Happy MotherF’ing New Year 😊😊😊

The fuel burning furnace shot out a spark. I see it land on a newspaper pile and catch.
I tell my housemate this.
They say, “You’re an extemist.”
I say, “You’re anti-science.”
We smell the smoke now.
But the fridge door still leans against the wall.
I’d wanted it mounted left.
They’d wanted it mounted right.
Fire alarms go off now.
I take one down, remove the battery.
They grab a broom, smash the other.
I hold a knife to their throat. “You’re a fascist fuck.”
They hold a pot of boiling oil over my head. “You’re a commie cuck.”

Inspired by Bravo, F! Illustration by Fred Ni.

Bravo, F!

The word Fuck has stood the test of time. Other vulgarities have come and gone, and for good reason. Take “Douche Bag” for example. Fuck is a constant. Never politically incorrect or cancelled. Gender neutral. A classic really. Up there with It’s a Wonderful Life. Now in vogue courtesy of Taylor. And quite versatile. A noun, verb, adverb or adjective. Capable of evoking a wide range of visceral emotion from eroticism to rage. It is complimented with the most revered figures—Mother and Jesus. And when used with Holy it is all powerful and divine. Good for you, Fuck.

Inspired by Sometimes used in the present participle as a meaningless intensive. Illustration by Yuliya Shavyra.

Sometimes used in the present participle as a meaningless intensive

I’d learned most of my off-colour vocabulary by my seventh birthday; but I was always looking for proof that all those dirty words were, in fact, real. The first big dictionary I found had its own pedestal in the middle of the Yorkville library, but it didn’t have what I was looking for.

The Compact Oxford included all thirteen volumes of the 1931 edition, but it didn’t include the word “fuck.” Years it took, but I finally did find it, in my grandmother’s humble Webster’s, where the editors had somehow come round to approaching those words just like the others.

Inspired by Ban Small-Mindedness, Not Books. Image from Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, eighth edition.

Ban Small-Mindedness, Not Books

Recently I’ve discovered shelves of banned books in some bookstores. They are proudly displayed, a poke in the eye to the small-minded—and a reminder that our freedoms are never assured. Attempts continue to cull books from stores and libraries around the world. Perish the notion that anyone should suffer free thought! The American Library Association keeps a list of banned or challenged literary classics. Read it and weep—then get angry. Those who ban books are rarely on the right side of history. If imagination, storytelling, and free expression can be deemed offensive, I'll proudly stand with the guilty.

Inspired by Box of Old Stuff and my incessant search for books to give at Christmas. Illustration by Erik Drooker on Freedom to Read. The American Library Association’s “Banned & Challenged Classics” list can be found here.

Box of Old Stuff

Who gets the ornaments? The crushed wire-frame angels Carly and I made. The paper-accordion stars that rain glitter when you pick them up. The baked-dough reindeer heads with crumbling red noses. Which one of us wants the dinged tin star for the top of the tree? My house is too cluttered as it is, and they won't go with your blue and silver colour scheme, and I’m not shipping them cross country to Carly, even if she wants them. Should we chuck them? God knows we couldn't sell them even at a rummage sale. They're not worth anything, are they?

Inspired by What Am I to Believe? Photo by Nancy.

What Am I to Believe?

What am I to believe, my dear?
Everything is sacred up here
Do you still speak to God, my dear?
Does he know we're still here?

Save your words, my dear
The truth has consequences here
Beware of the angels you hear
Halos tend to rust up here

Are we on our own, my dear?
To be made is to be alone, I fear
Who do we hold to account my dear?
Or has it just been us all along?

What should we do now, my dear?
Maybe it’s time to get out of here
Maybe it’s time to go

Inspired by Those Old Emotions. Photo by Fred Ni.

Those Old Emotions

December is here.
The days dark and cold.
And it brings back again.
Those old emotions.

Memories of childhood, magical and sweet.

Hanging in the twinkling of lights.

When the family fractures were so soft and unseen. 

Now grown and commuted, further splintered with time. 

Obligation in lieu of self-preservation.

Our superficial smiles perfectly placed.

Uncomfortable feelings simmering in anticipation.

Slated for eruption December 24 to January 1.

Privately yearning for our young free minds, and carefree days.

The innocent child is still within. 

Leading us with her heart if we surrender. 

To where we can be held and discovered. 

Inspired by the season and The Spoons. Image by Athiyada.

Minutes

Location: The Commoner, 2067 Dundas Street West.

Time: December 7, 5:00 P.M.

Attendees: Nancy, Ron, and Roy—plus Fred and Wendy.

Absent: Laurie.

Unfinished business: None.

New business:

—Impressions and engagement are essentially unchanged. Our two recent pledges expressed their enthusiasm, the veterans their acceptance.

—Problematic stories and f-bombs.

—Dog stuff, both pro and con.

—Complaints regarding neighbourhood infrastructure, mostly water-related.

—The fastest way to get downtown.

Actions:

—Going forward, members are asked to announce their posts in the regular group e-mail, including the due date for the next contribution, so that Roy isn’t always stuck being the deadline bully.

AI image by Gencraft.

You Wish

Before there was online shopping, even before there was the Internet there was the Sears Christmas Wishbook. Thick with potential, its arrival sparked a frisson of excitement among us Webbwood Estates snipes. I’d pore over those still-cold pages with the discerning eye of a Harrod’s merchandiser, nodding over the artistically back-lit dinosaur and Hot Wheels dioramas. I’d submit my list—with purchase order codes—in plenty of time. I rarely got anything I asked for, but disappointment never dampened my enthusiasm each year, when I could nestle that catalogue on my chubby little lap and pretend we had money.

Inspired by Virtual Therapy. Picture of the much coveted but never possessed Easy Bake Oven, from the Sears Wishbook, 1972.

Virtual Therapy

Feeling empty. 

Check social media

Scroll...

Scroll...

Everybody so happy, so fulfilled— 

Close IG, close Facebook, close TwitterX

Surf internet 

Deals, DEALS, DEALS— 

Click

Click

How did they know I needed that!? 

“Three left in stock” 

Gotta have

“Sixty-five people are currently viewing this product” 

Gotta have. Something, anything, to fill this emptiness

Hold it. Wait. Stop! Need to think…

“Take another 10% off at checkout” 

Now! Hurry! Click to get there

“Expedited delivery?”

Yes! I want it now!

“Your order is complete”

YES!

Close tab, rub hands, look out window

Feeling empty. 

Check social media. Everybody else so happy—

Inspired by Here’s a Day. Photo by Cliplab.

Niagara-on-the-lake

It’s off-season in this frozen-in-time neat-and-trim slice of Colonialism. Our guide says the Victorian hotel on the corner is mostly a new build. He points out where the Confederacy generals took refuge after Lincoln’s war, and what was rebuilt after the Americans razed everything in 1813.
     “If Brock had lived,” he muses. “He’d have kept his promises to his native allies.”
     Without pause, I reply: “Doubt it.”
     Have I grown too cynical? Are war, pestilence and wild fires too close for self-delusion now?
     Bedecked in Hallmark decorations, the town waits for that bright Christmas snow to make it picture perfect.

Inspired by my recent visit to NOTL. Image of the Prince of Wales Hotel hotel from TimeOut.

Here’s a Day

Now here’s a day
Basking in the digital glow of hi-rez pixels
Eating a handful of peanuts
Drinking yesterday’s coke
I stare at lines of code
Ruin my eyes
Trying to decipher the purpose of this program’s existence
Which is still easier by far than reaching for the purpose of mine

I know it’s in there
All purchaseable answers to our divine questions
How to lose ten pounds
How to find a date
How to remain vastly entertained
Aggregated through large language models
Ten billion voices waiting to be heard
How to reach the meaning beyond the meaning of words

Inspired by Thumbs-Down. Photo by Fred Ni.

Thumbs-Down

The world feels like a different place. There are many obvious reasons. Yet there is something else, inarticulable. It feels akin to existing but not living. Participating in the day-to-day but not experiencing. Searching for meaning in the meaningless. Have our privileged lives rendered us bored? We have grown intolerant of anything that takes time. While paradoxically time is all we have. Speaking and writing in full sentences takes too long, absurdly. We are drawn to the ever shorter and faster, constraining our human interactions when voice, touch and bearing witness to each other’s emotions is what truly sustains us.

Inspired by What Good Can Come. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

Bloor Station Maybe

Bloor station maybe, where I first saw that blood on the tracks, where a woman had fallen in front of a train, or maybe she’d jumped . . . the T.T.C. has never been terribly forthcoming with this sort of stuff. Perhaps in the belief that it could only encourage others, or more likely, that it would frighten their riders. Instead, they announce emergencies and delays and label the box under each platform For Police User Only. It’s certainly large enough to contain some pretty hefty rescue equipment, but the story I’ve heard is that it contains nothing more than a shovel and a plastic bag.

Inspired by Monday Bloody Monday. Photo by Rick Harris on Flickr, some rights reserved.

A Legacy of Borrowed Trauma

I’ve always squinted in bright light. Family snapshots show a scrawny kid with a face like a scrunchy. With my almond, half-closed eyes, kids taunted me with a certain racial slur. It hurt. I wanted to hide, to disappear. Then, one Halloween, my harried mother, with three boys to outfit, acquired an armful of hand-me-down costumes. Score! The only one that fit me was that of a Chinese coolie. (Yes, people used that term back then.) I howled. I cried. I refused to wear it. I missed the school party and missed trick-or-treat. To this day, I can’t stand dress-up.

Inspired by Bears in the Closet and the Corpse’s recent Halloween theme. Image from an article by Nevin Coyne. 

Bears in the Closet

They are just Teddy bears, two of them, old and worn, outgrown and neglected. The ears are chewed. The stuffing on one seeps out at the seams. She takes them from the closet and dusts them off. She displays them on the shelves, among the books he used to read, the toys he played with, and the detritus of his boyhood. There’s no tragedy here. He’s still alive. And he’s not a neglectful son, or an ungrateful one. But when she saw the bears they reminded her again that she still mourns him—the boy who was so fleetingly hers.

Inspired by What Good Can Come. Illustration by Nancy.

What Good Can Come?

Afterward, the night was etched with dreams and multiple wakings to the shadows of dreams. His mind’s turbulences tore asunder any possible reckoning with the quietude of darkness and all he heard he had heard before and would hear again, the plaintiff echoes of the disappearing creatures from all his scorched-earth imaginings made manifest: all flying things from the firmament, all walking things from the earth, and all swimming things from the seas. He sees the last mother bear, the last soaring eagle, and the last mourning whale and wonders, what good have we done here? What good can come?

Inspired by Loup. Illustration by Fred Ni.

Loup

It’s 3 A.M. It’s always 3 A.M. That heart-racing shadow time between first sleep and ragged consciousness. It starts by the stairs, announcing itself with a quiet scrape-scrape-scape like something in the walls. And then it rests, takes in the air around it. Scrape drag-scrape drag, closer, louder now. The creaking railing and floorboards mark its progress toward me. Eyes scrunched closed and pillow over my head I burrow deeper into the covers, wishing stillness, invisibility. But the blanket at the foot of the bed tugs back. Then that strangely soft brush of fur against my ankle right before the bite.

Inspired by All Work and No Play. Image of Tala by the author.

All Work and No Play

I remember the houses that never gave out treats, They stood alone, foreboding and yet alluring. Our eyes peered, searching for life, ready to act when the attic light started flickering. We expected a silhouette of a man unshaven, grinning and beckoning us with his bloody axe.

Fast forward 40 years, I rush home from work still to get a pumpkin and carve it. I’m too late for the candy and buy a box of regular size O’Henrys. The tots are beginning to arrive in their bunny costumes. And I wonder after all if Wendy and Jack were just tired.

Inspired by the Spooky Season. Photo from the Bettmann Archive.

A Break in Her Morning Routine

She woke reluctantly to the unpleasant sound of eggs and bacon coming in from the kitchen.

     She’d heard that taste before, but didn’t think to inform the superintendent until it was too late, until she’d gotten up to find the breakfast engine dispensing the morning traffic report instead of her coffee and the grim news that followed, a foul stream of information flowing over the countertop and down to a growing pool on the floor, swirling around the tiny drain to the recycling system, overwhelmed, and backing up quickly.

     The door, hearing nothing unusual in her frantic greens, stayed shut.

Inspired by Cocooned. Image by DALL·E.

Cocooned

Saturday. Jane’s condo door was stuck. The Super wasn’t picking up, so she busied herself with chores until he’d answer. Sunday. She awoke to a bedroom door, left open but now locked from the outside. Hours of shouting and pounding the walls. Her dying cell unable to reach neighbours, friends, even 911. Hoping a reset from this waking nightmare, she forced her anxious mind, her hungry body and bruised and bloody hands to bed. But Monday’s Reaper clawed at her racing heart and breathed on her neck. She couldn’t lift her head. She was boxed in on all four sides.

Inspired by Kazimir Melvich’s Black Suprematic Square (1915).

The Fall Cometh

When I see ancient ruins, I'm struck by the ephemeral nature of the societies that built them. Mycenae was a powerful empire, it traded widely, it was a central antagonist (with Sparta) in the Trojan War. And then it was sacked and burnt, no one knows by whom. It fell and never recovered. Other city states and empires rose and took its place—until they collapsed in their turn. All their impregnable fortresses were breached, their eternal tombs robbed, their people thrown into chaos, often for generations. What is history telling us?
        Looking for a scary Halloween? Ponder that thought.

Inspired by the Exquisite Corpse’s recent Halloween theme and a visit to Mycenae this week. Photo by Sergii Figurnyi.

Young Atomic Drivers

young atomic drivers
bend round the highway curve
all the way
to an electric LED night
they love the smell of an ozone fog
the way it irradiates as their headlights shine through

dashing boys and girls
working to be equal amongst equals
new climate babes
born to the tune of celebrities’ calls
howling at wifi satellites streaking across their night sky

they study the brand new truth:
things will get worse before they get worse
so they hold the world up and kiss it goodbye
then eat the billionaires’ flesh, sun-dried russet, shriveled-chewy on the asphalt in the heat

Inspired by the Spooky Season. Illustration by Fred Ni.

Original Haunt

I was alone in the house with my younger brother. We were emptying our pillowcases of candy and doing the usual trade offs between Caramels and Tootsie Rolls hoping for a surprise Popeye Cigarettes’ box. An old woman in ragged clothes howling like Regan’s exorcism suddenly appeared at the window. I was utterly terrified. I threw my brother on the back of my bike and raced away like he was E.T.  Turns out, it was my cousin playing a prank. It was the kind of scare that stirred me and still does. An original. Unlike the latest and greatest inflatable. 

Inspired by the Spooky Season and Monday Bloody Monday. Image from from The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World by William Makepeace Thackeray.

Monday Bloody Monday

All this just happened, the stories passing quickly through the schoolyard, all the way down to the first-grade kids: A twelve-year-old taken away in handcuffs, a bunch of kids expelled for something they’d done in the old warehouse. Another broke his leg in a challenge on the stairs. Someone found blood there later, then blood on a newspaper outside, then someone else said the hallways were haunted, maybe even a vampire in the cafeteria. 

So, today, powerless against this spectre of delinquents and bullies, we sent our boy back to school, but with a clove of garlic in his pocket.

Inspired by the Spooky Season. Image by AtlasStudio.

The Habs and the Hab-Nots

As mobile homes went, ours was rather swishy. We had three bedrooms and four televisions. This material aggrandizement was less middle-class preening and more Hockey Night in Canada. Good luck trying to sneak in a Saturday episode of M*A*S*H on the “Big TV.”

Banished, I’d sulk to my room to wrestle with the rabbit-eared 16″ Zenith. Mom would just sew. But Dad, a cable-TV pirate, jerry-rigged all the trailer’s electrics. So, when the Singer ran it killed the TV reception. At any moment, Dave Hodge’s voice could be dashing through the frizzling snow.

     And—ho, ho, ho—we knew it.

Inspired by Single on a Double. Image by Roy Schulze.

Single on a Double

It’s 1989. We meet in a sports bar for a Talk. I haven’t been a very good boyfriend. It’s crowded, Jays and A’s, Game 3, and the Jays have dropped the first two games. We haven’t seen each other, and the conversation is stilted. Finally she gets to the point: I haven’t been a very good boyfriend. And then, Tony Fernandez cracks a double, and the place goes wild. She’s talking, but I cheer along with everyone else, and she gets mad, and I know for certain that it’s over, that I’m more invested in this game than this relationship.

Inspired by What You Remember. Image from Eater on Pinterest.

What You Remember

On Amos’s 110th birthday he was asked: “Having lived through so much history, if you had a time machine, what event would you go back and relive?”
     He answered right away: “It was my first day of school, one of those crisp September mornings. The leaves were still green, but there was this whiff of Autumn and wood smoke in the air. I was standing with Mom in the schoolyard. She smelled of lilac soap. She smiled and squeezed my hand before letting go. If I could do it over again, I’d squeeze her hand back, before I rushed away.

Inspired by 58 is the New 58. Illustration by Nancy Kay Clark.

58 is the new 58

As child he sleeps
In bed he sleeps
In sleep he dreams of mother

As boy he plays
In school he plays
He plays to be his father

As man he works
Ev’ryday he works
He works to heal his brother

Now it is evening, they are still.
There’s a place he wants to arrive at with her, a calm solid centre where they’re together in silence or laughter, exhausted or exuberant. Everything else grows from there, strong and enduring, far-reaching, always exploring.
Always, there they still are at the centre.
Always, their souls languid with longing for each other.


Inspired by Misconceptions. Photo by Fred Ni.

Misconceptions

She wondered what it would have been like to grow and eject a human. To have or to not, was never a plan—it just worked out that way. She grew accustomed to the question, “so how many children do you have?”

One Halloween Eve at work, her CEO asked why she wasn’t home taking out the kids. Oh, the eyes of pity and overt judgment. Enquiring minds wanted to know. She wasn’t childless or childfree; just a woman living her life. Once she worried, she conceived a menopause baby; she peed on “the stick,” and frantically googled Naomi Campbell. 

Inspired by The Sting. Photo by Nico Zeißig.

The Sting

In this week’s episode, the Enterprise crew encounters a patriarchal society where the scientists have been confounded for generations by a problem arising from the fact their females are so fertile, they inevitably become pregnant from their first act of coitus.

     You’d think their primary concern would be with overpopulation, but no—natural selection worked that one out a long time ago. And that’s the real problem because, after a male’s first successful insemination, a series of hormonal changes causes his reproductive organ to dry up and drop off.

     It does not grow back.

     And the women couldn’t care less.

Inspired by I'll have what she’s having. Image by Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator.

I'll have what she’s having

Mainlining Pitocin, I settled back to practise that useless breathing technique they sell you in Lamaze class. With ovine determination, I puffed and hallucinated my way through another five excruciating hours. I watched as a door handle morphed into an old man, a bridge, a rabbit . . . then I remembered how the woman next to me in triage ordered off her birthing menu like she was at Susur Lee’s.

     “Right,” she says to the nurse, “I want nitrous oxide and a vacuum cap.” This was Mount Sinai in the mid-nineties, after all. Not earthy-crunchy-manage-the-pain-through-nipple-stimulation-and yoga-St. Joe’s.

     So I got me the epidural. 

Inspired by In a Pink Room. Image from Open Clipart.

The Greenbelt on Olympus

When the immortals asked Zeus to consider selling off part of Olympus, their case was difficult to refute. The global market for pantheism had peaked; revenues were way down. Zeus reluctantly agreed. Now, right next door, stood a billionaire’s massive mansion, from which helicopters came and went at all hours; recently, Nike had come to visit Hera and got sucked into a rotor. Yes, times had changed. Now the billionaire—Russian? American? Zeus couldn’t tell which—was pushing for a wall around Olympus. Zeus despised his neighbour, but thought this a prudent idea. The proles down below were increasingly obstreperous.

Inspired by In Gods They Trust. Image from the PS3 Game, God of War: Ascension, developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony.

In a Pink Room

In a pink room,
in a cold October attic,
spidery branches appear outside the window
and colours have faded to fog.
He sleeps beside me, tangled in his thoughts,
while downstairs, our hosts stir, put on the coffee.
Softly, the branches scratch the pane.
Shadows retreat across the walls.
Breath caught in my throat, I sit up—off-kilter and my head awash.
But with what? What is that something?
It’s too early—way too early to tell,
and I don’t know how I know,
but I know.
I am
I am one-month pregnant.
Pale yellow shines through the frost.

Inspired by Round-eyed Annie. Doodle by Nancy Kay Clark

Round-eyed Annie

Round-eyed Annie shows off her love proud tummy
She runs her finger down the vertical seam of her stretched skin
From her solar plexus to her soft nexus
Baby swollen and o hurry o, Tommy
Can you feel it kicking?
Put your hand in my hand and put your hand here
Can you feel it stirring?
Lay your ear upon my belly and tell me
Can you hear its hardly there heart beating?
O Tommy o I love this child so
Momma told me life made us so we could make life grow
O Tommy o
I make life grow

Inspired by A Choice of Sorts. Photo by Fred Ni.

A Choice of Sorts

It was one of their first dinner dates. He inhaled a piece of bruschetta and looked at her with teeth baring; a Herculean-like smile. She envisioned Mr. Clean with the corners of his mouth making sparkly dinging sounds in her head. It worked.

     Then Basil showed up. Unannounced.

He settled in for the evening getting comfortable in between the incisors. She tried not to look but Basil drew her in. Simultaneously repulsing and transfixing her with his emerald charm. She rushed through dinner planning the inevitable break-up. Later home alone, drinking a Smirnoff ice, she decided she could love Basil too.

Inspired by Hydra. Image by Walt Disney Pictures by way of People Magazine.

Hydra

They caught up with Hercules at the arcade downtown, holding court and pumping quarters into an old Hydra machine.

     “The girls down here are driving me nuts,” he boasted. “You try and tell them you’re just looking for a bit of fun, but then things start to get a bit serious—which is also okay—but then some stupid little problem crops up, and then another, and then it’s all with the stupid fights.”

     “So, then,” asked Corvus, “what do you do?”

     “You've gotta just cut them off,” said Hercules. “Burn ’em and leave, before they make their problems yours.”

Inspired by The Twelve Labours of Sophie. Animation by Justin Cyr.

The Twelve Labours of Sophie

My neighbour and I have an agreement: I promise to never, ever let my dogs near her lawn. She, in turn, will keep me abreast of her daily pains: her back, her legs, her neighbours, litterbugs, animals. What past murderous deed warranted such trials?

Our relationship stayed the same for years. Until we met on Fern Avenue last Sunday morning. We were both heading to Roncesvalles. Sophie’s walker pell-melling it to St. Casimir and keeping pace with Nim’s sniff-and-stroll. All was fine until Misko let forth with a Cerberus-worthy turd. Hardly a golden apple, but enough to make her suffer.

Inspired by In Gods They Trust. Image found on Pinterest (uncredited) with edits by the author and Roy Schulze.

In gods they trust

Zeus stepped out onto the balcony, leaving Europa asleep, tangled in the sheets. He relished nights on Olympus, the cool air, the stars overhead, and the quiet, broken only by the raucous noise of mortals far below. Such foolish, trusting creatures, believing their times of plenty would never end! And they wouldn’t, so long as they put their faith in Infallibles like him.
      He caught a whiff of smoke, noticed a red glare on the horizon, heard screams. And then he remembered. Oh, crap! In his haste to seduce a new mistress, he’d left a fire burning in Athens.

Inspired by Out of luck at the Soup Kitchen. Image of Zeus and Europa, by altceva.

Out of luck at the Soup Kitchen

We run out of soup and have to scramble to replenish trays, plates and cutlery. They keep coming. Have the holes in our safety net grown? Are more people falling through? I see the frayed edges of lives barely held together. The relentless slog from soup kitchen to food bank and back again wears on them. But they are us, without the lucky breaks. Some barely speak. Some won’t shut up. Some laugh too loudly. Some scream. Most indulge in petty dramas. But all, conditioned long ago by mothers and kindergarten teachers, never fail to say please and thank you.

Inspired by In a Time of Hunger. Photo by Nancy Kay Clark