Anaximaximum

I feel like a bag of bones

2011-03-16T23:02:00.001-05:00

I feel like a bag of bones
an hommage to William Shakespeare (1516-1564)
and Allen Ginsburg (1926-1997)

To die, to sleep —
To sleep — perchance to dream. ...
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause ...

I feel like a bag of bones

a bag of bones, the bones of my dead

freed [now] of dread -- except for my dead,

I'm alone with dread --

[even] dread of the visit to come

dread of all we've left undone --

me too! -- to feed the unfed.

O dear dead, the word kisses your face,

hear the words and relish embrace

when given sweet dreams

the bone-bag will split at the seams ...

whoever you were, whoever you are

he is not far

and comes to your foes

freed not to oppose

the teacher who's paid off your debt.

No sweat. No sweat, he absorbs your debt.

Go into death with your religions or none

go into death, naked, leaving here

your bag of bones, no more drones [and groans]

no more dreadful tones --

you're almost home.

-- Albert Gedraitis©March9,2011

This is a test version -- i'm not sure i want
the words enclosed in brackets to remain
in the final. Tom Brouillette, choreographer
and poetry-theare performer, may be presenting
this at a Food and Rent party for me to test
with a small select audience in the near
future. Woud you come to experience my new
poem? ... bearing small gifts of food and money
for rent? That woud be so nice!

We're at the tip of November

2008-11-30T20:25:00.002-05:00

So, we're at the tip
of November again
a day
or so, and
around we'll go
into December.

November's end
and we're reminded again
of the sharp snap
from the one
to the other,
November to December.
November then December.
A blast.

Today the snow blossomed

2007-02-14T22:47:00.000-05:00

Today the snow blossomed
valentines hearts white with innocence
covering all smudged the broken
the salted and the ice unsalted
the grey sky of the city
by the wintered lake

November Poem 2k6 2

2006-11-06T23:21:00.000-05:00

.
The Crats and the Licans
cudgel, attack and rally;
do-in each other

in each dank alley --
munchin' walnuts, peanuts, and pecans.

November poem

2006-11-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

I too

saw the jewell of a Jew bound to the cosmic forces

created and positivellbellating cruelty it would seem

to those bereft of the Key all keyed-up with sharps

& flats–

slots among the flaps

spinners goebelling, even the most cunning

a sterile gerbil

no arts, all-farts tarts,
she said smartly and rapidly drank a cupful
of maciavelli

a poem by Albert Gedraitis©Nov3,2k6

Anaximaximum's homopoems attacked by homophobe Pluthero

2006-07-21T23:40:00.000-05:00

See the write-up on Anaximaximum prose, our new page 2 to which all our prose pieces will be moved.

view urbanesque localest

2006-04-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

.
thru the one window, past the greenery growing
this side of the pane
into the backway and cemented-over yard
with its clothesless clothesline no clothespins
past the obtruding dark green of the garage
along the backway to the dark brown gate
noticing the h+laticed greyed-out wood fence
dividing the yard and way from those of the neighbour
jumping the gate and the unseen laneway
to the fresh wood of cross-laneway neighbour's
gateway new and h+er than this side of the lane
to the light brick and green shingles
of the neighbour's add-on, then
to the dark brick windows three-storyed wall
of the neighbour's house proper, then up
my eyes wander to the eavesless tinning
of the unseen roof opposite, a line
separating human habitate from grey sky stretching
its solid cloud-cover above

tired, tried, and terribly morose

2006-04-05T03:09:00.000-05:00

as tho you're interested

what a fool to be interested in
something that's no thing, only
a mood and a fatigue
that overwhelms the desire
for vital energy and doing this
or that obsessed with a vision
of accomplishment that eats
into the tiny fibres of the day
pushing for more, for more
something, anything, any no
thing whatsoever

but too tired
why f+t sleep>

Locale

2006-04-05T02:22:00.000-05:00

Desperately docking the cast iron
flask of mutinous mute mutations
under the good arm, the right swing-
ing aimlessly to and fro, from mere
habit of horror-movies in the late
afternoon with the curtains thick
drawn t+t to seal the room
under the other arm a book of
pressed insects from the earlier
times when the species were not
so extremely unpleasant and more
numerous as to the number of species
and variety of feces, but not so
many in terms of raw numbers, swarms,
flocks, hordes and battalions of
Italians and Greeks so to speaks:

they spoke many languages but not
to one another, to me it would
seem in the early evening when the
sun suddenly drops below the city-
scape claws and darkness descends
so the curtains are pulled back
and the stars beam in from all over
the sky which keeps the insects
out of s+t, but you can still
occasionally hear their whispers
and the plop plop plop as they lay
their eggs in discrete places in
woods nearby and the fields and
the drain gutters at the side of
the roads where the traffic has
stopped now some years ago
without a warning, since the
insects tolerate only natives of
the place not strangers from
other locales and the city. They
seem to have us all counted
hereabouts, and know us each.
Quite familiar with our habits
actually, and tolerant for all
that.

tanglingly

2006-01-24T20:18:00.000-05:00

green comes sky-brawt
underlinings of dealts
the brawt thawt that dwells
suddenly in the consciousness
unconsciously and conscienceless
- just there suddenly -
a silhouette on which you
woodn't bet much such
that a roarschark comes
to mind more orangely
with impulses streaming out
tangling and un-

a second poem for Danny

2006-01-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

I send you dollops of daffidildoes, and laffter before and after

I send great lakes of tears with great skies of ever-expanding space thru which there is no trace of you

You trace the lines in my face, my youth and yours before you offed to war, and were offed.

Before daylite came creeping thru the jungle, they said, you were knifed and bled

Knifed and bleeding, I remember hearing years later that you were gathered to the bosom of Abraham

Gathering shreds and shards of remembrance, I cut my finger, yet let it bleed freely. Who the deed?

a poem for you Danny

2006-01-14T20:06:00.000-05:00

a poem for you Danny

so long gone

Nam Nam damn Vietnam

not much of you came back

just these lingering memories

that come in the day and come in the nite

welcomed, unbidden, forfended

the trick doesn't always work

remember that time?

along Old Orchard Road

Bone Orchard? cemetarily asking

no bone orchard you that nite

living boner, asking Dya moan for the bone?"

implishly

completely contradicting

the taciturn structure of your face

I quickly take a cold, wetted and wrung,

coldwetwashcloth to my face

and struggling to

control again

the steering wheel of my thawts,

I reorient them again

to the pleasures and pain

of the task at hand ....

a jot of rhymes

2006-01-08T15:27:00.000-05:00

New year
new cheer
new fear
new jeer
new sneer
new queer
new tear
new weird
new word
new world
new whirl'd
now sqwirl'd
in the swirld
more war
as before
unfolding 2006
anno Domini

Poetics of digital semiotic artwork: Experiment#1

2005-12-29T19:09:00.000-05:00

The above work of digital semiotic art is its own title; overdetermined and overly fluid at the same time, it retains its redolence while being mentioned as at home in the poetics of the )wlbirdbet. Albert Gedraitis©Dec29,2k5 on OmniGrapple, Grab, GraphicConverter, Firefox, MacOSX3.9, iMac(summer2000), 6.5gigabytes, 350Herz.

Xyba, your visual

2005-12-25T05:48:00.000-05:00

Comment: Christmas Greeting

A marvellous visual - it spoke right to my heart. At my-group blog, refWrite, I "purloined" a Christianbooks.com email shoppingletter visual. I can't help but ask - you know, the way the concentrated focus in the light and in the quickly deepened shadows radiating out, we see hints of faces and terrain. And then again the focus: we feel welcomed into the adoration of our Lord Jesus when He was born, pouring out His deity (but not His Godhood-Trinit, which He perichoretically transformed when He (which theology brings under the category "Pre-Creation Pre-Cosmic Christ") because of perichoresis, God transformed from a Pre-Incarnation moment, followed by a Post-Incarnation moment which perdured perhaps some thirty-three years - in becoming human/God UNMIXED! a person of flesh and blood and subject to all the frailties flesh is heir to, but always the dangling mystery of what else there was about Him.

-- [This thawt is troo to the Gifted Meta-metaphor: In the beginning is the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Who is this? who is said to be "the Word"? - why, just look in the basket in the barnyard. There he radiates gloriously, blindingly if you look directly into the light. And again, there's that lite-motif in this visual! ] --

and marked with gender, height, weight, body hair - colour, kink, distribution, eyebrows, beard - facial features, not necessarily without flaws as tho judgeable in the same manner as moderns do in making aesthetics-judgements of Michelangelo's /David, or /Diskobolos. That blindingly radiating Jesus Child in the feed-bin for the animals, we presume (but in this painting on the Net, I can't see any animals, for sure. Well, actually, in my case, I don't see any at all. But my eyes these years ....

Thank you too for the "caption" - yegads!. the verse is the same as on my-group's refWrite blog entry. Anyway, Xyba, sir or madame or miss, a glorious visual you post for this very day's blog entry!

Posted by: Politicarp at December 25, 2005 04:00 AM

Legs, and Diabetes in the retina, and Photographic Portraiture

2005-12-16T22:51:00.000-05:00

I missed two doctor's appointments today
- warning signals of imminent total collapse
of internal personal psychic organization.

Well, if I have to limp thru the holy days
to the Feast Day of the Nativity, then
I shall limp. But crawl I will not do, will
not crawl. Limit set; boundary fixed between
diverse psychic energies that all become
volatile at once thru the Autumnal Procession
from Sterling's death by lite-ning ten days
into October and Ruth's death by pills and
plastic bag, Mom whisked herself away
at the end of the first week of November.

I get some chance to recoup myself, draw
my psychic energies into the corral
of organized emotional order. So hard to do,
so hard even to think adequately.

This is the way
I should like to go, if I become debilitated
but not yet dead.

But I must let go of my Christmas and enter
into the Christmas that the Church tries to
re-center from the shops and gifts, to the rites
of memory and true presence of the Incarnate
θηεο (theos, in Greek) Deus (Latin) Dios (Spanish)
God in English, YHWH in the ancient prevowel
Hebrew writing of the Bible.

I missed two doctor's appointments today, and
the Photo ID specialist who parachutes into
the Woodgren Community Centre to click the camera
and produce a legal-tender picture of you, but
I have to present my birth certificate, when
I have no birth certificate to present.

I was born July 30, 1940 in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania, USA, so I was always told
growing up. Here I am, all too apparent to myself,
but an undocumented person because I reached
sixty-five years of age
without proper documentation.

Feeling better. I didn't get to this doctor, or
that, to a photo-opportunity that would demand
to see my non-existent birth certificate, but
I did get to write a poem. Of sorts.

The day feels guilty

2005-12-15T13:54:00.000-05:00

The day feels guilty

Oops! Freudian slip.
I meant to write
The day feels easy.
And it does.

I'm no longer fretting
about the leg doctor's
appointment I missed.
That was Monday
at ten-thirty am (o'clock).

I'm no longer anxious
about the logjam in
the bureaucracies -
juggling Louise
the immigration person
at the NDP provinicial
riding office (Marily Churley,
MPP) and Johanna at the NDP
Federal riding office
(Jack Layton, MP), and
Evadne at Disability.

Actually I was sent
by Evadne to Woodgreen
Community Center. where
an official Photo ID specialist
rides in once a week, tomorrow
Friday, one pm to two-thirty.

Worry about tomorrow?
"Sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof."
Or, I could opt for
"showers of blessings" and
"a balm in Gilead."

But the Woodgreen phone
receptionist said
I had to bring a birth certificate.
Which I no longer have. I'm
an undocumented person, and
Disablity is banging me around
until I dissolve into utter incoherence.
I grasp the Co-Inherence! the Mercy!

My blogs on refWrite
yesterday (Wednesday) and
probably the day before
{Tuesday)
were just terribly written.

Guilt? Who me?
Well, it's not as bad
as feeling guility for your
Mother's death.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
jingle all the way down
to the bottom of the pit
of guilt and at the bottom
put your feet soldily on
the stone beneath you
in the well - and push
and paddle your way
to the surface.

Merry Christmas!

CSM continues to lead mass media in poetry

2005-12-13T03:00:00.000-05:00

Here are some recent poems published by the Christian Science Monitor. In his December 8column, "American Life in Poetry," Ted Kooser (US Poet Laureate) presents a poem by J. Lorraine Brown, "Tintype on the Pond" (1925). In the same edition (but not Kooser's column), M. Kelly Lombardi's "Tuscany Light" appears. A bit ... frail. Mary Lou Healy's "December Passage" (December 9) is stronger. - Anaximaximum

cummings and goings - un hommage

2005-12-11T19:56:00.000-05:00

cummings and goings

(with apologies to e e)

today
mud-lucious
puddle-wonderful

things
appearing

to be

far and wee
now
near and free

balloonmen coming
snowmen going

look-
the lame
the marbled
the pirated
the queer
come dancing and whistling

balloons purpled, blued, reddened
held high
let's let them go and watch them/we rise

and we the goat-footed
know the truth

there is no such thing as spring
only forsythia and gasoline

BarbaraVallette©2004

tSa dillydally day

2005-12-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

After the doctor, it's a dillydally day.

Cold clear day, brite blue sky.

Trite, but breathtakingly so.

Soul-chilling chill thru all my wrappings,

thru the tuque, thru the gloves leather-lined,

thru the scarf a dark green with a tartan plaid

printed on one side of the wool,

and my Great Coat made of synthetics for NorthWest Territories,

chill rite down to the bone.

Just a beautiful dillydally day.

Art: Movies: The (K)ni(gh)tes of the South Bronx - un hommage to a fine flick!

2005-12-06T22:09:00.001-05:00

The Knites of the South Bronx is a beauty of a movie that I saw tonite as I blogged. Well, I half-watched it twice, as they're running it again, back to back, an instant re-run on A&E (don't know if the A&E TV channel is Canadian-broadcast only, or does the channel come out of the States into my Rogers DigitalTV Terminal (which I use for free, except I pay for Fox News Channel ... so I'm continuing to blonguage the movie*, writing it up while I'm half-watchin The (K)Ni(gh)tes a second time around, right now as I compose this very blog for the poets, poem-lovers, and poem-livers ,,, composing a blog entry ... even, I do ostentatiously hope,,,,,,,, for some among the pro litcrits and movie watchers/thinkers (even "film studies" inhabitants, no less) - who may come to this blog for the poetry. By the way do you have a poem you think belongs published on this blog of poetry? Barbara Vallette re-wrote for the purpose of un hommage an e. e. cummings original, honouring her inspiration; we're going to publish digitally the poem for her and him. Ms Valette aka Swanfreak will be a making her début here (first off it will be with this cummings-hommage, bearing a copyright mark and all). Hear me, Babbs? But à propos this very moment, do you have a choice, short piece of poetic-prose or stanza'd verse or free verse of movie-writing of your own composition, dear readers all, a movie-writing that I may be interested in publishing rite hear on Anaximanximum? If so, let's parlay, chez my "semiotics" email address "at" - you might know, "mac.com" period.

The Knites learn to play chess, tawt to play by a longterm substitute teacher (an ex-executive Richard Nathan - played by star actor, Tim Danson in an urbane, gentlemanly role based on a truel life-story).

However, it's the elementary-school class that is the leading star of this show, including in its number a kindergartener who comes to his older sister's 4th Grade class with Mr Nathan, because kindergarten ends eah day when the sister's class with this Mr Nathan, is still in session. As things turn out, this normal boy otherwise, also happens to be an unpretentious math-prodigy. He leads the way almost by accident, all the 4th Graders + 1, together are in the leading role as a unit, the true protagonist. The Knites: It's a lyrical good-for-everybody movie, great-hearted and child-centered. Very convincing in that respect. The Knites begin to compete in Chess matches with other elementary schools. And the plot flows inevitably to its positive conclusion with only the most fringeal tragic elements / moments (thus, technically in litgenre-theory, the film's plot is a comedy). The kid-actors are brilliant! not over-dramatized!, and convincing as distinct characters within the strength of the collective identity and protagonisme; the movie is a marvel of characterization.

What an art-pleasurely work! Rated: good for kids and adults too.

Now I'm gonna Preview this blog entry, Publish it, and View online the product, the poem - an attempt to produce a poetic review of a great movie for you. - Anaximaximum

There's yet another layer, of course: the play upon the inner-semiotic riches of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that gives the computer-screen reader the si(gh)te of bold, italics, underline, "quote marks" and

blockquotes, and all the further other semiotica, phenomena related to fonts and punctuations, English orthography accompanied by purposeful mispelling, which along with the variables just listed are part of the textual poem's playground. -Anax [Here the blockquote endeth.]

* blonguage? should the spelling be "blongwich"? The latter is closer to the Owlbirdbet spelling, for sure.

This blog entry is being cross-posted in poetry-blog Anaximaximum and also in Writtles, an Owlhoot website hosted at dotMac, and devoted to reformational-philosophical semiotics in practice, as well as in the theory thereof, far more popularly-accessible than is any typical academic paper. Movie credits, pans, and praises are accessible here, and an eviscerated version of this review has been posted on the same site by by my sometimes amenuensis, Semiotics. But it takes a few days to get approval. - Anax

Novembroidery

2005-12-05T01:05:00.000-05:00

I'm holding onto, hanging onto

vapours of the month just faded away

Can I actually say the name aloud.

I will it: November

I say it aloud: I command me,

I demand -

Whitman said, "me, myself, and I;"

Olthuis took it up as a founding idea

of his philosophical anthropology

pour une science d'éthique reformationelle

- me do it.

I do

This is the month, this novembroideried
passage of days, every year

She died between November 6 and 7,

somewhere inbetween.

She took lots of sleeping pills.
She put a see-thru plastic bag over her head, a tint of blue,

veiled

and laid herself out in full decorum,

true to her fastidious aesthetic of simplicity,

now an aesthetic of dieing by her own willing it.

"She should have died hereafter,

there would have been

a time for such a thawt." Who said it?

Ruth Eleanor Balchunas Gedraitis,
rest in the peace, your son Albert

Albert Gedraitis copyright
Monday, December 5, 2005

Robert Browning float-up from Andrea del Sarto

2005-12-03T03:41:00.000-05:00

Ah, but a man's reach
should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?

- Robert Browning (1812-1869), Andrea del Sarto, lines 97-98a (1855).

Comments & Trackback are now working!

2005-11-28T20:32:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Somber umber November

2005-11-15T21:28:00.000-05:00

The leaves fall leaving the trees now skeletous

bared down to the wisp of twigs, each tree

a whisk-broom up-ended, a tired raker unable

to collect the wet discolor'd umbrous clumps.

October is Sterling's month

2005-10-19T16:21:00.000-05:00

October is Sterling's month. His death
has a date, around October 11, but
you can't fix it so completely because
the dieing happened on a Friday nite
at 6 o'clock in the evening, to the effect
that when the time creeps up on you
the days of the weekend don't fall each year
at precisely the official calendar date.
There's no way around this expansive blur
of the timing one direction or another
most years.

But in any case, the annual remembrance
must be planned for, plotted -
as, if not faced consciously, it will rise
like a secret tide of mooded illness of spirit,
of soul sickness. But if faced, it can be
prepared and practiced as a liturgy
of conscious remembrance of Sterling's dieing
and of Sterling's living.

Nature herself usually takes the first step
toward preparation and remembrance.
The autumnal signs, the semiosis of the wind
and cold and turning of leaves, even ever so
infinitesimally, now play like a piano-man
on my very bones, and I can hear
the slow rising tide of the blues.
The remembrance of Sterling's death is coming,
all the October signs tell me.

October belongs to Sterling.
October is a season of my heart, flooded
and, swimmingly, I'm loaded to the gills
with Sterling. I swim in the slowly rising tide,
and recall the steps of the liturgy
for this moment of my personal liturgical year.

October is Sterling's month.

Groceries List

2005-10-14T11:32:00.000-05:00

Yes, I must remember to put Oliviana on my list - that's the margarine made of olive oil. Basic Foods at Gerrard Square, so it's a long walk for Oliviana.

And I need that dark-red tipped lettuce (the red says there's iron in it, and I need some of that). Another BF item.

No lettuce on hand rite now for my sandwiches, you know with tomato and baloney (okay, spell that "bologna" - should I call it "blogogna" - but then you get into Gog and Magog). Check the corner convenience store for Schneider's 100% Beef baloney that the owner has been getting in, on my suggestion (I actually washed the plastic packaging all-labelled and took that with me to the store and showed it to the lady of the family, behind the counter that day ... they're from Sri Lanka. Well, they've already sold out their first order of baloney (3 packages, she said last time I looked), leaving in their fridge only that chicken baloney substitute that the supplier pggy-backed on her order, my suggestion. Yuck.

Then there's the hunt in the triple-stacked bins tucked into the shelves of Aisle 3 at BF, the bins being the gimmick they use to keep the tins of tuna and and other canned meats so that they don't have to be neatly stacked. I go to the bins for the Equality brand, it's the cheapest at BF, but I only like this brand's tuna when it's packed in water a-n-d of the variety "Light Chunk Style." Can't stand the "Flaked" variety, but too often the "Chunk" cans when you get them home actually open to reveal mostly flakes anyway. False advertizing, Equality!, low-brow brand of Basic Foods, low-brow subsidiary of Atlantic & Pacific food-oligarchocorporation. But thank you for getting the All-Natural Peanut Butter onto the shelves so voluminously - after I launched my one-man campaign to thwart the hi-sugar brands monopoly on your shelves!

Two days back, I bawt some stuff, not to duplicate today:

√ green peppers (2)
√ broccoli (2 stems with flowerettes)
√ salmon portion freeze-packs ($10 a package)
√ Dempster's Enriched White Bread
√ bananas for breakfast with my Oatmeal (1-Minute Quaker)
√ Gold Seal tuna (no Equality brand tins available in the bins)
√ sardines (2 tins, tabasco-pack only, the other varieties have lousey tastes, but with the tabasco you actually get 2 tabasco pods in each tin)

That's all I can remember.

O yeah, go to the convenience story first, to check out the 2% Milk supply (Sealtest), check date stamp as the milk in these cartons goes bad before I can use up the whole contents for my daily Oatmeal breakfasts (with a sliced banana and a shake of cinammon). And check out the Schneider's all-beef baloney; avoid the individually-wrapped cheese-slices to add to sandwiches, as the off-brand they carry tastes offal - hmm, buy a Kraft individually-wrapped pack of slices at BF, save the packaging after using the single-wrap slices on sandwiches, and then wash the package, and take it to the owner of the corner store. Likewise, make a move to get the large plain Quaker Oatmeal packages on the shelves, instead of the little boxes of little packets of Apple Oatmeal, and Whatnot Oatmeal, but no Banana Oatmeal.

Oh yeah, at BF., get some fresh packs of spinach.

Opthamology & Optometry

2005-10-12T12:16:00.000-05:00

The opthamologists are mapping my eye,
while the All-Seeing Eye, having mapped my I
from before my birth and tracked my days
on Earth, is now mapping my eye-doctors in
the process of their secondary map-making.
The All-Seeing maps my I and knows how to
get about within it,

even better than His seconds.

I go to the retina specialist whose Resident
deputized for the task, glares his pinpoint
little lite rite into my site, here-and-there-ing
as I slow-shift to the left and rite and up
and down and all around - for the mapping.
Doctor Wong comes in, his seconds report
the results. He checks, he asks them questions
to provoke their self-corrects. The chief
deputy then shows me his hand-drawn view
of the back of my eyeball, where the results
precisely locate a fleck of red along some
arterial track in the back southwestern zone
of softball tucked into the skull-bone

left of the nose.

Diabetes, is it swelling the artery with undue
pressure, puncturing the rear of the eye-ball,
horizontal to the left ear? Could be, must be
just a temp spot, or could be a vein-weakness
that will develop into a conflagration, render
the outside of my eye, what you see, a fiery
blaze of blood-shot haze, popping the eye

and maybe, just maybe, I'll die.

We've got to track it. If it's a minor event
that's on its way out, or is it a progressive
process of developing dire. We've got to track
it, to prevent a forest fire. Come back in
three months.

I'm being tracked for diabetes putting too
much pressure on the veins in the back
of my eyeball and exploding them one by one
until I'm blind, perhaps. I must make out
a will, and live my books to some deserving
student of reformational philosophy and
encyclopedia, someone really interested
in the history of American philosophy.

Now, I go to Doctor Chan for a wider
opthamologicification that will measure my
seeing-site in the form of an eye-glasses
checkup for the first time in eight years.
It wasn't at the hospital, but in his private
offices, where I return somewhat embarrassed
at the long time of self-neglect which now
becomes obvious as his staff checks for all
the eye diseases I may have contracted -
like glaucoma,

perhaps I'm in a coma,

and whatnot.

When the staff finishes , they turn over
their report to Doctor Chan, the main man.
I'm sent into his inner chamber where he
measures meticulously my site, my seeing,
my see-balls, left and rite. The results:
in the ate years since my last opto-measure
exam, my seeability has decreased just
a smidgeon, and my astigmatism has rotated
just a wee.

Of course, Doc gives me a new prescription
with the measurements needed for new glasses.
There will be a period of adjustment,
I'm advised, during which my site will blur
for awhile. But, I translate al this to mean
I won't have to get the new eye-glasses
for thse Internet-worn, TV-strained eyes, not
immeidately - as money is tite!

The All-Seeing Eye sees my plite, my site,
my nite, my day, my play, my journey
on the Way lit by His Word's Lite.

- Owlb

Cancellation in hand, I go to Disable Hdqtrs to beg for mercy

2005-08-11T16:57:00.000-05:00

I went downtown today with the sun less
a scorcher than most days nowadays, and
less humid for sure. Last nite spent hours
going thru every shred of paper I could
find, throwing away stuff not absolutely of
hi-est importance. I even found a note
with my "Date of Landing" in Canada way
back when - 1967! ~ arriving from my land
of birth and very much still dearly beloved.

The lady told me what I knew: I'm in trouble.
I'm undocumented since the landlady threw
out all my immigration documents and the
album of photos of my mom. The latter lady
I really can't warm up to, the former lady at
that moment this morning rite in front of me
behind the glass partition was amenable enuff.

She gave me three photocopies for the digital
file they had on me - these photocopies are
in lieu of zero, and I'm supposed to parlay them
with Old Age Benefits, while I go to Immigration
for further parlay, for which I need my US
birthcertificate from the great Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania, for which certificate I need a
government official photograph, for which I need
to go to the US Consulate. That's as in consul,
not as in console.

Dread.

My back hurts

2005-08-10T11:38:00.000-05:00

I was stopped.

I couldn't write pömz,
or rants as my Detractor calls them.

Much has happened. And I have
done much, sinned much.

Two days back, I got a notice
telling me I was cut off from
Disability.

The same day the Housing Tribunal
heard against me, sealing the Landlady's
complaint that I be evicted. So, now,
it's official. I don't belong here.
Thank You. Lord!

I don't want to pay more than here. So,
it's not easy to find a place.

I am selling my stuff a bit at a time, to
raise cash, as I'll need it for first and
last months' rent - wherever I go
and however much I have to pay.
It hurts.

I've found a place where I can cook
for a whlie. Still, it hurts.

And by the faraway day of actual eviction,
September 9, I have
a cubbyhole where I can then sleep.
Yet it hurts.

I'm busy looking for a room of my own
and praying for a think-space where I'm
free to think and blog - yes, still
trying to blog and to write pömz. Yet
it hurts.

My back hurts from carrying stuff
to the bargaining ladies of secondhand
stuff.

In the blazes of June, I flirt

2005-06-30T10:17:00.000-05:00

After the kitchen dance on the eve before
yesterday, I faced another blazing day here
in the Near East of Toronto's East End,
whereupon I went joyfully to Gerrard Square
Mall, as the dietician had ordered me to do,
for my daily walk (it's only a block or so from
my cell). Inside the Mall, there were a
benches lined up against the huge windows
revealing the Basic Foods store's insides.
Unfortunately, the benches were all occupied
by old-timers like myself. Me? I was about
to collapse just from the walk in the scorch,
dripping wet with sweat so that my shirt was
soaked thru. And breathing hard, very hard
to catch my breath. I had to get off my feet.

So, I trudged my way to thru the labyrinth
of the first-floor of the Mall all the way over
to the hidden-from view Food Court where
I had had my first visitor for conversation on
a more hospitable day (there's no room in my
cell for such amenities). In the court at one
of its uncomfortable tables to each of which
two opposite-facing seats are fixedm and thus
people of girth have to wedge themselves in,
and then later, out. A hi discourtesy to the Fats
who give these food courts a significant margin
of their total business. So I sat in my chair
facing out, with my legs turned out into the
aisle, side-saddle-style, and reached my arm
overto grasp the far edge of the piece which
binds two these tables for two, each table with
its own two chairs joined into one unit by this
piece, the fixed structure to no customer's good
or pleasure. We see that these Food Courts are
not designed for customers but to bilk money
from them amidst the discomfort they so
generously offer. I held my self steady in this
manner, clutching the binding piece of the two
forever joined tables. Waiting in this manner
for the flow of sweat to stop and the burning
of the cheeks to subside and the breathing
heavy to ease, and lo!, after a long time I was
sufficiently relieved to arise and go to the
washroom. In the washroom, I removed my
straw hat and left it on a clean clear counter.

Then I removed the twine cord from my
shoulder, the cord that ties onto one of my
belt loops on the right side of my jeans,
crosses my back and then loops thru a series
of loops to my the front left loop of my
jeans, the loop closest to my zipper. In this
way, I wear my jeans, no belt, and they droop
a bit, vaguely reminiscent of hiphop style. I
couldn't bear today to wear this device (no
suspenders) on the inside of my shirt as I most
always do. Where it functions then as a kind
of monastic hairshirt or penitential thorn that
some monks rig from a single barb of a barbed
wire, but mine is just the cheap imitation, tho
under the shirt it weighs on and irritates the
skin from shoulder to belly and also down the
back. A slight annoyance I have learned to
endure for the sake of a more sitely decorum.

But today, in making the trip from my cell to the
Mall, I couldn't bear to have it under the shirt,
and wore it instead in plain view on the outside.
But now, to negotiate the Mall without this low-
class self-advertisement of poverty, and return
to a slightly hi-er degree of possible middle-
class appearance, I am in the Men's Room,
dropping my twine cord, removing my soaked
shirt, and exposing my vast belly so enormously
pale in its impertinence, then replacing my twine
now to my bare shoulder which allows the
readjustment of my jeans which all the time I had
held from falling to the floor by widening the gap
between my legs at the knee. Now, cord in
pentitential place, I slip my soaked shirt back on
over my head, adjusting it to cover from outside
my jeans and the whole belt line - and now my
low-class is invisible, more or less, not so severe.

I go to the urinals and take a piss, all the while
trying to sense over my shoulder how much traffic
into and out of the pisseria is taking place, and
hoping no one steals my hat from the clean clear
counter I can no longer see. Relief complete, I go
to a basin to wash my hands and then dry them,
and now I can cock my eye on my hat. It's there.
I rescue it, and place it back on my head, my dark
glasses still hiding my eyes from all.

Out in the Food Mall, again, I quickly find another
ridiculous extortionist place for us among the fat
contortionists to try to sit. But I don't feel so
exhausted anymore. There's a slight air
conditioning effect at work here, very slight, due to
the a BrownOut alert today, an alert that's hovering
over the city with the pollution and the heat, as the
folks with home air-conditioning and the hi-rise
offices and the Malls and factories could use so
much electricity that the whole grid collapses and
leaves us all electricldess for dark nites and roasting
days ahead. That's when some folks go and live in
their air-conditioned automobiles and increase the
filth quotient in the air. But I'm feeling better.

I go into the new huge Home Depot store that's
replaced Sears in the Mall, now for some months.
It takes much time to explore such a store, but
suddenly at the front checkout, I find I have no
energy to tramp randomly into the depths and just
wander around looking for what I'm interested in.0
I finally persuade the checkout lady to summons to
the front someone to help me, and there arrives in
fine demeanor a sturdy young man, the Manager of
the Day, to assist me. Modest in his speech and
stance, but straitforward and courteous, so different
from what I get daily at home in the shared kitchen
of the three tenants from the sneaky would-be
Lord of the Manor. And, Manager, he is so sitely.
Sitely walks me into the depths a couple of feet
ahead but not outpacing me, not tiring me before
we even get to the sawt-for treasure. Finally, we
arrive at the free-standing air-conditioner that
conceivably I could set up in my room, with two
six-inch diameter accordion tubes, one to bring in
fresh air, the other to expel stale air from my cell,
conceivably. The very thawt of such fresh air
dehumidized and cooled, a trick, a trick of hi-tech
to be sure. And the tubes are six feet long; there's
a panel with two appropriate vents that fits into
the gap between the sliding panel of my window,
and vertical window=frame for maximal efficiency.
Sitely Manager explains the detials in answer to
my questions - some figure for BTUs, and some
other for electrical measurement - that one slips
by me. So I'll have to check. I ask where it's
made - USA. Good, not China, as my guilt over
buying cheapo slave-labour products from China
increases daily. And price, I ask. Seven hundred
and with tax eight hundred three dollars and
change. A major probelm of financing, surely.

Now, it's time to move on to fans. I must replace
Merton, since there's no air-conditioner for any
foreseeable future. Ah, a stand-up hi-rise fan is
exhibited in a demo model. The real for-sales
are all packed in large long narrow boxes, and I'd
have to assemble the dang thang. Price? Thirty
dollars! Business complete, Sitely Manager walks
me back thru the labyrinth to put me on the path
to the exit / entrance / checkout. I tell him I'm
going to be back for that stand-up, so that I can
lay naked on the bed in the blazes of a June nite
and let the air flow over my whole body. He turns
and gives me a sweetly wry smile, and I think I said
more than a propositional analysis could yield. I
feel good. I feel I have flirted.

But I needed to get some dietician-required green
vegetables of certain specific kinds (no peas, too
much sugar even when fresh off the peapod vine).
I buy my stuff, fussily, but successfully. And walk
home, wondering how I'd carry the hi-fan package
once I buy it tomorrow - that is, today. Did I
mention the way the orange thin straps of his
Home Depot orange work-apron crisscrossed over
the back of his shirt, and then double twined around
his waste in a most sitely design. Or how his shirt
above the top of the apron in front was open in a
V two or three buttons down and revealed a triangle
of fine, spaced, not curly, not dark hairs evenly
distributed in the field of notice.

Kitchen Dance

2005-06-29T14:44:00.000-05:00

Last nite I went up against the foe,
the little king-Tut tyrant of the tenants
at 1050, where I had not been able
to get his attention to discuss household
concerns for some time. Today he came
in after work, and refused to give me
the requested two seconds, and I found
myself following him down the hall whlie
he kept saying repetitively "I'm busy"
(walking down the hall). Finally, he
arrives at the locked door of hus spacious
room and hesitates before stepping up
close to it with key in hand to open it.
I see a space left unoccupied, and I slip
into it. I'm between him and the door,
me facing back toward him, he facing
forward to me and the door to his room
behind me.

Somehow I petitioned over and over for
two seconds to discuss my concern,
over and over he refused, and somehow
I danced after him as he retreated back
down the hallway past the third tenant's
door, past the bathroom door, into the
kitchen, a large kitchen with much
open space, things are getting heated as
I make my case and swears vigourously
repetittively, and stupidly he backs into
a corner between the fridge and the wall
that angles to the right from it. He has
cornered himself and present my whole
body closer and closer till my face is in
his faces and vile curses, and his face
is in my face, and my belly is against his
belly (both of us shirted, of course), and
he calls out for the third tenant who
comes running, but it takes a little time
and then suddenly he has formed a hand
into a jabbing device, thrusting like a
spear into my throat, reflex reaction one
of mine swings up and grabs his throat
between thumb and fingers. Third party
is behind me, I hope he saw the assault
which I transformed into words for the
record, and also announced my self-
defense.

He tells me to let go, but I say how can
I when you've got hold of my defense arm
in your own aggressing hand. He wants
a truce, he lets go, I left go. I retire,
having made sure he understands my
concern.

Later I see him and the third tenant
chattering to the landlady, and I go
directly and join the conversation to
sort things out. But that's another story
for another time.

Oh Lord, am I in trouble!

2005-06-25T21:35:00.000-05:00

Oh Lord, am I in trouble? Yes, Lord, I am
deep in trouble. I got kicked or nearly-kicked
off Thinknet today. I'm not really sure which.

A while back I got one guy's goat, a doctor of
academia, of course. I gave the blustering bull
a good raking for his egomaniacal assumption
that he was all logical, and in his dismissal of me
I was defending someone else, very much his
equal in smarts, against his blusterosity, while
the self-identified pure logic dude, claimed very
logicallically of course, I had "absolutely no
logic at all." Which is well-nigh an impossiblity.
Correct?. Lord. I mean to talk - er, to keyboard
the words that could evoke such anger from him
means I had to have had some little bit of logicity
in there somewhere, didn't I?, when I was showing
him my anger. You know, I showed him mine, and
he then he showed me his.

Then I went after another guy being ballyhooed
by yet a third guy. I outed the first of this duo for
going mean on one of my favourite philosophers,
and showed the innards of his programme of
division for what it was, but I'll not unravel that
much further, Lord. (People may be listening in on us.)

You know about this guy and his promoter, who has
now shrunk back, so I'm glad I stuck my neck out,
and my tongue, and my elbow, and my foot, so we
don't have to expect any more bully ballyhooing of
superstitutions malingering that the Enligthenment
tried to kick out of Christianity largely at Your behest,
as You are wont to do even to the people who cover
themselves with your Name and a whole bunch of
sticky theories that they and I can argue about, but in
doing which I don't follow rules that make me cut off
my feelings, because as You know, You've seen that
I had to do that most of my life, & I'm damn sick and
tired of it, as You know.

Yeah, You and the mixed bag of the Enlightenment,
in ridding us of the stranglehold of superstuitions
because it was such a damn nuisance & served only
the people who loved the treacherous spookiness of
the Enchanted Forest, only now they've put it back
in the sky "in the Heavenlies" and do so on the basis
of a stray Bible verse. It could be worse, I guess.

This former promoter of the Apostle of Discord was
so incensed at me, he farted out "totally out of order,
cowardly, vicious, and expressive of a deeply anti-
Christian spirit." You back him up, don't you, Lord?

I got another email from yet another guy and I got
delitefully animalized, and replied in kind, but we
somehow we worked it out. I hadn't been able to
reply in the meditative way I would have wanted
to an earlier email, so my telling him to wait, pissed
him off for a bit, as he too had a dire sense of
urgency of his own, and he let me have it. So, I let him
have it right back, and he charmed me out of my own
pissed-offedness in his reply email. Silver lining?, Lord.

Oh yeah, the guy who came off with the whole stream
of words trying to excuse the double divorcee divider
because of divider's mental health, then at another
point held me responsible because I was crazed by
an anti-Christian spirit - here we go again into the
Enchanted Forest. He kept reminding me of his status
in the mental profession, and said that I'm in bad
mental health, so I'm a real bad guy. The double
divorcee divider, however, is okay because he's in bad
mental health and therefore to be commiserated
because he broke his vows to two women, the most
important promises of his life. And then started an
effort to divide our Christian philosophy circle by
arguing you can't love both the main philosophers who
inspired us, not at the same time. But that's like trying
to force my mom and dad to divorce, the way I felt it.

It's this last that gets me in trouble, as You know, Lord.:
I philosophize by includng my feelings, my suspicions,
my joyous enthusiasms, my cautious and incautious
takes on various stuff, my doldrums, and my boredoms.

I'm speaking in repetitious circles, Lord, because I can't
figure it out, except that I outed a guy who tried to recruit
me into his circle of dividers, so yes, there's something
wrong with me, Lord. But you know all about that. You
trained me. You pained me. You drained me. And yet
left me to live and carry it all, scrounging about with no
one and nothing except a very live brain when I'm well
enuff to function, however illogically to the self-certified
judge of logics. And you beat into me some very serious
loyalties over the years, as I think of it, feeding from Your
stingey Hand, O Lord. Even tho You slay me, yet willl I
trust You ... almost, most of the time, perhaps, I would,
yes, I would like to. Still, I'm not starving in Africa, yet.

Yes, Lord, in the end I guess my quarrels are all a quarrel
with You. So, I've stepped away from Thinknet to let them
roast me in peace in their paradise of cool & superiourity -
You see, I've absolutely no logic,

Then at some point in some other email, he said he was
crazy, but stuck in one of those damn smiling faces. Lord,
I am in deep trouble. But I fite on, until the glad day when
I collapse permanently and can drop the sword and shield,
forever.

Friend visits the Common Laws

2005-06-18T15:58:00.000-05:00

I went avisiting again last nite. I'm shocked at myself.
Two visits out, in just one week's time. It will end my
neo-monasticism of the eremitic kind. The hermit is
not sufficiently hermitted, tho I maintain my member-
ship link with Raven's Bread, the loosely associated
hermits of Christian background in North America.
But this week, had I become a gad-about town?, one
asks oneself sheepishly and curious about change.

It was after I had made and devoured my supper,
along with the appropriate cholesterol pills, of course.
Having phoned the couple I had in mind before supper,
I soon forgot my plain to get an invitation to their home
this Friday nite. So it was after alimentary self-service
that I got a return call, and an invite to spend the
evening with them. She was home from Ka Ra Te, where
she holds a Belt of some distinguished colour or other.
And while she fnished her soup, we talked on and on.

I exposited my Reformational theory of the need to
retain the traditional legal definition of marriage,
aware in the back of my mind that my dear friend had
had no legal recognition of her permanent and exclusive
relationship with her man. This was her choice, altho
they had mentioned it off-handedly a few times over
the many years of happy and unhappy union, now much
more consistently on the flourishing side for sure. And
never more dissatisfied than most I've known who've
entered into civil certification and fortified themselves
with legalities, some having fogotten the meaning of the
word that had aged into just a sociological-status term.

My friends are what the law recognizes as "common law."
They have a bit of an anarachist stance, in that they don't
recognize the state's provisions and requirements that
accrue upon civilly-recognized marriage (traditional legal
definition or no). They simply don't partake of the state's
code-books of legislation and regulation. To its credit,
however, the Canadian state is ready, willing and able to
make sure no injustice is done either party, should they
have a parting of the ways. As to that hypothetical, I don't
think so. They are together, and as far as the relationship
is concerned, but without formal vowing of permanence
and exclusivity, they are married de facto. I'd say
God sees them and their relationship, and loves them for
who they are and what their relationship has become -
thru journey and struggle. And also for their work, the
vocations by which each has contributed to culture and the
societal whole.

So, my view of marriage traditional, starts with God its
Creator and doesn't necessaily ever get around to Church
or State. So that's before I find my own take on my friends'
self-awareness as to their relationship before government,
her own status of being "unmarried", and his. Traditional
without lingering to endorse or even recognize tradition.

And soon enuff he arrived from work at the cottage, covered
in muddy clothes which he changed and sat down to his own
supper with us still at the table, and new streams of lively
conversation arising, ebbing, flowing and crisscrossing,
while fragments of the old conversation continued interlaced
into the widened confluence of interminlgling thawts, and
all too soon it was time to call it a nite and to call a cab.

Format for Laundromat

2005-06-17T22:47:00.000-05:00

Yeah, laundromat. I finally excized my layers of laundry
out of depositoria in my digs, removing them into a great
oblong wicker basket, with handles of the same, full of:

underwear, jeans, comforter for cold nites, towels,
towels, towels. facecloths, dishclothes general purpose
usage (not dishes, pots, pans, not that sort of thing), but
I had bawt sometime back a set of four strong woven
dishclothes with a blue pattern dyed in, blue with a little
black mixed-in, in thick stripes, the colour fading when
washed. A second trib included sheets and pillow cases.

Also there was a scarf, a woollen scarf, sort of Scottish
Tartan pattern of thin red and dark green lines on a
forest green field of background colour. I found a setting
on the governing dial of the laundromat washing machine.
I deposted my Loonie (my Canadian dollar coin composed
of all what metallurgically I don't know, and with it two
quarters). There's Laundress, I greet her warmly and
she's just come back from five days in Québec she replies
to my question about You've been to the beach! ... Yeah,
you're right tan on your legs, but I mean your nose is
red! Not somethin' like Wausaga Beach, but Québec,
where in Québec I don't know.

A young Miss comes in. She's outtuv hi-school,
university student?, I am so bold as to ask. No, working.
She is dressed in grays and black, a tailored knit gray
jacket, black jeans, quite lovely. Well, I'm washing my
scarf in plain water, since I have no special cleaner stuff
just for wool items. Do you know anything about how to
laundro woollens? She comes over and peers blankly
looking for ... here, you must be looking for the
settings see I've got the dial set on woollens....
and lookinside the lid, its charted. Woollens... short
coldwater wash and soak, spin ... she ageed that
there couldn't be anything wrong with a no-cleaner
wash, over lite, with mashed potatoes.

I do three washers, and three dryers, with different
temperatures and durations (according to the
number of quarters deposited at the outset), I have
become a veritable industrial operation. The longest
to dry, once dryed, I slip on over... I slip the jeans on
over my shoes, long stockings up to my knee, then
the jeans up over the first layer of bountiful belly, once
dryed on over the torn walking shorts I have on, the
pair with the slit down the center of the left leg ... an
embarrassment endured to get these ancient layers of
laundroNeed in my monastic cell of celibacy vowed
and kept, out the door in the wicker basket with the
Tide Ultradetergent registered and Marca Registrada.

- Owlb

Yesterday's rain gone wild

2005-06-16T11:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, rain came wildly to Ontario and Toronto too
some farmers fields were left like glue
some farmers fields were with the débris of their dwellings
strewn, and not farmers only, suburbians got a tornado
passing thru, and TV cawt a sister twister fingering
our city, our pollutorium, I couldn't help but think
of M'angelo's God pic stretching out his Hand to touch
us, but in a version strait owttuv Karl Barth's Wrath
of God doctrine, which someone called beautiful which
I guess by it he meant awesome.

In any case, the rain of God swept the city's smaggg
away and gave us tomorrow, that is now's beautiful
day.

Thank you, Weather, for once, sweet critter of the Lord!

Someone's Sixty-Fifth

2005-06-14T14:07:00.000-05:00

I never go out. I stay in my cell, my Rubik's Cube,
because I have to move something to move something
to move the original thing I want moved. I am an
urban neo-monastic hermit. I'm supposed to take
a walk everyday, at least to the Gerrard Square Mall,
where Basic Foods ministers to my edible survival.
Other than that, an occasional trip to the physician
or the dietician or the ambulatory specialist and I
should go get my eye glasses updated. A trip, a
dozen trips to the dentist wouldn't hurt as much
physically as finanicially. I never visit friends, who
I do tend too often to think of in the past sense.
But that's my fawlt. Too long learning the difference
between loneliness and aloneness and more and
more embracing the latter (with my Krowbrain [my
iMac], my big-screen TV whom I call simply Mr Big,
my rickety-tick-tick killer of a fan, named Merton,
and Jungle Leaves, my hanging plant that requires
no sunlite. So, who's lonely?

A frend I've known since 1958 just had a birthday.
She'd retired from a lifetime of productive work
doing good and earning a paycheque to support
herself and much of the time with her hubby their
three (all grown up now) kids, retired as said, just 2
weeks before. But on Sunday in the afternoon and
into the evening, another of our frendz assembled
the folks mostly from town (but one flew in from
California - Washington - Oregon somewhere),
assembled us who had co-survived these several
decades.

For an old-timer like me, and many of us, it was
a grand bash. I don't think there was any music all
day. There was food, but I deferred until later on,
since I had none of my cholesterol pills with me.
But, yes later, I did sample just about everything,
and even had a fabulous sin-dessert.

We all told a story of relationship to Madame X,
the lady whose glory we had gathered to celebrate.
It was a right good honour to be able to do so,
and I found myself congratulated for being a bit
witty, much to my surprise. But we must consider
the folks gathered. Few of us have ever specialized
in joyous glib and uproarous gossip, remembrance
or pure roast (yes there was some of all that on
Sunday afternoon and evening; perhaps we all
surprized ourselves).

Did I mention that I imbibed? Yes, a little wine here
for this toast, and a little wine there for that toast,
sip, sip, lift glass, toast, sip, sip, a joke, a sip, a story,
a sip, here a sip, there a sip, everywhere a sip, sip ...

I was fine. No trouble. I got a ride home. I felt fine.
I stayed up a little while. I got my accoutrements in
order, and dishabille-ed myself into bed, with my
eye-mask in place, and my breathing mask fit titely
to my head, and slept.

And in the morning I awoke ... with a wicked
hangover. No hair of the dog at hand. I drank lots
of water. My pill load for the day. And two Tylenol.
It was a great day thereafter, reminiscing yesterday's
encounters with frendz who go back four and a half
decades to college days, some of them. And many
other longterm connections that embraced three
generations, four if you count-in the dear dead we
remembered and toasted. I can remember several
times, one or another of us couldn't keep track
between the word's one's saying and the feelings
rushing along with remembrance beyond the
words and fell from one's eyes like salty water.

God bless you all dear frendz at DSM's 65th.
God bless us all - Owlb

I had so many runs to make, I didn't get to the mall 'til late

2005-06-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had so many errands to run
and runarounds to runaround an'roun' in
the heet an smaggg I swam thru the See
uv Humididy 'til I coodnt tell well where much
I wuz, at thad pard'kulr momnt. Yoo see,
I wuzn't beside me, but Thank God! Yoo
were there, I knew, all this time, and got
me to the mall just before closin' time,
where I bawt a shirt to wear to an old-time
fren's retirement party (Yoo know who she be),
and thus appear comfordblee middle-class,
jus' in case I do get there, woodn't wanna
stick ou' like a poor thumm a' her event, now
wood eye? Lord, yoo'v given us this bond,
somehow still holdin after all theez yearz, like
a cord from one ta' th'other down an alpine ...
oh yoo get th' medafor ov koarse ... jus' pleez
Lord get me ta' th'pardy on time!

(The rest is private, dear Pöm readers...)

Waking up today

2005-06-09T09:06:00.000-05:00

I'm awake, it occurs to me, after prayer
still in bed. I pull myself up, to remove
the headstraps of my breathing machine,
and my first breath exhales direct from
nostrils to darkened room. And I breathe
in the curtained-room's air, to the oxygen
supply of which my jungle plants have
been contributing all thru the nite. (They
have names but I won't tell you, as they
are my sleeptime intimates and I'd have
to consult them before mentioning so
webbishly.)

Then off from my eyes comes my
sleeping mask, the second of the two,
as I have a breathing mask held in
place by the best headstraps the
breathing-machine industry can make
in Germany and supplied by Medigas
(hhhm, we wonder, don't we?). And
I have a five-and-dime mask to blacken
out any play of lite from the curtain's
crack of lite, when I leave it so. just
slightly ajar to feed, well by know you
can guess just who (rhymes with
Bamboo).

It's a real transition, this act of getting up,
but continues. Now, both masks off and
still sitting up in bed, I reach for my yellow
thin-rubber gloves, and get them in place
over each hand, left and right, both hands
knowing what the other's up to. Then
reach ... if they're not there in their proper
place, it would mean there are no clean pair
at hand, But there are today: Gloved
hand reaches for the black pressure
stockings, then guides the right stock
over the toes and up, not to the nose,
but to the knees, please. The right leg
is the worst, needing special attention
each time that this morning ritual is carried
out, before "my feet even touch the floor,"
she said with the strict severity of a stern
moralist nurse on TV. Then I massage black
stocking on the right leg to make
certainty-sure there's no folds and the tite
mesh of the stocks is well distributed from
toe to heel to knee. Then the left. I am
stockinged!

Once I'm black-stockinged, like the ladies
in the big Reform synagogue that annoy
my dear NS so much, I can stand. Up. I
can walk. I can jump (a bit). I can take my
daily walk ... but it's early and there won't
be anyone in the mall yet. And today's
smog won't allow me to walk much outside.
Outside = smogside, in summer Toronto
(by the way, the name is abbreviated,
nicknamed "T.O." - you don't have to
pronounce the periods but saying "TO"
won't get you anywhere, better the other
nickname for Polution City, "Hog Town" -
so-called because the cars and trucks
hog all the clean air).

But I'm up. Now I move to disconnect the
tube from the breathing-machine to the
humidifier; next, remove the second tube
from the humidif to my headstraps
nostril's-mask. Once disconnected I
move the freed-up humdfr from just
beyond the top of my bed to its interim
place sitting at bed's bottom, in just-so
a position that the remaining water in it
won't spill. Now I go to front of the little
room, my monastic cell, and pick up the
heavy metal half-a-chair I store there at
nite with boxes of stuff on it, and turn back
to place it on the bed ever so carefully
next to the humdfr that I don't want
to spill. That done, I go back to the front
of the room, leaning on the card table at
the widonw, leaning to stretch out my arm
to reach the far end of the curtain, then
pulling that double curtain a deep dark
purple on the outside and inside an
off-white with pale stripes and pale
purple-and-green floralities. Pull, but not
to strenuously. Just enuff force to slide
the curtains across the long great window.
half a jar thru the nite, now exposing the
room to the early day no direct sunlite but
brite, and now once again revealing an overly
gray sky ... yep, it's a polloot day ... still I
can see the sun's angled rays illuminating
the white-aluminum siding of the house
across the alley, even overnite my two
big fat tomatoes sat on the window sill
awaiting this indirect source of ripening
and I know in a couple more days will taste
so good. The anticipation of fresh tomato
arouses a sense of breakfast for me.

I have lite enuff, and space enuff now to
gather up my basin prepared for everything
I will need in the kitchen and bathroom. Oops!
I am about to leave home, so I must put
on my pants in order to observe the
decorum of a public place - the kitchen
and the bathroom. Of course, the other
two tenants will be gone. However, the
landlady may be lurking, so best not
risk the alarm of public nudity, as I really
don't want to be thrown out of this urban
monastic dig (you can't really call it "digs"
as is done sometimes by Egland-influenced
folk round about here, of which I'm not
a party; anyway the plural makes my room
sound plural which it isn't, just a Rubic's
Cube where to move something something
else must be moved first and before that
second thing can be moved a third thing
must be moved first.

I move the water-catcher from beneath a
large hanging loping jungle plant (who
shall have to remain anonymous here) and
by that means also open a space to open the
door, I place my humidifier on top of the
load of stuff in my basin, I gather my
fortitudes about me with my basin in my
hands, and walk out the door into the
hall. I did get from waking to the hall
after all, didin't I. In the hall, I turn right
to unlock and open the outside door, so
waht air is there can circulate in, if any
breeze has a mind to do me such a favour.
Then, I aboutface, and down the brief hall
toward the the large kitchen I go.

The quotidian has begun.

Blue like Mary's cloak

2005-06-07T16:44:00.000-05:00

I bounce out for my walk, my
doctor recommends a quiet
daily walk, but youknow
summer brings the smog
and winter the cold and ice
and snow and rain and bitter
cold to Toronto by the lake

but, for Glory's sake, walk,
says the dietician, even if it's
just to the mall where you do
your inconvenience shopping

so I walk into the sunny day
facing westward along the block
a long block to Gerrard Square
and Basic Foods, facing and
peering as I walk, squinting
down the street toward the
bridge over the river Don.
skimping its way between
the Don Valley ravine and the
out-of-site Don Valley
Expressway alongside the
the sad sham of a dead
rivulet of unclean water,
paralalleing a moving
traffic jam full of steaming
crumping slowing queuing
cars and crashbump trucks
thump steaming polluming
fuming up the smoke of
the greyness and the "shortness
of breath," as its called,
fortunately I take my
psychotropics every morning
as prescribed and the westward
watch of the dank downtown,
the darkening downtown half
of which is underground in
vast clean-air malls comfortably
temp'rachoor-controlled, like
the tunnels under Baghdad -
they could have malls down there,
over there, some- body please
tell them, maybe Toronto's could
move there, somewhere, any-
where but here, because their
habitues don't care about
surface air to which we surface
class are condemned, unless
you have a car or truck or
bus or plane, then you can
have mobile air-conditioning
inside and pollute the outside
air at the same time, it's called
diverity...

because the way it is we'll
never get the city free of this
dome of unbreathable chemo-
air that darkens the sky
toward the downtown, but
out here just over the Don
and a some blocks eastward
on Gerrard Street if I look
directly up today I can see
blue sky, I mean deep gorgeous
blue sky with no tint of black
subtextual pollute, I'm not
depressed, I'm breathing, and
I'm seeing a real ungreyed
blue sky for all at the mall
today...

On my way home, I look east-
ward toward Jones and beyond
out toward Little India, and the
sky is so blue, real Virgin Mary
blue, not like the statuettes
for the mantle-piece that pale
the blue down to a mockery,
not the blue of the Virgins set
on the window-sill so paled,
but the deep maternal blue of
the holy apparitions of God's
human mother wearing her
finest deep-blue cloak and
white open head-covering
against Palestine and Gerrard
street heat, and seeing the
white cloudlets so clean and
brite and lamb-like dotting the
serenity of the blue sky, on
this day walking home, aware
of all my quotidian saints -
the doctor at 410 Sherbourne,
the dietician there, and so
many more, I continue my
bounce back along Gerrard to
Galt up to the 40 Maximum
Speed sign, as I turn into the
alley and find my way to the
backyard gate, which is the
front door for the tenets, tru
the petite piazza with the
edge-garden along its three
perimeters 'cept the gateway
up the steps and into the house
and my monastic cell with the
big window facing out to the
backyard ... where quickly I get
off my feet ....

paralysis

2005-06-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

My back hurts, but feelin' good, well, ok
I am
~ ~ ~ 'cept
oh that damn form
the form that wants the documentation
to prove
I am
h~~e~~r~~e
&
I'm no less than m~~e

but paperless, unable to prove
I came over that damn border
with thoro legality

but reduced to this little room
because of illness

and no room under the cardtable
on which Krowbrain sits
can't even stretch legs
oh well

so I move boxes
out from under the cardtable
to mack at my iMac

into the hall, which the
landlady hates
my stuff in the hall

so I move the boxes
into the very large kitchen
and put a not-too-brite
not-loud neatly-designed
patterned wrapping paper over
the top

so my stuff is marked off
from boxes destined
for throw-out
into the garbage

until one day
I notice gone
all gone
the three stacked little
boxes with the patterned paper
as a sign of belonging
personally to me not garbage

I race down to the landlady's
door, knock, opens, I'm looking
in
and begging for my boxes
with the patterned paper on
top

and there I see the landlord
at one of my boxes
having stripped
everything they don't want
but but
where's my pictures of my mother
and sister and brother
all gone,
I try to say thru the screen of
English to the ears of Chinese landlord
and lady
where's my documentation
my proof of my existence
my immigration
my birth certificate
my identification
gone
I'm all gone into paperlessness

and now they say they
want to give me Old Age
benefits, but to get
a little check, or you could
spell it "cheque"

to get a little check I
have to have
the documentation to prove
I'm not somebody else
not a terrorista
not an illegalista
not a tourista wanting a longer fiesta

but I'm paperlessness
and paralyzed

© Owlb

Gray sky

2005-06-05T17:23:00.000-05:00

Walking under the gray sky as only Toronto
can gray with a subtext of blue and one spot
of a puncture mark in the solid cloud cover's
underbelly gray with a subtext if you carefully
analyzed blue there, some blue there in that
graying of the sky that displays one

almost-white

stigmate -

still a wind

someday this week, I'd say, if I could
remembring remember more

the puncture hole is a soft white and
cloudy puffy but opens not, to no sun -
still the wind moves and cools the skin,
my skin is cooled by this wind and
I do not burn within

© Owlb

The day is done

2005-03-01T01:56:00.000-05:00

Today is done, and so am I
Lids of eyes droop and wood drop
but the eyeballs say to the lids,
You first. And the lids reply,
No, you have priority. So the eyes
stare out some more, fixed, unseeing,
and the lids are too tired to make up
their minds.

Now I should be in control of all
this. But, I too am too tired to
tell the two twos what to wear and
should the lips smile as tho they
cared, or not?

If only I could get this shirt off, and
all, I cood get to bed, hit the sack, no,
not enuff energy for that. But, then,
a decision must be made ... and will

- AG © Mon, Feb28,2k5

Poem for Today, Sun. Feb27,2k5

2005-02-27T19:17:00.000-05:00

Thank you for this day, Lord
Thank you I can pray, Lord
Thank you for a Way, Lord
Thank you that you'll stay my Lord

AG ©