ideas and yours over a giant pint.

Of course this still sporadically happens even now,

But only as rarely as a inordinately cheap classic at the second hand bookstore is found.

But we controversial conjectorial thinker types cannot be beaten easily.

Like the virus that survived the traumatic trip to outer space under on a phillips-head screw,

We will too will survive to cough out (spontaneous emit) our acerbic & strangely colored lines.

(Much to their chagrin).

This was my ode to that priceless currently invisible concept: ‘intellectual honesty’.

“She Was She, I Was Me, And We Both Still Are” (A Prose Poem + Bonus Material)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Her name was Rose W. Thorn

(Not her real name at all)

She was as they say a ‘small town girl’.

Who like all the kids in high school from the late eighties and nineties and beyond.

Was told by the clueless teachers you had to ‘go to university’ (or yer nuthin’?).

So she ditched the small town and studied something in the nearest city with a uni.

(In fact I did that too, didn’t we all? we were such lemmings!).

Of course moreover all the young want to leave their small towns – we all know it.

(And I’m not saying that’s bad per se).

She graduated with a quasi-profession credential and got an office job….

(She wanted to be an architect but didn’t have the grades – I can sympathize I wanted to be a physicist! What a pity that I couldn’t get out bed to see dear Einstein’s Equations)

Ironically she got an office job in a small town – one not so unlike her hometown.

(But aren’t small towns all roughly the same anyway?)

She had to return to this state of affairs – there were no big city jobs for her – for there was a recession in the early nineties.

It was the only office job she could get in her ‘line of Uni’,

(Beggers can’t be choosers just starting out).

So she stayed and started her career off – a good temp outcome it seemed.

She grinded…she grinded…and it was so long ago now that she may have even used a typewriter (?)

A couple years passed.

Her early ‘apprenticeship’ was duly achieved.

But she was still very young and anxious not to waste her youth (the young run on instinct).

Her feet were getting decidedly ‘itchy’ – as young peoples feet do when stuck in a boring place.

She was shy, but at heart adventurous – especially when blind drunk.

(We all drunk a lot back then, and we who lack confidence need it as social medicine. Entire Nations are like this).

But to go backwards a little.

At this first career-job she met a guy,

Who of course fell in love with her.

(Some people are of course all too easy to fall in love with – she was like that).

He wanted to settle down young marry, have kids and front lawn and a Labrador.

But she wanted to travel the world and party, see the sights, have total freedom.

(And Ultra-independence was like gold to her).

So she said goodbye to him and the future labrador and hello to a plane, a flying tin can.

She soon travelled around the world.

To England, most of Europe, and even to Africa and some other unnamed wild places too.

While on the road she stayed in many a dingy backpackers.

(As you do and are happy to do with at that age – in fact I did it for a long time).

For her home base she stayed in the typical antipodean way – ‘ten person flats’ with only two or three rooms.

After the first bout of travel she pulled beers in England and mixed a few temp office gigs too.

She partied hard – this goes without saying:

(On that looking back – were not the nineties simply an extension of the sixties and seventies?)

She was a westerner in the late 20th century and young.

The parties and dopamine and hormone based experiences rolled on.

(Don’t make me spell them out either, I couldn’t tell you details as I wasn’t with her).

When she was finally Thirty she had to give up that five years of fun and duly went home –

(So back in the tin can it was).

The ‘flat land of red dirt’ some thirty flight-hours away was calling.

She returned to a big dirty city for the rest of her career and is still there some twenty five years later.

(I dare say she will probably stay for the rest of her life).

She could never settle down – and she didn’t really want to.

She was used to and programmed for short relationships and fun times with the men with rizz aplenty.

The ‘trap of excitement’ you might say.

As she aged and all around her settled down – she steadfastly resisted.

Many whisperers did appear from ‘various gossipers’,

They said ‘she couldn’t love’, and of course much worse.

This was not the case that she ‘could not love’- the truth was that she actually loved too hard.

(Well once in a blue moon that is when the right biological, time-a-logical, socio-intellectual bloke arrived.)

Unfortunately, on ‘matters of the heart’ – she had a curse.

And when she did feel love or closeness, the electronics in her body went haywire.

(Her nervous system would pull rank on her)

Those pangs of anxiety simply wouldn’t let her settle down with one guy, once and for all.

Tragically the more she felt loving feelings the further she was made to run.

(Perversely this meant she could only essentially marry the ‘amorphous male blobosphere’).

So she kicked to the kerb many guys she really liked, and a couple or at least one of these she loved.

Not becasue she wanted to.

She had to.

(Her internal physiological Sergeant Major had pulled rank).

The electronics inside were stronger than diamond chains around her feet,

And it would take a series of perfectly planned and executed wars to break those chains,

To then allow the feelings of closeness not to trigger electrical short circuits within.

(I hope that day comes)

And so her career rolled on, money was made, rent was paid.

But as the years rolled,

Her social life was increasingly a ever slightly degrading repeat and rehash of her youth in England/Europe.

(You see with addiction, the hit gets less high each time).

Perhaps now described best as quasi-controlled-debauteurous weekends,

Mixed with typical middle class dinner parties, drunk racing events, cafe coffees and brunches.

As the grey hairs grew she new she was having the same year, done many times over.

(The Sergeant Major was not yet in retirement and was still ‘blasting ears’)

She knew she wasn’t happy (I know as she even let slip one day – but weren’t we city-o-office-o’s all that way?).

At heart she always wanted to be an entrepreneur – set her own hours – do her own thing.

But she got trapped as a salary-woman in a mega city does.

(After all – is not the invention of the ‘big city’ the oldest trap on humankind there is?)

Late in life she tried to become an entrepreneur –

I’m not sure if that worked.

After all, entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs while young.

They find a way – becasue it is who they are.

I guess I was lucky that she couldn’t handle long term closeness,

Becasue we would have never met at that drunken bar when she was pushing forty.

(When we kissed, didn’t come home with me and then handed me her business card pre taxi home)

Of course I may be deluding myself.

I could easily say using joes-schmo logic ‘that was a ruinous night and the start of a war’.

But now old I know that sometimes you meet who you need to meet at the time.

(And it will disrupt and shift your entire life).

And it might be someone who allows the needed dismantling of your entire life to occur.

That would not have happened otherwise.

And I guess that’s why I met her.

(I had a not just a destiny-date with a mirror – but a date to be thrown through it to a parallel-life)

But with the peace-and-fun-becoming-full-blown-war (that was us) being now long over,

With the mustard gas that was stinging my (our?) eyes long gone –

I (we?) can now see that clearly.

And isn’t it interesting that there is one part inside myself that has never changed.

Perhaps that is a all-knowing holographic part of her inside my chest.

I don’t know if that’s a healthy assessment – but I don’t really care.

It is simply an immovable object inside.

It is what Olympus Mons is to the surface of Mars.

But the question is (and has been over the rolling years) what to do about it?

Does the famous climbers Q & A adage hold for me? –

“Why did you climb that mountain? – becasue it’s there”.

And so I sometimes look at Olypus Mons, from far away Earth.

And I wonder if I too would/should Travel there.

To see her in true strikingly perfectly imperfect unique beauty.

After all – I believe that today she is still ‘There’.

Yet currently at star-date 2026.4958 I am still ‘Here’.

Perhaps I am like an asteroid that collided on Olympus Mons with a ‘glancing blow’,

And so natural physical law demanded I skip away into the black skies never to return.

Yet information cannot ever be scrubbed.

Yet the scars of the collision remain within the asteroid’s hulk, within me,

As so do more than a few small fragments of her (my ‘Olympus Mons’).

So I guess if I never see her rugged striking heights and cosmically unique grandeur again,

I can always say she never one hundred percent left anyway.

I carry literally a few pieces of her with me through space and time.

And will her short-circuiting electronics (her Sgt. Major Syndrome) ever be fixed before she is gone?

Perhaps when it is, this will be the spark that starts the spaceship’s thrusters,

And while I am thinking I will simply be whisked away to see her.

Physics itself will be in ‘dictatorial charge’ of the matter.

(it will issue an edict that will happen).

Yes – let’s end it there and agree to that seemingly quasi-copout shall we?

(Why do the most frank assessments also seem so glib and weak sounding or is it just me?).

It is time to wrap it up.

After all this prose poem has become an odyssey in its own right,

(Or is it the modern-version unsent letter?).

And perhaps with a mind of its own, and definitely a nervous system.

So there is now only one more line that I have to say,

And whatever the future holds it will remain true for everlasting eternity.

And that last line is this:

She was she, I was me, and we both still are…..

(And at least if nothing else – I still have that).

BONUS MATERIAL: WHAT DOES THE WORDPRESS AI BOT THINK OF THIS WRITING?

“The Poet-Vigilante Vs The Toolbox-Poet: Who will win?” (A Prose Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

‘Writers Block’
Is very handy.
For Example:
When you meet someone who doesn’t read?
Out Comes The Block.
You asked the said non-reader to close their eyes.
Then….
!Whack!
Rough justice employed.

Another example:
You are at a poetry reading.
You come across the “toolbox poet”.
They’ve had an easy life.
Their parents are (of course) still together, upper middle class types.
Their progeny is this ‘toolbox poet’.
It is they that is trifecta-masacre-ing you’re brain, eyes, and ears,
Has never known poverty or genuine struggle.
Is quite possibly what the Americans refer to as a ‘Trust-Fund Baby’.

Alas ‘Toolbox Poets’ – They have nothing to say,
Yet yield Hiroshima like damage on new poetic pastures, usually in urban locales.
They use ‘form’ like a mega-sledgehammer.
They use rhyme far too much and for no good reason.
Their empty platitudes flow like the cheap tract-nouveau-riche-wine,
Delivered to their and their parents friends pristine well swept doorsteps,
Like the badge of copy-cat-ism-style of dishonor it surely is.

The ‘Toolbox Poet’ not knowing what truth is – uses hearty dollops of ‘false mystery’.
‘False mystery’ is the poetic version of verbal sophistry –
Basically they use empty-misjoint-imagery spoken with faux gravitas,
To swindle audiences who have not yet purchased ‘intellectual imposter glasses’.

So where was I?

Yes let me backtrack to ‘Writer’s Block’ (the non-metaphoric physically real kind).
‘Writers block’ comes in handy with run-ins with the ‘Toolbox Poet’ set.
And as my prescriptive advice,
Simply throw said block from the very ‘back of the back’ of said room,
Ideally throw from behind a billowy curtain or from an appropriate alcove.
Aim for the trajectory to have a nicely curved parabola, but not too curved –
less it miss its mark – i.e. the Toolbox Poets ‘schnoz’.
Too flat a trajectory – and you risk hitting the audience.
Watch this glorious ‘Writers Block’ fly with feeling-imbued-slow-ity through the air,
Until it completely nulify’s the ‘toolbox poet’ in mid-bad-stanza,
Mid-bad-imagery-rhyme & mid-flowery-false-platitude.
And Congrats! You hit with a bullseye’d ‘schnoz splashdown’
(NB: in the event that you missed? – Abort mission & stay behind said curtain or alcove & whistle quietly).

And for when the audience turns around post successful ‘Toolbox Poet’ assassination & wonders what has happened?
Well you just stand there sans curtain, whistle quietly & hold your hands behind your back,
Contemplating your next ‘writers block attack’.
Yes my friends of good and great writing –
Contrary to popular sentiment –
As I have outlined in detail above,
‘Writer’s Block’ comes in very handy.
In this the stolen-valor-filled-faux-literary-world.
Yes the valiant soldier wielding the ‘Writer’s Block’ is a poet-not-just-a-poet,
But is also a well battle scarred poverty knowing poet-vigilante,
Who’s parents duly hated each others guts and then in five to ten got truthfully divorced.
And in so doing accidently created a glorious poet-vigilante,
Willing to swiftly and parabolically destroy the high-crimes-of-poetic-dastardry –
Wherever the ‘Toolbox Poet’ plies this evil solipsistic trade,
Or doth present their oversized probably-open-mic’d-big-target-wearing-schnoz.

Hazaar to the Poet-Vigilante & his mighty non-aerodynamic ‘Writer’s Block’.
Hopefully he is not deluded,
Hopefully he is not living in a fantasy world of his own choice,
Hopefully he is not merely ‘projecting’ some twisted internal trauma based misery.
Hopefully he has met his ‘Jungian shadow’ and now gets on not just like a ‘house on fire’,
But as the houses warm embers the day after the house was on fire.
Oh yes – I know what you’re thinking.
It would be a shame if this ‘poet vigilante’ I speak of was in fact ‘dead wrong’ –
For all this would be a waste of time and a total ‘all encompassing lie’.
It would be an exercise in acute effrontery (which is definitely not cute).
But surely not – surely he is not then a ‘Poet Terrorist’.
Surely not dear highly-intelligent-literary-loving and truth loving avid reader!
After all – we’ve all seen the multitudes of ‘Toolbox Poets’ that abound –
The ones that litter the urban poet-scapes like maimed-and-hobbling-town-square-pigeons?
I ask of you dear discerning reader of near angelic virtue – have we not seen them everywhere?
Of course we have….Of course we have…..Of course we have.
I’d stake my very reputation on it.
And let me give you the tip –
That’s worth more than a few cases of ‘Smith’s Luxurious Highly-Blunted Flying Writer’s Blocks’.

“Excuse Me – My Nose Is Gettin’ Thirsty” (A Poem + Bonus Material)

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by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Don’t tell anyone this.

You better not.

Or else their will be galactic trouble.

You will suffer If you spill the beans!

Ok here it is – the big reveal:

I am not human.

I am an alien from a distant star system.

I came here to raise the consciousnes of human being everywhere.

It was going to be the defining moment of human existence.

But I am sorry, I got derailed from the plan.

I stopped into one of your pubs and started drinking beer.

Then I noticed the attractive human females dancing.

I forgot my mission entirely.

And what’s worse?

It’s now twenty years later from that fateful day.

I’ve become addicted to this swill, and the these now well aged hags.

My glorious mission and prior cosmic repectability has bitten the dust.

And so I have became just another loser sitting on a barstool,

Telling another loser just exactly how he became a loser.

What’s that you say?

Your story is almost the same?

But instead you are from the Scutum-Centaurus Arm instead of the Perseus?

Fuck!

We fellow Milky Way aliens have really gone down in the world lately haven’t we?

These human beings are a very bad influence on us.

Yes yes yes – I agree – we were wrong to try to increase their consciousness to a higher plane.

Yes yes yes – I agree – we should have just vaporized them from afar.

Oh well, never mind.

Let’s just raise a drink of swill to being depressed aliens in forever exile on a totally fucked-up planet.

Oh I’m glad you agree.

Now out of interest – which of these funny dancing hags do you like the best?

Is it the fat, short, smelly partly bald one to my right that’s holding my hand,

Or is it the tall, hollow-cheeked, bug-eyed and buck toothed one sitting on your lap?

I guess we could always swap.

After all we’ve lost all respect for ourselves.

Ah isn’t it sad – our home planets have shunned us for our rank immorality.

Yes yes I agree – at least we fit in perfectly with the Earth crowd.

Oh glee! Oh rapture! We merry few galactic losers!

Sinking pints and a-choosin’ human hags!

Hazaar to the Humans!

Oh hey…did you see that – that human just pulled out their cock out then puked on that bouncer.

My word these folks are something else!

I’m so glad I’m exiled here and not on the teetotaller Andromeda system.

Now is it my round or yours?

Oh and one more thing – Isn’t it weird?

I’ve been drinking this swill through my dugong shaped nose all this time –

And no one’s batted an eyelid for a full twenty years!

Not a once my Scutum-Centares friend!

Ahh yes…I hear you well and good…yes I agree totally –

They like phallocentric shaped things of all shapes and sizes.

But is it too much to ask that an abusive drunken fool call me ‘dicknose’ once in a blue moon?

After all – I would really appreciate the attention.

I can’t just sit here by myself having conversations with an empty barstool like you forever you know.

Now excuse me – my nose is gettin’ thirsty.

Bonus Material: Let’s see what the new WordPress AI Podcast BOT says about “Excuse me my nose is gettn’ thirsty’

Update: I’ve been on rooves clearing gutters – I always knew I’d make in to ‘high society’. (A Blog Post)

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by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com (I use this one most)

Yes we came up from the gutters…and the wrong side of the Tracks – Lemmy Kilmister

I’ve been on rooves clearing out leaves from gutters. This is one of the tasks I do to make some money in my day job. I’ve done 2 rooves in 2 days. Wealthy folk with big houses where if your ladder falls your in for a trip to the ER. this week I got ‘lucky’ – I got 6 out of 7 days booked with jobs. This little business keeps me mentally healthy, fit and allows me to do fun things like work on this creative site. Yes it is the ‘day job’ although since I’m self employed it’s a bit more than that. In theory it could ‘take off’.

But of course – theoretically I’d rather have my writing take off. If I was really smart I’d ramp up my advertising and employ some sucker to do all the work and I would write all day and try to get things published. That would be pretty wild to do that. I wonder if it would be easier than it seems.

Sometimes I think about the ability to make money. I think growing up poor gives you some good and bad programming. On the good side you can learn to live frugally – because you had to growing up. I think that ability stays with you for life. in business that’s a ‘cost side benefit’. But on the negative side – I think growing up poor makes you think that having a lot of money is some kind of ‘mystical thing that’s not for us because we are poor’. In business that would perhaps be called ‘revenue atrophy problem’.

You see in business you got to go out and get sales, then you get money. The poor programming doesn’t see this reality. In my business I have to go out and make sales – so I have broken that old cycle BUT I don’t think I have broken it enough YET. You see I don’t really push sales – I tend to ‘go after’ them with the pressure of a low bank balance. If I was truly over my childhood no money upbringing of thinking ‘money was a mystical thing we don’t see’ I’d push myself to make more sales.

Oh well I have time to improve in this life on many things & this is one of them. The good thing is when I make a sale I am truly helping someone, clean their driveway or take leaves from the gutters, mow lawns, fix a fence etc. This is good as I don’t need to feel I’m a ‘corporate sell out’ who is (for example) selling overpriced insurance to people that don’t need it etc.

In other news we are heading into winter here in South Island NZ. It gets freeezing here – which is great for reading and writing so YAY WINTER.

On the writing front I am editing my new novella which I am worried is too boring – I’m wondering if the main character needs to do something wild. But I’m also thinking I’ve never done a story where nothing much happens, so perhaps this could be a test case. It does have a lot of underlying existential philosophy in it, so I’m hoping this will be the thing that makes people like it. It’s about a guy that lives in the higher plain of the ‘holographic world’ and is having one of his regular jaunts as a physical being on a planet as a joe schmoe. In this case the joe schmoe is a High School principal who is a functional alcoholic that travels to the neighboring town to get drunk at the pubs. This happens a lot I think with the ‘teacher’ set.

For the record I don’t like teachers much (and at root it’s because they live in an cloistered Marxist intellectual fishbowl) but let’s not get into it NB(people always pretend teachers are ‘great’ yet everyone agrees the good teachers they had were few and far between). And yes there are always that 10-20% V. Good to Great Teachers – I won’t be so mean spirited to deny that truth. The good ones must suffer their colleagues with grace no doubt.

Anyway these were just some quick thoughts.

happy creativity everyone and thanks for reading and liking my stuff – especially the guys who do it regularly – I really appreciate it!

Now it’s time for me to have a beer (I have 2 a night and it’s a fantastic tonic).

‘May all your gutters be clean’.

We who grew up poor may have (As Lemmy said) ‘come up from the gutters…’ but I will add this to that line

…that doesn’t mean we can’t bloom be be a giant sunflower that somehow crawled out of a deep crack in the concrete after having finally seen the light of the eternal supernova

p.s. My DM’s are open (email me an idea or comment)

Anton Martin Smith

“Open Letter: Hey poet – Don’t steal Buk’s stellar 30 year Work Record”

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com

I called out a fellow Buk fan & I was ‘blocked’.

This fellow Antipodean Poet also loves Buk.

Like me he mentions him all the time.

Sidebar:You can love Bukowski AND not like some of his bad drunken behavior.

That’s cool.

I applaud him for recognizing Buk’s literary genius.

BUT he ruins it all by doing this:

He tells his audience that he’s essentially ‘just like Buk’.

BUT

He has a patchy at best work record.

More holes in his CV than swiss cheese.

His dole check to work week ratio cannot have more than two-fifths MAX.

YET

He implies to his audience that he’s been working “thirty years straight in shit jobs just like Buk”.

Look, my Antipodean-warmer-climes-fellow-GenX-Pal,

Poetry is supposed to be about Truth.

Poets are supposed to be Truthful above all else.

None of this ‘Stolen Work Record Valor’ OK?

Oh did I mention?

In between the holes he was a ‘Marketing Man’.

Marketing Men love to lie to get results.

So what I would say to you oh ‘Fake Antipodean Buk’ is this:

If your were a true Poet,

Bernaysian Chicanery wouldn’t rule your tongue.

The Truth would.

Deep down I think you know this,

And are wondering about the sword of Damocles.

Or should I saw ‘The sword of Buk’?

Huh?

Riddle me that oh you Poetic antipodean hybrid of Bernays & Goebels.

But I am a reasonable man,

I am willing to throw you this crumb:

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong,

For there has always been scammy poets.

Who don’t give a rats about the Truth.

So perhaps you are a ‘poet’.

With a ‘small p’.

I implore you to capitalize your P forthwith – by admitting you were lazy with real world jobs.

And that’s why you hardly worked at all.

After all that is no sin to admit – in fact that’s honorable.

A ‘Big P Poet’ would definitely do this.

They might even wear it as a ‘badge of honor”.

But you lie about it, and suggest you grind-worked every day from age twenty to fifty –

‘Just like Buk did’.

That’s called intellectual dishonesty my friend.

And no Cap P Poet ever does this treasonous act.

And I’m sure BUK would agree.

He would say this:

“Be the hero in and of your own story YES – but don’t dare write about someone else pal”.