“The Ballad Of Low Self Esteem” (A Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

Their was once a land far far away,

Full of people with gnarled, wrinkly faces – even the young.

A land of ‘downward trending’ smiles & lost tempers.

It was a sad place – for it never learnt how to do anything.

This was because the peoplesfolk had abjectly low self-esteem.

You couldn’t tell them anything, for they took it the wrong way – as a sleight.

Slowly they became more backward than they were the year before, & the year before that.

Some wag once said a very funny comment when pressed on the problem of the matter:

“Why would we change – for if we continue to be move backwards,

Eventually the worst that will happen is we will return to our starting point”.

Another one said:

“Sure we have low self esteem, nothing works, crimes up & our economies in the dustbin BUT”

And I said “But what” then they said

“But…But…imagine if we had too high self esteem – that would be worse as a society”.

I said “why is that”, to which they replied

“Well then we’ll get in over our heads won’t we” they said.

Then I said “what about the saying better to try & fail than never try at all”?

Flustered they then looked at their phone nervousy & said:

“No Sir it is better to not try at all & in the future tell of your wimpery to another wimp”

“Why’s that” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Misery love company’ “?

“Yes I have” I said.

“Well I’d be too lonely if I was a go getter – I’ll stay miserable with lots of friends thanks”.

The weird thing is that after they said this, it was the most confidant I’d ever seen them look.

As they walked away with a swagger, I made a mental note to make sure I leave this town tomorrow.

They are all far to comfortable with their entrenched culture of low self-esteem.

After all – it is almost certainly just another undiscovered form of insanity.

Even if it is indeed as comfortable as they made out.

And I wonder if I’ll actually ever leave.

Perhaps I am one of them, & simply deluding myself to the contrary.

Sadly, this is not the first time I have wondered about this, & it won’t be the last.

This was ‘the ballad of low-self esteem’.

Out now, never-ending, & everywhere you look.

“Cafe Produced Warblings” (A Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

I had just finished listing to the old ‘Poet Laurette’ and was on my way out.

A spare coffee was needed for the usual night’s work – that is, writing.

For sipping a coffee while trying to be original certainly helps matters.

< Digression: >

Isn’t a pity that we if being truthful now have to say “excuse me for my keyboard clacking awaits”,

Versus yesteryear’s romantic “Excuse me Sir/Madam my quill & parchment & fine hardwood desk awaits”.

Yes it is a pity, but I remind myself that it’s the writing that matters vs the input method.

< Digression Ends >

“What do you do” said the coffee girl.

“I do some Carpentry & Handyman-ing, but that’s only half my life…

….the other half is sitting in front of a computer at night – ya’know – writing”.

I wasn’t sure if she respected the arts, but I was tired of hiding today,

And with the new owners – the cafe was now becoming more of an arts hangout to.

“Oh”, she says.

it was hard to decipher if this was a “good oh” or a “bad oh” or a neutral “oh”.

As I left the cafe she says “have fun in front of your computer!”

It sounded a little like a “jab” but we types are touchy on such matters, aren’t we?

As I was literally half out the door I reposted (in good humour of course).

“You never know – I might write a poem about you

The 70-something Poet Laurette who was sitting quietly at a table laughed as he overheard.

“I hope not” she said.

“That’s why they say ‘the pen is mightier than the sword'” I doubly retorted.

Again, the Poet Laurette chortled.

And as I walked home on that perfect sunny day, I thought to myself:

Ah these trips to the cafe are getting better & better.

They are even beginning to foment material.

Why is it always true that the life-sliced-words have a certain ring?

Because they’re the freshly filtered words emerging from the ground.

That’s why.

Long live the cafe-produced-warblings –

For much like ourselves, we would all miss them had they not been there.

“ScamDoctoringTM” (Prose/Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinwrites@gmail.com

Doctors give you 15 mins of their time after you wait half an hour in a small virus-filled room.

When seeing them they try their best to halve the visit to 7.5 mins for double-profit reasons.

Then they charge you $50 on the way out & $100 to the Generalised Insom-na-cised Taxpayer (G.I.T.).

Then they’ll look you in the eye & tell you ‘they’re in it’ in because they care about the community –

& all as the workmen rush to install the rolla-doors & ticket-machines.

This article is owned by Martin Smith Creations ltd (NZ). If you are a person or a small non-profit please read or reproduce freely. Commercial Users or NGO’s: If you want to purchase for reprint of this work for a commercial project to reach a wider audience – then contact me via martinantonsmith@gmail.com to gain written legal permission.

“Leaves falling in a bored mans head” ( Prose/A Thought)

By Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Right now it is Autumn – or as the yanks say – “fall”.

The other day I looked at a giant pile of wind curated leaves on my front yard.

The thought appeared –

Each leaf has come from a particular tree, from a particular branch, & from a certain sub-branch,

But as I look at the big seemingly homogenous leaf pile – that information is not available to me personally.

The Physics man tells us in that theory you could somehow still “ID” any one of those leaves.

For the total information content of the universe is always preserved.

I thought that it’s pretty cool that there are trillions of seemingly indistinguishable leaves out there but the universe still knows exactly where they came from.

I also was kinda miffed that I’d never be able to find that info – or so I thought.

A couple of days later, most the leaves had fallen – so there were only a couple of hundred of leaves on each tree.

I watched one of them waggle on the tree, & I could even watch it waggle off from its precise location.

That meant when that leaf hit the big pile of its friends below,

I could know exactly where it used to live – which tree which branch which sub-branch it fell from.

A lot of artists say that science ruins the ‘magic’ of the world – I disagree –

I think both of these ‘where did the leaf live’ situations were interesting in their own right.

The real problem these artists who say science ruins ‘the magic of the world’ is they don’t know any science at all.

If they knew just a little about it, they’d see some of the magic in science too.

But I won’t labour the point –

I mean it’s not my place to once again throw the second law of infodynamics into another artists face.

I’ve been doing that far too much lately & I really must cut down on it.

And in closing If you ask someone be they a leaf, an artist, or a man of science

They will all agree that…

….I’ve got to fucking get out more….

But then again….

Is there really anything wrong with leaves falling in a bored man’s head?...

Note: Yesterdays Poem “lottery Lines” has been updated! Improved?!

Newsflash!!!

I have finished the last poem I was working on yesterday – So if you read the nor very good version – then read the new ‘not very good but hopefully marginally better version’ now called “The Lottery Economy”.

LINK:

Now that I’m here I may as well chat about it. We all know that when the lottery gets a big jackpot, people all line up at the lottery agents – well maybe that’s a thing of the past nowadays but I think that still happens.

For a long time now – when I see the lines I get a twinged in my heart – for it’s like it is an allegory of our modern economy driven lives – people suspending their disbelief in the reality of the tiny odds-on offer for a successful outcome. .. .so it’s just like “The economy” – i.e. jobs careers, moving to the city to improve your life, working your ass off & burning yourself out in the hope it will truly get you somewhere.

Yes it might work for some, but I think for many a decade now that is a losing strategy, person for person.

The odds don’t add up.

I hope the Poem “The Lottery Economy” sums that up properly when you read it.

in my opinion that Beast we call & bow down too, “The Economy” hasn’t worked for a long time, if ever.

We have mega cartel Corporates sucking the time & energy of Humans beings under the guise of “Good Jobs”.

I’m not against Jobs, I’m against Cartels masquerading as “Employers”.

With this becoming the norm, there is only ever going to be one winner in 100, tops.

Many small & medium players, is what works well for the most people.

I’m sure all the bad guys running the Cartel Scam called “The Modern Economy” know this inherently.

The outcome is their aim.

The mistake too many people make is thinking this isn’t the case.

The good news is we can still save things by supporting small & medium companies.

That’s why the beer I’m drinking now tastes good, is at a fair price, & is probably also good place to work.

“Smoke, Mirrors & Bad Medicine: The ‘Internal Logic’ That Don’t Make Sense- ” (An Essay)

by Martin Anton Smith

Ok I’m writing this introduction after I’ve already written the body of the essay below. For some reason, I started writing about this thing called “internal logic”. And I might be re-defining the term. I don’t know why I chose this topic – this is the beauty of writing – the words seem to just fall out of the sky. I know that’s cliche – but it is true of the best writing that can be done (or any creative endeavor I guess).

I’m sure the reason is that all that is happening (words/ideas flowing from seemingly nowhere) is that your subconscious has been working on an interesting…let’s call it a ‘proto- thought’…& when your subconscious deems it’s done the neccessary & wants to give birth to the idea to the world – it spews it forward into your executive functioning ‘outside world’ orientated brain – & hopefully onto a page or screen.

[Sidebar: *Psshht* that’s the sound of me opening a beer as I proof read this finished essay. A drink makes all this easier – as does music – I’m listening to ‘Mother Love Bone’ the short lived Seatle grunge/rock fusion band. The lead singer Andy Wood was an amazing talent who tragically had too many drugs – a typically sad rock cliche, but at least in terms of music, one very good if not great album was produced. And on that matter: ‘Escaping’ via easily available illegal drugs is folly – the fact they are so readilly available suggests this is actually a very conformist way to act. if he’d lived longer Andy Wood may have twigged that in an mostly un-free world (like the big music biz), you can’t escape by conforming. This is why when you think about it, all those ‘tragic’ cliche celebrity deaths are semi-planned by the industry & wider culture itself. After all – more records are sold that way. – M.S.]

Anyway I don’t want to get stuck on the mysteries of the ‘writing process’ too much here. It’s not that kind of an essay. So back to the subject matter – ‘internal logic’.

So what I will be talking about with the concept of internal logic, is about how no matter how mad something can be – let’s say the classic example of an organisation bound by paperwork (or nowadays emails & computer word files) & bureacracy. Given that these places essentially exist in what in truth is really a ‘simulated reality’, they can get very irrational. Anything grounded in the real connot go off script too much – that’s impossible by definition. This is more easily noticed by someone who is more connected, or more correctly, wedded to reality by nature of their profession – say a brick layer or a carpenter.

[Sidebar: I’m still proof reading & here is another extra thought: Another more gruesome example of the concept is that of how the Nazi’s increased their efforts – that is their scarce resources – in the extermination of the Jews in the concentration camps. This seems strange given that after 1943 Germany was losing the war, which was now being fought on multiple fronts. Logic said that given Germany wanted to win the war – it would have been wiser to either use the Jews to help the war effort – such as produce weapons in factories etc. But the reality was that to do this Hitler would have been defying his own internal logic. Hitlers ‘prime aim’ was to kill as many Jews as possible – not to win the World War.

I think Hitler knew deep down that he would not win the War from the moment it was declared. . .& as such the main aim was & would always be the extermination of as many Jews as possible in as small amount of time. Thus Hitler’s internal logic was not contridicted at all, even though he diverted core war resources from the front in doing so.

Personally, I don’t think Hitler ever really thought he would win that war, so the gruesome actions I’ve discussed were likely simply his internally logical cold, cost benefit analysis. Yes Evil is real, & Hitler was so evil it makes you think theres a good chance what happened was a supernatural phenomenon. To me it’s almost like how could it not be? – M.S.]

Someone who has a job that is moving & transforming real things can’t by neccessity engage in the madness of the bureau. An builder can’t for example say to the investors “Building has become far too masculine since Ramses the Great, & as such I’m building this 100 floor skyscraper purely out of co-joined daiseys”. But a bureaucrat can entertain the same kind of folly & not only get away with it, but be given a knight or damehood or any number of financial & non financial accolades. They do this by sleight of hand, sophistry & chicanery – of all the different classes bureaucrats, it is naturally the Politicians (govt. & NGO’s) & Mega Corporation CEO’s & their major shareholders (For they are by neccessity, Politicians as well) that are the best at this.

I could list any number of examples of these types – but let’s just list a few (& I have knick-name-ised them to beat the censors, as you do in wartime) names from the post 2020-2022 era: Dr Slouchi – Bill Doors – Jacinda Hardened – Justin Un-Trudeau- Klaus SS Schwab. For these types & their like are our modern comic-book villains who have become all too real. These real-life-comic-villains all got lauded for their total madness, & wrongheadedness & civic destruction edicts.

But why were they so lauded? Well, it was an example of the monster of internal logic. The system that was in place, bolstered by a bought & paid band of crony journalist army had a theoretical framework that had a certain internal logic to it. The internal logic was this false premise:

That thing they created in the lab to combat that thing that was also almost certainly also created in a gain-of-function research lab, was a not a dud & actually worked.

Once they had a commitment to believing this falsity – they built a whole house of cards around propping it up – including lockdowns & attacking free speech. The gang had its own internal logic that informed all the stupid democracy & ecomonically destructive eddicts, no matter how bad things became. As I eluded to with the Bricklayer/Carpenter reference – If viruses were actually as big as marbles, we would be able to see exactly what was happening, & all the wild ideas would never have been able to be foistered by the Politicians onto the mases – they’d be laughed at as much as the builder was who told his investors that he wanted to build a skyscraper made entirely from co-joined daisees.

Internal logic is a funny thing – if you let yourself get too wrapped up in it, pretty soon you too will brainwash yourself into thinking you’re not working in a madhouse. . . & once you’ve crossed that rubicon, that’s when they’ve really got you by the balls. . .pretty soon you’ll even convince yourself if you climb the next rung of the corporate or governmental ladder this time will be different from all the others this time you’ll be happy. Look at the faces of these people that hold these beliefs – they are not happy, & they get much more unhappy & mean looking with age.

These things I talk of have happened a few billion times since the dawn of man – yes there is indeed nothing new under the sun. Everything nowadays just has different veneer painted over it.

Yes, once in the grips of internal logic, pretty soon you’ll be married to a prick, or a bitch, pay forty percent income tax & have a massive mortgage, have assholes for friends & forever be hanging out for the weekend, or your measly two, three, or if your lucky – a massive four weeks holiday. This is just garden variety stuff – we who are lucky enough to have eyes to see, see it everywhere.

Shackled with the high fever of internal logic – you see a mirage of security, yet in truth the generals rank of internal logic global military could fire you tomorrow, in the next few hours, or even in less than three second’s time.

Spend enough time around the Black Widow that spins the web called internal logic, and so they’ve bought your soul. Worse – you’ve agreed to willingly sell it. Then with your weak-to-none defences down, she’s got you straitjacketed in her web. She’s about to sink her fangs into you. She won’t do you a favour & end it all quickly….oh no no no no! – She’ll take a sip of you every night for eternity. You snooze you lose – that’s just the way it goes.

The demons of internal logic will own your very being freehold until someone who saves schmucks like you shows pity on your sorry ass & rips up that life-contract on your behalf.

Yes sir-ee internal logic is the biggest trick of the madhouse. Don’t fall for it before it’s too late. Those slimey guys selling you the internal logic of the madhouse sell billions of souls for a dime a pop. Aren’t you, glorious you worth more than a dime? Even a total asshole is worth a lot more than that, and even then they’d bargain for it.

Internal logic it’s out there hiding in plain sight, convincing everybody it doesn’t exist. This is why people in madhouses & in offices both think they’re sane, despite the madness that surrounds them. At least the literal madhouse kind is more honest, with a higher chance you’ll one day get out – after all madhouses at least all have limited capacities.

It goes without saying that most people will hate to hear these words – they like to pretend that their lives aren’t totally fucked up beyond remit. They’ll get worked up about a tiny stain on a carpet, but for something like sellign their soul to a modern shyster-demon-in-a-suit, they’ll happily look the other way.

And so I leave you with this witty rejoinder which is a twist on an old theme:

People – can’t live with ’em, can’t build a time machine & hand victory to the plucky pragmatic Neanderthals.

But in closing I’ll let in on a little secret that I alluded to earlier: I’m really an optimist. I actually truly believe someone great will break you outa this mess. Call it a hunch. This belief defies logic. I won’t say I feel it to be true – for this will imply I’m an emotion flake. It’s more correct for me to say this:

I envisage this to be true.

So as Chevy Chase once said to his family in that classic 1980’s Xmas movie (that I forget the title to – was it National Lampoons Xmas Vacation?):

“Were gonna be the happiest bunch of assholes that ever lived!

Well at the very least, a few of us might just be.

Ok so at the end of my intro – I said I’d be back for some closing remarks – so here I am. I guess this is a good chance to say why do I think I wrote this? Some (I hope) will call it Revolutionary Writing. Thomas Paine eat your heart out! Well yes these words did just fall out of the sky, like the rain droplets of a sun shower while on an afternoon stroll – BUT to make more concrete guesses , I might say that at my advanced age of forty-six, I’m more interested in Truth, spelt with a capital T.

Perhaps this is just a run-of-the-mill middle age intellectual orientation – but I’m not sure exactly how run-of-the-mill that actually is? Might it not be that most middle aged & above have hemmed themselves into their internal logic of a ‘on paper well organised life’?

If the truth of the madness actually jumped off the paper & into real life – this could lead to a total psycological melt-down. The madness of this kind of life which has been buried in their psyce so heavilly, bolstered by that particulal life’s internal logic system, surely has to stay till death for most people afflicted by the ailment. If all the Truth finally came out like a Yellowstone geyser into the conscious brain It would conjure an epiphany that they’d wasted their best years on a total mirage.

Lets call a spade a spade: Does not the worst of the “Corporate world” – i.e. the “Mega Corporations” rely on the repression of the Truth via the propaganda that is the phenomena of internal logic? Which has particularly taken over the prior world since the 1970s. Priorly the situation was that marked by genuine competition of the millions of small to medium companies. I mean – why else would someone waste their lives creating the unholy, unhalthy crap that is produced by mega corporates?

Basically it’s all about Stockholm Syndrome. Someone working for a Mega-Corporate (or a Monopoly like that thing we call the ‘Government’) or a smaller company that thinks like a Mega Corporate has Stockholm Syndrome – they’ve fallen in love with their captors. The words someone says while living under this ailment are the epitets of what I’m calling internal logic – which is at base just the cultural programming of the captor. The aim is so that the victim doesn’t even know they are held captive, thus they won’t want to actually escape. Then the piramid scheme economy that is created & run by the Mega Corporates stays intact & ideally thrives.

I’ll end with this classic Bukowski quote – which descibes what I’ve been taking about perfectly:

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

― Charles Bukowski

Bukowski was dead right – & the reason no one breaks out of the situation is becasue of the brainwashing that is internal logic as evidenced when the Stocholm Syndrome sufferer says things like “If I work another five years here at this Mega Corporation, I’ll be able to earn X, then I’ll be able to live in Suburb Y, then I’ll be able to hang out with the ‘in crowd’, Z”. When someone says or thinks that, they’ve invariably sacrificed their entire lives to a scammer, as Bukowski astutely summarised in his quote.

So if you ever catch yourself talking like that – you’ll know that you are a prisoner spiting the empty platitudes, which is the embodiment of the internal logic or the programming – of the pirimid scheme that is run for & by the mega corporation economy. Once you realise that you have become a zombie to these crooks – now your first priority is the need to work on breaking free from your captors – to massively understate it – they are not your friends. Don’t ever let yourself demand your own imprisonment again.

For that is why we have the world we have in 2024, most people havent broken free of their captors.

I hope a few people who read this end up being free from their captors.

If you can read it – then we still have that slowly-becoming-extinct thing called free speech. If we don’t wisen up, perhaps in ten years no one will be able to talk or even think about anything freely or independantly. Free speech & thought could be gone forever. Orwells vision of the dystopian future in the book called 1984 (read it while you can) – will have been fully implementated into society.

We’ll know we have collectively broken free of our slavery when the Mega Corporations are no longer running the earth-prison usually just lazily called the “economy”. There will be a lot less badly made useless, easily broken, unhealthy crap on offer. You’ll see a lot more smaller, often owner operated companies pop up, & they won’t be killed off by a mega corporate within a couple of years. Depression & anxiety will plummet, and no one will be chugging those poisonous, mind & body destroying Big-Pharma pills.

[P.s. Like the famous ‘post quantum selection experiment’, I can feel the Patriots of the distant future read these words. This would mean we were ultimately victorious in our efforts. Perhaps I’ll meet a time traveller from the future, disguised badly as someone from my timeline? Or am I just like Corporal Jones in that great Brit comedy of yesteryear called ‘Dad’s Army’ – once again delving into the realms of fantasy. Maybe. Maybe not?.]

The End

“The Max 49% Bastardry Law” (A Poem)

by Martin Anton Smith

What if you’ve said all there is to say?

What if you’ve now become a jaded ‘tribute writer’ of your former self?

When will something new come?

I wonder,

Is the lack of inspiration because I’ve been happier lately?

I wonder,

Can you still write ‘good stuff’ if your old friend ‘depression & anxiety’ abates?

I wonder,

Is this the inevitable curse of the good writer?

To become well?

To start to see the glass as half-full?.

To be more organised than not?

To drink less?

To yell less?

To be able to easily afford the nice things?

To have stable relationships?

& perhaps the final literary death knell –

To become an early riser?.

But thank God!

Alas I don’t need to panic just yet.

As I have at best only two of those six symptoms.

If I have four, then I’ll become officially diagnosed.

I’ll be entered into the book or words.

My name will be entered as one of the ‘walking literary dead’.

A soul who no longer has anything interesting to say.

Of course, what I’m actually talking about,

Is more readily referred to in the creative space as “The problem of success”.

It becomes a ‘catch 22’, in that it deadens the creative spirit.

So logically, it’s better to ‘make it’ after death – that way you’ll maximise your best work.

We could call it the “Van Gogh” effect – for he sold only one painting while alive.

But then again, while all the above is true – I must be fair & even handed about the rest.

It’s also a bad thing to have something worthwhile to say,

& be afraid to say it.

But most importantly with words & writing aside,

A bastard is a bastard is a bastard,

Whether he or she writes or not,

or has good material or not.

We should always remember,

To at worse,

Be only 49% Bastards.

For the world sure doesn’t need any more ‘amazing creatives’,

Who also happen to casually destroy the fabric of society.

Contrary to popular opinion,

That ain’t cool.

That aint cool at at all.

In fact,

It’s fucking boring,

& if you look closely at these type’s work –

It’s all stolen from someone else anyway.

All creatives should never forget ‘The Max 49% Bastardry Law’.

You’ll still have fun,

For you don’t necessarily have to be squeaky clean,

And you won’t help destroy the Earth.

Call it a novel idea of mine.

Else that saying will continue to always be true:

“Never meet your heros”.

Those assholes flagrantly ignore the Max 49% Bastardry law.

We might even call them “Those wizards of bastardry” –

But then again, that catchey term might only make their heads swell even bigger.

So don’t now give them souless pricks any of your time or your dimes.

We in the West have become to far indulgent of shady assholes.

That’ll be what the Historian from the next Empire that replaces us will write:

“Their downfall was that they wasted all their time & money on totally shady assholes”.

My theory is the next Empire will call a spade a spade.

They all at least start that way.

So in summary – let me or you say this the next time someone asks us ‘what do you do?’

“I’m a writer, & also I’m technically not an asshole”.

And hopefully for us all – that won’t be a lie.

Updates from the abyss

Hello there Poem readers of great aplomb. Take me to your leaders. I want to see the cats. The cats are in charge – we all know that. The Cats have pulled of all the rights of life without the responsibilities. their only catch is they mostly rely on us for food.

I have (as usual) been trying to survive small town NZ life. This is not easy for someone who writes Poems. But then again NZ is quite open to these things, so what am I complaining about?

The day job is going ok – I work in the trades. If you mix things up enough you can keep your sanity. e.g. dig a hole here, bang a nail there, prune a tree here.

Since my last letter/update I have written a reasonable amount – the links are below & I have written a line to describe them.

Poems from latest to earliest:

This is a giant complain about how humans are (a typical theme of mine). I argue for example that Atomic Physicists are not necessarily ‘civilised”

This is about my messy room. Just as well if my cat told me to clean up I can yell “No! I am an artiste!
This is a hurrah to the fact that if you are a loser, you can hide it with engaging the arts –
this is a well-worn trick which has been done since the caveman days –“No I don’t have an actual Bison for tea dear – I was too tired to go out & hunt one down – but look here – I drew a picture of one on our cave wall”
This is about practical ways to beat depressive behaviours – i.e. know exercise cuts it in half at the very least – due simply to dopamine release.
I went through a Chess playing phase – this is the notes of that.

It has been good to keep writing – unfortunately no one really reads them but then again all I do is this blog. Like most writers – I still need to “Bloom”. This means to be more business like. One day I better push harder. I fear that it is ‘fear of success’ rather than the more advertised ‘fear of failure’ that is the true reason. For that I guess I shoulf blame my childhood – why not? My theory is if I am screwing up ‘blooming’ – at least what I can do is keep writing & posting it here on my blog. At least that’s something – that’s at least like reading one page a day of a giant book – one day you will finish it.

Anyway nice chatting

till next time!

“He Who Seeks Flavour (sic) Amoungst the Gum-Chewers” (A Poem)

The man who cannot ‘walk & chew gum’ at the same time takes a long time to get anywhere –

Unless of course he hates to chew gum,

In which case he is always on time.

But then on arrival he faces a new problem –

No one wants him around –

You see ‘Gum chewers’ think ‘Non-Gum Chewers’ are snobs.

After a while this accusation gets to him & he begins to chew gum.

In no time he makes a lot of friends & is known for always being late.

Over-excited by his newfound popularity amoungst the ‘Gum Chewers’ –

He goes overboard:

He subscribes to “Gum Chewers Monthly Magazine”

He invests his life savings in Wrigleys

He joins the Ivory Towers set & writes a thesis called:

‘Saw Jaws & bubble blowing throughout the ages: a longitudinal study well worth sinking your teeth into’

He is then approached by a well known american publisher to turn his thesis into a book,

Then Hollywood comes a-knocking for a feature length documentary

‘Saw Jaws’ becomes a Rollicking blockbuster –

He moves into the Hollywood Hills & dates a bevy of ‘A-listers’ –

Of course – “what goes up, must come down”

Fast forward 7 years – he is washed up, on crack & outa fame & cash & lives under a bridge.

“I wish I’d never reached for that stick of gum” are the words that rattle his head constantly.

They are not the only ones

“How can something as insignificant as chewing gum lead to this”

“How did the Devil get me in such a obscure way as this”

“Now I am so broke I can’t even afford a pack of gum” 

Then he had an epiphany: he’d walk & not stop.

He’d walk & not chew gum – ad infinitum.

He Walked & Walked & Walked & never stopped.

People fed him along the way & gave him a bed at nights.

He began to get attention

Eventually the News Networks wanted to buy his story – for a princely sum.

Strangely he said yes and the whole ‘rise & fall’ story repeated itself again.

The moral of the story is this: Never try to impress the in-crowd.

Alas it is always true – they will chew you up & then spit you out.

But why can’t they Chew you up & spit you out at the same time?

Bloody Hypocrites!

Thankyou for enduring this long lasting & unpallatable gum chewing = life analogie

After all – It really is just some pricks piss poor poetry –

But then again – so it all is – it’s just the fancy packaging that makes you think otherwise.. .

Writers Block Poem #2 (A Poem)

By Martin Anton Smith

A few months ago, I wrote a Poem about “Writers Block”

It was about 10 lines.

To Steal Lars Ulrich’s favourite term,

Its content was best described as mostly “Stock”.

But alas – there is reason in the madness –

Yes! Let me tell you kind Sirs & Madams – the phrase “please add stock”,

isn’t just for the pages of cookbooks – the writer needs just it as much as the happy eater.

The strategy for the writer is that it will break the hoodoo that is ‘writers block’.

To put pen to paper or more modernly, single-index-finger to dirty-computer-button.

Because in the Poem or Writing game, to not be productive is to certainly risk ‘dying off entirely’ –

And that my fine poem reading, writing, & consuming friend – is a fate worse than death.

But perhaps as the High School English Teachers used to say, I am “exaggerating for effect” –

Like a typical over-the-top-arts-flake’ – yes this is possible.

But the again – perhaps not – after all good poem’s tell a story, do they not?

And no one would argue with the truism ‘good stories have changed the world’.

Well – Maybe a Lawyer or a Politician would but that merely proves my point.

& so now that this poem has served its purpose – to break writers block,

There is no point in more placking away at these dirty, chocolaty keys.

The “kill writers block objective” has been reached and on top of that,

To do so would result in this C- poem becoming a D- poem

& that is stupid in anyone’s book -even mine.

The End