Twelve exquisite corpses,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Eleven unexpected juxtapositions,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Ten menageries revolting,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Nine photos of Rose Sélavy,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Eight treacherous images,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Seven surrealist manifestos,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Six soluble fishes,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Five urinals,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Four fur-lined teacups,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Three found objects,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Two readymades,

And a mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

A mustache like Salvador Dali’s.

Newspaper Blackout Poems

Other good things about heaven: Jesus tweets. And He has made sure that in heaven, twitter is never over capacity. And heaven makes sure that all ads are blocked on Facebook.

My only regret is that I missed Kristina’s Rapture Day Yard Sale.  Once you get up into heaven, it’s hard to get back to town for a yard sale.

Oh, and the Pixies were right:  God is seven.

The vuvuzelas were stacked by the chimney with care, ready for blowing and buzzing to cheer St. Chrysalis when he trips down the stairs.

The children cast aspersions, and ate crinkled corn, and some danced like St. Elvis, and some like Rip Torn

And I in my bowler, and my wife in her cape, were waltzing and weaving, napping and knitting, hither and yon, till nowhere was safe

Out on the lawn, we heard such a platter, as if St Elvis had come, to help us with our hip shaking and vuvuzela noise making and matter.

We hoped for St. Elvis, with his white jumpsuit a tatter, looking much fatter, to sing solstice songs like Hound Dog and Return to Sender.

The children sprayed us with cognac, and the vulvuzelas buzzed on their own, and a dozen tiny elven Elvises, leaped out of the phone.

A surreal Christmas to all, sang each miniature Elvis, with a very real shake of each miniature pelvis, penguins dancing in time.

All soon were shaking and singing, each fur-covered spoon, and each fur covered cup, wishing us a surreal solstice and a very long night.

My approach to SAD season is not so much to buoy myself with false cheer but to really wallow in the sadness by revisiting my favorite really depressing songs. So, plug in your full-spectrum lights and take your vitamin D supplements, and brace yourself.

As always, it’s good to start the list with a couple of songs about the cause of SAD, the loss of light in winter (or, at least, more generally about darkness and the lack of sunlight, literal and metaphorical).

Lenny Kravitz, “Ain’t No Sunshine” (cover of the Bill Withers original)

Best Coast, “When the Sun Don’t Shine”

Jamey Johnson, “Even the Skies Are Blue”

According to Jamey Johnson, not even God is immune to SAD: “God must by crying / because even the skies are blue.”

Along with Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson is one of the great sources of SAD songs. How bad can it get? Well, when all your dreams have withered and died, that seems to be as low as you can get.

Love lost is one of the greatest sources of blueness, and nobody does the lost love blues better than Bessie Smith. This is a nice cover of her “Empty Bed Blues” by Anne McCue:

I’m in a Best Coast sort of blue mood, it seems. As Best Coast knows, there’s only one thing worse than an empty bed—and that’s a bed that’s not empty. As they note in and “Wish He was You,” “It’s 6 am I’m in someone else’s bed / Oh I wish he was you”

Two standard themes of sad songs are lost love and unrequited love, and the brilliance of this song by A Fine Frenzy  is to combine the two, a sad song of lost unrequited love: A Fine Frenzy, “Almost Lover”

And my favorite SAD song of the year has to be Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” which consists of one long painful guitar solo by Eddie Hazel. “Play it like someone told you your mama just died,” George Clinton told Hazel at the recording session (at least according to legend), and Hazel plays it like everybody just died. This is Michael Hampton playing guitar in this live version.

It is indeed a beautiful sight. The ignorant have often stopped and snickered at such sights, encumbered by the false belief that they have discovered porridge cows mating. The positioning of one porridge cow atop another is merely for convenience of storage and not for the purposes of copulation. Porridge cows are born pregnant and thus do not engage in sexual activity, which is fortunate, as there’s little chance that a porridge cow in the wild would live long enough (given the slow pace of their movements) even to get remotely close to another porridge cow, much less close enough to initiate sexual contact.

So, let’s just enjoy the porridge cows for what they are–a wonderful part of the autumn landscape.

From the Boston Globe: Sarah Palin, in an unexpected poke at Senator Scott Brown, said that while Massachusetts may “put up with’’ the GOP lawmaker and “some of the antics,’’ Republicans in states across the nation wouldn’t tolerate his more moderate views and compromising ways. “But up here in Alaska, and so many places across the US, where we have a pioneering, independent spirit, and we have an expectation that our representatives in D.C. will respect the will of the people and the intelligence of the people, well, up here, we wouldn’t stand for that,’’ she said.

Let the play begin.

MacPalin, or The Scott(Brown)ish Tragedy, a play of pioneering independent spirit

MacPalin: Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural antics do breed Scott MacBrown’s unnatural troubles: liberal leanings, weak compromises.

MacPalin: I have given suck, know tender feeling 2 the babe, but I’d pluck my nipple from boneless gums before voting with Democrats.

MacPalin: Scott MacBrown, screw your courage to the sticking-place and respect the will of the people.

MacPalin: Oh, Scott MacBrown, I do fear thy nature is too full of the milk o’ human kindess.

MacPalin: But up here in Alaska, our deaf pillows discharge no secrets. We have a pioneering spirit, bloody, bold, and resolute.

MacPalin: “Unsex me here,” Scott MacBrown cries, and the real Republican replies, “Already been done!”

MacPalin: Laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm MacPalin.

MacBrown: I was not of woman born but birthed by Mama Grizzly, and untimely ripped from her den.

MacBrown: Though grizzly born, I’m 100% American and have US birth certificate (just looking ahead to 2016, or 2012—too soon?)

MacPalin: Lay on, MacBrown, and damned be he who first cries, “Pls refudiate!”

All exit, pursued by a mama grizzly bear.

Curtain

Karen, Period

And Trevor would be more than happy to write a song for you or for someone you know (or even for someone you don’t know). Check out the Trevor Strong website.