RKS Literature: On the Bum Again (Jack Kerouac)

“And since I’m well and on the bum again & ain’t got nothing else to do, but roam, long faced, the real America, with my unreal heart, here I am eager and ready to be a big busted nose scullion or dishwasher on the old scoff scow s’long as I can buy my next fancy shirt in a Hong Kong haberdashery or wave a polo mallet in some old Singapore bar or play the horses in Austrailian, it’s all the same to me as long as it can be exciting and goes around the world.”

Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.

RKS Literature: A Hot Time at the El Carrido Per Motel (Jack Kerouac)

“Deni had big plans for what was going to happen at the hotel, which was the El Carrido Per to Motpaotta California potator hotel as I say with potted palmettos and seamen inside and also hot-rod champion sons of aircraft computators of Long Beach, the whole general and dismal California culture a palpable hangout for it where you saw Hawaiian shirted and be-wrist watched tanned strong young men tilting thin long beers  to their mouth and leaning and mincing with broads in fancy necklaces and little white ivory things at their tanned ears and a whole blanked blue in their eyes that you saw, also a bestial cruelty hidden and the smell of beer and smoke and smart smell of the cool inside plush cocktail lounge all that Americaness that in my youth had me get wild to be in it and leave my home and go off be big hero in the American romance-me-jazz-night.”

Jack Kerouac, “Piers of the Homeless Night”, 1960.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”Ensure your last testament is prepared (COVID Memories)”

Ensure your last testament is prepared (COVID Memories)

Yes, rely on the government

And the state medical bureaucracy

Politics and medicine can be a fatal mix

The needle but tricks

Urging a jab, then two or three

Has the scientific mind saved us or grossly miscalculated

Well what does it matter?

According to the rebel right wing blockading truckers we all will be soon dead

Be free from coercion instead

Attributable to rush tested vaccines

From a Trump Warp Speed

We’ll be underground and the daisies will be sprouting seed

And the criticized unvaccinated so haughtily criticized

Will be alive and grateful they never complied

Us the goody two shoes instead to The Great Beyond flied

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Death and What Lies Ahead (Françoise Sagan)

“He was dying. He knew now that he was dying. Something was tearing at his body. Meanwhile she was leaning over him, supporting him by the shoulders, and he felt the shoulder blade, ignominiously reduced to skin and bone, flinch beneath his wife’s gentle hand. Ignominy, that was what he was dying of, ignominy. Was there an illness which allowed you to die gracefully? There probably wasn’t, and mankind’s only grace, perhaps lay in that aspiration towards what lay ahead.”

Françoise Sagan, “In Extremis”, 1975.

RKS PORTHEAD ALERT: CROFT 2012 Quinta da Roeda Vintage Port

Rather strange that on my first media trip to Porto in 2014 to sample Ports throughout the Douro region on the bus for the first of five intense days of sampling my seatmate, a French advertising executive, said to me, “Port is an affordable luxury”. It is a statement that has stuck me as to both its veracity and simplicity.

Red Port is massively flavourful with a range of styles and flavour profiles. Ranging from prohibitively expensive to affordable. In twelve years I have not had an “off Port”. Having toured the quality control laboratory at the IVDP, the regulatory body that ensures quality control of Port, all Ports are analyzed and tested before their release.

Now is not the time to elaborate on the 1867 and 1932 Ports I have tried other than saying the 1867 still had life in it and could sail off in the distance for years!

Back to the Croft Port. A blackish red beauty?

Aroma: Creamy. Blackberry. Cassis. Chocolate covered raisins. Santa Rosa Plums.

Palate: Massive and far from timid it represents an “Attack of the Black Fruit”. Firm. Quite a tough baby now struggling for toddlerhood and for a full-grown adult look to 2040. Enormously long finish.

Food: Go conservative blue cheese and chocolate-based desserts. But pair this with rare grilled Portuguese Ox you may not ever want to leave Portugal. For vegetarians pair with a rich pasta sauce with a San Marzano tomato foundation e.g. Pasta a la Norma.

Price: $33CDN. 350 mL.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery: Drinkable now indeed. Give it five more years to show its entirely luxurious side. At this price affordable and a luxurious taste experience. You are paying Ryanair prices for TAP Air Portugal business class!

RKS PORTHEAD ALERT RATING: 95/100. Kim Marcus Wine Spectator 95.

(Croft 2012 Quinta da Roeda Vintage Port)

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “If at First You Don’t Succeed Try Again?”

If at First You Don’t Succeed Try Again?

The Supreme leader and most of his clan met a violent demise

But the regime remains even nastier shouldered by nepo baby who lives witnessing yet another sunrise

Didn’t someone promise to perpetually escape the Middle East quagmire

Well that election promise certainly encountered a flat tire

But will it draw MAGA electoral ire?

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”Galen Weston Jr. Did You Forget About Kraft Dinner?”

Galen Weston Jr. Did You Forget About Kraft Dinner?

What family wealth estimated at 9 billion

With all this inflation heartfelt thanks for your “concern” freezing prices on Loblaws house brands showing concern for Canadian’s COVID induced ill financial health

But please at Loblaws and your subsidiary Shoppers Drug Mart $2.99 for a box of Kraft Dinner

And $4.39 for four at competitor Metro makes you kind of a sinner

I am shopping at Metro instead of Loblaws and Shoppers just to show you I am a winner!

Sorry to make your profits a bit thinner!

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds)”The Social Relevance and Contribution to Society by the Kardashian Clan”

The Social Relevance and Contribution to Society by the Kardashian Clan

0

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: The Gigolo at the Cattle Fair (Françoise Sagan)

“She suddenly remembered that hectic party and the first glimpse she had of Nicholas, looking miserable because old Mme Essini was talking to him t very close quarters and giggling girlishly. Nicolas was pressed up against the bar, with no hope of escape. The scene had amused her at first, then she had looked at Nicholas with increasing interest and cynical speculation. These cocktail parties were like horse fairs or cattle shows. One almost expected to see mature ladies lifting the young men’s upper lips to examine their teeth.”

Françoise Sagan, “The Gigolo”, 1975.

RKS Literature: Self Esteem of the Gigolo (Françoise Sagan)

“Not that she respected him more than the others: she kept him completely, dressed him, gave him expensive presents which he didn’t throw back in her face. He never went in for those stupid, boorish ploys the others indulged in, those sulky moods when they wanted something or felt they were the injured party in the bargain stuck between their bodies and her money-that was it, really, they felt hard done by. They would get her to buy them all manner of expensive trinkets which they didn’t even want, simply in order to restore their self-esteem. The word esteem made her laugh inwardly. It was none the less the only word for it.”

Françoise Sagan, “The Gigolo”, 1975.