Monthly Archives: September 2018

The listener

In the glove of twilight
Our man of twenty two
pads along the powder cow path road
to the last rise
above the grand grand valley below.
In a dreamt jacket of lizard skin,
shouldering a paunchy canvas backpack,
his threadbare desert boots with mended laces
make small dusty puffs
in time with his panting breaths.
Sits down, he does,
on an afterthought stump,
just at the lip.
His pearly whites illuminate.
Eyes are shining burning red.
Lips in taut crescent smile.
He twinkles above them,
they twinkle below.
The myriad thousands.
So silent through this slice of the airs.
They are here, he knows.
The seeds of stories.
Tragic, magic, triumphant, sad, comic,
Love, and Rage.
Tonight, he feeds.

 

A lost weekend (repost)

Memories of a night in I.C.U. some years ago.

awoke suddenly
two hours into sleep
disoriented, heart racing
wouldn’t slow
Wife puts the cuff on
pulse of one seventy five
steady

Let’s go…let’s go
off to emergency
they took us first
there was a guy with a bloody hand
they took us first

prepped for I.V.
we have drugs that will slow it down
don’t worry
five minutes, almost ten
no good
family out please
we have to put him under

Out for the count
then coming back in phases
I see a one armed nurse
She is so nice
and I realize she’s the one they call
The Shark Lady
who lost her arm to one while swimming

she sees I’m awake,
calls in wife and kids
wife says what are the bandages for
Oh, they had to shock him twice
and there are burns

then, the long trolley ride
down to ICU
drugged chatting with
the Angel nurse.

pills for you, mister
and we have reserved a spot for you
at the Cardiologist
you stay here tonight, okay?
and the Doc should let you go home
tomorrow.

 

In the coffee aisle

A chance encounter has left me with a strange sense of regret.

It’s been my experience, when out in the marketplace, that people are usually impersonal, unless you happen to run into a friend or an acquaintance.
The grocery store, today, wasn’t very busy.  I had just come from the barbershop,
and remembered that I needed to pick up coffee.  It was an idle afternoon for me,
so I was taking my time looking through their selection.  

I happened to glance at a woman who was picking up cake mixes or some such, and she returned my glance with a smile.  I suppose I gave her a bit of a strange look, and I regretted it instantly. It was one of those times where you feel that you know someone, but also feel embarrassed to say so and to ask them who they are.  What happened next was unexpected, for she walked right up to me, extended her hand, and said I know we haven’t met, but you looked at me so I looked at you.  I’m Jessica.  

I shook her hand warmly.  It seemed as if she wanted to hold on for a few seconds.  I told her my name, and said It’s nice to meet you, Jessica.  She said and you as well, my friend.  I felt like I wanted to stay and talk, but at the same time wondered how appropriate it would be. In hindsight, I should have, but instead I made something of an awkward exit. As I was driving out of the parking lot, I passed by the front of the store, and she was there, loading her groceries into a basket on her bicycle.  I stopped, opened my window, and said Goodbye, Jessica!  Strange….the way she reacted.  She looked a little downcast, then returned my smile, saying I feel like I know you.  You’re a lovely man.


Just like that.  A lovely man.  Her words.  Must have been a case of mistaken identity. What I did next surprises me even more.  Taking my usual route home, I stopped abruptly, made a U-turn, and doubled back.  Looking, like a fool, for a green bicycle with a basket on it.  But no, the spell was broken.

Nice to meet you, Jessica.  My friend…..

Running for it

My old father-in-law, now gone, was someone I knew for the first thirty years of my marriage.

It does take me a long while to get to know anyone, and vice versa, but, as I grew into his ways (and he became more comfortable with mine), we got along fine.  There was my city boy naïveté for him to chuckle about, and I enjoyed the many parables that he related to me (true or made up) from his own street-wise life.  I think he was always testing me to see how much bullshit I would believe.

The last couple of years of his life saw him in a steep decline.  He began to have difficulty walking, and could no longer drive, but still wanted to pursue some of his favorite activities, such as looking through second hand stores to find some little trinket to bring home to his wife (who would usually spurn it anyway), going visiting, and prowling the flea markets and garage sales.

It fell to me to taxi him around most of the time, and I didn’t mind, because we kept each other good company.  Getting him in and out of the car, unfolding his walker, shuffling through the stores etc. at his slower pace taught me some patience,  and showed me his love and his own patience with his wife, who was well into her struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.

We were far apart, distance wise (hundreds of miles), but as her parents’ health declined, my wife and I visited at least monthly.  Sadly, her Dad began to lose interest in his gadabout lifestyle, and started wandering in his conversations.

When he and I were alone one time, he told me quietly that he had been having frequent dreams about the Devil, that he had a sense of being constantly examined by the Evil Eye, and that the Devil had shown him all of the misdeeds in his life, and was “expecting him” soon.  In the most recent episode, he was being chased around and around his car by “a short little bastard with red skin, horns, and brass buttons”.

I said to him “you’ve been watching too many cartoons”, whilst in my own mind I was pretty unsettled, despairing for all of the blackness of his visions, for the loss of his carefree self, and for my wife’s emotional state.  It wasn’t long before we took him to the hospital for the last time.  The physical ailment was bladder cancer, but he had long since given up the game, spiritually.

In those days, mental illness wasn’t a subject for open discussion.  Now, as I am approaching my seventies, and for the last couple of years, I’ve experienced the creeping insidiousness of the black thoughts, and have come to know it for what it is.  I’m on the run, as he was, in a way.  Recognizing what is happening (thankfully), and trying to stay a step ahead through therapy and (hopefully) wonderful medicine.

Still lucid enough to put something like this together, and to take a little joy from it.
God bless all of you out there who are rowing the same boat.

A Head of the game

I went on a toboggan

And I hurt my little noggin

We had no helmets back when we were three

I played a game of hockey

With bigger kids, so cocky

And whacked me noggin once again, you see

One time when we went swimming

And the day was quickly dimming

I jumped into the lake so foolishly

And cracked my head upon a rock

I didn’t see was by the dock

They pulled me out and yelled “Emergency!”

One night, it had been raining

Upon the ice remaining

And everything was slick and slippery

My feet went out from under

And my head was burst asunder

(Or so it felt, when it came back to me)

I helped a lady build a shelf

She could not do it by herself

We hammered and we sawed ’til it was three

I went to stand up quickly

And hit my head so thickly

On a board that had been fastened over me

 

So, these are my excuses

If I seem like silly gooses

And write some ditties hardly worth a penny

It’s just this poor old noggin

And that nasty old toboggan

And the forty whacks I had were one too many.

 

 

Would you like beef with that pizza?

  • Few people turn on their outside lights at night, which means you sometimes have to do arithmetic and count down from the one house that does have its lights on, in order to find their address.  Please, if you order something, I assume you want me to find your place.
  • After driving around for five minutes trying to find a house in the dark, I walk up to their door (in darkness) and ring the bell.  Someone opens it, and still does not turn the light on.  I tell them what the total is, and they present their credit card.  Still no lights.  I confess I got a little impatient and said “could we have some lights on?”  Oh sorry they say.  They turn it on, they pay, and then immediately turn it off, leaving me to stumble down stairs in the dark.  No tip, presumably because of my poor demeanour.
  • I pull up to a big fancy house, with the lights on—yay!  It’s a $23 order.  They want to pay $5 on debit card, and the rest in cash.  Ok then.  But the debit card is declined.  She has ten dollars in cash,  the rest in coin.  Mostly quarters, dimes and nickels.  Still short by two bucks, so she calls her husband to come out with his debit card.  We do it for two bucks.  He looks pissed off, and leaves the scene without comment.  No tip.
  • Next stop….15 km.  into the bush.  Long and winding road into their country mansion.  I pull up, and am just about to get out of the car, when it seems they have released the hounds.  Four of them surround my car with ominous growls.  I open the window and say to the lady “is it okay if I stay in the car?”  She says oh, they are fine.  They won’t do anything unless I tell them to.  I say I would prefer to hand the pizzas out through the window.  She looks pissed off.  It’s a $110 order.  Tip was two bucks.

I don’t think I am cut out for this.

The wasting of a mind (a mother known)

The years are ten
since your body died.
Fifteen since you fled in spirit.

That damn old sharpness and command you had
That keen sense of the ridiculous
Lost in the vexing of an unchosen labyrinth.

Our nervous laughter.
Our embarrassment for you.
Sidelong glances.
What to do?

You were looking around corners,
expecting the worst.
Each day, the maze grew more confounding.
Your shields were up,
and no one could get in.

We strangers let you lie
in a home that was not.
We came and fed you,
shared the load
until you were done.
Helpless.  Helpless.

Just last night,
in my dream of blackened beams,
I watched, appalled,
as your mystic ghost rose in torment
from its wasted habit.

Embarked on the journey of the lost.

 

Very bad things (graphic)

Someone came running.
Said come and see.
They smiled strangely
as we took a shortcut
through the hedges, to the roadway.
There, a black cat that was mostly flat.
Crushed and cooking in the concrete heat.
One eye staring up, askew.
The other, a popped grape.
Introduction to prurience.
Smile no more.

Someone caught a snake.
A long sinewy garter.
Put a big red firecracker down its throat.
Bang.
Then hung it from a thorny tree.
For all to see.
Attraction, and repulsion.

Playing house in a backyard tent
with someone they called “the dirty girl”.
Now, let’s play Doctor.  She said.
You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.
Naïve confusion and uncertainty.

Someone laying by a bush on Mount Royal.
We were up there with our bows and arrows.
This person was a strange colour,
and had a crusty red hole in the side of their head.
Momma, Momma, Momma!
We ran.  Changed forever.

We were stopped at a gas station,
when we heard the sirens, coming from our left.
The loudspeakers blaring CLEAR THE INTERSECTION.
Straight ahead of us, a car speeding towards the same point,
with thumping music.  Oblivious.
They hit hard, and spun.
Bloody faces punched through windshields.
Horror and helplessness.