Some Butts

Some butts are soft like butter
Some butts are hard as rock
Some butts are round and plump
Some butts are chiseled from a stump
Some butts are smooth as a baby’s
Some butts can scour a pot
Some butts are petit
Some butts are gros
Some butts are cool as cucumbers
Some butts warm your bed
Some butts roar like rockets
Some butts purr like kittens
Some butts are worth a million bucks
Some butts smell like socks
Some butts are a joke
Some butts are blown up with smoke
Some butts litter the sidewalks
Some butts become president

Inspired by A Number One Bites the Dust as well as the 2024 Presidential Debates. Compiled statues illustration by Fred Ni.

A Number One Bites the Dust

It finally happened. The robots took over military defense and accidentally launched nuclear weapons. A faulty chip failed to correct for colour-blindness and the robots pressed the red button instead of green. Three million years later, the new civilization arrived from another multi-verse, hoping to decipher what had destroyed planet earth. They unearthed a large blue foam replica of what looked like a hand with an enormous index digit. They surmised that this was a rudimentary proctology-type of equipment gone wrong resulting in the release of inordinate amounts of methane into the atmosphere which spontaneously combusted. Only the donkeys survived.

Inspired by Just So and Queen. Image from eBay.

Just So

“I don’t get it,” said Nick. “What the fuck just happened? Why would anyone do something like that?”

     “I don’t know,” said Atalanta. “It’s Jason. It’s just the way he is, I guess.”

     “So, you’re telling me I should’ve seen it coming?”

     “Didn’t your mother ever tell you about leopards and their spots?”

     “But how does someone even get that way?”

     “Who knows, but maybe you’ve something there—you know, like all those stories they used to tell us in kindergarten: How the Camel Got his Hump; How the Giraffe Got his Neck; . . . ”

     “Like, How the Ass Got his Hole?”

Inspired by Well, that levy went dry. Image by Microsoft Copilot.

Well, that levy went dry.

Earlier this week I contemplated penning a humour piece. At first, after dinner and half a bottle of wine, it sounded edgy and hilarious, and I hit the hay dreaming up puffy bits to stretch it out into a decent story. But as daylight chafed, it didn't fly and ran a real risk of offending. I won't elaborate on the content or for whom I wrote it, but the punch line involved Las Vegas, a vibrator and the full recitation of American Pie.
     “Why would you even WRITE THAT?” Rich said, appalled. True to form, it landed foul on the grass.

Inspired by Dance with Me. Don McLean’s suggestive thumb from the cover of American Pie. United Artists, 1971.

Courage

Jan Karski was an agent of the Polish underground during the Second World War. He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto to document conditions, disguised himself as a guard to investigate a concentration camp, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. He escaped and, not once but three times, travelled across occupied Europe to France and Britain with details of Nazi atrocities in Poland. The detailed reports he carried to the Allies were dismissed. No one could believe the scale of the Nazi death machine.

      Touching his statue’s arm, rubbed shiny by countless hands, I wondered: would I have had such courage?

Inspired by Dance with Me, and death-defying courage. Photo of the statue of Jan Karski in Kazimierz, the old Jewish district of Krakow, by Ron Thompson.

Dance with Me

Dance with me. You pull him to his feet.

He resists. Can’t. My boss is on my ass. I have 600 new emails in my inbox. The air is full of smoke. The news is full of war. I woke up with this pain that won’t go away no matter what I do. There’s so much crap around—everywhere I look. I don’t see the point anymore—of any of it—of life. Tell me, tell me, what’s the point?

This, you say, this is the point. A fast song comes on the radio and you pull him up.

Inspired by In his Chamber of Lust and Love. Image of a late 18-century print “Il Ballo” by Giuseppe Piatolli from the the Uffizi Gallery collections.

In His Chamber of Lust and Love

Jesus Jesus lying in the night
said, “Hold me tight, hold me tight.”
In his chamber of lust and love
a thousand candles whispered (yes) and burned
It was warm and bright
and she held him tight (yes) so tight
He closed his eyes and it was still so bright
All he felt was brightness, lightness, life
There was a breath against his breath
(yes)
There was a heart against his heart
(yes)
Burning and bright it was
The meaning of life it was
flowing through her blood to his;
hunger it was
flowing through her body to his
(yes)


Inspired by Angel of Harlem. Painting is The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.

Angel of Harlem

She hovers under the archway, Jesus keeping her company from his Cross. Fed by the neighbours like a starving stray dog, her face is reddened by the sharp winds of Winter and the scorching Summer sun. 

It’s easier to avert one’s gaze—objectify her in the garden of the religious paraphernalia. But she will look directly into you if you let her; a stoic living statue with piercing eyes.

Once a child playing and dreaming of her grown-up life, she’s shrinking day by day now. She’s soon to exit this world like we all will, alone and into the unknown. 

Inspired by In Local News and U2.  Image based on a photo by Patrick Asselin.

In Local News

Remember that clock radio next to your bed, and the half-awake news every morning? Especially the local stuff, like the story of the flasher, who for the past three years had been prowling the paths of High Park?

     A group of west-end women had given up on the police and gone to the press. It was the same guy, they knew, because of his particular routine of hiding in the bushes and whistling a birdsong to get their attention. They put up posters declaring “We know who you are and what you look like.”

     They called him the Whistling Pervert.

But in that funny-not-funny moment, we also learned that the guy had been getting more brazen, and that some women had talked about arming themselves.

     This and some casual threats of vigilante justice was all that it took—after years of complaints, and what the police had dared call an “intensive investigation”—to get them to actually start beating the bushes and maybe dress up some female constables to flush the guy out.

     And so it was, just one week later, that Toronto awoke to the news that the cops had arrested not one, not two, but four whistling perverts.

Inspired by The Good Doctor. Photo by the author.