Welcome

Welcome.  Here you will find most things about Michelle Josef's creative life: poems, photos, musings, gigs, maybe some videos and recipes.  Please look around.  Take your shoes off.  Make yourself at home

via facebook:

Sean Brxxxx

12 January 00:30

I'm sitting here listening to you on those Wilcox tunes.....goddamn, that's great drumming.


the Reverend Max Woolaver said"your groove is so solid you can walk on it"

Bernard Purdie said " you're a really good drummer"

Bill Monroe said "you're a fine drummer"

a fan in Duluth said "you play drums better than Dizzy Gillespie

Haida Gwaii

I am the ocean

I am the tide

I am the beauty of desolation

 I am the sand

I am the pebbles

I am the wind holding up the waves 

I am the sunset

I am the cold

I am the loneliness of the unwanted debris

I am the creator

I am the destroyer

I am the hunger of the heart

I am the Spanish moss

I am the driftwood

I am the bleached bones of what once was

I  am the grey

I am the blue

I am the breath that's taken away

I am the rhythm

I am the cycle 

I am the pounding of the surf

WhaT GOeS uP

what's hip today
will become passé
today it's flare
tomorrow thin
one day sacred
next day sin
In, out, cool, hot
what it is and
what it's not

Firecracker Day

Firecracker Day
Denial
Anger 
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
In the end there's only
Silence
I say yes to all

Being

The Blues are not a dark enough color
I prefer black
As I slip on darkness
The colour suits me.

The jokes on me
I never thought I'd get old
the glass is half empty
it's not half full
Wasted time I'll never get back


Light a candle
To stained glass saints
Forgive me Father
For I have sinned
Vespers whispered
Regrets, remorse
I can't Hail Mary! my way
Out of this one.

A story about Gordon Lightfoot

a story about Gordon Lightfoot

Back when I played with the Good Brothers, Gord Lightfoot was part of the scene and was kind of a mentor to the band. Brian Good had written as song called "Ballad of the Eletha B". It was a song about a fishing boat that went down in Lake Erie with a father and his sons aboard. They had been out in a heavy fog when the temp crashed and the fog froze onto the boat sinking it. It was a beautiful, haunting song and Brian was quite proud of it.

After the first Good Bros album was recorded we were all at a listening party at Thunder Sound, a long gone Toronto recording studio. I was standing beside Brian when the Eletha B started playing on the speakers. Brian asked Gord to listen to the song. After it finished, Gord turned to Brian and said "it's a great song but sinking ships don't work!" This was a couple of years before Gord wrote the Edmund Fitzgerald-one of his biggest hits. Ironic.

Yah-No

From the whispering of the stars
to the grave bass of the heavy wall clocks
I will not be punished for my anger
I will be punished by my anger
'cause this is the big league
and when you fuck up
you lose the right to play
I'm not a psychopath
just a high functioning sociopath
so I do my research
educate, incubate, innovate
perception is reality
don't you get it?

You Send Me

Elvis' voice sends me
Gives me the willies every time
Thank you God
For letting me be so afflicted

Hanging with the Biever

Me 'n the Biev were bored.  Decided to go to MalWart and do some shoplifting.  He pocketed some cheap Maybeline mascara. Thought that his lashes  could use some thickening up. I laughed.  As if anyone cared about his lashes.  I said "wouldn't it be fun to have a go cart chase up and down the aisles of this place".   He immediately gets on the Crackberry, calls up his "go to guy" and the next thing you know, we're chasing each other in hot rod go-carts up and down the lingerie aisles, knocking down the mannequins and overturning tables full of bras and panties.  He gets a girdle stuck in his steering wheel, bumps into a low lying shelf, goes up on two wheels  and looses control, crashing into a big display of plastic laundry hampers.  I'm pissing myself laughing.  By now, security has the place surrounded and they're calling out to us on bull-horns.  I scramble over the hampers and the Biev is out cold.  He's got a nasty gash across his forehead and it's gushing bright red blood.  I look around and they're having a "white" sale in the towel department.  I grab a handful of facecloths and begin wiping up the blood from his face.  He slowly comes around but when he sees all the blood he passes out again.  I slap him hard-once on each cheek.  "Wake up man.  They've got us surrounded and they're gonna find the mascara in your pocket!"  He slowly gets up and I wrap another white towel around his head.  Makes him look like ......................to be continued

On with the show (the Tea Party)

On a bus to Palookaville
we passed three vile inns
each more disgusting than the other
the circus was in town
everyone was booked
there was a fire breather, a Gothic belly dancer
and a man with two heads
dressed in his Sunday best
with his hand over his heart.

the crowd wrapped itself in the flag
the little girls in pink ribbons
believing it will keep them safe
but they got more past than future
and someone was going to pay.

They brought out a golden cage
in it a starving tiger

I believe the tiger was innocent

guilty only of being himself

he could smell their fear

the crowd called out for MORE!!!!

they wanted blood
to ease their suffering
and wait for Revelation to expire
but there is no safe way out 'cause
God is up to something big.