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Bedecked
This was Billy Collins’ choice in Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, and I thought it was fantastic. I really love Redel’s anger and the acceptance she has for her son. Allowing a girl to grow up a tomboy may be acceptable now, but turning the tables on that does take some courage. Bedecked by Victoria Redel Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger. He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock. Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings…
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The Minute by Charles Bukowski
“I am always fighting for the next minute,” I tell my wife. then she begins to tell me how mistaken I am. wives have a way of not believing what their husbands tell them. the minute is a very sacred thing. I have fought for each one since my childhood. I continue to fight for each one. I have never been bored or at a loss what to do next. even when I do nothing, I am utilizing my time. why people must go to amusement parks or movies or sit in front of tv sets or work crossword puzzles or go to picnics or visit relatives or travel or…
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Eating Poetry by Mark Strand
I hadn’t heard that Mark Strand had died a couple of months ago. I came across him on a CBC podcast about a decade ago while driving home to visit my parents. He was really interesting, and the poems he read were fantastically absurd, so I picked up his latest collection at the time, Man and Camel. I wasn’t in love with that particular book, but I did find a few of his poems online that I quite liked. This one always stuck with me. Perfect for those whose bookish appetites have ever been met with looks of bewilderment. Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no…
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The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
This was a favourite of my dad’s, and you can’t go wrong with Johnny Cash reciting it. The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only…
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If Only We Had Taller Been
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John de Lancie Reads The Raven
I think I like John de Lancie’s version of The Raven even better than Vincent Price’s or James Earl Jones’, and that’s saying a lot.
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Dear Editor by Charles Bukowski
remember when you bought me that big rebuilt standard typewriter when I was living on air and beer over at that place on DeLongpre? and I tried it out and phoned you that night drunk complaining that it jumped an extra space when I hit an “e” or a “u”? well, I’ve just ordered a $700 IBM electric with my gold American Express card. it has an automatic error-eraser among its many other features. I’m going to hell so fast you’d never believe it. I might have to forget expensive German wine and go back to beer in order to find myself again. meanwhile, I await delivery.
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Let’s Have Some Fun by Charles Bukowski
there will always be people who say, let’s go on a boat or let’s go to Argentina or let’s go to a movie or let’s go to a tennis match or let’s visit my sister or how about a picnic? and I don’t understand any of this because to me just walking across the room is like walking through flames and the first strange face I see each day adds a knot to my stomach and I don’t have the time because I haven’t paid the gas bill or checked the air in my tires and one of my teeth is aching (on the left side) and I’ve received several…
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Happy Idiot
I watch the jocks come out in the post parade. one will win the race. the others will lose. but each jock must win sometime in some race on some day, and he must do it often enough. or he is done as a jockey. it’s like the girls on the street trying to score for their pimp or each of us sitting over a typewriter tonight or tomorrow or next week or next month and doing it well enough once in a while or he is done as a writer, he’s a whore who can’t score. I think I would like a little more kindness in the structure but…
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How to Make Spells
I don’t think I’d read a word of Atwood before finding her In Love With Raymond Chandler for the last post, but I’ve been browsing through, and thoroughly enjoying, some of her poetry tonight. Spelling My daughter plays on the floor with plastic letters, red, blue & hard yellow, learning how to spell, spelling, how to make spells. I wonder how many women denied themselves daughters, closed themselves in rooms, drew the curtains so they could mainline words. A child is not a poem, a poem is not a child. there is no either/or. However. I return to the story of the woman caught in the war & in labour,…