I look to the chicken, I look to the sky, I look to the chicken, and ask myself WHY? Does this madness not end? Have we gone round the bend? When toads get you high, what next? Save the Sky? Michael That's just a teaser from my upcoming collection of what I like to think of as a "Perma-cultured" guide to poetry entitled, "Give a Fuckin' don't Care". So it turns out that people use an entirely unique portion of the Grey Goo to produce poetry, and that a significant segment of the population is born without it. What a surprise, a population of souless non rhymers. Many of the rest have it as sort of an appendix, which might flare up unexpectedly and thrust out a few lines of impeccable verse, catapulting the afflicted into visions of Frostian grandeur followed by a relapse to normalcy, much like a spent burst of dopamine or the "living lion, dead dog" thing. Here's a good example of finding that poetic moment and making it endemic to your environment. My morning chores begin with a stroll out the kitchen door and out toward the driveway where i am greeted by a flock of adolescent psycho chooks ready for brekeeees. Before the pullets begin to lay they are like sixteen to twenty something women who haven't had a kid. After, more like confident in their power to outsmart you in almost every instance. I pace slowly toward their enclosure, surrounded by the little peckers trying my boots on for size. "In ya go now", says I. And in they go indeed. Next, out to the older leghorns who live by the ponds and seem to enjoy life in a frantic sort of unhurried way. "Hi girls", says I, and in fowl language, they respond: "FOOD". It's the simple things in life that irritate you the most, 'cause they never go away. So after the birds have been given the essentials to fill their crops I take the short walk to the pond, and with a container of fish food in hand start to sprinkle the surface with yummy. The fish, like the chooks and like us get into the habit of responding to the slightest stimulation to seek out the opportunity to cross paths with pleasure. My footfall on the path round the pond get the fish to making a bee line to the feeding spot. If you have never watched a school of koi churning up the water in pursuit of the knosh, put it on your bucket list. Fish in action, still calming. The seine net that we use to fish sits on the liner in wait of its opportunity to be put to use, like a monk awaiting satori, except for the fact that on several occasions now I have found Bufos caught in most gnarly ways. You see, they push through the inch and a half diameter netting, get their forelegs through and become inextricably entangled in a choke hold, with only a forward gear to further complicate matters. Once tangled they begin to twist around, making a knotted mess of the line, sinkers and floats. My first thought upon eyeballing the first victim was that I would have to cut the net to free it. My second thought: SHIT. Bela Lugosi popped into my head and suggested live dissection followed by pan frying. What ended up happening was a SpaceFace moment. With the greatest of care and the compassion of a Jain priest, I slowly brought breath back to the little wheezer by maneuvering his feet through the net and freeing up its neck. I then untwisted the net, freed up the weights and floats and puzzled out the rest of the trap. I looked it in the eye and said, don't be such a knucklehead, you only have one gear. He threw up some bile. At this point, I have done the rescue many times. Yesterday there was an eight on the scale of ten being cut it, kill it, eat it. Now I'm not saying i've lost my patience with this scenario, but the solution seems to have eluded me thus far and that makes me dumber than a toad. I am freeing it up with some added vigor when this bead of white liquid oozes out of a wart on its head and before i know it, it shoots a stream three feet into my eye and the general eye ball region. Imagine my surprise. It even woke the Humunculus up with a start screaming, "my liege, man the turrets, we've been hit." At first I thought, what a targeting system. The military should know about this. That's when I realized that i was already hallucinating. Now I've been up the lazy river a few times and I figured stay calm, head to the house and wash the eye out, roll a doob and enjoy the ride. The skin surrounding the eye had gone numb. Mother Nature from some other place saying lose the hubris. Act out kindness. I'm still thinkin' army of gmo'd bufos against the Avengers. Next summers blockbuster, as it runs behind my eyelids, scripted, filmed, edited and in three D. The whole movie has run with Scarlett Johansson ending up wanting to have my baby and I'm only about four feet closer to the house. I thought, "where's Spielberg when you need him?" Night is falling and closing my eyes is no longer necessary to cruise toadland. I am transfixed by the suns glow on the shiny coffee leaves and the family of smurfs cultivating the soil and singing some goofy song. I suddenly realize that i am dancing around the coffee trees in my impression of a whirling dervish. I am a child spinning until my inner world uncoils at the stop and brings me back. Time ceased, normal crawled back into play, I still hadn't made it to the house and when i talked it sounded like i had been inhaling helium all morning. I'm not trying to figure it out. Lasted about four hours. The toad is in my pocket so that when i have a Matrix moment, I can tickle a squirt and head to Zion. Embrace and Transcend. News of the week: the mother ship arrives on the twenty fifth. Her Masserrati gets in the next day. Ask me if i'm excited. Fenced off the southern boundary line and freed up another three quarters of an acre for the first annual pan pacific Permaculture games. We don't really have a clue as to what that implies, but it sounds cool and we'll do our best to flesh it out a bit more. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace. Jp