- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2014
And I thought I'd shaken the habit of the late night cup of coffee, but I was in need of waking (5 hours napping and a short little rest today) and so it didn't seem like a bad idea...at the time.
Now, of course, as the wee hours roll on and I show no signs of fatigue I'm beginning to question the wisdom of it all..
There is small consolation to be found - here. But I'm not in my 20's and I can't help but thinking that 5 hours napping and 2 cups of coffee at 11:30 PM are more proof of my stupidity than cleverness.
And so I work on writing, hacking, writing some more, editing, writing.
The editing is murder, what to keep, what to discard, what to lay aside in the hopes that it might grow up in it's own right. The pruning of words.
The current hydra:
The sound of one hand clapping
It's the sound of one hand clapping
It's the dream I dreamt not napping,
It's the tune of a broken string played by the wind
it's the harmony of 1 voice singing;
it's your voice on the telephone ringing,
It's the unwound clocks' stopped ticking
It's the light of an unlit candle cast about a darkened tomb,
it's the murmur of conversations that fill an empty room -
it's the moon scraped from the river, held in a silver spoon;
It's the final cry of the phoenix, before she is consumed,
It's the sound of one hand clapping - applause for all you've ruined
And this short - very imperfect scrap from a larger body of lines (grown to some hundreds) that include:
it's the secret midnight garden that you water with your tears
It's the clamor of honest lawyers
it's the juggernaut of all destroyers
It's the sound of forks and spoons in separate drawers
it's the unmatched sock's limp searching,
It's the view of the new moon not risen
It's all the freedom had in prison
it's the letters you never sent,
the countless slights you never meant;
it's all your just suspicions,
every flawless intuition
it's the list of promises you kept all bound up in my skin,
it's all your inept accusations put down and scored for violin.
it's your loyalty when you disowned me
it's the mote of your integrity,
the featherweight of your fidelity;
it's the sum of all your virtues,
counted from 12 til noon.
it's all the snow found in the desert
it's all the warmth gleaned from the stars
it's your footprints beneath my window;
it's your love shaped in my bed
It's the constant quiet whisper of all the things you never said,
Some of which I rather liked. Especially: The unmatched sock's limp searching, which was discarded because it provided a tangible visual, whereas the rest of the rhymes, well, you get the idea. Some just seem personal and bitter, and should be discarded, others provide little hope of rhyming (ever, and I'm growing ever more a fan of blank verse...), and so it goes. I'm not against poetry being personal, I just don't have a personal life to be personal about. One day I'm going to change that. In any event, keep the title and closing line and keep hacking everything that's in between...
But from the dropped lines and stanzas there of course spring even more poems and the night wears on...Time now, I think, to switch to whiskey and see if that makes sleep come any easier...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1931
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
The Doors
And so I miss my bus last night, just miss it but I'm in luck, the boys, they want to go for a drink. It's Stampede. And so I catch a ride downtown, go for a drink with them at King Henry VIII on Stephen Ave. Mall because they don't want to wait in line to go anyplace better and I don't care, I'm sweaty and still dressed for work and all I really want to do is to go home and shower and go to bed.
Now I don't smoke. Or only cigarettes, which is probably the worst of the vices. But the boys, they smoke, and the smoke pools in the back seat of the car where I'm sat and by the time we're parked downtown I'm already pretty fucked up.
At the bar I drink my drink, quickly, it's filled with other people who didn't want to wait and get into better bars, all looking about as happy as we are. I finish my drink and then go to catch the connecting bus home.
And I'm pretty fucked up, whatever they were smoking it was pretty good if I can be fucked up after sitting in the back seat of the car for 10 minutes and drinking a single beer. And I don't feel nauseous, which is a good thing as I seem to recall it being the reason I never pursued that particular vice. So I wait at the bus stop and notice the people, all the people, they're looking at me, they know how fucked up I am and I see a group of chinese tourists coming down the street in these sheer raincoats, you can see their bras and knickers beneath, and I turn away because I don't want to stare, to seem like I'm all fucked up and they pass and it's a group of blobby young teenagers, not the chinese tourists I thought they were, and I realize that I'm pretty fucked up.
But I'm concentrating on waiting for the bus, ignoring the many staring people around me....
The bus comes and I get on and find a seat and I have to concentrate now, concentrate on the stop I have to get off at, I could imagine very easily missing it, riding the bus all night until the driver kicks me off, and I just want to get home...
The regulars, the bus has regulars, depending on the hour you board it, they're all there. And I'm in the midst of life, in tune with it all, not apart or above as usually I am but right there in the midst of it all and I tune their conversations in and out, move my concentration about the bus and capture the snippets of their conversation....
...and I realize that they're all pretty fucked up as well. I had never noticed before, had overheard but not paid attention, thought them boring, irrelevant, whatever, but tonight, tonight I realize, tonight I'm on their page, I understand just how fucked up everyone really is.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1895
The Stampede has begun to take it's toll, cancellations, slow lunches, evenings.
It would be a relief were it not for the heat. There's air conditioning, but it doesn't help much, at all, it's stand around in a vest and tie and feel your life blood ebbing away.
There's the making of notes, the other staff find me mysterious as I hack away in my journal, elaborating upon brief flashes of inspiration, cutting down inspiration as it ripens and is ready to harvest, there's a lot of catching up to be done...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1798
Because I was too lazy to go for coffee, it was getting late and the view from my bench is just fine.
I feel a bit like Forest Gump just sitting there...
You watch the river, Canada geese circling the islands, the odd lone beaver swimming, the silence punctuated by joggers and odd couples walking and talking quietly amongst themselves.
It's grey, cool, cloudy, occasional stray raindrops splash onto my notebook, smudge the ink, no real threat, just aimless drops.
Sitting, watching, the grey clouds run like a band down the center of the sky, to the east it's all blue, to the west you can see a break low on the horizon.
Sounds of the river, of people passing, traffic.
And now the sun has passed the clouds and for 5, 6 minutes perhaps the sky, the river is lit up, no longer grey but blue and green with white caps on the waves, reflected sunlight, a thousand silvery winged motes hang in the air, the leaves and trees acquire a gem-like coloring, jewel tone shadings of phthalo green, pastel orange-yellow-grey clouds on a cerulean blue sky, it's been an hour on the bench for 5 minutes of perfection, the sun brilliant and low on the horizon, now behind a tree and you can see climbing into the sky the crepuscular rays, and my time is done.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1858
And the 2nd armchair is gone, gone the same way as the first which is good as I didn't like to see them separated, not after their having been together so long. I left it on the front step and the lady who purchased the first came and retrieved it.
I thought, briefly, of writing some torrid ancient love letters and hiding them in the stuffing, or a map to some lost familial treasure, but there wasn't enough time, and really, at the price, it wasn't worth the effort. Or a letter congratulating her on her fine financial acumen, congratulating her on the deal she acquired, maybe even a first person letter letting her know how glad the chair was to be reunited with it's more beautiful twin. But again, not enough time, and certainly not at that price.
The important thing is that they're gone, and there's a hole in the living room where they used to be but I think to myself that it's 2 less chairs I'll have to move.