Category Archives: AWARDS & OTHER POSTS

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Gods Are Dead? by William Ernest Henley

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted,
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated
In some still land of lilacs and the rose.

Once high they sat, and high o’er earthly shows
With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes,
The gods are dead.

It must be true. The world, a world of prose,
Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,
Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows
Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:-
‘The Gods are Dead!’

by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY (1849-1903)
Public Domain Poetry

SOAPBOX TNT // Tooty Frooty

TATI: Tony, I have found your dream job!

TONY: Is there even such a thing? Work is work after all.

TATI: It’s something you already do for free every day. But now you can get money and respect for it!

TONY: What? Sleeping?

TATI: Nope. Any other ideas?

TONY: Chewing? I chew a lot when I eat food.

TATI: Getting hotter…

TONY: Why, thank you! I always try to look my best…

TATI: Don’t flatter yourself, beta male.

TONY: Well, twist my titties. That was rude!

TATI: Tony, are you going to keep guessing or pout like a little sissy?

TONY: Masturbate?

TATI: Let me just show you the link, because I’m almost scared to hear your next suggestion.

TONY: Wise!

Priest farts on church members as a display of “God’s power”

TATI: So, what do you think? Would you like to schedule a job interview? Or maybe ‘audition’ in this case?

TONY: I don’t think so. I mean, farts do not have magical healing properties.

TATI: Some consider smelling farts as healthy by the way. But I’d rather continue to take care of my health with more traditional means.

Lovely Smells

Is Smelling Farts Healthy? Research Says Maybe

TONY: Yes, me too. I don’t think I want some ‘holy man’ getting all flatulent with my face in the name of some all-powerful ‘god’. I mean, what a crock of shit!

TATI: Well… let’s back to the farting priest. I find it’s rather funny but I feel you may have another point of view as a former believer. May I ask what you think regarding this?

TONY: Believe me, I do see the humour in this as the whole scenario is rather absurd. Someone pretending to have a direct line to a god then demonstrating said god’s power by farting on people? Those are the ingredients for absurdist comedy right there. But I do kinda find it sad too.

TATI: I see. Do you feel cheated, ridiculed?

TONY: While I was certainly never taken in by a scam like this, I was still a member of a christian church for about twenty years. That turned out to be a huge mistake, and I’ve spent the last decade trying to shed the mindset that such a religious culture programs into you.

TATI: So, they didn’t fart on your face, but in your brains.

TONY: Exactly. I was so desperate to fit in with my chosen ‘family’ that I was more than willing to try and believe whatever nonsensical bible story or precept they presented. Talking snakes and donkeys. A boat full of the entire world’s animals. A loving god that sanctioned incest, genocides and slavery. The cognitive dissonance was strong with me.

TATI: I heard an interesting thought recently, that certain linguistic anthropologists think religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain, dulling critical thinking. So, in regards to what you’re saying… it really makes sense.

TONY: I don’t know if that’s necessarily true of religious people across the board, but it certainly was with me. So, in that sense there is a ring of truth to it.

TATI: I’m glad you have since ventilated your brain. But it looks like now we need to ventilate our room. Tony?

TONY: That wasn’t me! It must have been you!

TATI: Me?! No!

TONY: Well, then it must have been the dog. Or Gerald the Fart Fairy.

TATI: Let’s say it was the priest from Limpopo!

TONY: Yes, let’s say it was that charlatan, for that is indeed what he is. And I despise such people. He’s really no better than the Benny Hinns, Paula Whites and Kenneth Copelands of the evangelical world. He just exists on a smaller scale is all.

TATI: Benny Hill was a priest?

TONY: If only! I think Hinn’s healing services could’ve been more entertaining if they’d utilised under-cranked footage of parishioners being slain in the spirit to Boots Randolph’s ‘Yakety Sax‘.

TATI: I smell your outrage, Tony. Well… our time would be better spent taking the dog for a walk.

TONY: We have a dog?

TATI: Gotcha!

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Garden Patch by Paul Cameron Brown

Gourd was taken to task when she understood the limitations the garden patch had placed upon her people.

It was early fall and the dancers of the vegetable kingdom paraded their charms in bright, full regalia. Across the earth in splotches of colour, the tomatoes scented a good fall. So, too, the kingly husks of corn and the melons, spinach and cucumber in turn eyed the approaching season in growing faith. Each had a succulent function and dangled their inviting flesh to the beholder.

But, alas, what did gourd promise? She was deeply conscious of lacking the forward brightness of tomato and pumpkin. She lacked leafy greens so evidently prized and when her fellow vegetables covered the brown soil in preparation for the fine day they would bask across a kitchen table, it was almost too much for the sensitive gourd to stomach. Why even squash, which she felt closest to, had more of a function than she. So versatile did the big neighbour seem in comparison to herself, the ugly dwarf.

She was on the verge of casting herself in despair across the rickety fence or joining the long, black embers of a dead fire young boys had prepared months back. Surely, she was the outcast of the plant world. How grotesque her features were, so hard and unpliable seemed her flesh. Even her skin tones were half-caste. No recipes called for her presence. A mood of growing helplessness seemed to envelop her.

A boy, the earlier fire setter, is describing an odd vegetable, tubular and often misshapen, that was excellent for all sorts of childhood pursuits – making paperweights, building scarecrows and decorating mantles.

“If only people knew,” he bubbles.

“Still more success stories,” the little gourd cries on hearing the child’s comment.

“At least I won’t have to be humbled in her presence,” the gourd thought, her self confidence shattered.

And with that the little gourd approached the Vegetable King and asked to use her remaining wish. For in those days all living things were handed one means for improving themselves.

“I resolve to be a new edible,” she sighed, “something other than a gnomish gourd. Make, O King, a glorious . . . pumpkin.” But the Vegetable King decided not to abandon his earlier invention and so gourds live on. Distant relatives of the bright, new pumpkin, but their inspiration nonetheless.

by PAUL CAMERON BROWN (?-?)
Public Domain Poetry

SPAM® Sushi #19

Don’t disregard to factor in the costs and benefits to your loved ones close-mouthed friends and classification as amply as deal with associates who are feigned by way of your baleful behaviour.
— SaturasIntagorgo

Dear SaturasIntagorgo,
There are certainly benefits to using our loved ones and close-mouthed friends to cover up our baleful deeds, and we never miss an opportunity. We always wear gloves with their fingerprints on them, and carry samples of their DNA (they’ll think twice about spitting in our faces next time!).
Right now we’re going to sneak into the kitchen and commit another crime of the century—pick the chocolate chips out of all the cookies—and none of the proof we leave behind will point to us. (Of course, we could do this after our loved ones and close-mouthed friends unlock the closet where they’ve detained us because they’ve decided to overlook our baleful behaviour.)
— Tati & Tony (Two Astonished Miscreants Who Cannot Believe That a Close-mouthed Person Can Even Spit)

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // A Short Hymn To Venus. by Robert Herrick

Goddess, I do love a girl,
Ruby-lipp’d and tooth’d with pearl;
If so be I may but prove
Lucky in this maid I love,
I will promise there shall be
Myrtles offer’d up to thee.

by ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674)
Public Domain Poetry