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WAVES

THE SCALE OF MY MISFORTUNE

Like everything about me
the scale of my misfortune
frightens those about me
as my mother said though tell me
Tell me something anything
before I’m dead. Don’t make
me plague your dreams, like last
night wanting you to drive us home
dad asking where you hid his flat cap
bullying you down Main Street
Garry already in the driver’s seat
waiting to turn into the Exchange.
Consider angels on your shoulders
Arguing the afterlife is better
cleaner after all, no more
toilet tissue tearing
No more picking up
after your pooch let’s
print the form MAiD to order
give you some time to think it over
music we’ll choose together
but none live no deep dive
I gave away my gear sum time
ago we’ve never made it under
Water will float your boat, we’ll
pack it with your remaindered
lines drones will drag you out to sea
my tender button brought aflame
saying my best goodbye,
my cheeks blushing,
again and again waves
waves to see you go

 

RENOVATIONS

Glenlea Mennonite Church Sunday morning, once upon a time before renovations.

 I had a vivid dream. I was invited to go to  the consecration of the new Glenlea Mennonite church. The place was packed and I had just been dropped off with a ride on call later in the afternoon, if they were so kind to offer lunch. They weren’t nor was there even a church bulletin. But they had a major av station like in Bethel Mennonite church. I was not sure who I rubbed shoulders with but they seemed to think they knew me. Then somebody large, let’s call him Grant Klassen who told everyone to stay in their seats, specially designed for this church. The lights went out and the roof opened!!! There where one or two other tricks the roof could do like turn it into God’s heavenly sky-dome covered in case of rain, the church goers would stay dry to gaze amazed at the reconstructed heavens. 

So once that was done, what now?  There was some undercurrent of ok what are we doing here. No coffee.  No wohin whoher? Nothing, and I couldn’t find my phone to call for my ride so I thought what the hell. Kiddin me! Hitchhike, but as I was walking through the parking lot I found my friend Gerhard just standing there but I was not able to tell who hew was  driving for.  He looked around, looked around for someone else an cd said. It’ll be fine. He opened the passenger front seat, and there I was riding shotgun in a RAV, a little higher off the ground than previously, which Ii appreciated and I told him. He did a u-ee and off  we went back to Winnipeg. 

THE SCALE OF MY MISFORTUNE

ANGELS ON MY SHOULDER 

the scale of my misfortune
frightens those about me
as my mother said though tell me
Tell me something anything
before I’m dead. Don’t make
me plague your dreams, like last
night wanting you to drive us home
dad asking where you hid his flat cap
bullying you down Main Street
Garry already in the driver’s seat
waiting to turn into the Exchange.
Consider angels on your shoulders
Arguing the afterlife is better
cleaner after all, no more
toilet tissue tearing
No more picking up
after your pooch let’s
print the form MAiD to order
give you some time to think it over
music we’ll choose together
but none live no deep dive
I gave away my gear sum time
ago we’ve never made it under
Water will float your boat, we’ll
pack it with your remaindered
lines drones will drag you out to sea
my tender button brought aflame
saying my best goodbye,
my cheeks blushing,
again and again waves
waves to see you go

 

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I listen to music, read, write poetry and prose, and make videocasts, usually in collaboration with visual and media artist Murray Toews. I am a writer with disabilities, or a disabled writer, or a neurodivergent crip writer. You choose the point of entry for your reading;  there are no border guards.  The welcome mat is out. Stomp your feet and leave your shoes on. 

But remember

Always Breathe, (n n 2025) 186 page of raw, candid, memoir from my face to face meeting with a brick wall when I was 6 months old, to my narrow escape from a badly bungled methadone transition that nearly killed me. A quick sample.

I am dizzy I am raw

Still to sign a DNR

My hallucinations

stand around my bed

they breathe too,

until I’m dead.

Order Always Breathe online.

Love & Surgery (Radiant 2019)  was my  collection of words about love and loss, including my below-the-left- knee amputation, my most visible disability. “Lousy cartilage genetics,”  the surgeon’s note. Lucky for me no phantom leg pain. Disappearing cartilage makes for severe osteoarthritis. Real pain is now an everyday companion, but usually held back enough with meds and meditation, to allow for making poems, stories, jokes, aphorisms all true enough, remembering narrators are unreliable and writers make shit up. 

Afghanistan Confessions, poems in the voice of Canadian soldiers, was published in 2014, boy in 2012. Lucky Man (2005) was nominated for the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year award.