Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
I’m the Man in Brown
(With apologies to Johnny Cash) Well, you wonder why I always dress in brown, Why never smiling white or blackened frown, And why does my visage and my old clothing fade into The background of the noisy hullabaloo? I wear brown for the folks who keep their peace And mind their business and respect police, I wear it for the citizens who behave with charity Not broadcasting from rooftops, noisily; I wear it for the people low on cash, Whose bank accounts and cars are not too flash, For sinners who believe or those who do not…
Continue Reading →Tranquillity, Too: A Revelation
(An Allegory) Behold, he cometh with clouds He had a second rate mind, and his name had been Register Seven. At two o’clock in the morning, after night fill, the infomer-cial for a “fat-free infuser” caused him to get into his zombie-mobile and drive to a window to collect his succulent “Stak-A-Krap.” He could eat that for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; the taste portable, running all over, smelling like a wet dog on a sunny day. So he ended up working there, managing what management called “the dining area.” His diseased yearnings had gotten him into difficulties with earlier jobs….
Continue Reading →Nabokov’s Conundrum
You are doubtless familiar with Poe’s Law: “Satirical expressions of extremism online are hard to distinguish from genuine ones without indicating intent.”* As inventor Nathan Poe put it, in relation to fundamentalist religious belief: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake it for the genuine article.”** But, as usual, the master of English as a second language formulated something even better. Writing about the announcement of Facebook from the terrace of the Montreux Palace in the Spring of 1977, Vladimir Nabokov formulated his…
Continue Reading →Tiny Wheelwrights of the Dawn
1968-1974; 1995 As they became known to their legion of fans, “The Wrights” rode the high wave of prog rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s, re-surfacing briefly (and disastrously) in the Age of Grunge. From the time of their second album, if not their first, they were unsurpassed for arty, ambitious, meticulously structured, and extremely long records, produced according to the principles obtaining from nature, such as the spinning of a spider’s web. As their putative leader, Rael Conan Doyle, declared to ‘Cacophony Magazine’, “we don’t want you to hum; we don’t want you to dance. Don’t tap…
Continue Reading →A Dream of Dad’s
(by Pierre Bonnard)
Father dabbed his mouth, Declared contentment with his meal Mother had made, after a day At work, assembled to “Blue Hills”; And in expansive mood, Reflected that they might do well To open a café, right on this spot, To pay some bills. This very clever man Somehow forgot to wonder why Places of hospitality Open and close; But thought that patrons would arrive And seat themselves upon our couch, Cars in our crowded drive and on The table, elbows. Mum would serve and make the food And Dad would schmooze; From a domestic kitchen This would pass, And as…
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