Four Thin Flowers

In our corner

most of the plants sleep

all winter.

Science says this

is because

earth tips away for a while

before angling back toward the sun.

This is a likely story,

one I believe, though

I have as much proof

of tip

as proof that Jesus rose

to bloom again.

Proof is word-of-mouth.

We are lush,

decorated everywhere

by ordinary blossom and leaf.

Great bodies of water mitigate change,

it is neither too hot

nor cold,

neither too wet

nor dry.

Unsatisfied,

into this Eden we bring exotic things,

all colours different,

that sleep not but die and are thrown away

when fickle earth

tips its hat.

We think we can afford this, it’s the right thing to do.

Today I saw

four thin shadow flowers,

drab petal covered, head to foot,

their hearts hollowed out.

Life has been merciless to them.

They are far from where they grew,

shuffling,

conspicuous in this place

that plucked them

toward a promised safety that exists

only by word-of-mouth.

Now,

the very land is tipping.

They are not prepared.

Something Heavy Sits

Something heavy

sits. It is the colour

of machinery.

If you asked

our victim,

the one sat upon,

he whom has not got

breath

to speak with,

“how heavy is that, that thing?”

would

whispered response

satisfy?

Read on…

The doctor knows

how little any

ordinary citizen,

thus prostrate,

understands about weight.

You see?

A body or spirit can be crushed

but as fact it remains,

that someone should wish

to be freed by death,

is not always so.

No.

In truth,

the pressing bulk might be

gripped as comfort,

a warm, dark,

solid familiarity.

Geese and the Twelve 0’clock News

Any geese who land

are seized and eaten.

People are hungry, thirsty.

We live by a great water

under whatever makes for shelter,

boiling the liquid,

thorough.

Once,

things were golden,

machines sent messages

back and forth,

the heart was studied,

moon and star

as well.

Binary billions

built few and built some.

Of that,

nothing more remains than walls,

eroded.

It seems that

caustic air invades the velvet temple

easy as the gutter

slum.

Streets were

chartered once,

the Thames

also,

and

many took his name,

their various homes to claim

but

Jesus

left a long time ago.

I Cannot Be Sure He is Dead

My neighbour is waiting, impatient.

I rock slow.

He is bent double by modern chemistry,

stands in the centre of

a thousand intersections,

gathers outside the liquor store,

one bony hand stretched toward

fuel,

more fuel, just a little more fuel.

Tawdry is the word.

I rock slow.

What is there to be done about

anything?

I rock slow.

The alchemist grins,

with a profound flourish

he licks the pipettes,

moves the beaker,

adjusts the flame a touch

higher,

looks up from the mirror and

his rolled-up hundred dollar bill.

It is a toothless sun today.

I rock slow.

On the hill,

where it is all white,

there are flags.

One lazy sedan slides

after another in dark procession,

elbowing through the crowd,

trying to make me believe

this is an ordinary time.

No, it is not normal.

I rock slow.

I told the nurse

I wasn’t sure he was dead,

I have seen too many

television shows.

She laughed.

I rock slow

and my chair begins to

squeak.

Wont To Go

This morning offered another blank sheet of paper,

empty as any world could bleach to,

flat,

two-dimensional, sharp edged…

ready to fill.

The wary play safe

and add depth to a new day with song

or an articulate paint-brush

or,

perhaps,

just wrap their dead fish,

pre-disposal.

At noon,

our city bustled.

I bustled not,

though sun smiled overhead

like a politician with

fingers crossed behind its back.

Folks will promise

‘life goes on’

but,

for what reason?

they don’t seem to know,

that some have nothing,

some nothing to complain of,

also.

A shade-tree beckons

sublime,

it’s very near the time,

I guess that I’m

wont

to go.

July 11

Thank God for friends. Yeah, God, I guess. What is God though? Seems to me that none of the ‘religions’ really know. It is often true that wearing a green shirt or a funny hat on Thursday makes you a part of somebody’s idea of God.

I am made very sad by the way everyone disavows their religion and its precepts when it comes to whichever group their leaders decide to hate. Oh, yes. The leaders change up who to hate and how much over time. Once, Anabaptists were drowned in the canals in The Netherlands. They were drowned or burned at the stake because they didn’t believe or think as the church said they should. The church that said people should be drowned was itself considered renegade by the Pope.

Did the same Jesus that appears, that people hide behind, EVER say ‘Death to the others!’ Nah, I thought not. It isn’t in Torah, not in Quran, not in the bible. The folks in the far east didn’t get a chance to meet the man but their books and chants and incense don’t provide any roadmap for allowing us to kill each other, either. The folks who thump the lectern on Sunday or Saturday or demand that we kneel, turn east and pray fifty times a day are the ones — the guilty parties.

I wish it were true that the sandaled one was going to come back and slap some sense into us. We can hope. I say this as a member of that least loved group of folks (queer). The drumbeats are pounding again to get us all put off earth once and for all. Here in Canada, we have a loudmouth Conservative who is a buddy of J.D.Vance (the noted theological scholar) who is waking the dead corpse of Homo-Hatus again. Once more through the fire. For Christ’s sake. Leave your hatred on the sanctuary floor when you close your Sunday worship. Leave it there, behind you and pick it up again next week. During the rest of the week, let folks be and follow whichever commandments you trust. Those commandments are always the same:

don’t fuck with your neighbours

don’t kill folks

don’t leer at your neighbour’s spouse

don’t mix your recyclables…

A Little Boy With Good Pitch

It is Joy who is singing,

I should put away my own efforts,

to listen.

I can only just hear,

since perfect breeze masks the song

and the source is far

away.

Still,

a note

or two

gets through.

The filthy television knows

we are paused between missile strikes

for a moment

and

business is on holiday,

somewhere that is

too expensive

for ordinary

folk.

I can laugh at the king,

with his raised whip.

Go ahead,

strike me.

I know there is no promise of

anything,

no matter whose gold ink

signs.

For this instant,

it is Joy

who is singing,

in a strange language

that I hear too little of

yet

plenty enough.

Have You Eaten?

Mine is not breakfast,

it is lunch

and

I am at the Marina.

I have a sweet roll,

a cup of cheap coffee

and a moment to share

with the geese.

Winged beasts of a good size

strut past,

their young miming grace,

feigning interest, following,

doing what they must

and not considering it.

Was there, ever,

a truer paradise?

Sunday, someone reads from

books that

others like him have written,

he peers over his spectacles,

he makes outlandish

claims.

He is looking down

from a make-believe height.

He says that paradise was

lost,

to a simple meal,

a snack,

to unsanctioned curiousity,

to a woman who

robbed life from

a man.

Geese,

and their progeny,

eat what is in front of them,

walk where the webbed foot

leads. They can’t read

the ‘Don’t Walk’ sign,

blaming nothing and no one for

existence.

Nature,

God’s direct line,

God’s little red phone,

drives their heartbeats.

Then,

time pushes the wings out,

until air does what it does.

The man with the books

rolls his eyes

toward

an invisible heaven

of magical proportions,

offers apology every

Sunday.

He doesn’t hear the phone

playing its sweet tune.

He is too busy tasting and

misunderstanding

that which is thought to be

the fruit of

the tree of.

Geese would laugh,

to know this.

Theirs,

and mine for a moment,

is paradise,

nothing more nor less.

The Symphony of SortsI have a symphony, of sortsoutside.My window, openfor the whileof summer,sendsbold sounds of some small childwith brand-newlungsin here.There are birds,as in any song of nature.There are cotton clouds,busyness,intentionup and down the street.I was napping,sinful in my disregardof wakeful living,my boreddisdain.Sun with air cheers the musty corners buttoday,I am sotired.

May 26, 2026

I am in pain, people. Ouch. The pain has at least a little to do with being out of shape, lack of exercise, abuse of the body in one way or another. Well, perhaps it could be traced more to an unwitting abuse of the body.. that abuse which time and lack of knowledge inflicts. The direct, hands on abuser was in fact, myself. I was young, I felt good, I was healthy so I took no precautions. I used my physical self to make money. I sold myself. Oh, Lord.. I do wish I had been a different kind of prostitute. That might have been fun for a while. No, I was the usual kind of wage-slave prostitute. I spent long hours humping away in a hard environment, with chemical mist in the air, physical challenges, loud machinery, no sunlight. At one point, in the long ago past, I even machined beryllium without any sort of breathing protection. The kind of machining I was doing allowed tiny particles of metal to rise up in a thin cloud, ready for the breathing in. Turns out that the metal is vigorous in it’s ability to cause lung cancer. Yikes. That was then and this is now. Now, there are regulations that attempt to keep folks away from the thin clouds of harmful stuff, away from the loud noises, away from chemical mists. It is too late for me.

I am almost elderly, at 75 and I am in pain. Ouch. What now?

Currently, I have a shoulder that is complaining. This makes my day more difficult than I want it to be. The shoulder is loud. He cries out, periodically and louder when I want to move my arm or sleep. I try to play piano, I try to play guitar and both things aggravate the shoulder. Doing laundry is a misery. What did I do to deserve this? The answer is: I lived. Repeated stress from using the shoulder, over 75 years, has brought me to this point. There are other things that have accumulated over time. Repeated consumption of more calories than I needed made me fat. Being fat made me less eager to go walking, less eager to keep doing. It kinda looks a little downhill from here. I don’t want to believe that, to let go and surrender. Nope. My tendency is to blame myself for the road I travelled to get here. I won’t accept that I just did what was there to do, the best I could, with the knowledge and maturity I had at the time. Nope. My bad. My naughty. My better start making reparations!

So. Sympathy? No and I won’t be going to the doctor yet. Maybe, after six months of constant pain, I will consider it. The challenge I face is to ignore the pain and/or sit it out for now. I still have desire enough to play music, to sing – so I guess I will have to put my nerve-endings on over-ride and push through a bit. One thing I need to do, though, is to not blame myself so much when I just want to sit in the rocking chair. Staring out the window, with my shoulder raised just right relieves… I shall allow me to do that for a while. No, there isn’t a lot of time left to learn guitar or piano or to sing and sing the way I wish to do but… I gotta sit down for a minute. The book (and typing) the guitar, the piano, the possibility of romance all will have to wait. I am on pause, trying to remain ready to re-start.

I have to realize both that I am wearing out and that I still have a bit of material left on the calipers, a little gas left in the tank, a little bit of smile to give. After all, I did make the church folk laugh at my naughty joke about King Charles being a queen (until we get the books reprinted). I have some miles to go before I sleep. Oh, by the by – I am excited about some new music I found. Two little hotties (Gen Z or X or something) who cobble together really nice, inane pop tunes that satisfy, thoroughly. They go by the band name of Ray Bull, check them out. Also, the fellow next door is handsome and mighty bed-worthy. There is that, still.

Ouch, damn.