RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Optical Illusion Oasis”

Optical Illusion Oasis

People sitting under the great Canadian fright

Drinking heavily in the village of neon light

Pretensions of affairs being outta sight

Really nothing more than a herd of the uptight

Things actually aren’t really alright

Such a pathetic sight

Strongest on a Saturday night

People with nothing to do

Except playing cool fools

Floundering in the human cesspool

Death should be superior

Come join me tomorrow

For you’re in fact already dead

What can you do in life I tell you

Like the pieces of gum

The black suited monsters

Crush without pity on the way to the paper colonies

Refusing the cries of the crushed innocent are needless superfluous

Come join me in the land of the insane

Everyday does not end in a futile game

Soulless butchered minds craving dead maggots

That’s what we are

No schools of respectability

Only dens of perverse sadistic crazed nobility

Souls of the living cry to join us

Yes

I’m Lucifer but which hell is better

Yours or mine

You’ll find out in due course of time

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “Piggies and politics”

Piggies and politics

Look at all the little piggies

Guzzling off the through

Left piggies

          Centre piggies

                                          Right piggies

But all the same

Echoes of belches

Similar but of the same intensity

What the hell

They all wallow in the same slop

A fecal paradise

And but a few enter the slaughterhouse at re-election time

The rest

Devise menus for the apathetic innocent

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: The Pulpit as the Prow of a Whaling Ship (Herman Melville)

“What could be more full of meaning? -For the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first decried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: The Women of New Bedford and Salem (Herman Melville)

“And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match the bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: The Gold Rush of Whaling in New Bedford (Herman Melville)

“There weekly arrive in this town scores of Green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old.

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS ONTARIO 2026 Wine: Magnotta 2021 Toro Negro Cabernet Sauvignon: Baco Noir Suffering a Neurological Hemorrhage

Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon as a single varietal seldom works unless skillful use of oak is involved and when it is it can be quite good. This one was aged in 225 litre new French oak barriques for two years.

More often you will find Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon “utilized” in a blend.

So there is always hope for Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon.

Aroma: Lordy me! Earthy or is it funky. How about earthy, funky and smoky. How about over oaked? Coffee too! Are we at Starbucks? Being somewhat charitable can I venture below the Nor wester of unpleasantness some black cherry and dark chocolate.

Palate: Some mid level tannins. Sneaky and almost threatening acidity. Uncertain what fruit involved but diffuse and let’s say nonchalant.

Personality: I am a Baco Noir after a cerebral incident.

Food Match: COSTCO Hotdog. Sodium Nitrate and this wine a match made in heaven!

Cellarbility: You won’t be buying this so no comment.

Price: $19.50 CDN.

RKS ONTARIO 2026 Wine Rating: 64/100.

Comment from the Peanut Gallery: caveat emptor.A Raging Bull with rabies?

(Magnotta 2021 Toro Nero Cabernet Sauvignon, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Magnotta. 750 mL,14.5%).

RKS 2026 EURO Film: “Mirrors No. 3”: Healing Effect of the Intersection of Miseries

Laura (Paula Beer), a very unhappy looking Laura, opens the film peering over the edge of a bridge staring at the water below. There is no pedestrian walkway on this bridge so she is where she shouldn’t be and as cars speed by with horns blaring my thought is that girl is ready to jump to her death.

No jump and she returns to her flat to meet boyfriend Jakob (Phillip Froissant) to drive to a marina in the countryside outside Berlin for a cruise with a music producer and his girlfriend. When they arrive a very morose and haggard looking Laura says she does not wish to go on this cruise and instead return home annoying Jakob who has an opportunity for a relationship with this successful music producer. On the angry return trip to Berlin their car crashes in the countryside killing Jakob and barely affecting Laura.

A nearby resident, Betty (Barbara Auer) runs to the accident site where Jakob lies lifeless head oozing blood and assists Laura to walk to her nearby home. The police and medical staff arrive and Laura’s request to stay with Betty and rest is quickly, perhaps too quickly accepted by Betty.

From this point on there are many “Why’s” emerging in the viewer’s mind.

Why is Laura so miserable?

Why is Betty so quick to take in Laura? And when Laura asks if she can stay with Betty why does Betty have that joyous look on her face when she replies, “Of course”?

Why is Betty on the side of the road watching Laura drive to and back from the marina? Is Betty waiting for someone? Is Betty an omen?

Who is this Yelena that Betty mentions frequently?

Why do passerby’s gawk at Betty’s house?

Why are Betty’s son (Max) and husband (Richard) not living in the family home with Betty?

Why does Betty invite Max and Richard to dinner shortly after Laura’s arrival so they may celebrate?

As the film progresses the answers to these questions reveal themselves and the misery of Richard, Max and Betty becomes clearly understood. Why Laura is so miserable is never fully explained other than an unhappy relationship with boyfriend Jakob.

In a strange way one might conclude that these miseries are staring at each other as if looking in a mirror except the reflection is not of one’s own misery but that of others somehow intersected through fate or chance.

A pyscho-mystery-thriller if you wish which at one-point could have veered chillingly in the direction of a horror film.

It is clear how Betty, Richard and Max are healed through their interaction with Laura. Laura’s smile at the end of the film is indicative of healing but what is she healing from? And why the “3” in the film’s title?

One can’t escape what I might call the warmth of the cinematography that relaxes and almost lulls the senses of the viewer to somehow blunt the horribleness of it all. What messages there are in the film are effortlessly and nonthreateningly delivered.

I will not blame you if you shout out, “WHAT” at the last scene. Does director Christian Petzold have you exactly where the wants you as he did with “Undine” and “Roter Himmel” both of which starred Paula Beer?

You can watch the trailer here https://vimeo.com/1157324527?fl=pl&fe=vl

Opens throughout Canada 20March2026.

RKS 2026 EURO Film Rating 90/100.

RKS Literature: Timid Warrior Whalemen at Breakfast (Herman Melville)

“These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstances that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas-entire strangers to them-and duelled them dead without winking; and yet here they sat at a social breakfast table-all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes-looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): “The fight for”

The fight for

It’s called survival

Apologize

Prostitute mind and body for THEM

And you just might make the suburbs and that second car

I hope you like kissing asses

And if you don’t kick em in and rot

With the rats

Robert K. Stephen

Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom: “RORY ADMITS TO SLEEPING AROUND AND IS PROUD OF IT”

RORY ADMITS TO SLEEPING AROUND AND IS PROUD OF IT

I have been sleeping around and I’m proud of it!

It can’t be a macho thing as some of you may be snickering about as you may recall I lost my “manhood” one month ago. Some of you should be ashamed of yourself with your “mind in the gutter” insinuations.

When I say I am sleeping around I am napping increasingly out of my crate. I love conking out on a towel by the sliding door where I can keep a sleepy eye on the squirrels and on the sofa in the basement listening to jazz. Dylan the Westie’s favourite napping spot was the sofa so I feel somewhat honoured snoozing there. All said and done my enforced naps are on the wane and symbolically perhaps my puppyhood.