WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT

By Victor | Published: May 31, 2023

 

July 14, 2023

FAIR CONTROL

My psych understood I was after
“fair control,” Understand my pain
will never get better. Not ever,
only intensity changes. Broken up
prose like this might get to be a poem
but now I am waiting for four pm
and my next flight of meds.I’m in
wine valley, though no more
for me since I chose to have surgeons
cut off my left leg below the knee
five years ago to gamble amputation
would put an end to my ankle’s
constant hammering
pain into my brain. 

I take the lowest dose of Suboxone
considered effective, keeping the chocks
blocking the pain from getting on the plane,
providing med enough for fair control to
free my imagination/ be real, you mean
free your hands your arms and every joint
to make it possible to sit and tell the story
about what ails one finger at a time.

This piece has “dud” written all over it. This is
important to say fuckbottom, no not what I mean
find another metaphor as good as so many
others. Spinny wheel races out of the tower
and that’s better but you hurt so much
that’s me I’m talking about snapping suspenders
climbing aboard my gravity defying recliner
cradling my pain, but the yoke’s on me
vertigo ascends the wall over reaches
I tilt a whirl with nothing to hang on to
I’m flung into madness but must not
ever say so, how could I write a poem
when I’m climbing the walls. Now
grab a mask company’s coming.

 

 

This is a cross over piece for the Look show, Jimmy Bang Blues Project, and Listen Here.

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 it hard to breathe
don’tcha look at me
I’m sucking I tell you
I find it hard to breathe
 
My wife and my children
My brother and my sister
You are the finest family
to love me and true me
 
my friends, my family
I should listen to you
you all bring me oxygen
one more time, singing
 
singing our sweet oxygen
oxygen  blues singing we all sing
we all sing
the sweet oxygen blues.
 

Posted in ARCHIVES, Blog, Listen Here, My Daily Fog, My Life in Pieces, Pain Room, pain room blogish, This & That, What Men Do | Leave a comment

FALSE START 1 ish

By Victor | Published: May 29, 2023

This is the official Look show reading. But not the book the book comes after, hope burns.

This is St. Augustine confessing he once threw pears in fronrt of swine, with a bunch of rowdy Manicheans.

Name calling has already begun in my brain. Pompus piloty pig. No This is the official reading for the Look show! Sounds better already doesn’t it.

That’s another show I’m on about it’s called Listen Here which is formally interesting employing correct and incorrect forms of the ghazal, though preferring the contemporary full Persian with stands by advice, that’s also crying the blues, because the Jimmy Bang Blues Project is not suitable for the tenor of our times. Fix your own jokes, the ingredients are on the table.

I am not crying. An advantage when reading so your listeners aren’t swayed by books they’ve read. Putting that over. Used to be the phrase, eh. Barkers, comedians, ministers of the cloth. Thinking about minister of the cloth at a nudist colony. Galloping Galoshes Galumphries, now there’s a name you can walk home with.

That went over well, and no crying emotion echos goodbye. Sit down!

Hold my nose stuff, such crap and the kid won’t stop spraying Mr Clean the idea

Dawns there might be a connection between spraying chemicals in the air and my headaches.

No this is the official reading for Look show, I am no actor. There will never be an official  reading …imagine a man dressed in a brown wool uniform and big military style very Russian style Official official official official hat my father marched One May Day parade before escaping Moscow after escaping Moscow he never would wear a uniform never go back it is not kind to remember your father strapping (let’s be specific he never hit you, did he)you, that would be me.

How about my father remembering how he was strapped by his father, just like me, for not being where he’s supposed to be – at home.Long after he’s dead and made amends I want crying towels. I am not crying now. My blood hammers my skull screaming to leave above my right hear

I m not crying.

Even in this massive outburst of pain I am happier now than before. Because I am making something of it I’m on a tear, but no tears. I am not
Crying. Fuck That is too bad to keep just a fall back lazy move, peckerhead

There you go with the names again!

 

Posted in ARCHIVES, Blog, Listening, My Life in Pieces, Pain Room, pain room blogish, Uncategorized, What Men Do, What Men Do Blogish | Leave a comment

THIS IS THE INTRODUCTION

By Victor | Published: May 28, 2023

IMG_1118

Video Director and Camera by Jayden Ryga

Written and Produced by Victor (I’m # U) Enns

 

WHERE DOES IT HURT?

My stomach hurts, usually where I put my finger in this picture. The internal bleeding has stopped. I suspect a small bleeding ulcer developed by my anxieties preparing for the opening of the LOOK show. We can see some developments and preparations on the web page.

 

Posted in Abject Alphabet (Fits and starts), ARCHIVES, Blog, My Life in Pieces, Pain Room, pain room blogish, This & That, Uncategorized, What Men Do Blogish | Leave a comment

Being and Nonbeing

By Victor | Published: May 21, 2023

I am, he thought, putting down his pen.

His son brought him his pants hanging by their suspenders on a peg by the door.
_Wear these, Poppa. You’ll be less conspicuous. His underpants were red, his over pants were the colour of the sky in May, gray. It was raining.

_Never mind, he said closing the door. I couldn’t hear the rain again.

_Could you help me find my slippers. Have you seen my turpentine? I have some brushes could stand some cleaning.

_You’re a writer, not? Dad, We’ve locked up the turpentine. Which slippers do you want?

_ The ones from Eatons.
_They’ve gone out of business. Do you own a pair of slippers?

_I guess. I’m wearing a pair that will do. See how neatly they fit the prosthesis? Larry signed them for me, so I could always remember the pair I liked.

_Larry signed your slippers?

_No, no, let’s try  a little harder. He signed my metal leg, my peg, the part my stump fits into. You see how nicely they fit?
_You just have one.
_Right, right. My left leg to keep it straight. He signed the socket.
Here let me show you.
_It’s OK Poppa, you’ve showed me before. I was just checking in. Have you got your hearing aids? I know how much you enjoy breathing!” 

They both laugh, inside joke. He had nearly died a year ago. His time in hospital had marked him. He was certain they bungled more than one or two things. His lips were crooked, which they had not been BEFORE he nearly died. He put on his pants, his son offered him his arm to keep him from tumbling. 

_Well I better go. His Dad had forgotten they had planned a trip to the barber’s but he didn’t have enough hair for the visit to be more than social. 

_Sure thing! I’ve got some writing to do. Give me some warning I’ll be wearing my pants,  so you can bring the kids next time. 

Richard was beginning to think it might be time to read to his father. Or cause his father to be read to. Nah, he could still do it, at least until his Dad got that old man odour, he picked up in the hallways.  Levi Lodge, what a name. Leviticus, Leviathan, jeans. He’d have to look that up, he  thought, after his hybrid began to hum. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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HOLDING ON

By Victor | Published: May 18, 2023

READING A BOOK

When I think
I’m dying
buying a new book
is a commitment,
only half-hearted since
I downloaded it instantly
for my e-reader and not

for my own library shelf
waiting for a diagnosis
waiting for a prognosis
sounds like (tug your ear)
punch in the proboscis

bury me not with any Bibles
no family plot or churchyard
still being kept for skeptics
no hole deep enough
to catch the dark paragraphs
sedimental they said it was
pshah blood in the bowl
but if you turn to look
how dark your show
make sure you hold fast
to your book and your pants.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in ARCHIVES, Blog, My Life in Pieces, Pain Room, pain room blogish, Poems, This & That, Uncategorized, What Men Do, What Men Do Blogish | Leave a comment

DEAD OR ALIVE

By Victor | Published: May 12, 2023

‘The moment you tell someone you are sick,
an element of doubt enters the conversation.” Source?

KEEP THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Nowhere does it say, “He almost died.” Let me
fill that in for you.”I nearly died.”Ask anyone in ICU
at 4 in the morning on Pandosy Street, and hour privileged
by poets most famously by Canadian Leonard Cohen.

I did not go clear, I survived being
tied to my bed to limit
my chances of choking to death
on my vomit like many a rock star.
Now I know how easy it is I’m afraid to sleep
on my back for the first time since my first hip surgery in 1969.

Sputter was a word invented for the struggle for air more needy than a baby’s once the huge rubber tube has been removed
from your throat.

No where does it say “He almost died.” Let me
fill that in for you. “At four in the morning,
we filled a Shop Vac with undigested food
lumpy with vegtables.”

The ER Nurse stopped for this teachable moment,
“If your husband makes it through this, tell him
tell him from me to CHEW YOUR FOOD!! Disgusting
he was full up to the back of his throat!”

You see I sleep flat because my disks
are all such a mess, and keeping my spine
as flat as a prairie railway track
manages my pain, manages my pain.

Did you hear, “He almost died.”
Jim Maclean could use my name
in his shout “Dead You Say?!
Dead! Almost, what, Almost?

So did he die or not. Is he
buried, so dead and gone
he will not drawth breath again
Not much of a story if he made it out

Alive! You say?! See what I mean,
DEAD Y0U SAY, has a much stronger
punch to it, This is how rumours get started
too many people just staying alive!

THIS IS a piece of work I found “prospecting” as I start ensuring anything worth saving can be saved. Ephemera anyone?

 

 

 

Posted in ARCHIVES, Blog, Food, Health, My Life in Pieces, Pain Room, Poems, Quotations, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

TIME IN MY HANDS

By Victor | Published: May 11, 2023

“I am more of an existentialist the closer I am to running out of existence.”
HE said. 

Today is Thursday my computer tells me so. My colonoscopy is scheduled for Monday, the day after my wife Michelle has her MRI of her brain and her spine.  Wonder of wonders LOOK show has a few more hours to go. I am working on stuff, writing of some kind, and reading. Meanwhile I am killing time.

I take beating the clock very very serialpoopsy. This piece has been performed live (at x-cues) only once, and filmed in a vacant lot across from DeLuca’s directed by Kevin Nickel, shot by Kevin Nikkel with Caden Nikkel, and edited by Kevin and Caden Nikkel in it’s initial placement in my abject alphabet, and then edited again by Murray Toews for LOOK show. I haven’t seen the film loops yet because I was a dumbass and stayed home when I filled the toilet bowl with the wrong colour of blood. I have pictures. Nope, I will not go so far as to post pictures of my poop. At least not yet.

I am convinced something is wrong. I am convinced it’s more than just haemorrhoids, because I recognise the bright cheery red blood now when it burst. It totally ruined my reading at the only time I was invited to THIN AIR Writers’ Festival. Lorna Crozier commented later to tell me how badly I had been racing. Yeah well I’m dying I thought. But after a trip to an urgent care clinic they laughed and said most likely you just burst a haemorrhoid. This led to my first colonoscopy, and yes of course. I’ve been too embarrassed not to have known that and ruined a good chance I had at tasking my next step forward. 

Posted in Blog, Jimmy Bang, My Daily Fog, My Life in Pieces, Pain Room, pain room blogish, Seeing, This & That, Uncategorized, What Men Do, What Men Do Blogish | Leave a comment

I DO NOT SUFFER AS MUCH AS MANY

By Victor | Published: April 30, 2023

SUFFER

There will always be someone who suffers more deeply, more righteously, more rigorously, more appropriately with higher levels of pain;  others with higher levels of accomplishment, achievement than me; like the amputee running a super marathon across the Sahara desert. Good for you. Good for the breath of God and good for fabulous prosthetics.

Me; how do I tell you about my puny sorrows, when even those have been commandeered by someone suffering more successfully than me and even yet from jahnt siede. Believe me, believe my pain, No matter. I agree Somebody has it worse. Sure. But believe you me when I tell you how much it hurts!

You share the story about the boy who used an axe to chop up the radiator hose his father beat him with.  Pat commented on his father’s fury grown by his church and  by extension, then at least, his God as he wielded the strap. Only twice did my father strap me black and blue. Both before I was sexually assaulted on holiday in 1965.

After we moved to Winnipeg in August of 1968 my parents would not believe my pain which had started earlier in summer; they accepted our rotund and jolly GP’s word that nothing was wrong. Initially the mis-diagnosis was “adjustment problems” as I was adjusting to puberty and living in a city.

After three months of suffering without belief, they did a simple test; they tried to bend my left heel to my left buttock. I screamed. I was in Emergency with a weight on my leg in no time flat. Dr Bruiser (that’s right!) pinned my hip with three four inch screws. After 3 months I was walking again, as if nothing had happened. While the pain in my hip subsided, it grew in my heart and my mind. My parents and I were through.

Similar circumstances in my ankle in 2017.  FINALLY the surgeon took a closer look at a CT scan and he had to admit  his attempt at an ankle fusion  failed. I was the third out of 300, given the options  I finally called for an amputation.  But nobody laughed when under heavy sedation and an epidural block I joked;  feeling some tugging, “Hey, you are pulling my leg.” Then it was gone.  The left leg below the knee. My sense of humour grew, without it I would have no sense at all. 

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WHERE IS

By Victor | Published: April 27, 2023

THIS IS WHERE

All I want
is to disappear
suck the disappointments
I have made
down the vortex
never to desire
never to want
never to make

give me pain
give me shame
give me suffering
cry cry cry I have towels
to wipe my cringing face

It’s dark in this hole
but I must be sitting
I find my flashlight
examine what it is
I sit on not a wheelchair
not a chair at all

but a box like in a play
with a lid and my little
light finds a crack
I pry open
the cube which
contains another box

with the word
PERSIST stamped on it
I open another box
stamped with PERSIST

inside that box I find
a heavy rock covered
with eagle shit tagged
JESUS WAS HERE

 

Posted in ARCHIVES, Blog, Listen Here, Poems, Preachers' Kids, Seeing, This & That, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

SEE  Oh let’s see

By Victor | Published: April 18, 2023

RACK IT UP
Let’s see let’s see there is nothing to see
I think we might have one in your size
Wait a minute two different poems
Focus what you look at but there is nothing boss
Nothing to see well then let’s get serious
Your feet to the fire, ah yes, FOOT to the fire

For lying about your broken your broken shoulder
Just a wise crack taking you down teaching Hubris
Hubris once again leaving so little to see Jimmy Bang
Clacking out of his sack again and again repetition
Notice you you switch persons whenever you’ve
Shit yourself bald with fear
and embarrassment
You’ve been

COMPLAINING
Shopping for Jesus, wrong store…..

These are the hanging complaints racked up according
To trash talking I imagine going against me
And brittle winds taking out my Christmas
hard cavity leaving nothing but saltwater gargle
Oceans oceans but here there is just a valley
With just enough hopler dopler to confuse my lame

ARROGANCE
Here we have arrogance in sizes large and extra large
Across the aisle here we have the cape doubling hoodie
There is nothing to it I am afraid of it like as a barking dog
Running zoomie circles around me with a take-down target
From target in polyester and lies of good working conditions
Here’s one in blue happy to say we have one in blue signed
By William Gass who ran out of well yeah, obviously but Gass.
Here we have the $999 version with a Gass signature and a complimentary
Copy of The Tunnel for free or his wowser essay On Blue being down
With a down filled comforter it is. But to sleep you huff and you puff
Crying a pig sized breakdown, a fiddler’s compassion your sister
Says, you can’t be much, but you can be kind, I’d rather “Leave it”
Shouting to the dog, whistling the Leave it to Beaver theme on the way home
One too many lines and not enough jokes.

OVERSHARING
oversharing in colours let’s see what’s left green and brown
Browns pretty hideous though
can you hear the people from outside
They are practicing ice removal
they are checking to see what life there is
I rice patch but I will not icefish for you next slide
so click click we have looked at arrogance we have looked
at oversharing and over here we have jealousy

JEALOUSY
There seemed to be a surplus of jealousy today what can we say Nobody wants to be you. On the other hand you don’t seem to want to be anybody else. Who can believe that!

You were in the hospital remember you wouldn’t wear any clothes remember you were naked naked naked naked and birthday suits well they’re harder to find if you want his capital age his birthday soon you may be on a waiting list would you like to be on a waiting list OK you could be on a waiting list 6 feet tall on a waiting list 6 feet tall

Can you hear the curtains close can you hear the curtain switch around my hospital bed ha what’s gonna happen do you think what’s gonna happen Google a good boy next live

My head is full of Lester Lester Lester by plus purbi per billing yes we’re hearing Diamond purbalingga that’s not for doing papala dingawe will skip this line I think and will start again with another

PRIDE
Hubris there that’s a good one we have a full rack of hubris you know all sizes from just a small little bit of hubris like all I’m gonna buy me a diamond ring so no normal course you’re not so I said with your eyes closed yet with your eyes closed did I say with your eyes closed of course with your eyes you’re gonna have to stop again stop again stop again you got nothing I got nothing but wishes now that’s in another department wishes yes the shelves are pretty bare for or wishes, oh Complaints, that’s a few ranks over. How did you get here?
I slipped, caught the grab bar and wrenched my shoulder. I thought it was broken that’s what it said on the first report, but not the one the doctor was looking at this is no poem
Because there was nothing too see.

Oh let’s see

RACK IT UP

 

 

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