Last night I was dying the sleep of the dead
It lasted for forty one hours
It must have infected my intimate head
Because now I have heavenly powers
As I lie in my armchair, I’m watching with glee
As I sip at my hot whisky toddy
The housework is done by a double of me
But another is moving his body
https://poetlee.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/doppelganger_3_by_doppelganger47.jpg
There, and back again. I wish it had a happy ending, like Bilbo Baggins’s book. I dropped my wife off to spend a few days with her sister in the North country. Last night I stayed in a motel and bedded down for the night at 10 pm. I am by nature a light sleeper, and unused to sleeping in strange beds. Unfortunately, I also had the neighbours from hell. They stayed up all night, and the door to their room must have slammed fifty times. Finally, at 3 AM, I summoned up the courage to open my door and see what the hell was going on down the hall. At that point, I saw two figures dressed in deep hoodies, and sporting backpacks. They seem to be in a hurry to leave the neighbours room, and kept their heads down and their hats pulled over their faces. I am no babe in the bush, and it struck me that probably what was going down was a drug deal. This could be a flight of fancy on my part, but pieces fit together pretty well I think. Someone who is dealing could rent a room reasonably cheaply and use it as a headquarters for the evening to do their transactions. Hence, the multiple door slammings and conversations in the hall. At four in the morning, still without sleep, I got on the phone to the front desk and did some yelling. Things seem to quiet down for a bit, and I was drifting off by around 6 AM when the shenanigans resumed. So, not one iota of sleep the whole night really. Around 7 o’clock in the morning, I grabbed a coffee and went to see them at the front desk. I told them how my night had gone. They expressed sympathy and offered me a discount. Ha ha. I said a one hundred percent discount would be more in line with my thinking, and that’s what I walked out with. It is 6:45 PM as I write this, and I am going to bed for the night in my own comfy quiet room. Wish me luck.
Interrupted greenness laps at a concrete shore.
Pines conical
Squat bushes like smudged thumbprints
ubiquitous ferns with a grace of lowness
No single berry or petal resides
Birds are gone or struck dumb
I am stopped in this nondescript time and place
out of fatigue, tension, and the chewing of unpalatable thoughts
on this long and lonely trip home.
The idiot noise of the highway derby buzzes by.
I regret that I must rejoin it soon.
But I sit and sip some coffee.
Things have a vital brightness here.
Each is a home unto itself.
There is permanence, potential.
The verdant perfume of forgetfulness.
Please…I…tell me what is needed, this day.
So things can be set right.
Please, oh please.
It is debatable whether I should share this.
Tomorrow I will drive 500 miles for the umpteenth time to see my wife’s sister. This is a person who, in the 40 years I have known her, seems bent on self-destruction.
I will spare you the lurid details of her life, except to say that she has been in trouble with the law on more than one occasion, and is close to being jailed for the things she has done and continues to do.
It’s a sore point between my wife and I. Over the years, she has made attempts to rescue, save, or reform this person. All to no avail. We take food up to her, “lend” her money, take her out shopping, buy her cigarettes, you name it. Two years ago, she had a stroke, then booked her self out of the hospital. Since then, my wife has been beside herself trying to get social services to help her out. She can’t understand why they won’t put her sister into an assisted care facility.
As I see it, there are a number of reasons. She is a gangster, so to speak, and has been in that life for years. You don’t just get out of it that easily. She herself will not get involved with social services in case she gets found out. So she is laying low, keeping her contacts close, and living the life.
It seems that every time we go there she’s in a different “house”, and the characters she associates with make me very uncomfortable. We have even brought her into our home for a vacation and, more than once, my wife has broached the idea of having her live with us. At least I have had the guts to say a flat no to that one.
This has been a constant irritant to me, and it’s hard to know what to do. I do understand that this is my wife’s sister, and that she has tried many things to help her get out of the life she’s in. But it’s come to a point where something has to give.
It’s been years since my dear daughter changed her hair colour to deep black. I can’t remember why or exactly when she did it. Sometime after she left the nest anyway.. The last thing dear old dad wants to do is to be critical of her. She is, after all, a very sensitive creature. Also very independent and strong headed. But she does get the drift after a while as to what her dad’s opinion is.
This morning she texted me, and there was a picture to download. The caption above the picture said “Dad, I know you never liked my black hair, so here you go! I went natural. I kind of hate it, And I am thinking of going back and getting it fixed. But I did want you to see what I used to look like.”
I wrote back and said don’t you dare.
Here’s what she did for Dad
Rosy red puddle
Mahogany floor
Twenty nine fingers
Have been through the door
One of their owners
Has taken a knife
And mortally wounded
The Principal’s wife
Blood on the doorknob
(But on the outside)
There’s a ring in the bathtub
But is it a guide?
Her body is naked
And lies in the hall
Something inside of her fist,
In a ball
The balcony window
Is splintered and hangs
And the cat in the corner
Is showing its fangs
On the dining room table
A Cadbury box
Some pieces are missing
The parakeet talks
Tells of a struggle
And lets out a scream
Gobbles a biscuit
And now there’s nineteen.
There’s a man in a mustang
He’s driving away
He cries and he screams
And all Hell is to pay
But there’ll be no more lessons
Not tomorrow at nine
Now he speeds up the highway
And crosses the line.
Muscles twitching, jumpy nerves,
The patience wearing thin.
And trickling veins are showing through
The alabaster skin.
Loose connections, shorting out.
The nails are getting yellow.
Bathrooms must be close at hand.
Life’s never been so mellow.
Now, turn that frown right upside down
And be that happy fella-
Just say Hi, and wave goodbye
‘Cause your smile is your umbrella!
On the third floor of the stacked parking garage, I sit hunkered down. Locked in the dirty black Jetta that I’ve squeezed into a sardine can spot, almost touching the concrete wall. It’s what I want. No one can get in from either side. The spate of pounding grey rain outside panders to the mood. I can watch from here. See what passes under the showerhead streetlights. Too much nondescript traffic pulsing, pulsing, all bleached black in the deluge. The time window is long tonight, and I’ve smoked my last half pack. I risk rolling down a window to let out the blue, then think shit, I shoulda left it. It’ll last longer. In my jacket pocket, there’s a cyanide candy for me. A glossy gel cap, in case they come and find a way to bust the armored glass. Quick dissolving. There’s someone I have to find and readjust. Tonight, it’s a She. A needle in a haystack, so I’ve been told. After all, this is Tokyo. But I am secure in my own self, and I know what I can do. The coordinates are true. I know that the one I wait for will be more nondescript than even the rest of the floaters going by. It’s always the way. They think it’s perfect camouflage, but subtlety’s been my study for a while now. I open the glove box, fumble around for more ciggies, no luck. Until I touch a long plastic tube. Yesss, it’s that Kanda Leaf cigar that buddy gave me from off world. Maybe a little stale now, but it’ll do, for more blue. The things that I know about the Runners mean that there’s a big price on my head. I have to stop her, empty her hard drives, and feed in some handy counterpoints. Otherwise, they’re going to be successful in slipping this aberration of time into”Our” continuum. This has been their seventh attempt, and they are here for a reason: to eliminate a bloodline, to prevent what they see as a catastrophic event that will bring their world order down, five thousand years from our “Now”.
Awoke were mine eyes
and tangled was i
in the webs of the house of you.
But a light had arisen
in that windowless prison
and a pathway had come into view.
The storms you collected
their practice perfected
they swarmed and they battered anew
but i busted your cleaving
and as i was leaving
another had sailed with me too.
painting by Jaroslaw Jasnikowski
Gerald. My Gerald, my boy.
I seem to wake on this snowy night, and, my boy, my little boy, you are deeply asleep, but you float in my room. You are a balloon boy on a string, and, bumbling against the ceiling, you drift toward my open window….why? why? did I leave it so?
I grab onto your string….ah! my little boy!…..but you are taken fast out into the night.
I climb out quickly, something is tugging you away, away. I hold fast onto your lifeline, and run stumbling out into the cold white.
A seething throng, out of the birch forest, all pale, all living death, all grasping with bony hands, all floating, has come to take you.
They pull, they pull, they sighingly say you belong with them.
Gerald, your eyes open and you are in fear, my son.
How comes this visitation? What have I done?
My dear dear boy. My life.
***
Art by Michael MacRae
Aremyfeetofftheground 
