HUNGRELL

Please click on the link .
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

FREE WRITE IN PAGE

IMAGINE THIS BLANK PAGE IS YOURS AND YOURS ALONE. WRITE OR DON’T WRITE THIS BLANK PAGE IS YOURS. NO SUBMISSION, NO ENTRY FEES
WRITING IS FREE, TO YOU AND TO ME.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

LOOK at my new scar

My shoulder replacement is a success. I must be careful not to overuse it, lift something heavy and I’ll lose it.  My surgeon said he would look at my right shoulder in January when he looks at the left for the final oohs and aaashhs.
 The cleaner is cleaning.  

I am waiting for:

 The results of the BC Provincial Election tonight
pain medication  by Tuesday,
a call to set up physio appointment
Counselling session next week Friday
six cortisone shots to relieve pain in my spine  Oct.30th , 2024
Shoulder surgeon appointment  in January, final clearance on left
and  start the process for the right shoulder
First x-ray on my knee for what  likely be a knee replacement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

My head in a pail

1.
I should get a pail to  carry
random thoughts  Yes
that’s more like it.
If I had a pal
I could carry
my head in it
but only when
it is too heavy
for my cervical spine.
so most of the time.

 

2.
I forbid any talk
about Liza.

I forbid any talk
about holes.

I forbid any talk
of bottoms.

You see, the next
thing you’ll talk

you’ll talk about the
hole in Liza’s bottom.

You’ll forget
the pail completely

you dirty minded
rascal.

 

3.

All I’ve got
is my head
in a pail.

Lucky man
my angels carry
the pail between

them. Ever so well
leaving
my body in hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

CAST: of characters

EROS HOTEL

 

Desk Clerk/Gatekeper

1. St. Augustine/with ghost of Euripides
2. Richard III
3. Menno Simons
4. Catherine the Great
5. Ludwig Van Beethoven
6. Queen Victoria
7. Sigmund Freud/with Richard Dehmel
8. Samuel Beckett

 

Augustine is working on a story for you!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I WANT TO DRIVE MY CAR

DREAM

This is still kind of loopy but I’ll put it in my dreams section on my website.

Last night I dreamed of forgetting my car. I was driving and needed to park quickly.
The parking lot changing from U of M to the downtown flat lots while I went to meetings.
I overstayed my welcome the tough guys came and towed my green Studebaker to their central parking compound. Not happy, I had the phone number and called.
I went to the compound and it seems the visit, only one or two, in real life had an impact. The tough guys as I’ll call them, were not interested in helping me at all, calling forth their manager, who suggested with a significant payment well over the usual compound fees I could get my car in time to get to the airport where I wanted to go in a hurry or they would give me a ride in my own car and keep it safe in their compound. Gullible to a fault sure drive me to the airport.
I was in Minneapolis for a professional development event for writers. Returning, landin, back in Winnipeg I called for my car and the compound said they didn’t have it. Likely somebody stole it. WTF, what do you mean, “likely it was stolen.”
“Happens here all the time.” I’m on my way, and I expect to retrieve my car at the government approved rates for parking tickets and such.
Do what you want, but you’ll be wasting your time. I take a cab who I asked to wait but insists on collecting its fare, and then high-tails it out of there. Not a pleasant neighborhood, for sure. I see what I think is my green Studebaker and go into the compound office all huffy and puffy. “I’d like my car please.”
“Yeah, about that we don’t have your car
“I can see it in the lot without its doors.”
“Oh, that. It’s not your car. Did your car have doors?”
“Yes, of course I could drive it.
“See, not your car.”
“Should I call the police?
I don’t know what you should do. I would suggest leaving as your best choice.

After muttering a number of profanities, I turned and walked out into the lot, and tried to make a phone call. But there was no, I mean NO cell phone service thereabouts, at all! walk away afraid in the dark until I find service, call for a cab
Two possible endings; One I walk to the green Studebaker get in on the driver’s side throw my carry-on into the back seat and try my spare key. It starts, I go, leaving with no doors on the car. The second is I try to retrieve the car but have no way to get it started and not ready to drive it without doors. So I walk away afraid of the dark, until I come into the light and cell service.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

IMAGINATIONS

I’m opening a new page in or from the pain room, called “Imaginations.” Being in the  moment  is natural but often claimed by pedestrian thinkers. We are, we humans, in the moment such is our nature. The IMAGINATIONS latch old too the idea that we disabled folks can imagine a moment taking us from our beds and chairs into the world of our imaginations. I have been waiting for the right moment to sew these together, but fuck it, now it’s as good as anytime to be in my imagined moments. I will try to keep these to their own page with “pain room” as the parent page. My imagination can do only so much, as pain is clobbering me now from my hands to my shoulders and neck. So this is a place to start.

WAKING SLOW ~

Corporal Ivy opens his eyes, blinks, and sees Blake’s “Glad Day,” painted on the ceiling. “That’s me,” says he once and again. What a fine figure of a man am I! The fan has been running intermittently all night, but steady since the morning bell. The room smells like it is above the Hero’s Hotel bar in Boundary Creek, Manitoba. The room smells like a dentist’s office more precisely, which is what it was, once upon a time, before the hotel’s sale to the Administration, and the occupancy of Corporal Ivy.

“Iris,” he says, “my meds and water please.” The wheelchair wide door to the pain room opens admitting Iris who drifts in and stops at bedside. “Shall I serve?” “Always,” says the crippled naked man, pleased at the progress of automated service since the Rumba, no the Roomba, it was, had diddled around his feet. He liked the sound of the name enough to buy stock. He was fond of the sound of small electric motors, though nothing beat a gas mower for the lawn outside. That was one of his harvested sounds, collected by one of the homecare workers, handy with recording devices.

He had neither a Roomba, now, nor feet for it to diddle around. Both his legs were amputated below the knee following an industrial accident, a photo shoot actually, which had been his occupation until his preoccupation with focus caused him to drop sixteen feet. He was surprised that he landed upright like his cat, until his ankles shattered. “Fucking useless hardhat!” he exclaimed, the witnesses later testified, and tossing it away with nothing between him and the concrete when he started to wobble, fainted and fell on his face. “Oh shit,” said the forklift operator, “not my fault.” “Oh shit,” said the shift super, “more paperwork.” Memories got a little hazy at this point, what with the screaming and bleeding and blaming and hiding, the lights falling from the scaffolding after it had stopped the fork lift operator from running over Mr. Unfocused on the floor.

Iris opened the bedside fridge to the bedside water, juice and milk. She placed a clean cold glass on a cork lined serving tray, filled it from a pitcher of filtered cold water sourced from the springs in Marchand Manitoba, placing it on a hospital style table swinging over the bed when convenient. She opened his night table drawer, preparing his oral medications.

Corporal was thirsty, drank harshly and took his seven different pills, some psychotropic, some for physical pain. He clicked his stereo remote currently programmed for Beethoven string quartets. The bed was programmed with his seven favourite positions including one that actually stretched him backwards and lowered his head. Wished they could reprogram my back, riddled with osteoarthritis, bad cartilage genetics causing degenerative disc disease. Collapsing on his nerves.

This part of the day, did not vary, until he lay back to wait for the meds to kick in and reduce his pain levels to allow for the zip to the loo, and a ritual bath. “Let’s have Greece,” he said settling back with his legs spread, under a thin top sheet with a fan blowing over him. He had access to envirocams all over the world, but chose seven for the year 2027. He imagined he might change things up in 2028.

The ceiling screen filled with images of Kanakai Beach, virtually deserted, on the Island of Salamis, close to the cave of Euripides writing the Tragedy of Oedipus.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

THREE YEARS AND COUNTING!

I married the hardest-working super-woman three years ago, August 27th. I am grateful for everything she has brought into my life, and for saving my life from a respiratory depression in 2022. A long story, recounted in Always Breathe now making the rounds of Canadian publishers. Michelle has just submitted a completed draft of her Ph.D. dissertation and is a little at loose enns. It’s hurry up and wait.

We will celebrate the first day of “Arthritis month” on September the third with a reversed total shoulder replacement, a rational pain management strategy. I have lousy cartilage genetics, and many bone-on-bone situations, that are killing me, or driving me to chose MAiD, as a result. Michelle will experience my 12th serious surgery vicariously, and I thank her for submitting her dissertation in time to help me find my way through it. Four weeks with NO weight bearing activity on my left arm/shoulder at all. And then rehab starts.Total and reverse shoulder replacement diagramTotal and reverse shoulder replacement diagram

Fortunately, we have four excellent care aides that are scheduled, around the clock if and when necessary, to give us a hand, arm, shoulder and a lift. So, thanks to Davina, Jayden, Aimee and goodbye to Amanda who has gone on to a full-time job, and hello to Christine who is finishing her shift.

Happy Be Lated Anni versify Michelle. 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

CRY, EH

CRATE

Gate
clangs shut

oh my my
pain pain

cleaves my
thunder rail

let’s play
pretend

my wheelchair
plays a tune

I hear
in my ear

high eh
cry , eh

die
die

God’ s got
you by the collar

~

Not at all what I wanted pacing my cage
now there’s a tune full of ache

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

BRAIN BRAIN PLEASE NO DRAIN

I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT SOME MORE SENSE IN MY BRAIN COME BACK!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment