The Y and the 7

My friends liked to go to the beach. Swim. Boat. I hated it. Its my skin. My lungs. Skin burns. Lungs don’t like water. I can’t swim. I can’t wear shorts. Or go topless. (I used to have a body.) I have to wear a huge hat on my head. And dab my nose with something that looks like bird…  You get the picture. I look ridiculous. My friends were always thinking they might get lucky. With the birds. There was no way in hell any woman would have been attracted to me. And if there was one young lady,  I don’t think I’d want to be associated with her. So we were at Wasaga Beach. (It wasn’t Wasaga but I like to say Wasaga. Great name for a beach. Wasaga.) I wrote this poem. Just listed everything I saw around me. And then tagged an ending on it. Its not much of a poem. I think I’ve probably read hundreds like it. But I liked the title. The Y and the 7. Nice couple.

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SUNDAY 27

 

seashore needles

waters lash

sunburnt walrus

beachcombers jazz

 

summertime drone

driftwood laughs

everyone imitating

childhood crafts

 

sunshine worshippers

barbecue mass

the day turns into tan

the night breaks out in rash.

The Strangers Don’t Like To Be Disappointed

I found out. It came to me. Out of the blue. Maybe I listen to too much late radio. Too much Art Bell. That brain tumor I talked about some time ago. I realize now that it was no brain tumor. More sinister than that. It’s an implant. There were dozens of us implanted with special beacons. So the strangers could find us. We were picked. Individually. The strangers expected us to become leaders in industry, commerce, politics. My problem. I think I’m going to disappoint them. The strangers don’t like to be disappointed. I’m going to tell them that I’m the leader of a secret organization that controls everything. Its a company. A good front. We produce toilet paper.

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Road scholar

Winter was cold this year. As was your shoulder. On the side of the road. Scholar.

Poetry is like pong.

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Fear and the angle of refraction

I had a confrontation with a young man in our school the other day. He was not one of our students. And though I thought he was an ex-student, I did not recognize him. He was threatening one of our students and I stepped in between the two boys. And asked him to leave. He swore at me and let it be known that he knew me. And didn’t like me. I still didn’t recognize him but asked him to leave. Kept moving him slowly to the exit. All along he kept threatening me. I finally got him out of the school. All through this experience I was calm. I don’t suppose my heart rate increased at all. I had no sensations of fear. Or anger. I felt very little at all. I’m not sure this was the appropriate response.

iAMaGALLERY Feb2011

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New work. Have a browse. Don’t pester the guards. Wine and cheese are gratis.

Chicken out?

Why is it so important to have done something with one’s life? I will soon be at the age where I will have to retire. Retire from what? I don’t think I’ve ever had a real job. Just income. What is it with these bucket lists? When you’re in your last moments, do you think it will matter much to you that you jumped out of an airplane, made a million dollars, slept with hundreds of women, or raised your children as good people. (For reasons that I can’t explain raising my children was important.) It’s like this. I think when I’m about to pass on, I’ll chicken out. I don’t really want to leave this life. No matter how much I bitch about it.

This is the way big corporations operate

My son has tourettes. It is a disorder of the nervous system. He also has Attention Deficit Disorder. He is not hyper active. We had him tested with all kinds of doctors when he was young. He is very intelligent. In intelligent tests he scored in the top 5% of the population. He is a talented artist. But he is disorganized, untidy, and when under stress he can be very intense. He worked for my wife’s company, a large accounting firm in Toronto. He worked in their mail room for four years. And then he was fired. For being so intense. They had a policy in the mailroom of not talking to our son. Our son thought it might have been because he was a visual minority. He got along fine with most of the people he worked with but they were afraid to talk to him lest they be centred out as well. (We learned this from one of the girls who worked in the mailroom.) Our son’s boss did not like his attitude, his intensity. She was put off by all the symptoms (though minor) of his tourettes. They sent our son to an anger management interview. The psychiatrist who spoke to him (over several interviews) told him that he didn’t have anger problems. Nevertheless, our son lost his job. At this same time this accounting firm was running a campaign to support the investigation and education of the public on tourette syndrome. A couple of weeks after our son left the company, the woman that fired him asked my wife for a donation to the tourette program. She was in charge of the campaign for the company. This is the way big corporations work.

 

 

You know my name

Look up the number. But I can’t remember. People know who I am. But I have no perception of who I am. I am like a vampire. I can’t see myself in the mirror. But I know what I am. And this sense of myself is reaffirmed in disasters. Not personal disasters. But the news of disaster. Like the recent terrible events in Japan. One feels a crushing identity with the victims and the survivors. It is almost too much. Empathy seems too weak a word for the emotion. It is a strong force in the universe. We need to feel it. (Which is probably the attraction of horror fiction/movies, car accidents, hospital TV shows.) This affinity is our identity. But if this empathy is too strong, we can lose ourselves in the horror. (Perhaps this is what is identified as ‘battle fatigue’. )

 

Don’t call me and I won’t call you

I hate telephones. What a backward step for mankind. The loss of privacy. People are chained to their jobs. And the chains are wireless. That’s progress.

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The Box

The Box has finally been released. These stories were originally part of a larger project but I decided that they were more enjoyable on their own. They are separate stories. Some of the characters may reappear in different tales. They are written somewhat like the stories from the TV series “The Twilight Zone” of which I have been a big fan. (Never end a sentence with a preposition. I hate that rule.) The Box is available at Smashwords and you may read a large portion of it without payment. If you should decide to buy it, it would be most appreciative. I have to put my prepositions through college. Sort of.