Ricky Ray

Saturday, April 11, 2009

RICKY RAY

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns

I see him surrounded by Dark Forces,
Swirling around and engulfing him,
Strangling his Higher Self.
I try to send him love and light,
To ease his pain
And to stop the devilish energy from killing his goodness.

Ricky calls himself a Buddhist
Yet he is consumed with rage and vengeance.
I do Wiccan rituals,
To the light of a candle,
In the silent depths of the night,
Asking my Guides for a miracle.

This ugly, mean being tries to rob me of joy and passion.
My creativity sits on a chair, unused,
Like a soiled, torn garment.
Thick hands encircle my neck,
Distorting my voice and choking my Life Force.
I stand in court pleading my innocence
For I have done no wrong.

Ricky has no support system,
No life, no hobbies, no lovers or friends.
His tormented shadow falls on all my daily activities,
Like a rabid dog chasing me through a nightmare.

I watched a movie on my TV set.
One of the scenes was set in a beautiful house
Overlooking the ocean in Southern California.
I read a book where the main character owned an 8,000 acre ranch in New Mexico.
She roamed the mountains with her dogs,
Trekking through canyons and cool streams.

Oh, how I long to escape to these places.
To find solace in nature,
Surrounded by quiet and tranquility.
I wish for money to lead a proper life.
Forever the struggling artist counting his pennies.

Ricky professes to believe in Karma,
Yet he cannot see the consequences of his actions
In the here and now.

The Universe surrounds me in a cocoon of White Light and joy.
No harm will come to me.
This is merely a learning experience.
I am not attached to this man,
In any way, shape or form.

I send Reiki to the courtroom.
I am alone.
My Higher Self speaks to me
And I try so hard to hear the soft, faint words.

Ricky is drowning in a black, inky cesspool.
It is not my job to save him.
My biggest wish is for him to disappear from my life
Forever.

Lip Synch Dysphoria

Monday, March 9, 2009

LIP SYNCH DYSPHORIA

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns

The last time I did acid,

I had the overwhelming desire to cut off my hands.

In the twisted logic of my skewered mind,

I figured, since they were the most valuable part of my anatomy,

Being an artist,

Then, therefore, I must hack them off.

“Yes” means “no” and “no” means “yes”.

Being alone, I could only have cut off one hand

Since I don’t own a chain saw.

You’d be seeing me, right now, with a gory stump,

Long since healed, on the end of one arm.

I’d have to keep that mutilated thing in my pocket at auditions

Or I’d never get hired, again.

Don’t know which hand it would have been.

I’m ambidextrous but I favour my right hand in most things.

If I’d hacked off that one,

It would’ve taken me a while to come up to speed with the left.

I have a little voice, inside me, that protects me under such circumstances.

“Don’t do it. Relax. You’re high on acid. You’ll regret it in the morning.”

“But my hands are so important. I really should cut them off. It makes perfect sense.”

“You’ll bitterly regret it. Big time. Believe me.”

When I came down, I decided never again to take LSD.

After all, next time, I might not be so lucky.

My inner parent might not win the battle.

That was my 6^th trip.

The first time was in the 70s.

That evening, my friend told me he had dropped it, too,

But I think he was lying.

I was crazy about Bob but the feeling wasn’t mutual.

The two of us, and a plus-size female friend,

Went to see the Kubrick film, “2001: A Space Odyssey”

At a midnight showing at the Roxy.

What a perfect trip!! What a blast!!

The third time I dropped acid,

I was staying at a friend’s cottage on the French River.

Walking out onto the deck, in the glorious summer sunshine,

A hornet’s nest, lodged under the strips of wood,

Was accidentally disturbed and they went nuts,

But neither of us was stung.

I did some painting and talked a mile a minute with my hostess,

Smoking endless cigarettes.

I found a bug outside.

Its face looked so human to me.

I held it in my hand and felt that we were communicating on some strange level.

It looked like a tiny, little baby.

Late that afternoon, there was a knock at the door.

An older, balding man stood there with a message for me from my hostess’s mother,

Back in Scarborough.

He’d taken a boat from the marina in order to deliver it.

A major theatre, back in Toronto, wanted me for a part in a play with Len Cariou,

The Broadway star.

That’s what it said.

The director wanted to see me, the very next day.

We raced back to Toronto in her car, on very little sleep,

Weaving in and out of traffic,

With just enough time for me to shower and change

At my parent’s place in the Burbs.

Then Carol Anne drove me downtown to the theatre.

I walked in, portfolio in hand, with grand expectations and racing heart.

The bitchy, impatient Artistic Director snapped at me,

“We don’t want to see that.”

(He gestured at the portfolio of pictures from plays I had been in.)

“We just want to look at you and hear your voice.”

I read for him but was not cast.

It was just another audition.

I didn’t tell him what I’d gone through in order to get there on time.

My vacation was shot.

On the final LSD trip, the 6^th one, I also painted.

It was a wild, psychedelic acrylic abstract,

With eyes and eyelashes peering out from the frantic colours.

Lots of deep pinks and reds and pale blue and startling yellow.

A stranger phoned and said I sounded sleepy.

He seemed pissed off.

I had answered his personal ad in the paper.

“I’m painting a picture,” I said but he didn’t get it.

The Asian man never called back, as he said he would.

The 5^th time was totally unexpected.

An upstairs neighbour appeared at my door, late one night.

He reached in my front door, thrusting a beer in my face.

“I heard you moving about,” he said.

He wanted me to drop acid with him but I had to rehearse in the morning,

So I begged off.

The shaggy-haired blond kept plying me with beer.

He handed me a purple tab of acid and I said I would take it later.

I dropped it on the floor and Dave said, “It’s dirty. Better put it in your mouth, ”

Which I foolishly did.

After partying all night with this scuzzy guy,

I phoned the director the next morning.

He had long hair and seemed pretty cool so I figured it would be okay to be honest.

“I can’t come to rehearsal. I dropped acid last night. I haven’t had any sleep.”

Darshan started freaking out.

“Oh, no. Oh, no. Do you still want to do the play?”

“Of course. I just need some sleep.”

“I’ll call you,” he said but I never heard from him, again.

That was okay. The gig was a freebee in a speakeasy

And I didn’t really want to do it.

I heard through the grapevine that the production never happened.

Sometimes it’s best to tell a little white lie.

Colours look so vivid.

You think you’ve found all the deep, profound answers to the great mysteries of life.

Your sense of perspective is all topsy-turvy.

It’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Acid is so unpredictable.

Be careful.

Don’t do it by yourself, as I once did.

I was looking for truths.

Trying to find cosmic answers.

Wanted to know what all the media screaming was about.

Pink turns into swirling neon lime green.

Reality becomes a kaleidoscope.

You crave sex but it can be hard to function properly.

I somehow miss those wild, crazy times.

Life had infinite possibilities.

Now, it seems to be lots of cul de sacs, dead ends,

And doors slammed in my face.

The Circus in Thomson Park

Wednesday, February 25, 2009


THE CIRCUS IN THOMSON PARK


By Philip Cairns


Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns


Marching and skipping across the top of the hill,
I could see the colourful parade come closer.
Vividly coloured Mardi Gras-like costumes,
Huge papier mache heads with enormous eyes.
Women dressed like gypsy fortune tellers
And brawny young men looking like Harlequin.
The sound of brass instruments
And the thump-thump of big, round drums.

Standing with my four siblings,
Amongst the canvas tents in a clearing in the suburban park,
I watched the procession as it drew nearer.
Smiling faces in a rag-tag band.
Electric blue, startling red, lush green grass and the deep brown earth.
The bubbling sound of the nearby creek.
The notes of the piccolo slipped out in a merry way,
Along with the bump-bump-bump of the heavy bass drum.

I remember the youthful face of the fortune teller,
Inside the hot, burning tarpaulin,
And the silly lies she told about my future.
The auburn haired young woman couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

Then, into the tent to see the Freaks of Nature.
The African Sausage Man with no arms or legs,
Lying on a wooden table, wrapped all in woollen clothing,
Rolling and lighting a cigarette using only his mouth and tongue.

A Pinhead in a dirty, sleeveless housedress,
Was sitting on the stage weeping and exchanging bitter words
With a short, mean, hideous man standing in the front row.
He was insulting and making fun of the pathetic, ugly woman.
(From this great distance in time,
I see her as being rather beautiful, in a Picasso sort of way.)
I was only eleven, but, even so,
I was appalled and disappointed by this so-called Freak Show.

Outside, again, there were stiltwalkers and jugglers
Roaming the grounds of the little ersatz circus.
There was cotton candy to consume,
Taffy apples to gobble
And sweet orange pop to slurp.

I walked home with an uneasy sensation in the pit of my stomach.
The Pinhead woman seemed so vulnerable and morbidly unhappy.
40 years down the road,
I remember the sight of her so clearly,
Sobbing on that makeshift stage in the intense August heat.
I went inside expecting to be frightened and excited
But came away feeling low and gypped.

The circus came to town.
Childhood dreams fell away,
Like the melting skin of a burn victim.
Phony adolescent psychics and depressed freaks
On a sweltering summer day in Scarborough.
A rerun from the past.

Chesty Morgan

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

CHESTY MORGAN

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns

Chesty Morgan contemplated having breast reduction surgery

And looking for a McJob.

Her huge breasts hung down so low

She was unable to cook breakfast on the stove.

Her tits would flop out of her negligee

And end up plopped into the frying pan,

Scrambling the eggs and burning her nipples.

At the age of 75,

They almost reached down to her labia.

Chesty had deep indentations on her shoulders

From the weight pressing down on her bra straps.

I bought a DVD, from the Net, of Chesty Morgan’s two starring roles on film.

Not porn, just campy soft-core exploitation silliness.

No sex, just lots of bare boobs.

I was fascinated by her appendages.

Chesty possesses the largest breasts I have ever seen in my life.

I sat mesmerized, as if I were watching the landing of a UFO.

She made her living from those ta-tas

But it must have been a nuisance to own them.

It would be like carrying 50 pounds of groceries with you

Everywhere you went.

In these two movies, Chesty wears bad blonde wigs,

Hideous, flowery Seventies clothes and five inch platform heels.

Her voice is dubbed because of her thick Polish accent,

I am told.

Is she the fifth Wonder of the World?

Having sex with her would be like screwing a waterbed!

Her teeth are kind of rotten at the back

Making me wonder if she has dragon breath.

The midriff bulge spills over the sides of her tight skirts.

Her breasts cascade out of the front of her enormous brassiere.

The screen is saturated with washed out reds and turquoise

Because the film stock has deteriorated in 35 years.

The tinny music reminds me of my wild youth.

I’m sure millions of men would love a wife with tits that big.

I want to meet Chesty Morgan and ask her about her stripping career.

I understand that, even to this day,

Pushing 80,

She still gardens in a halter top,

Frightening the neighbourhood children

And giving guilty boners to all the frustrated teenage boys.

Chesty was in Fellini’s “Casanova” but ended up on the cutting room floor.

You can watch a clip from the outtakes on YouTube.

A friend of mine went to see her strip at the Victory Burlesque Theatre on Spadina

Back in the late Seventies, when she was hot.

Chesty, you are a work of art, my dear.

A trailer trash diva made of fine cut crystal.

Bless you.

My Lost Bed

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

MY LOST BED

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns

I mourn my lost bed,

Covered in clear plastic and thrown out in the trash.

There was no lover in it to pitch out with the orange peels.

I’m sleeping on the floor on a cream coloured carpet

And rolled up pink blankets to soften the blows.

I mourn my lost bed.

It made loud, strange noises every time I moved.

Louisa came for a Reiki treatment and leered,

“This wouldn’t be good for sex.”

There’s more room in the apartment, now,

But my spine misses the comfort of the mattress.

My loins miss the bliss of a lover’s touch.

I’m surfing in Hawaii.

Calling my agent from my sun-drenched deck at Malibu.

I’m walking the red carpet at Cannes

And holding a Golden Bear at Berlin.

I’d like a bed the size of my whole apartment,

Full of hunky floozies and scented candles,

Eating grapes and puking in marble buckets at my Roman orgy.

I lament the burial of my bed,

The first one I ever bought, myself, as an adult.

I’ll pretend I’m camping out at Algonquin Park

Instead of this hard floor and my soft daydreams.

Money in the bank.

Food in the fridge.

Lust in my belly and love between the sheets.

“Come home with me, baby.

We’ll start a life together, if you like.

We can make love on the floor.

I’ll make you feel so good,

You’ll think you’re on cloud nine.”

How’s that for a pick-up line?

My back aches.

I’ve never not had a bed.

Never dreamed I would live without one.

The bedbug epidemic stole my sweet nest.

Can I share yours, maybe, if you wouldn’t mind?

It’s not so bad.

I’ll imagine I’m a boy scout in a pup tent in the backyard.

I’ll invite my best friend for a sleep-over on the cold ground.

The two of us can fool around when it gets dark

As we both pretend to be asleep.

We’ll wake up in the morning in sticky pyjamas

With guilt in our 14 year old eyes.

My bed is dead but it’s not the end of the world.

Hey, Mr. Bigot!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

HEY, MR. BIGOT!!


By Philip Cairns


Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns



Hey, Mr. Bigot!

Why do you care what I do in bed?

Mind your own fucking business.

If I want to eat baked beans and stick a trumpet up my ass

Then play Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,

Why should you give a shit?!

I’m not asking you to watch my sexcapades on video,

For Christ sake.

Everyone’s gotta have someone to hate.


Maybe this faggy gay boy routine of mine

Is really just a ruse to pick up women.

If feel like Lily Tomlin in “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”.

One of her characters wears a T-shirt that says,

“Leave Me Alone”.


Hey, Mr. Bigot!!

Why did you bash my brother on the street?

I’m surprised you could tear yourself away from the football game on TV.

Hey, Mr. Bigot!

Maybe me and my friends in the Fruit Brigade

Are gonna hunt you down in a van, late at night.

Take you home and tie you spread-eagle to the bed

And cut off your limbs with a chain saw.


Oh, look what you made me say!!

I’d rather force you to do yoga

Or, God forbid,

Paint a picture of my naked body.

No, better not.

You might get excited and that would really blow your mind, baby.


I’m the kind of guy who swims with the dolphins

And watches Elizabeth Taylor movies on TCM.

You want to fuck her, Mr. Bigot, don’t you?

And I want to wear her priceless jewellery.


Hey, man.

Let me whisper in your ear.

“Just calm down and open your heart,”

I might be inclined to say.

I’m just trying to pay the bills.

Just looking for someone to love.

A man with feet of clay who won’t run screaming into the night

When I say, “I want to see you, again.”


Hey, Mr. Bigot!!

Get off my back and I promise not to climb on yours.

Get your hair streaked.

Bye a purple shirt.

Get some amethyst beads.

Take a meditation class.

Go beat off in a rosebush

But just fuck off and leave me alone.

Please!


I promise not to tell your wife when I see you on Church Street in drag.

I won’t tell anyone when I discover you in a dark car at midnight

Paying some teenage hustler to give you head.

Your wife doesn’t know that you go to bedbug motels

And pay hookers an extra $20 to give you a rim job.

Just lend me your red pumps.

No one needs to know but you and me.


Why was there cum on the bashed in head of the half-dead queer?

It seems, Mr. Bigot, that you really got off,

I mean REALLY GOT OFF,

When you cracked my friend with a baseball bat.


Hey, babe!!

I’d like to stick your head in my toilet bowl next time I use it.

Then you’ll know what it’s like to eat shit on a regular basis.

Forgive me.

Here’s a flower.

Let’s do lunch.

My Mute Playmates

Wednesday, February 11, 2009


MY MUTE PLAYMATES


By Philip Cairns


Copyright 2009 by Philip Cairns


I fell in love with a bedbug, once.

It’s tendril of anaesthetic sent me into a stupor of ecstasy and bliss.

I told him all my secrets and he didn’t hate or mistreat me.

I was grateful for that.


I French-kissed a cockroach one lonely Saturday night.

I couldn’t find any willing guy so I figured a cockroach would do,

Just as well.

At least I was getting some cock, or so it seemed, at the time.

His feelers tickled me and made me laugh.

It was only a quickie so there was no chit-chat.

In fact, he scurried away before I could catch his name.


My best friend was a June bug for numerous years.

I liked the fact that he listened to my impassioned rants

And never argued with me or raised a hand, as if to strike me.

Yet I had a twisted affair with Gorgeous George for many, many years

And he hurt me more than the sting of a friendly bee.

My bee friend meant no malice when he jabbed me with his sharp needle.

He was only fulfilling his destiny and running on instinct.


Gorgeous George would yell at me.

Tell me I was a piece of shit.

Torture me with his words and deeds and force me to snort coke.

This curly-haired muscle-bound prick would try to sabotage my career

In sly and insidious ways.

I was dazzled by his Playgirl façade and big, pouty lips.


I’d rather hop on the back of a grasshopper with not a care in the world.

Fly with the eagles, like I do in my dreams.

The bedbug would sleep quietly with me and bite me awake at dawn.

He would sit placidly on the table when I ate my breakfast.


George would be gone at 4 a.m.,

Leaving a whirlwind mess and anger and frustration in his wake.

The ladybug was polite to me.

I loved her sweet, caring smile.

No matter what I said, it never left her face.


She wasn’t like the fat Welfare worker who always called me a liar

When I told her the absolute honest-to-God truth.

My ladybug friend is so beautiful.

The shimmering colours of her attire always complement my clothes

When she triumphantly rides on my shoulder at social events,

Looking like a jewel-encrusted brooch.


Gorgeous George always has to call the shots or he explodes in venom and bile.

Who could have imagined that this rank puddle of vomit

Would be wrapped in such a voluptuous, appealing package?!


My critter playmates have all left me.

Disappeared into the night, like a vanishing circus act.

I’m stronger, now.

I no longer need them.

George has gone, as well.

But he’ll be back, if I allow it.


I miss the neon orange of the ladybug’s back.

Now, the bedbug bites with vengeance and revenge.

It’s sad, the way things turned out.