the ten of diamonds

i’ve seen religious skirts and leather pants and I love McDonalds coffee and all this just sort of happened and it must be magic and we’re gonna find a four pillar porch or a green park bench and sit and chug chinese tea or portugal wine and we’ll remove our hands from our pockets and shake around and maybe we’ll walk east and west and collect cans and get enough aluminum trade in barter for some coins to get us a cigar and we’ll smoke it behind the bakery and drink what’s left of the portugal wine and we’ll think about religious skirts and leather pants and McDonalds coffee again and we’ll know that it’s magic and then the mood will change and things won’t seem so magical anymore, but we will hear of an old friend who is grey and needs a cane and never stops talking and loosens people from their grips and has lots of love to give and we’ll know it’s magic.

professor confusion and a new baby

so i got to see a baby again. i like hospital cafeterias and the ice scream scoops of potatoes and the new kid is like a dog. he doesn’t have to hold it in. he pees and shits and cries when he has to and when things go wrong, he cries some more.

seeing all this newness inspired me. i walked into the community college classroom. it was a course on american literature. i wasn’t going for a degree or anything, just looking for some connection to something bigger than my self.

The professor recited poetry and i liked the confusion it inspired in me and based on the questions of the students,,,,,,,well, they sounded confused too….and so i thought how great, we could all be confused together and maybe figure it out, but I knew we would never figure it out and ultimately head out to the bars or some beer basement to at least try and we wouldn’t go so far as creating a fraternity or a brother hood, but we’d be less alone anyway and i’d have stories to tell the new baby

but don’t get me wrong, i like chicken and hamburgers

i felt kind of cruel tonight standing there and staring at a brown idaho potato boiling in water, bobbing up and down, trying to escape, desperately longing for a previous state and for a second there, i think i understood the potato because i remembered how good it looked just a few minutes earlier with its brownish pocked skin, all dry and crusty, ready for a nice rain.

i like to take my potatoes out of the suffocating bag and let them breathe and hang out and look at the bananas on top of my microwave or the white wall or maybe they don’t look at anything which wouldn’t be that bad either. i like a few minutes or days of not looking at things.

and if that’s the case, if a potato has eyes, but doesn’t look at things, then i’m like a potato because i have eyes, but i haven’t looked at a sunrise or sunset or a crushed beer can rolling in the wind in forever and i’m slowly decomposing too.

and in other news,

so this 59-year old grave digger commits suicide. he’d been digging graves since he was a teenager so what suddenly inspired him to end it? that’s the thing that sucks about science. You can dissect his brain, but you’ll never find out what his last thoughts were.

i wonder what poets do?

do they have refrigerator magnets?
what do they keep in their refrigerator?
champagne? key lime pie?
do they watch tv before going to bed?
sing in the shower?
read magazines?
what magazines?
study roman mythology?
i bet they do all of these things and much more and I bet they like that there are solstices, two of them, and that there are moon phases because that allows for all kinds of moods.

the new covid variant and underpants

so there’s a new name to memorize…a new covid variant. I don’t remember if i first heard the news from a co-worker or read about it online or if my girlfriend told me? in any case, i flipped on the news last night and heard of the new variant and was amazed that they already had assigned it a name, one not related to the Greek alphabet and one way more complicated than hurricanes which are quite simple. I think they simply go down the alphabet, A-Z and give it a name – Hurricane Joe followed by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Leon and so on. Come to think of it, it’s kind of anglocentric. I mean, did ya ever hear of a hurricane being named Raul or Prajneesh?

Anyway, it’s called Omicron which is kind of a mysterious name. i have no idea what it means. but i think it’s appropriate in that it sounds kind of ominous which the variants of covid truly are.

i had the day off yesterday. Had to take a blood test. I told my boss i was willing to come to work in the morning. He gave me a nod and said, “no, no, it’s OK. take the day off.” I’ve been on a bit of a Cal Ripken streak. Haven’t missed a day since early July so I guess it was a reward. my neurologist told me to call her secretary to make an appointment for the blood test so I did. It was set for 11. There was a pretty decent crowd. I got outta there by 1. plenty of time to go to Costco with my girlfriend. She had the day off too.

well, i’ve been having trouble with underwear. i buy mediums to match my waist. i don’t remember the exact time frame as far as how often i buy them, but it’s never more than once a year and if i remember right, they sometimes last two or three years. as a side note, one of the things that is truly bizarre about getting old is memory loss. it’s like a perpetual drunken black out.

anyway, i don’t want to go into the details about my trouble with underwear, just to say that they’ve become uncomfortable. oh what the hell, i’ll delve into a little detail. when i tuck in my shirt which i have to do in Montreal because it’s cold and wind drafts find openings….when i tuck in my shirt my underpants rise. i’ll let you do the math. the thing is i’m the kind of person who hates wasting food and so i hate wasting underpants too so i wear them. but with this covid never ending, i’ve come to understand that my days might be numbered as the invisible virus can reek havoc on anyone. it’s like being at the butcher, picking a number and your number gets called. everyone’s number eventually gets called. this is something i always knew, this inevitable death, but now it’s like a constant billboard in my face. as a result, i’ve been treating myself so I splurged and bought four more pairs of underpants, the larger ones. I tried them on when i got home and walked around and there was no issue. I also found an emergency solution in case they do rise, in case they become too big for my waist. I tucked my shirt into my actual underpants as opposed to simply my pants, and the underpants didn’t rise.

realized on a blood test rainy day

it’s november and i’ve been brainwashed to associate the name november with rain and snow and mushed leaves on the cement earth floor and so far, it’s true. that’s what happens, at least it does here in montreal. i had a blood test scheduled for today. the hospital is a 25 minute walk away. it was raining. i took a broken umbrella and set out. i kept pretty dry too, using my head to push up the damaged scaffolding of the brella and it worked, except for my shoes. they got wet. so did my socks. i stashed the brella beside some electric box and figured no one would take it or even see it. it was black, so was the electrical box. a little camouflage action.

they gave me a mask at the entrance, told me to wash my hands and asked if i had any symptoms. thinking back now, i could have said that i had plenty of symptoms, but i didn’t say a damn thing. sometimes i hate myself for being so freaking obedient. he left the door wide open for me to say whatever i wanted. i could have shaken the chandeliers. I could have said what i really believe….

“yeh, I got symptoms, mostly from the way things are as in why are there not clubs that build runways for the arrival of potential extra terrestrials like I think the ancient Incas did?”

And then i could have stepped aside so the others could get to their appointments, but i could have carried on my monologue and said,

“the more and more i think about it, the more an activity like building runways makes sense, maybe curb some depression, that getting outside and doing some physical activity, probably minimize anxiety too plus we’d be too busy working to be hating our neighbor and thinking about other life would remind us that earth was a sand grain in a big mysterious universe, but that it was home too, our home.”

anyway, i lied and told the friendly hospital bouncer that “thankfully, i had no symptoms” and he waved me in like a third base coach sending his runner home and if i was going home, it was a massive welcoming home celebration with dozens waiting for the vampire to draw their blood too. we all had little pieces of paper with numbers printed on them but we were more than numbers. there was an old white man with a flat, bald head in the back and grey hair matted down on the sides. looked like he woke up for the blood test and headed straight for the door. He was listening to a lady who talked a lot. i couldn’t make out what she was saying, but she had one of those stand up chairs she used for balance, a walker? She had a smile on her face. she seemed pretty grateful. There was another man who stumbled up to the counter. He either had bad balance or wasn’t fasting, awarding him the opportunity to top off his coffee or tea with a pinch of vodka. a lady had a hijab. another one talked on her phone in greek or russian. there was a chinese looking man (hard to tell with the mask) who wasn’t wearing socks. I could see his ankles and they were skinny. I assume his legs were too. he reminded me of me because people have been saying i’m too skinny. there was also a brown-skinned young lady, maybe from india, maybe pakistan, maybe bangladesh, she had a beautiful horse mane hair and i bet she had a beautiful face (hard to tell with the mask) i daydreamed of us sharing a bottle of wine in the park and since it was raining and wet, i could show her how to do a head first slide.

I waited for about an hour in my wet shoes and wet socks and somewhere in my pass-the-time thinking stupid thoughts, i realized that it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered. they were supposed to draw seven tubes of blood. big deal. i had way more than that streaming through my veins. i would survive and even if i didn’t, i probably wouldn’t know anyway. i’d be in that sweet golden sleep Mr. Patman, played by James Coburn, mused about. And who cares if my umbrella was stolen and my feet got even wetter, i had heat back in my basement apartment…..and even better i had heat ducts, the rectangular things that crick and crackle and send out a steady stream of heat. they feature a flat ledge like a mountain mesa and that’s exactly where i would spread out my socks like a body on its back in a coffin and my shoes? I’d lean them against the duct like a wood log angled to another log to help flame up a teepee fire…and all would eventually be dry and with that i would know i had the best of both worlds, both options – the ancient one of gathering wood and building a fire and the newer, easier version of heat ducts.

in cold feet i love you

i wondered about the word mercy and
without knowing its origins,
took off my socks and
let my toes yawn a bit,
another done day.

smoking joe

the other day someone shared their fascination over the precision required to install a new bathroom inside an already very large hospital, all the plumbing pipes that had to be arranged in such and such a location to link to the bigger pipes and all the electric wires having to do the same.

i felt old standing there so cold, so numb to all of life’s plumbing and electrical wonders. it just didn’t fascinate me, but it was good to hear someone else so captivated. he was like a little kid visiting the giant aquarium for the first time.

i walked on and saw a familiar face in the neighborhood. he’s a chain smoker. i see him often. when i walk to the grocery store, there he is. when i walk to work, there he is. when i walk to the beer store, there he is. and every time i see him, he’s shuffling his feet and smoking and he doesn’t inhale every few shuffles nonchalantly looking fashionable no sireeeee, he sucks out every last morsel of that tobacco with his entire being and the way he smokes and the way he shuffles his feet seems to take a lot of precision too or at least it fascinates me.

i won the lottery for a day

i had 20 bucks and walked into the grocery store and bought:
sardines
spaghetti squash
cucumbers
carrots
cole slaw
humus
hot dogs
pasta
cheese
stewed tomato

i had 80 cents left over.

i scooped out the seeds of the squash and replaced them with carrots, cucumbers, stewed tomatoes and on top of that cheese. it looked like a dugout canoe with a roof. i let it cook for 40 minutes and it was fun peeling away the squash strands. it tasted good too.

i’ll probably eat the sardines with rice tomorrow.