The CuisinArt

from dylan…

New school. Still within first month of attendance. Ms. Yammy’s third grade class. Time of day: 11:20 AM. Preceded by break for consumption of small ingestions. To be followed by break for consumption of larger quantities of intake entitled ‘Lunch.’ So is routine of day.

Alphabet cutouts pasted along the wall encircle your young narrator. Stalking him with their repetition. What a longueur. What a passionless ritual of singsong rhythm.

Saggy skinned Yammy, plump and near-sighted with a dictionary on her desk, adjusts her bifocals, trying to find a word meant to challenge female peer Malia Madrona.

Malia Madrona. Pigtails. Fingertips covered in colored paste, one hand blue, the other pink. An irritating nymph certain males swoon over.

Not this student. Not your narrator.

“Malia…” Instructing gorilla-Yammy, with rampant avoirdupois, clicks her mouth, scanning the pages of her dictionary. “Malia, please spell ‘Wreck,’” the bumbling fool requests.

Is easy. At risk of sounding ironic, is child’s play.

This narrator could stand and recite to this instructor the famed French poet Theophile Gautier. “A cat will be your friend, but never your slave.” But such outré behavior might flummox the old wench, so this studious pupil patiently watches the bane Malia struggle over the word. Such incompetence.

“Wreck…”

This narrator could stand and lecture menstruating Yammy on her antidepressants, which she swallows like candy, and how they cause her infertility. But no. Will not frazzle the esteemed instructor so. Yammy, the bulky knuckled creature, matronly, with a face packed with moles.

The young thing squeaks, “Could you use it in a sentence, please?”

“After the tornado, all the houses in the neighborhood were a wreck,” recites barren-wombed Yammy.

“Could you provide the language of origin, please?” This dilatory bastard child Malia intends to run me insane!

“It is… Middle English.”

“Wreck. R-E… C-K? Wreck?”

“I’m sorry, Malia. W-R-E-C-K.”

The dyslexic bitch sits and it’s time for the flabby-chested, child-starved Yammy to test this student - Your narrator.

“Humphrey…” The dirty hog runs her eyes along the tome’s dry pages, trying to find a suitable challenge for your eager pupil. “Humphrey…” Such a blind slug. She trails off and returns with this banal finish, “Please spell, ‘Wry.’”

Whip-snap, your narrator spits bullet letters at her – “R-Y-E.”

“Oh, no, Humphrey, sorry. That isn’t correct. I was asking for W-R-Y, the adjective. Not ‘rye’ the grain.”

What is this misandry!

Pox infested Yammy with her useless ovaries. Ms. Evolution-gone-aWRY. She motions for the next victim – beefy Stevie, a repugnant dork with Velcro sandals.

“Humphrey…” Phallus-deprived Yammy glares this narrator down. “You may sit.”

Inside his head, your narrator repeats to himself, “A cat will be your friend…”

Home, or what was home, was crushed by a space rock and is now a crater of smoking rubble.

For billions and trillions of years - from God knows when - dust slowly gravitated together and traveled through the cosmos - from God knows where – until it reached our solar system, rocketed toward this planet and crashed through this atmosphere to land square on my house and, subsequently, crush the body of my twenty-something girlfriend.

It could’ve landed anywhere. Out in a field. In the ocean. On my neighbors house. Point is, it had to land. Even lightning has to hit something. Just bad luck if it ends up in your body. Or your girlfriends’.

Certain things survived the blow: A pair of trousers here, some silverware there, the remote to the TV. You know, all the important stuff.

And the ringing from deep in the pit lets me know, somehow, a phone endured.

Digging through the sizzling wallpaper, the ruined centerpieces, the smoldering appliances, I find it. My cell.

Because of the smoking rock next to me, instead of saying ‘Hello,’ I just wheeze.

On the other end is my brother. “I’m getting married!” He yells.

And all I can do is cough.

“What’s going on?” He asks. “Aren’t you psyched for me?”

Through the rock’s toxic smell, I dry heave, “Who’s the girl?”

“Kim.” He sings her name.

“Kim’s the…” - more coughing here - “…the dancer?” My foot gets stuck in the icebox of a melting refrigerator.

“No, dude. Riley’s the dancer. Kim’s the one with the huge ass. Dude, you interested in Riley? I can hook you up. Or, no, you’re with whatshername?”

My foot sinks deeper into the sticky puddle of aluminum and I gag, “My house got flattened by a meteor. Her too.”

And my newly engaged brother, he says, “Again?”

Yes. Again. This has happened a few times before. Not an asteroid, necessarily. Doesn’t have to be. Traffic accident. Brain parasites. Could be anything.

Disney Land could destroy life as we know it. We’re still the ones paying the entrance fee.

Sorry, but how many times can you be surprised by a freak occurrence?

Not saying the whole world is out to get me, just the piece that landed on my girl.

I hack a long one.

“Three ways I see it,” my brother’s voice says through the phone, “One is chance. Two is freewill. Three is fate.”

So this rock came all this way specifically to find me and obliterate my new girlfriend’s bones?

I guess these things happen.

“The universe works in billions and trillions,” my brother says. “Scary, dude. The precision of it all.”

He said that last time.

MECHANICAL MAN by, Jessica Sansom

Though a sort of infamous recluse by this point, some are already hailing Raymond Chancellor as one of this generations’ greatest minds. But three months ago, the residents of Airway Heights only knew Raymond, if they knew him at all, as an advertising executive who sculpted as a hobby. Mostly, Raymond admits, he kept to himself. Not an “active social life.” Until, recently, when he has almost unwillingly been thrust into the limelight.

Now, the outside of Raymond’s house is a massive crowd of people from around the country – the majority of whom are present for religious beliefs. Some come to protest, others to worship. Raymond prefers to stay out the debate and hold up in his room. Occasionally peer out a window. Nothing more.

Back in July, neighbors of Raymond started hearing noises coming from inside the house. Also, around this time, Raymond stopped going to work. Co-workers recount his absence as particularly puzzling. A fellow employee, Kelly Reich, says Raymond “never missed a day of work” the eight years they’d worked together. After a few days, Kelly recalls phoning Raymond at home. Raymond answered, said everything was fine but he probably wouldn’t be back to work for some time. When asked if he was sick, the answer was a terse “No.”

Outside of Raymond’s home, the neighbors’ curiosity grew. They knew he was in his basement, but aside from the loud sounds and a couple sightings of smoke from a small basement window, no one knew what he was doing. Just some bellowing and billowing.

“Right before all this,” a concerned neighbor says, “Raymond had been in a funk. His mother had died and he was very closeted about the whole thing. I don’t even know if he went to the funeral. Stopped seeing him at church too.”

All this speculation came to a head last Sunday night when the mystery was finally “revealed” as the “Gloxy Oxtornity Device” – or G.O.D. as religious patrons call it. The Gloxy is a large, sleek machine of sorts. With its peculiar shape, it is inarguably a technical marvel and may or may not defy both science and nature in its structure. Scraps and pieces fitted together to create what is either one man’s labor intensive artwork, or what may very well be the most complicated piece of equipment man has ever seen.

“I knew Raymond was into art,” a friend said, “but I didn’t know he was doing this sort of thing.”

While Scientists investigate Gloxy’s operative functions, Raymond holds up in his room, trying his best to remove himself from all the attention suddenly thrust upon him.

Raymond has shut the world out since Gloxy was unveiled, but yesterday he granted us an exclusive interview… of sorts. There were some conditions he requested: He would remain behind a closed door at all times, never speak or be spoken to. The questions would be slipped to him under the door, hand written on paper, and he would respond in kind - writing his answer on the other side and sliding it back.

Unfortunately, the interview was not as informative as we had hoped. Raymond’s answers were sparse, to say the least. Clipped, cryptic and, most of the time, completely illegible.

When asked specifically about how his mother’s death influenced Gloxy’s development, Raymond wrote back, “It didn’t.”

When asked about the origins of the name, Raymond wrote, “I don’t know.”

And when asked how he was able to design such a complex machine without anyone knowing anything about it, how he gathered all the parts and assembled it with no assistance, how a man with no training in engineering whatsoever built this machine in a matter of weeks, when asked simply “How did you do it?” Raymond wrote back, “I just followed the instructions,” followed by a long unreadable paragraph whose only decipherable word was ‘failure.’

More questions were asked, but Raymond stopped responding. Leaving myself, all the denizens on his lawn, and the attentive nation to wonder what this all means. This modern marvel.

The effect Gloxy has on people is undeniable.

There is no Horton street. 6^th and 8^th avenue are useless. Head down the Sunset Highway, people have posted signs directing you to “Gloxy.”

To “G.O.D.”

Of course, if you’re Raymond, all you have to do is peel back your curtains and look out the window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ny5BYc-Fs&feature=related

New from Dylan. Part 1…

The crate blocking Raymond’s front door stood almost six feet high and was made up of long planks of wood. Raymond wasn’t expecting any packages and it was far too early for the mail to have been delivered. Still, here was this thing.

His body tensed as the cold air chewed his skin.

Morning had come, as it had well over twelve thousand other times in Raymond’s life. But this was the first morning where there was something he couldn’t explain.

The sun had risen (as it had the tendency to do) and Raymond’s mind was lightning. In bed, on his back, head hanging off the side, he scribbled manically on a yellow legal pad. Quickly drawing diagrams and labeling them before their meaning was forgotten. Rough sketches of sculptures to-be. His hand almost couldn’t keep up.

That time of day was “dreamscape,” as Mkei had taught Raymond. Mkei was an underground African sculptor (who only went by his first name). He was Raymond’s favorite. At a seminar, Mkei had said to write when you first wake, when your mind is still somewhat in the dream world. Unfettered from daily hassles.

This particular morning, Raymond’s dreamscape session raged on for twenty sweat-filled minutes before his head felt about to burst with blood, forcing him to sit up and stumble down the stairs in a daze to grab the morning paper.

That’s when he came upon the delivery.

The crate with the red stamp on the side - a big circle with three lines through the middle. Below that, Raymond’s full name and address.

No mistake. Whatever was in there, it was for him.

“Embrace the unexpected,” Mkei had said once.

So Raymond figured the box should come inside. Lifting it was out of the question (far too heavy), so he tried to push it through the doorway. He positioned his hands along the beast’s sides and leaned into it. The box began to tip. Raymond struggled to keep hold, failed horribly, and the crate crashed down on top of his living room coffee table. The table’s legs snapped upon impact and the glass face smashed into a hundred pieces.

Raymond breathed out in frustration and looked behind him as if someone were there not bothering to help. That once notable piece of furniture had been rendered garbage. He’d be picking glass out of the carpet for months. But the crate was inside.

Step one complete.

“Always go one step beyond safe,” Mkei once said.

So Raymond squiggled his fingers between the planks and with a considerable amount of effort, ripped the top end off. Reaching in, he found a slew of loose nails and screws. Behind them, pipes. Even deeper, a set of gears. The box held the most vast array of mechanical parts Raymond had ever seen. Rods, cables, belts, wheels, wires, sprockets, coils, burners, sheets of metal, a surprising number of light bulbs, grates, blades…

Some objects were completely foreign to him. There was a cylinder of sorts with different sized teeth jutting out its sides that, to Raymond, had no conceivable purpose.

Toward the back of the crate, were the tools. Wrenches, screwdrivers, chisels, calipers, knives, a vise, clamps, saws, drills. Finally, a smaller box with a set of gloves, earplugs, a small surgical mask, safety goggles, and a tube of glue.

Raymond sat on the crate, exhausted. The living room turned to a junkyard. He scanned the spare parts, trying to piece it together. Nothing.

“Art is invention,” Mkei had once said. “And invention is expression of self.”

Raymond rose to his feet, lifted the empty crate with both hands, took it outside, heaved it over his head and began to shake it with frustration.

“The only time you’ve failed as an artist,” Mkei had been known to say, “is when you succeed on something that didn’t come from you. Unearned acclaim means nothing. Personal promotion is artistic death.”

Just as Raymond was about finished with his spleen venting, an envelope flew out of the crate and landed in the grass at his feet. Raymond dropped the box, picked up the envelope and opened it.

No note inside.

Instead, Raymond found a small handbook with the title “Gloxy Oxtornity Device” printed on its cover. The inside pages were a detailed set of instructions. Diagrams plotting out the construction of some sort of machine.

Raymond looked back in through his house’s open front door to the metal mess inside.

“Success and mass acclaim,” Mkei had said once, “is irrelevant to artistic growth.”

“Lovely day!” A neighbor on his morning walk called to Raymond as he passed by the driveway. And Raymond waved to the neighbor, though the wave meant nothing to either of them.

Nerves, perhaps? Something didn’t feel right. A numbness of sorts had overtaken Meng Yau’s left hand. A stroke? He felt no pain, although when he looked at his fingers, speedily marching around the instrument’s neck, he saw his little pinkie about to fall off. There was no blood. Just the single digit, that tiny one on the end, dangling by a thin strand of skin. Swinging loosely as he continued to play.

This is odd, Meng thought as his pinkie broke apart from his hand entirely and fell to the stage floor in a tailspin.
Why, he wondered, did that just happen? Attempting to answer that question, Meng replayed the evening’s events in his head.

Though the park’s air was cool, all he had felt when this performance began was the hot lights above him, pushing sweat out his pores. The gerontocratic lawn before him, population on blankets and in folding chairs, applauded his entrance. Meng remembered trying to shake away a dizziness in his head as he took his seat, center stage, and readied his instrument.

He thought back to the crowd’s silence as he first poised his then full-fingered hand over the fret board. Eyes squinted out into the distance once more before closing in concentration, Meng raised his bow and placed it above the strings.

How unnecessarily dramatic, he had thought.

With a long stroke, he drew his bow across the hull of the object resting against his body. This first note, low and ominous, carried out across the night, spreading into nearby ears.

And a few notes later, his finger fell off.

Meng was convinced he had done nothing different than any other night’s performance. He pushed up his glasses and smiled outward to where tradition told him the audience lay. Perhaps none of them, he thought, have noticed a thing.

So, mostly blinded by brightness, he decided to forge ahead. To not let his sudden handicap deter his concert. He moved his hand a little faster and stretched his fingers a little farther to compensate for the missing member.

Forward and back, quickening in pace, the spell he was casting mounted in pace and grandeur. The longer it went, the more it took hold of him. He felt the heat dripping down his brow, and in opening his eyes to bat away a salty bead, he happened to glance at his left hand again. Both his ring and middle fingers seemed to have gone completely limp. Lacking any dexterity, all he was able to do was clumsily slide them up and down the instruments neck.

Fear finally took hold of him and he felt his stomach drop. What is happening to me? And as he finished that thought, both of his fingers broke off his hand and freefell to the stage floor, joining the pinkie.

My god, Meng gulped. And then he thought of the audience. Perhaps they will only think of this as a diminuendo.

And the heat from the lights was becoming unbearable. He felt covered in it. Dripping in perspiration. Surely, he thought, I look repulsive.

Breathing heavily, he reached up to wipe at the slime of sweat on his brow, but as he brought his hand down, he found it covered in hair. Wet hair, his own, sticking to his hand.

At this exact moment, his tongue discovered a small, hard object inside his mouth. He spit it into his lap. A molar. Tonguing around, he found a space in his mouth where a tooth used to be. And continuing investigation found the entire lineup to be loosening and ready to dislodge completely.

What a contretemps! Meng thought as he spit a few more teeth into his lap. What more could he do except attempt to keep track of them all?

It wasn’t long before Meng’s mouth was all gums.

He decided to stop playing then.

Rising from his chair, he wiped at his lower lip, which hung weighty on his face. Saliva dribbled out his mouth and down his shirt. He tried to speak but, to his surprise, his jaw had unhinged itself.

What a wicked role Fortuna has given me tonight, he thought. Then his legs gave out and Meng tumbled to the floor. The teeth he had cradled in his shirt spilt across the stage.

As he stared at the lights beaming down at him, he wondered what the audience out there must be thinking of him. All this work, he thought. Six years of college…

But his schooling could not save him from his undoing

Dylan’s Newest. Don’t Worry, you won’t feel so illiterate at the sight of his veritable display of vocabulary this time…
–
- we are transferring power at this time…. Challenger is now running off its three onboard fuel cells…

The bath water splashed. Annoyed, bitter. Approximating her broken state. The letter dampened in her hand, the edges loosening from the water collected on her pruned fingertips. She read it over once again to make sure nothing was left out.

“Sweetie, is that the radio in there I hear?” Her mother pounded the door from the hallway.

“Of course,” she moaned.

“Oh, well… how much longer do you plan to contemplate suicide?”

“For as long as is suitable, mother.”

“Surely an hour and a half in the hot bath is enough.”

“It would be highly inappropriate to rush this decision ,” she spluttered. “And besides, the water is no longer hot.”

“So why do you insist on sitting in that tub with the door locked?”

She hit the water with frustration as the radio commented “…coming up on a go for all sequence start…”

“Even the most superior of minds in history have required seclusion! If there is a morsel of compassion in your withered body you will grant me this lavatory’s occupancy for this one night!”

“But we only have the one in the house and I have been in need of a constitution since you first locked yourself in there.”

“The level of your insensitivity staggers the mind,” she coughed. “When you were bawling over the cancellation of your favorite magazine did I not pat your back and say ‘There there?’ It seems only reasonable to ask the same from you in this, my time of pain. What is wrong with the Reenebeds water closet?”

“Baby, it is nearing midnight. I will not knock on their door at this hour for such a request.”

“Well, surely I can not be blamed for your timidity.”

“It would be uncouth, my dear!”

“And this abominable act you’re putting on isn’t? How ironic!” she sighed violently.

…and we have a go for auto sequence start, Challenger’s onboard computers have primary control of all the vehicle’s critical functions…

“What are you listening to?”

“It is a rebroadcast of the Challenger launch.”

“Oh. Darling,” her mother pleaded. “please unlock this, if only for the reason that when you kill yourself I can then enter and properly mourn your passing.”

“Your mourning would just be a humiliating display of lachrymal clichés. Best to avoid it altogether. You will have to mourn in this exact manner - through the door.”

“Honey, that is absurd. And, if I may say so, I would rather you not follow through with this threat. I rarely understand your actions, and this is no exception.”

The nearby radio announced “…T minus 17 seconds and counting…” and at that moment she furiously spat water against the closed door.

“Did you just spit at me?” Her mother gasped.

“I was planning to spit at the door when the countdown began regardless of whether or not you were on the other side.”

… 8… 7…

And there in the bath, water beneath her, she reached to the lighter on the sinks counter, cued it, and leaned its flame to the letter. The parchment burned. The edges squirreled around to touch the words, which there, on the backside, read mirrored.

This is timeless, she thought.

“Do I smell smoke?” Her mother squealed.

And a few years before this, far away from this Idaho bathtub, a space shuttle exploded.

From Dylan…

–

I had married a Succubus but
Didn’t realize till after we’d wed
Emerged a vixen so oleaginous, I
Had to escape from the Demoness’ bed!

For some newlyweds we had quite the dwelling
A place atop a hill with twenty-five rooms
All surrounded by marshland and mire
With an inhabit of her womanly ruse

For leviathans she had quite the beauty
Though a chthonic she looked tanned in the sun
Not carious, at least not on the outside
But on the in she was well over done

She didn’t sleep and had impressive peripheral
So my skedaddle had to avoid the day
I needed desperately the cover of sable
In aide to avoid her covering gaze

In her repast the night I had planned it
Slipped her opiate to addle her limbs
Then used that moment to slip out of the side door
While she collapsed to the parquet languid!

Then came the moment of my anagnorisis
As I tromped through the Buffalo Swamp
The gangly devil who I left behind was
The only woman I ever would want!

So went to return to my darkly lit quarters
Fetch my true love and sorely apologize
But as I lifted my feet from the peat stirred
A snake so deadly when it bit me I died!

The pain was quick but the poison was quicker
I fell in water and was numbed to excess
I could have lived to die with my darling bloodsucker
Instead I died with a snake and regret!

Hello all, here’s the latest submission from Dylan. Enjoy…

–

Quimson’s exotic stories of romance were always a source of great entertainment. He was raised on the classic tales of love. The plays, the poems. The films, novels, and songs. And his life, he liked to think, was a reflection of those mediums.

Versed in all forms, he was able to summon up lines from the great poets, it would seem, without any sort of mental pause. Where others found themselves adrift in a sea of thoughts and feelings they could not explain, Quimson’s speech came across as both effortless and precise. His words came out, not as though he had thought of them, but as if they had sought out his mouth specifically. Like the pipes in his throat were the most divine gateway to speech an utterance could hope for, and so it was there they flocked.

He believed in, and could understand nothing but, great passion.

Among all the attributes he carried, people would first take note of how stout a boy he was, with attire consisting mainly of sweaters and an earflap hat, in which he could be seen regardless of season or setting.

After school, atop an overturned chicken crate, Quimson would spin stories of love’s triumph to a mass of his classmates. Children, held suspended from their televisions and radios by one boy’s histrionic telling of a summer courting, or of two lovers rend by society or wartimes. Stories where hardship is endured and characters discover strength through love. Sometimes the love was reckless, sometimes it was mad, but always it was pure.

Often the children had questions. Often the children were not children at all but young adults much older than Quimson himself.

He would address their concerns calmly and warmly, settling their worries by citing Cummings, Shakespeare, Frost, and Dickinson when appropriate.

But despite all the times he had helped the public deal with the woes of the heart, they would always return with new dilemmas and, frequently, new loves altogether. As much as Quimson tried to mirror his life with the romance in his books and plays, his peers seemed to live a carefree existence filled with shallow, frivolous coquetries.

Quimson was not like them. His heart was devoted to Monique - a girl he spent an all too short spring in the company of many years ago. Their initial paths crossed during a year which, to lovelorn Quimson, isn’t remembered by a number but by the event – “The Spring of Monique.” A daughter of friends who would imbibe with Quimson’s parents, Monique was a thin-armed girl, sleek and slender, who would squat in mud for long stretches of time, as was the tendency at the age. During these play dates arranged by their parents, Quimson was captivated fully and found his eyes lingering on her so long he’d forget his mouth altogether, letting it droop toward his chest. But his Monique showed no signs of noticing.

At the close of the spring, as school let out, Monique was whisked away from Quimson. Her father had been offered a new job and so the family of three moved. To where, Quimson did not know.

For that summer, and all the seasons since, Quimson writhed over her absence. Although brief, he declared his time with Monique to be the buds of a romance destined to follow him throughout the rest of his existence. Once a month he would compose a letter to her, opening it with “Dearest Monique” and then stating his continuing adoration for her before the eventual close - “Truly yours…”

Knowing no address, he would rely on the wings of pigeons, or the waves of a nearby creek to deliver the message to her hands.

Quimson composed the letters as he did all his writings, by candlelight, in cursive, using a feather and ink. For school, sometimes professors would make a dire request for type, in which case Quimson had an old typewriter. It was a gift from his grandmother. A number of the keys had the tendency of sticking, but Quimson strongly believed in believing and modern day “advancements,” he felt, alienated people of this duty. Everything was too easy for everyone and true work, he believed, true passion, true love, was a rare sight nowadays.

This thought had been forming in his mind for some time but it invaded his home in the summer of his thirteenth year, before he was to enter the eighth grade. He was in his room when from down the stairs, through his wall, the voices of his parents found the canal of his ear.

He was working diligently on a paper of little importance, lit by a skinny wax candle, feather tip in hand, when he heard the bitter bellow of the word “divorce.” It had sought him out. It found him, as many other words had, and Quimson began to think – the world may very well be heading in the wrong direction.

He felt then, more then ever, the frustration of everyone around him not taking love seriously.

Quimson was able to rely on the satisfaction of knowing his life was based on a larger, a more grand idea of romance. If his life were to be viewed by a writer, there would be the saga of Monique - two young lovers, separated in their youth. Quimson knew that he would go about his life always thinking of her, and she would go about hers thinking of him, then many years down the road they would reunite under unlikely circumstances with a passionate embrace.

But not yet.

APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!

Enter Stockton B on a bright stage, curtains behind him, house band to his right, and a boisterous crowd just yards in front.

“Thank you folks, it’s great to be here. First thing, I gotta talk about this. Medical history in the making. Surgeons removed a woman’s kidney through her vagina, so she could give it to her ailing niece! You heard me. An unusual operation they hope will encourage others to donate because it reduces pain. Amazing. Yeah, apparently soon after, Kim Kardashian made an appointment to have her entire insides removed that way. Yup, she had 200 consecutive orgasms, and now she’s dead. The doctors are thrilled with the results.

And that’s it. I’m done. How’s that for a monologue? Take a note, Leno.

But seriously folks, Tonight, as you know, is our 5th Post Anniversary. And so we’re beginning the fifth, with a first.

For Johnny Carson, it was Groucho Marx. For Conan O’Brien, it was John Goodman, for Diego Maradona on La Noche del 10, it was Pelé.

And for The Cuisinart, it is Dylan Mayer, of Dance on Friday fame. Our first celebrity! So, mindless babbling and off putting jokes aside, here is the first outside submission to the blog. Who will be next?

FADE OUT, FADE IN:

HORSE WITNESS -

Please forgive me and my horse
We need some money for the courts
Who apprehended my eldest girl
For a wrong she’s not done

You see it was the orphan lad
A castrato for that retched band
Who with my daughter had a dalliance
Now she’s in jail for a lustrum

He went into the barn with her
Laid her in the provender
No, I was not there, of course
But this falabella has stated

That the boy produced
A match and lit it on his boot
Dropped it to the floor and hooted
As the place conflagrated

You see it’s the oldest tale
According to this miniature mare
Two lovers in peril who prevail
But one flees as the other is hauled off to jail

If it wasn’t for she
Not speaking it would most certainly be he
Behind bars but they two agreed
To not squeal to the authorities

So I’m taking this tiny steed
The only witness to the entire scene
To tell the police exactly what he’s seen
And set my poor little girl free

I just hope they believe
And can understand this horses’ speech
And it won’t come out a string of whinnies
But first some money for the bus ride, please
A few pence for my pony and me.