Tag Archives: Poetry

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

We Have a Suspicion that Morrison’s Mission in New Exposition’s to Lie by Omission About Her Commission so Our Admonition to this Patrician Technician’s to Cure the Condition of her Own Volition with an Act of Contrition¹

July 5, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Kerry Morrison keeping schtum about her culpability. — Kerry Morrison, patrician technician of homeless policy in LA, keeping schtum about her culpability in various matters.

On the front page of the Summer 2015 issue of the HPOA newsletter, our heroine and perennial source of subject matter, Kerry Morrison, has an article cynically entitled Discouraging News About Homelessness Surprises No One. Her subject is the 2015 homeless count results, released last month and showing that homelessness in Los Angeles County has increased by 12% over 2013, the year of the last count. In her piece, Kerry gives a number of delusional speculations on why this might have happened: more crazy people, good weather in LA, Prop 47 (srsly), people who, following the example of Jesus Christ, give money to panhandlers, the FREAKING ACLU?!!³

You’d never guess though, from reading this little essay, that the County’s approach to the problem of homelessness consists of anything more than a bunch of random but self-styledly-good-natured business-people chilling in their offices speculating benignantly about how hobos gossiping amongst themselves about how the livin’ is easy down by the LA River³ might possibly have to our current homelessness armageddon. There are actually agencies in Los Angeles whose entire purpose is “to support, create and sustain solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County…”
Continue reading We Have a Suspicion that Morrison’s Mission in New Exposition’s to Lie by Omission About Her Commission so Our Admonition to this Patrician Technician’s to Cure the Condition of her Own Volition with an Act of Contrition¹ →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Valentine’s Day Poetry Slam Special!

February 14, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Roses are red Violets are blue Scansion's important And using an appropriate number of syllables per line so you don't sound like a doofus is too! — Roses are red
Violets are blue
Scansion’s important
And using an appropriate number of syllables per line and some semblance of competent syntax so you don’t sound like a total doofus is too!

We’ve written at some length about Übersicherheitführer Steve Seyler‘s unfortunate penchant for poetry. Today, in honor of this, the most poetic of American holidays, we’re highlighting an email exchange from the archives between Seyler and “Good News Joe” Mariani, showing that Richard Dawkins’s notion that cultural practices spread like deadly infectious agents must be taken seriously by serious people.

We'll be damned if we can figure out what this is. Some trash on the street? Anyway, this is to Joe and Steve as Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were to one another. Rhyme on! — We’ll be damned if we can figure out what this is. Some trash on the street? Anyway, this is to Joe and Steve as Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were to one another. Rhyme on!

For reasons that we can’t determine from the evidence at hand but in response to the unintelligible photo at left, Good News Joe sent Stevie the following billet-doux:

Steve works so hard
Whether he is near or far
I wish he could go to a lake
Or maybe a Vegas escape

Lack of metrical structure? Check. Unintentional partial rhymes? Check. Unthinking use of brain-dead advertising-slogan phraseology as if it were human language? Check. Complete and utter tin-ear-itude? Check, check, check. He’s learned well from his master, whose classic response may be seen after the break.
Continue reading →

Hollywood BID Patrol, Joint Security Committee

Steve Seyler, Hitherto Unknown Poet Laureate of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

December 5, 2014 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Steve Seyler composing poetry on his employer's time. — Steve Seyler composing poetry on his employer’s time.

Aristotle once said that “poetry needs either a sympathetic nature or a madman.”¹ We’ll leave it up to you, our beloved reader, to decide, after you read the following little gem (the line breaks of which we’ve inserted for your convenience), which branch of that dichotomy is most applicable to the case of Steve Seyler, poet laureate of the BID patrol:
Continue reading →