The title of this particular poem needs some explaining. It was inspired by a book I read a while ago about the history of symbols and their ever-changing meaning across all cultures. Here are the definitions of the terms used in the title of this poem:
Obolus - the proper name for the division symbol ÷ used in mathematics
ISOTYPES - international signs that use easy to understand images as symbols that can be understood in any language, and regardless of education level (i.e. those who cannot read)

THE OBOLUS AND THE ISOTYPES

These cuckoons
of a few days
Between extremes of day and night
are what I live for.
Somehow I arrived
at this modern life:
it surged towards me
like liquid glass
moving in molten streams
crystal clear and clinging to the feet of angels
briefly like curtains
before merging with the flow
across every landscape
and on to the lake of fire.

SOOOOO, I have finally converted to a new layout for my blog. This must be what it feels like to renovate a house; full of surprises, great and small...The best of which is that MY ARCHIVES ARE BACK!!! Joy of joys!

I had to put this up!!! This is the new movie comming out which was directed by a very good friend of my hubby and me, in Vancouver. Last fall I got to see all the pictures of the movie being filmed, and it's so exciting to see it finally up and running with a trailer. It promises to be a fantastic good old fashioned slasher flick (which we all know Canadians do best). I can't wait. Enjoy the trailer.

Just an extra note to say that I don't know where my archives have gone, but I'm on the case. They have disappeared on me before, so I know it can be fixed, I just don't remember how. Until then, you'll just have to stick with what I've got on my front page!

A while ago, I posted some videos about supporting net neutrality (Nov. 11/o6 post). As a rebutal, a reader responded to me in the comments area recommending this video, which poses a persuasive counter-argument to Internet regulation. This guy makes some very valid points AGAINST net neutrality. We're going to have to think very long and hard about this complex issue folks. And don't think it's gone unnoticed that my "new" blogger account is run by Google (which I believe is now partnered with Microsoft), either. I was aware that giants like Microsoft are in favour of net neutrality, but I'm not entirely sure that I'm clear about their intentions. I assumed it was because a company like Microsoft, that deals in the distribution of media tools, would obviously benefit from a maximum variety of free media ideas. After seeing this video, I wonder that there isn't more to it than that. Just goes to show you that you should never make up your mind too quickly about where you stand on issues like this. The jury's still out for me...

Hey kids. I feel like I'm checking in on a summer home I haven't been to in months, just to make sure the pipes haven't frozen over the long winter...To all my faithful readers out there ("I see Jenny, and Kevin, and David, and Nicole, and Sandy, I see you too!") I apologize for the long gap in postings. I've still been writing but sadly, homework and crochet keep steeling my attention away from transcribing it here!!! I will try to post some new gems soon, once I've had a chance to separate the chaff from the wheat (hope I spelled that right). In the mean time, please enjoy this delightful video I found on Google videos.



And here's Part II...

10 reasons to love christmas again

At some point in all of our lives, we begin to understand why people say "Christmas is for children"; because after 12 years of doing ANYTHING repeatedly, it gets to be more stressful and annoying than joyous and fun. For many years, I myself was a nemesis of Christmas to rival the Grinch, Scrooge and the Easter Bunny put together. However, if one lets just a few more years pass, one comes out the other side of Christmas malais. So in the spirit of the season, here is my list of the top 10 reasons to love Christmas again.

1) It's the one time of year when the "family drunk" gets to drop that title and is instead refered to as the family member with the most "Christmas cheer".

2) The food, my god the food!!!

3) There comes a time when you realize that you're not getting any more of those wierd obscure presents from distant aunts and uncles...now it's YOUR turn to dole out reindeer sweaters and homemade Christmas socks to the young ones in the family. heh heh heh.

4) It's the one time of year when the snooty cynical film critics in the family have to shut there cake holes and let you watch all the glorious TV movie smaltz you can handle without derision!!!

5) You can feel guilt-free about your "3 for them, 1 for me" shopping policy...at least until boxing day.

6) You can just show up at a Christmas party without any gifts and tell people you're giving them the gift of "charitable opportunity".

7) New Year's resolutions are a great excuse for buying new clothes, getting a hair cut, getting a massage, or basically doing anything decadent for yourself that you wouldn't do any other time of year.

8) Peppermint candy canes are great for getting rid of bad breath...or curing dry mouth.

9) Everything smells good except your day-old body odour.

10) Two days of sitting on the couch in your pajamas doing absolutely nothing but wallow in food, liquor and shredded wrapping paper.

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

Too honest to be made artful

Some time ago, a friend of mine asked me if I ever write love poems. It disturbed me a little to realise that most of my stuff doesn't read like one, even when they were intended to be about love. I suppose I have trouble writing 'love poems' because I have always felt that real love is too honest to be made artful. On the other hand it may be that my definition of love makes for poetry that does not give the sense of satiety that one would traditionally expect from, say, a praise poem. In any case, I thought I would try to take up his challenge, and this is what I came up with. Funny thing is, I still don't really feel that it will read like a love poem...probably more like disenfranchised lonely heart stuff. But I can't help it!! I can't kick the feeling that it's more important to turn difficult, ugly things into something beautiful than to defile that which is already gorgeous by trying to deconstruct its parts! Perhaps I'm only justifying a deficiency in my writing skills or life philosophy, but there it is. In that case, let this poem be a lesson to you all of what happens when you try to 'force' your inspiration. It can be an ugly sight. Anyway, without further ado...

THE ART OF LIVING WITH LONGING

I only remember my dreams
when I dream of you
I can sketch
every shadow of your face
from memory
In these quiet havens
of my unspoken heart
you still possess me

And this is how we touch:
like the fingertips
of Michaelangelo's Adam
meeting his maker
forever suspended
above the heads of searching souls
forever exhalted
beyond the flesh

I reflect on your madness
with childlike reverence
I marvel
at your immortal deviance
and even after all these years
the idea of you shocks me
engulfed in my remote admiration
never too near
to this fragile repose
more precious to me
than a thousand wishes
fulfilled
Leave me to my vain illusion
of who you are to me
because souls like ours
make beautiful ghosts

I know that I'm not supposed to solicit my readers into clicking on the add banner on my site (which I'm not trying to do), but I just thought it was time that I mention, once more, that I do not specifically endorse the individual adds that run on it. I mostly just leave it up there because some of the adds are so damn funny. I was provoked to mention this when I noticed what they have running on the banner right now..."genital swollen glands"...WHAT THE HELL IS THAT???????? And I love that it sits right next to the "total union with God" add. Why is Jesus the only way to union? Well yes, the answer does surprise me, if the answer is swollen genital glands. So funny.

THE DEMYSTIFICATION OF MRS. HARTBERN

All I'm saying
is that you know you're high
when you're having spiritual epiphanies
about a washing machine.

I was right this time
and she knew it.

In one breath
I renounced my faith in her
and still she lingers.

Back when the days
were all sweetness and light
she didn't even know
to see the good fight
But in seductive little increments
something changed in her
just as she suppected it might.

She forces the colours open
in her meek and gloomy life
split and spilled
like powder from a capsule
and it makes her world
as daunting as the sun
on Sunday morning
coming down.

I've been feeling pretty angsty about where I live lately...

WHERE LAME DOGS GO TO DIE

Edmonton
is where people go
when they give up
on where they came from.
In a province where politicians
say the wrong thing
at the right time
It's where lame dogs
and falling stars
go to die.

In Edmonton
oil and blood are the same
our engines as tense
as our shoulders
they run as rough
as our language
and spew just as much
blue poison

This is where dogs go
to die
The dirty streets
slip and roll under brown snow
stained with bad tune-ups
and random acts of violence
and nothing
is colourful anymore
but the trash

The good ones get out young

we plow through icy fields
of reticence
with unrequited innocence
wait for bodies to break down
like old pickup trucks
spend our fortunes
on greasy black vices
this is where lame dogs
and falling stars
go to die.

Soooooooo important. Be aware, folks. Anyone who surfs the net is affected by the issue of NET NEUTRALITY...

PLEEEEEAAASE watch this fantastic video.

HUMANITY LOBOTOMY


and for a lighter take on the same subject, please, ask a ninja...

Confessions at Sunset

I hope this one is as funny to read as it was to write, in a self-depricating kind of way...

CONFESSIONS AT SUNSET,
the piece was called,
just an intersection of cherry pie
with a finite edge of canvas
a lot like who you are too me
a memorable suggestion
of what I might be
before the world sets in
presses its jaws
into my soft corners

and we share some hardships,
are foreign as terrorists
with others
and you said
in essense,
that I should be proud to profess
my own exposure
in this confessional
this Six-by-V. cell of Honesty
that we call poetry
but defects and diseases
shouldn't sound pretty on paper
like the Hallowed Sounds of Victims
or Hellbound Shepards of Vice
not glamourous at all
to say it plainly
even when you're gentle about it
and say it like an anagram

Look it's serious,
but not that serious.
I mean it's not fatal
usually.
The cigarettes are more deadly
than this
but still.
There it is.
My anagramatical SHiVe.

HOW TO MAKE LOVE WITH A SAFETY PIN

I don't care what the psychic said
this is where I belong,
among the poets
with their bad breath
and worse fashion sense
raking their words
across their chests
and screaming obscenities
Of course they make me angry
exposing their lusts
for all the world to see

But blood rushes to a wound
and heats it up for days
attracting anything
that shivers from this cold hard world
it gathers sympathisers
pressing on the pain
until it's toughened up again

SHE CAN'T HELP IT IF SHE LOVES AN ADDICT

Well I guess she's got her drug
and you've got yours
but nothing lasts five minutes
these days
now we are all God's Forbidden Familiars
each one of us
wierder than the last
great weaver of webs
shorting out
through wonderous wires

Light strains our eyes,
we focus better on the dark between it
reading characters,
better than black
and those white lines
only start to look good
when the midnights
get too big to understand

Has it really been almost two months since my last post??????? Well, it's not been for lack of writing. More like lack of free time. I'm getting a little over-run with school work, now that I'm back at Grant MacEwan, taking my first semester of the library tech program...don't laugh. We all gotta do something practical, and I'm not getting any younger.

Anyway, here's one I wrote a while ago. I guess you could say it's about a vagrant having a particularly lonely day...

LITTLE BIRD

I could see the laboured breathing
I could see that it was sad
I sunk in the darkness of knowing
I was useless to help this sweet lad

It didn't flinch at my foot steps
barely an inch from its face
not at all acting a natural bird
I suppose we all change without grace

I pretended to smoke a cigarette
so I could be company
though I dared not to touch it
for fear of disease
I was wishing some hero would see

that someone better equiped than me
would notice this poor sparrow's plight
for not even my attentive gaze
could inspire some firy flight

Then it hit me:
this fowl and I are the same
not much more than vermon to most
barely the shadow beneath as they soar
So I prayed for this wretched ghost

And I'll never get satisfaction
never know how its story ends
I suppose it will yield to its final relief
and me to my mottled friends

I think of the thousands
that die every day
unbeknownst to me
and I hope that they know I can feel them
and that my will wishes them free

THE MELANCOLY OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Someday you won't need this happiness
someday all this glory
that you stash away
in safe boxes
under soap boxes
will seem like a shrine
to someone else's prime
And where will all your honey be
when you strain to recall
a faint image of me?
A fragile friend less mortal
than ideas ought to be
barely worthy of a shadow
across your enlightened soul
who only knew that if heaven
is reserved for the sinless,
then it's nowhere I would want to be

Hunter S. did Gonzo journalism. I do Gonzo poetry.

END OF DAYS-DREAMING

I cured the cancer
by taking the lumps
one slump at a time
by making my worst nightmare
a soul mate
with her own crimes as soft
as chewed meat
snaking down to this chicken's gizzard
aged a decade
in twenty days
living on harvested
black market organs
like rusty pipes
in a Montreal church

Everything delightful
is sacrilege again
and even Nostredamus
could not have seen this madness
for badness

Make it new!
the modernists cried
but to make it old
is golden
make it tried and trusted
make it stubborn and crusted
as barnacles on a sunken ship
gnarled as an old maid's claw
Aye, there's the draw
for dreams so dusty
they congest the senses
even in the daylight
for scars so merciless
they eclipse the pain
of fresh wounds weeping
as they take flight
towards their backdrop
of gritty Meridian plateaus

I cannot be broken
any more than molten mettle
under the anvil's hammer
best to make it sharp and clean
to serve within your favour
to mark your blood against the grain
of everything you envy

or make victims of us all

THE LEFT HAND

But I can choose to hope
I can choose to hope
I can turn it all into prayer
and wine
any time
I can change it on a dime
Tell the tale of Hamlet
from Ophelia's eyes
lose track of the second hand
more impassive than the first
and always knowing
what the other is doing,
grasping at the seeds of progress
reaching for the fatted calf

My new favorite mantra, gleaned from my wiley and wise father-in-law:

"Avoid the ordinary."