Mike Topp
Mike Topp lives and works in a large Eastern metropolis. He can be reached at mike_topp@hotmail.com.
30 ONE-LINERS
CONFESSION
I used to be ashamed of my striped face.
WIRED
I have wireless cable.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
What's another word for thesaurus?
SHISH KEBAB
Alternate little pieces of shish with pieces of kebab.
PARIS SPLEEN
While drinking Perrier I lost my terrier.
PHENOMENOLOGY
A rolling stone can gather moss if it is rolling very, very slowly.
MONEY
When I asked Alan Greenspan the other day if he had any idea what fuels the economy he said-"Shame"-I believe is how he put it.
EXPERIENCE
Experience, I once read, is one of the forms of paralysis.
POOL
I'm told one of the problems with the gene pool is that there's no life guard.
STEVEN
Steven confessed this morning that he's been writing an unauthorized autobiography.
FIRE ISLAND
It was on Fire Island I realized that hermits have no peer pressure.
TODAY
If it's true that you are what you eat, then I am one flaky pastry.
CHILDHOOD
I find it very hard to believe that I was ever a half-twin.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL AVERAGE GUY
Sure, I overdo it once in a while, but who doesn't?
WAR
In November 1915 Chief Secretary of Ireland Augustine Birrell said, "I, for one, would forbid the use, during the war, of poetry."
LIFE
I was just, you know, I wasn't bothering anyone.
BIG LIES FROM GRASSY
Grassy told me once that when he was a child in the Pacific Northwest, a fruit tree grew from the head of a deer shot with fruit pits.
=20
THE ONE-MINUTE TEENAGER
Place 12-year-old in microwave.
TENNIS
Tennis is more than raising a racket.
HEARING PROBLEM
You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel.
ON MUSTARD
One can't live without mustard.
METAMORPHOSIS
>From a biographer we learn that Frederick Kohner, the creator of Gidget, was a friend and associate of Franz Kafka.
SPARROW
There's a little bit of Sparrow in all of us.
VENUS
Venus can cast a shadow.
SCANDAL
Safety matches just kill the smart kids.
CHEMISTRY CLASS
In chemistry class my chemistry teacher keeps changing my seat.
10 BULLS
PULL MY FINGER
A monk told Joshu: ³I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.²
Joshu said: ³Pull my finger.²
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
THE PHILODENDRON STORY
A monk asked Joshu why chocolate mousse was invented.
Joshu said: ³A philodendron in the garden.²
JUST GO FUCK YOURSELF
Gasan was sitting at the bedside of Tekisui three days before his
teacherıs passing. Tekisui had already chosen Gasan as his successor.
A temple had recently burned down and Gasan was rebuilding it. Tekisui
asked him: ³What are you going to do when the temple is rebuilt?²
³When youıre better we want you to speak there,² said Gasan.
³Suppose I die before then?²
³Then weıll find somebody else,² replied Gasan.
³Suppose you canıt get anybody?² said Tekisui.
Gasan answered loudly: ³Donıt ask such stupid questions. Just go fuck
yourself.³
THIS MIND IS BUDDHA
Two monks were arguing about whether their train was moving. One said:
³Our train is moving.²
The other said: ³The train on the tracks next to us is moving.²
The sixth patriarch happened to be walking down the aisle. He asked
them: ³Would I look good in short shorts?²
WE HAVE CHOCOLATE PUDDING
When Banzan was walking through the Union Square greenmarket he
overheard a conversation between a vendor and his customer.
³Do you have chocolate mousse?² asked the customer.
³We have chocolate pudding,² replied the vendor.
At these words Banzan became enlightened.
TOZANıS PRETZELS
A monk asked Tozan when he was eating some pretzels: ³What is Buddha?²
Tozan said: ³These pretzels are making me thirsty.²
SPARROW CALLS HIS OWN MASTER
Sparrow called out to himself every morning: ³Master.²
Then he answered himself: ³Yes, boss.²
And after that he added: ³Donıt forget the zucchini.²
Again he answered, ³Yes, boss.²
And after that, he continued, ³Donıt be fooled by others.²
³Yes, boss. yes, boss,² he answered.
TENNIS
A monk asked Ummon: ³Why is tennis a noisy game?²
Ummon answered him: ³Because you canıt play without raising a racket.²
BAD MOVIES
A Zen student asked Ummon: ³You know what I like to do when I get really
depressed?²
Ummon replied: ³No, what?²
³I like to turn on the TV and watch a really bad movie,² answered the
student.
³Thatıs a funny thing to want to do,² said Ummon.
The student smiled and said: ³I know.²
10 BULLS
Wakuan complained when he saw a picture of 10 bulls: ³Why donıt those
cows have horns?²
SPRINKLE WITH CHEESE AND BAKE
Ananda asked Kashapa: "Buddha gave you the golden-woven robe of
succesorship. What else did he give you?"
Kashapa said: "A recipe."
Ananda answered: "Yes, brother."
Said Kashapa: "When in doubt, sprinkle with cheese and bake."
SCOOBY-DOO
A monk asked Ummon: "What is Buddha?"
Ummon answered him: "Scooby-Doo."
BONER
A handsome young Zen monk came to Bankei and complained: "Master, I have
an uncontrollable boner. How can I master it?"
"You have something very strange," replied Bankei. "Let me see
what you have."
"Just now I cannot show it to you," replied the other.
"When can you show it to me?" asked Bankei.
"It arises unexpectedly," replied the student.
"Then," concluded Bankei, "it must not be your own true nature.
If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born, you
did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that
over."
BASHO'S MILK DUD
Basho said to his disciple: "When you have a Milk Dud, I will give it to
you. If you have no Milk Dud, I will take it away from you."
LATER THAT SAME DAY
The doorbell rang. Balthazar had been sitting on the hearth, staring dopily into the fire. He heaved himself to his feet. There was no one at the door. He looked up and down the suburban street, his long tail wagging, but no one appeared.
Meanwhile, Professor Scott turned to gaze out the window at the somber landscape. With a gesture that seemed likely to sweep them into the void, Fall pointed to some trees.
Silence.
Again the moribund shape on the divan stirred and the others heard the words, "My viola."
Silence.
Across town, Irving's ladle paused in mid-air. He hoped that no one would notice that he had added nutmeg to the creamed spinach. His wife had called from work to say she was on her way. She would be early.
Susan blinked several times. "The bluebells of Scotland are not a myth."
"Mr. Banks was joking."
"Ever done any curling?"
And she handed him a pair of warm woolen socks from a chest of drawers.
Mrs. Worsey had just finished her coffee when the doorbell rang. "In the spring," Mrs. Worsey said, her voice rising excitedly, "when the flowers are blooming, pigs are driven up the hills. With sticks, by boys. Later, they are driven down again."
Though the members of Mrs. Worsey's Cub Scout den waited, this was the end of her story.
ORAL SWIFT
My gang used to break into buildings. One day we got inside a little electrical supplies store. Next to the front door I found a grate that looked like it led to the basement. I lifted the grate and and went through and ended up in a septic tank. Everyone was shocked to see me swallowed up by the filth, but they had to get me out.
Mount Rushmore
In many parts of the world there are mountains that smoke. At times, that is, clouds of smoke rise from them. The mountains that smoke are called volcanoes. There are hundreds of volcanoes in the world. But none is more beautiful than Mount Rushmore. Some are much higher, but very few smoke as much.
Mount Rushmore is different from most volcanoes because it is in four parts. Nobody knows why.
Mount Rushmore began with a crack that reached down from the earth's surface to a pocket of red-hot rock deep, deep underground. Some of this hot rock was pushed up through the crack to the top of the ground. It may have been pushed up rather slowly. Or there may have been explosions that caused earthquakes and shot bits of rock skyward. Nobody knows. The hot rock that pushed out of the opening is called lava. Lava hardens as it gets older. Most of the rock dust shot high in the air fell down near the opening. Around the opening was the beginning of Mount Rushmore.
Of course, this beautiful natural phenomena was not completed overnight. It took months for Abraham Lincoln to grow a proper beard.
Many thousands of people visit Mount Rushmore every year. Visitors who see the volcano on a sunshiny day often see Teddy Roosevelt smoking.
UNTITLED
I hate loafers. They're like wearing
a pair of shoe with no laces in them.
POST OFFICE
I had a gun hidden in a drawer in my desk
just in case there was trouble at work. Somebody
accidentally bumped my desk and the gun went
off. Later someone told me that everyone knew
about the gun and that the accident was staged.
I told him I was aware that everyone knew about
it and had been doing it just to see what would
happen. He said they all knew that I knew and
had done it just to see how I would react.
LARRY RIVERS
Larry Rivers tried having sex
with his dog.
Amy howled
and he stopped,
he said.
They remain good friends.
(Untitled)
Consider, then, two referential systems k and K, both furnished with measuring rods and synchronized clocks, initially at relative rest and congruent. The length of the rod arranged parallel to the x-axis is, of course, the same in both systems: l. Let the rod and system k be accelerated until they move along the x-axis at a constant velocity v relative to K, with the rod at rest in k but moving in K at velocity v. The length of the rod in k can now be "thought to be obtained by two operations."
First let an observer determine the length of the rod at rest in k. "According to the relativity principle" this length must be the same as the length l of the rod at rest in K. Any deviation would annul the equivalence of the two systems and thereby violate the relativity principle. While no one at this point--even without the relativity principle--would expect anything different, the second operation immediately brings a surprise.
An observer in system K, relative to which the rod is moving at velocity v, now determines by means of the synchronized clocks where ends A and B of the rod are at a definite moment. If the distance between these two points is measured with the measuring rods from K, one obtains "also a length which one might call 'the lenght of the rod.'" This is the length rAB of the moving rod in system K. Einstein announces that he will now determine this length "on the basis of our two principles, and will find it to be different from l."
The rain pattered lightly on the window outside. He shivered. Was it Death?
MIKE TOPP
The "mad poet," Mike Topp, is neither mad nor a poet. He is a self-schooled Siberian peasant who affects religiosity and dabbles in faith healing. He has a talent of sorts for hypnosis. He has an eye for human frailty. And, decisively, he has a gift for sex, or more precisely for seduction, since the act itself for Topp is an affair of moments. He has bent (literally) to his will scores of women on whom he has fixed his stare. His vigor is seemingly undiminished by a prodigious consumption of alcohol in all-night drinking bouts enlivened by gypsy choirs.
A precise description of Topp's male attributes is unnecessary here, but there is a hint in one of Michael Musto's anecdotes that these may be more than just the subject of conjecture. Having smashed up a smart New York nightclub, Topp was challenged to prove that he was who he said he was. In response, Musto notes, "Topp unbuttoned his trousers and waved his penis at the waiters and onlookers."
This piece of self-advertisement aside, one of Topp's saving graces is that he also knows when to favor discretion. He has not had a sexual relationship with Maggie Estep, for all the gossip to the contrary. Nor has he had a sexual relationship with Elizabeth Wurtzel. His ascendancy over the downtown poetry scene derives from his supposed powers as a healer. He is credited with halting three potentially embarrassing episodes of laryngitis in the poet laureate, Robert Haas, and with saving Allen Ginsberg's life after a train crash.
But healing and fornicating are merely Topp's calling cards. What makes him a power in New York is that the fact that the literary agent, Andrew Wylie, listens to him and usually trusts his judgment. Wylie thinks Topp is a good judge of other people. He has come to rely on tips from the wild-eyed sage when making and unmaking writers. This is no small franchise. In a single year under Topp's influence, the Lower East Side has had two presidential candidates, three movies, one Broadway play, and a special on Howard Stern. Topp can fix television, too: a word from him is enough to have a troublesome author dispatched to host a fund-raiser on PBS, or a tractable one featured on MTV.
Topp's constituents, once in the media, are obliged to help him in the lesser favors in which he traffics wholesale: grants, contracts, readings, agents, merchandising and the like. In January 1998, 300 to 400 people were calling on him daily in his modest apartment on the Lower East Side. The columnists call him an almost supernatural fiend, but he is in reality one of this city's great literary fixers.
FIELD & STREAM
I shot for Eton and I shot for Sandhurst. But I will only shoot animals that donıt shoot back. I adore underwater swimming. When I shoot fish I donıt wear an aqualung-it evens out the odds. The smell of tobacco makes the fishes cough. Iım sure they think of me as a pirate.
FRENCH POETS
be careful and be patient and guard yourself.
where is your boat where are my tears.
my fingers rolled a cigarette as bitter and delicious as life.
i want to smoke.
personality is only a persistent disorder
personality is only a tic
personality is one of the forms of paralysis
each person looked in himself for the miraculous child
century oh century of clouds
FER-DE-PANTS
It was before my coronation. Maria Schneider, my wife, was giving me a hard time, and so I took a geographic to the states. I ended up in Canada. Fine French wines bored me, and so I began drinking six quarts of beer daily. I dated occasionally, and tended to my orchids. As a wife has a cow a love story. I hitchhiked to New York City. Juan Gris, a foreign correspondent for the Times, was dispatching news of a possible revolution in France. ³Sometimes I think Iıd be better off dead,² he wrote. ³No, wait. Not me, you.² I was furious. Doesnıt he know about dividing cultures by the way they view time-as either fixed (monochronic) or flexible (polychronic), I wondered. Well, I hopped a freighter to Brittany, and got, I guess, an erection, due to the powerful throbbing of the shipıs engines and thinking about Maria saying ³You naughty boy² over and over. Later, I had an epiphany over something or other when I went dancing at the lesbian bar. Man, not being made of wood or stone, is at times not without emotional reactions.
POSTMANıS ARIA
1
Thereıs this thing I do where I swallow letters, then I swallow stamps, then I pull them out and all the letters are stamped.
2
Charles Bukowski gave me early encouragement.
3
My mom invented Liquid Paper.
4
I own a hat that used to belong to William Faulkner. Every party I throw, I take the hat out, turn it over slowly in my hands, and announce sadly, ³He was a great, great postmaster.²
5
My sisterıs boyfriend is a clerk in one of the countryıs largest post offices. The post office is so big it takes him all day to do his job.
6
Pedro Almovodar and I are co-producers of an experimental theater group called ³Buzones Rotos.²
7
My first wife had a tawdry affair with basketball player Karl ³The Mailman² Malone, which she ended when he rolled his eighteen-wheeler in our front yard. She still really loves me.
Subject: The Writer's Craft/Incidents
THE WRITER'S CRAFT
"I always like everything to be different. I have always liked everything to work itself out differently. If Ive done something I dont like to do it again. Why do something again when youve already done it? Why do something the same way again? Why sing something the same way twice?"
(from an interview with writer Gayl Jones)
INCIDENTS
Once Dad ate some canned food and died of botulism.
Mom had some and died too.
Grandmother got hit by a car.
Grandmothers niece got hit by lightning and also died.
The nieces children got run over by a speedboat.
The father of the children got leukemia.
The rest of the family moved near a toxic waste dump and died.
Uncle Earl was executed by members of a cult.
Our sitter, Mrs. Pete, won a trip to Paris and the plane exploded over the Atlantic.
Nice people, but they dont know how to take care of themselves.
Last night I went
to the >.
The next morning
I felt like <.
FORGOTTEN SLOGANS
OF THE SEVENTIES
Liberty or jail.
Make up, not war.
Power to each person.
The last day of your previous life
was only yesterday.
RECENT SYMPTOMS
Sweating. Itching. Anorexia. Night sweats. Dizziness. Headache. Sensation disturbance. Chills. Malaise. Delusions. Depersonalization. Euphoria. Hallucinations. Hostility. Libido increased. Manic reaction. Paranoid reaction. Psychosis. Stupor.
REJECTED MAFIA NICKNAMES
Vanilla
Kitty
Jughead
Marcel Duchamp
Senor Wences
Archilochus
Tony the Logical Positivist
X-15
Gideon
Achilles Fang
UP THE BUTT
When Joe studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku he was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one rainy night he was carrying a bottle of wine in a wet paper bag on Surf Avenue. The bag broke and the bottle fell out of the bag, and at that moment Joe was set free!
In commemoration, he wrote a poem:
Kaleidoscopic umbrellas
march on boardwalks
dressed in liquid stars
up the butt.
NO RADIO
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in an old car at the edge of town. One night a thief broke into the car only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to see me," he told the crook, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, listening to the radio. "Poor guy," he mused, "I wish I could give him this radio."
HOW TO WRITE A HAIKU
A well-known American poet was asked how to compose a haiku.
"The usual method is three lines," Ron explained. "The first line contains five syllables; the second line, seven syllables; the third line, five syllables. One of my poems illustrates this:
First: five syllables
Second: seven syllables
Third: five syllables
SHUZANS FAT STOMACH
Shuzan took off his T-shirt and said: "If you call this a fat stomach, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a fat stomach, you ignore the fact. Now what do you want to call this?"
Mike Topp