15/04/2025

Selected Readings by Victor Enns. Order Always Breathe online.

23/04/2025

No dice
No Christ
No rise

12/04/2025

CUFF WITH A BUTTON

Grabbed by the photo camera
sure as shootin’ obscura
hand pressed
spine flattened
drag my ass to lazy
bed my scabby
hammer toes
ringing anvil
sparks fly
make a copy
Pick a bale full
of buttons tug
the shirt to close
the end is nigh
press the spine
game of apocalypse
now yesterday’s
dirty laundry
forgotten
line please
For the morning
Back to bed
cat on my shoulder
my nose stuffed
with my hair of Guss

HOME AND AWAY
He was heard to say, “I can be a pest.”

We have great support from Murray Toews the urbanstickman  and from Relish Design. We let a “best final” virgin expire, that would be version, and Murray will send a crystal clear mp4 update which we will upload this weekend. Weekends are tough, people have lives and other things to do but create this perfect 10 minute video of selected readings from my lovely new book Always Breathe. I can be a pest. But send money and we will send you a book. Every which way.

06/04/2025

This section introduces my new book Always Breathe. Armin Wiebe describes it best “This blisteringly candid memoir is structured in alphabetical units consisting
of poems, prose pieces, social media-like posts, and one-liners that take the reader into the horror of a deteriorating body and constant pain.” Armin was a high-school student of my parents , and we were in the same University of Manitoba advanced creative writing class led by Robert Kroetsch in 1978-79, along with Sandra Birdsell and Jake MacDonald.  I can’t find anything to say now so I’m going to look for a quote. I’m going to look for something to say.

04/04/2025

NEW NEW NEW

I’ver been hiding my apple under a barrel, or my talent in the mud, but
I have published a new book At 70 (birthday today) copies for sale at the Mosaic bookstore in Kelowna, Massy has just sent word they’ll carry it in Vancouver, I think it’ll Bolen And Russel in Victoria.  We’ll have a “better bookstores” list up in time for the launch on April the 9th.

The launch!  Will be at Kelowna Art Gallery.
Plenty room to breathe.
The pictures are at Mosaic Books
where you can buy Always Breathe before and after the readings .

Always Breathe debuts with several short shorts by Murray Toews and our new
Selected Readings from Always Breathe my words and Murray Toews images and editing. There will be two showings. I have a feeling this should be two seatings
early just after six, and late, just after 7:00. The hall will echo with our dogged pomo
gestures calling for the purity of absence, we’ll be gone by 8 pm. 

 Always Breathe will be for sale for $20.
Lime cordial and slices will be available, no alcoholic beverages. 
The launch is NOT at Mosaic books, but if you are there you might wander into the local authors section and buy a copy.  Bookstores need to succeed. They are wonderful places to walk the aisle without getting married! 

This is me in front of
Mosaic Books.

01/04/2025

MEDICINE

I reach into
My angel’s apron

Their blister pac of medicine
close enough now

To the hour.
So small and so dense

It’s just enough. We call it
Self-defense.

27/03/2025

Bullwinkle 2, Stumpy, Smile awhile? Any names you like? Aimee menard, one of our caregivers helped me on with what I sometimes call my “shrimp sock” for shrink sock, designed to  keep the end of my stump ship-shape. From shrimp she went to moose, she could see him just trying to find his way. Lightening up can be difficult especially as I feel myself journey into a deeper darkness, stuff like this brightens up my day. Gus is asleep beside my computer happy to hear me clicking away again. 

I had very welcome cortisone shots on Monday. You may not believe how well my spine and vertebrae respond to the cortisone the specialist, is able, with a visually guided system, to ease my back pain. It’s not for everyone, and I have not had success with it in my knee, but we mixed up dates so it had been six month since my last back pain relieving injections. Tuesday was an intense six hours of neurological testing with shape shifting lines I could not repeat. The cube was child’s play, already too hard for my visual spatial senses. Never has “repeat these words after me exactly in order” been so frightening despite all the wonderful reassurances. Yesterday was a much needed day for recovery, treats and comfort food, spaghetti and meatballs by any other (bolognese) name tastes just as good prepared by Christine who is back on her shifts after visiting her mother.

Davina is out delivering my book Always Breathe to our first bookstore acceptance for consignment,  more on that in a minute. Jayden smiles patiently as she watches me stumble through decisions, particularly as related to my computer.  Jayden’s  talents in the kitchen and with tech and aesthetic eye that she shares with Aimee, will be set aside after my book launch  as she accepts a full-time summer research assistant position in medical physics for cancer care. She will keep at least one shift, and/or visit as we are friends with our team members.  My wife Michelle will get a separate thank you whose unwavering support has not been remiss as she completed her Ph.D. in Disability Studies  as I said separate news on that as she has launched a new website. The fight for  DWP (disability without poverty) is beginning anew though the credit is present and scheduled to begin paying out in July, the $200 a month is a tiny wedge to move the huge weight of poverty from people with disability. 

Finally I feel good having confirmed the guest suite for my three children visiting over the Easter weekends! Yay! 

3

23/03/2025

I stomp around in my seven League books stomp
fast as I can to stomp out corruption, famine, war
There is a picture, now many pictures of swims in oceans
Free of blood or dead migrants park like views from houses
Put to order free of slaves or soldiers this is peace alright
Fright, right we have it and they have nothing but more
Bombs being delivered on schedule to very well sought
Out targets, let’s bomb them back to the stone age
And we forget we forget we’re in it now! Just look
Our faces reflected in our screens too much
we watch the bodies be loaded too much death
While rockets missiles bombs are unloaded
There are no boundaries, no front, it is all ours
Let’s kill them all such a nuisance hell is other people
So we look out only for ourselves we be lucky
I talk funny about it. I am angry about being
In have a safe place to rest my broken body spirit
not so long we were laughing and drinking we
or me didn’t know how to dance so one invention
was the nns stomp or ns stomp to be inclusive
yes all those records were mine first one step

then a second harder
now that’s
the stomp
resist pacifist
singer songwriters

My brain
is off the chain
Here comes
The Train

My brain does not want to look a little harder
Nestle will sell us the water To wash blood
off our hands police armored Like legionnaires
we all hear force might as one solution, I lose
My breath again and again forever falling
Smashed on the rocks for doing wrong.

POOR SPECIMEN

Needles stick my dried carcass to the display board
eyes woggle until skin and bones have their assignments.
my pores hot and grimy under the magnifying glass.
two failing specimens one side up, the other ass down
Now this is failing but keep bailing. Read. Read.
< V > 

SOFT SOAP

Longer is getting shorter
the days that I dream up

I need to rest
to close my eyes

empty, lets
the bilge

it weighs me
down, my finger

nail’s infection, pour
hydrogen peroxide

as you pull nail
and skin apart

it’ll eat infection
+ enough skin

to stop it
until tomorrow

silly ass
you keep

biting your nails
with your dirty mouth

< V > 

08/03/2025

TALES FROM GIMLI’S WATERFRONT CENTRE back to 2018  REVISED 

March, 17, 2025

what I’m trying to say is there are moments my brain seizes up completely, not willing to leap anymore synaptic gaps, these moments often accompanied by a blank stare and a complete inability to choose anything, like, always backing up.

These socks. Why these socks. Socks. Why socks at all, why capital letters why sentences. Just stoop. uh. stop? But why socks? Ok no socks now what about feet those are still attached hard not to take them or better they take you where you are going. Wait a minute. I have a prosthesis Don’t need feet, got my wheelchair, my buddy my body and my back is doing crunches not authorized by the physio,

I want a stretcher like my mother had in her basement, that you grasped with your hands over head and with your feet stretched out under the other end; this apartment has just enough room.

I heard somebody explain the size of our elevator doubling as a service elevator say for moving, was actually there to accommodate stretchers and paramedics, or the mortician from Bardal.
 

SELLING ALWAYS BREATHE IN KELOWNA AND ELSEWHERE.

I have just submitted my book Always Breathe to the buyer at Mosaic Books in Kelowna. They have become my favourite indie bookstore in the Okanagan, I’M NOT JUST SAYING THAT. I can actually get there from where we live, whether in my power wheelchair, or accessible van. I did a big book buy when the retail taxes where lifted.

This is me in front of
Mosaic Books.

I will also check with The McNally’s stores in Winnipeg and ask them as well. It’s a well known fact. The number one reason books sell, because they are on the shelf in bookstores. Yes, the stores look more and more like a page filled with “Buy with 1-click” buttons, but that was and is under the evil Jeff Bezos. I try to avoid the Amazon retailer.

Always Breathe, (Aka My Book) will be available for purchase next week, retail price is $20. It is more than my new poetry collection. There are actual sentences and paragraphs and my favourite “He was the kind of guy” sayings. The one I’ve noticed is repeated more than twice “He was the kind of guy who thought the weight of the world was on his shoulders: until he checked, and it was his suspenders holding up the weight of his pants.