pain room

05/03/2023

from imaginary conversations Bruise You see this bruise? The one on your leg? Yeah that’s the one just underneath my birthmark. What about it? I got that skiing downhill at Innsbruck. You’ve never been to Innsbruck! You don’t even know how to ski. You try to convince my bruise of that! Where else do you

26/01/2023

My P***s Take 2 

25/01/2023

A is for abjection in my Abject Alphabet project by me, the mad phonetician. “A Poem of Pears” is a homage to Robert Kroetsch and his “Sketches of a Lemon” and his book The Sad Phonetician , which I was privileged to hear him read alive. There are a lot of alphabet poems recently the

08/01/2023

NOTHING TO SEE willowy orthopedist tends to (me) black and white negatives (screen) racked and raised above  my caregiver draws my orthopedist’s attention A flash of interest, then goes pro nothing to see there’s nothing to see her gaze swivels to my power wheelchair, as I chronicle my chronicity  including  depression hears my explanation differently

07/01/2023

  IT DEPENDS WHAT YOUR DEFINITION OF IT IS It doesn’t matter. Yes it does. No it doesn’t. Yes it does. Why say it doesn’t matter. You know it does matter. So making a longer sentence makes it matter more.  No sentences don’t make it matter. Can you imagine a book without it. Oh, like

22/12/2022

  I badly wrenched my shoulder a couple of weeks ago and the pain kept increasing. There was another slip and a catch of a grab bar in the bathroom, and a forceful smack onto the top of the dining room table getting up and slipping my prosthetic foot  on my table napkin, and jamming

01/12/2022

SWEET OXYGEN BLUES I find it hard to breathe (I tell you) I find it hard to breathe I find it hard to breathe (Lord lord) why is it so hard to breathe The words come heavy My words come hard say say My words come heavy with what little breath I breathe I find

26/10/2022

I have been NO I am writing MANIFESTOS. I like to figure 5 is enough. Remember before capital letters were promoted to uppercase in keeping with the type room and styling type. Never you mind! I am up to five manifestos, would easily seem to be enough.  Listem. Breathe, Suffer, Desire, Suffer, and Love.  PERSIST

06/07/2022

I was fortunate enough to recruit Murray Toews as Visual Editor for Rhubarb magazine. He also contributed graphics, culminating in the 9 illustrations for each story in 9 Mennonite Stories, published by The Mennonite Literary Society in 2017. One email led another another email led to 100,000 thousand or more, and Murray bought extra storage

02/07/2022

I SCARE MYSELF[1] Even with M keeping me in bed it’s dark after ten even on Canada Day. Deefer Dog is shaking between us until he’s not and the bangs stop banging. I start my journey into the night my body and my mind insisting on separate rips. I wake as my arm sweeps the

24/06/2022

Grace Paley writes:  “My father had decided to teach me how to grow old. I said O.K. My children didn’t think it was such a great idea. If I knew how, they thought, I might do so too easily. No, no, I said, it’s for later, years from now. And besides, if I get it

04/06/2022

THE LETTER-WRITER “If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me,” thought Moses Herzog.  Some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubted that he was all there. But n0w, though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, cheerful, clairvoyant and strong. He had fallen under a

03/06/2022

I have just finished reading The PAIN chronicles cures myths mysteries prayers diaries brain scans healing and the science of suffering, by Melanie Thernstrom. It’s too big a book to read when you’re in pain. At 370 pages you’d probably be better off putting it on your Kindle or Kobo. Reading this book created that

13/02/2022

MY ANGER AND PAIN MANIFESTO  There will always be someone who suffers more deeply, more righteously, more rigorously, more appropriately with higher levels of pain, with higher levels of accomplishment achievement than me like the amputee running a super marathon across the Sahara desert. Good for you. Good for God!   Me how do I

04/12/2021

UPDATE Saturday December 4, 2021 WELCOME TO MY NEW NORMAL…. I’m getting a lot of my current circumstances out on my website today, and passing stuff along on Facebook. I believe I am the master of my own circumstances, which makes it easier to work and love. Our bodies and our minds are always changing…though

BREATHING MY PAIN[1] WITH A SIGH   “As long as you are breathing there is more right with you than wrong with you.” Jon Kabat Zinn “What’s the secret of life? Always breathe.” Christopher Durang. Dad holds a piece of three-ply against the side of the brown and white Jersey cow. He hits the piece

22/10/2018

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28/03/2018

UPDATE MARCH 27, 2018 Good news and bad news. My blood pressure is a low 110 over 70, not unusual in our family, my father and brother the exceptions. It seems I arrived at my GP’s with barely a pulse. The doc checked the pulse in my feet, including the one that will be sacrificed