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

In a time of hunger

In a time of hunger

there is much abundance which cannot be reached,

there are memories of uncertain times,

there are barren gardens beside deep luxuriant pools.

In a time of hunger

politicians and psychics

predict financial hardships and broken hearts,

encourage our fears then charge us

for false spirits to cure them away,

offer their red hands full of hopes and prayers.

In a time of hunger what can be done? I have

no media prowess nor extrasensory powers

so I fight

the politicians and psychics

with a rich harvest, flowers from a friend and

love on a wing.

Inspired by Our Drug of Choice. Photo by Fred Ni.

Flash in the Pan

No one uses flashlights anymore. We all use our phones. So boring and dull. Flashlights tap into our imaginations. Revealing the obvious and conjuring up the unseen. Giving permission to our minds to percolate on subconscious fears. Flashlights remind us of camping, dark starry nights, and horror movies. A rush of adrenaline as we anticipate what may lay behind their last shimmer of light.

Flashlights led us to personal connections with other humans. Guiding us to familiar faces. Showing us the way to our neighbours, friends, family—our community. Not alone, texting mindlessly by the halo of blue light. 

Inspired by August 14, 2003. Photo by Wendelin Jacober.

August 14, 2003

The power had been out since four and, being there was nothing else to do in the house, I decided to grab a flashlight and follow my curiosity down to the lake, hoping to see the stars freed from the dimness we city-folk accept as dark . . . and Mars, of course, which had been in the news for a week, the nearest to Earth it had been in the last 60,000 years, a little orange dot dancing through the trees as I walked along the shore, hanging over the dark downtown, brighter even than the aircraft warning lights, higher than the towers.

Inspired by the anniversary of the 2003 Blackout and maybe a bit by the 1990 Blackout. Photo by Lucas Oleniuk for the Toronto Star.

Rose City Barbies

Ken’s head made a satisfying pop when pulled from his body, followed by a delicious squish-squash as molars met polyvinyl chloride. I loved decapitating Ken, but it came at a price. One day, me and the other Douillard Road guttersnipes were playing Barbie-Goes-to-the-Circus. We used the sewer drain as a tightrope. After a death-defying leap, Ken landed safely on the curb but his now-bobbling noggin splashed into the abyss. With a coat hanger and a deft hand, mom retrieved it. It poached for weeks in a jar of alcohol. Afterwards, Ken was only a pale version of his former self.

Inspired by Our Drug of Choice. Image by Passagems on Etsy.

Our Drug of Choice

Wildfires have scorched thirteen million hectares in Canada. Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. Floods sweep away bridges, roads, children. Overseas, it’s fifty degrees Celsius in some Iranian cities. Super-charged typhoons inundate China. The sea off Florida is warmer than a hot tub. The UN Secretary General just announced that Earth has passed beyond warming into an era of global boiling.

     Lobster, anyone? 

     Oh, don’t think about that! Be happy! Beyoncé’s tour is incredible, and Taylor Swift is coming! And those summer blockbusters . . . catch them all before it’s too late!

     This summer, we've swapped hopium for Barbieturates.

Inspired by Little Sadists. Photo by Sofia Furió.

For a sense of scale, thirteen million hectares is the size of Greece—which has also suffered devastating wildfires this summer.

Little Sadists

That summer, I remember the grasshoppers were so plentiful in our suburban yard that clouds of them flew out of the way of my father’s lawn mower. We caught them and put them in jars with little bits of grass, punching air holes through the lids, but not bothering to feed them. I remember they bled an oozy yellow, when we pulled their legs off. Better yet, in those long hot afternoons of childhood boredom, curiosity and sadism, we offered our hoppers to any mantises we found and watched the praying arms grasp the frantic hopper and bite deep.

Inspired by Baby Bummer (via Beatles = beetles = bugs). Photo by Jon Brierley .

Baby Bummer

I don’t care what the demographics say, I am so very tired of being lumped with the last of the Baby Boomers. Like most members of Generation X, I grew up feeling I’d missed out on something big, that there was some sharp delineation between the Flower Children and being an actual child growing up in the 1960s; and I think it comes down to the Beatles.

     Because, whereas some in my cohort may have been introduced to the band by an older brother or sister, us early Gen-Xers didn’t truly experience the Fab Four until their titular Saturday-morning cartoon.

Inspired by Words of Wisdom. Character design by Peter Sander, image from The Beatles Wiki.

He flies through the air, with the greatest of fleas, that daring young cat in his stripey jammies

All our pets have their special songs, but Badger has the most. First a song praising how his lithe kitten body walked a favorite handrail. Then the “Tuna Juice” song to lure his finicky adult self to dinner. Later, “Badger Needs His Medicine” a twice-daily ditty heralded his methimazole ministrations. After he became deaf, gentle, rhythmic pats of air behind his ears gave him a tune he could feel rather than hear. Badger died last week in his twentieth year. Just me and him and the “Puff Puff” song telling him he’d been a beautiful, brave boy worth singing about.

Inspired by Words of Wisdom. Photo, “Fishing for Cat Porn,” by Laurie.

Words of Wisdom

It was over, that was obvious. The band was falling apart. He sat despondent in the empty studio, feeling spent, empty, without ideas, uninspired. Clearly he would never write again, never move others as he'd always done before. He felt grief at the thought. “Woe is me,” he mumbled, tinkling the keyboard in accompaniment, “woe is me.” He repeated the words, voice rising, voice falling, again and again, lamenting. 

      After several hours Mary, the kindly old cleaning lady, looked in from the hall. “Oh Paul,” she whispered. “Poor darling! Just let it be.” 

      McCartney startled and straightened at the piano . . .

Inspired by The Full MAPL. Image from a photo by Max Scheler.

The full MAPL

Those few years before my girlfriend realized that she and her last boyfriend weren’t meant to be still gave him more than enough time to move his band up the Canadian charts, culminating in a wildly successful song of his love for her. Of course it mentions her by name—over and over and over. He even gave her a share of the royalties.

     His love for her still plays on the radio all summer long. His love for her still brings in a few hundred dollars a year.

     And how the hell am I supposed to compete with that?

Inspired by Ton front est ceint de fleurons fanées! and Claire. Full MAPL logo adapted from this partial MAPL logo by M-Greco.

Ton front est ceint de fleurons fanées!

Yesterday, we realized on our way to the subway that neither of us brought masks. Also, Rich flew our Canada Day flag for the first time since the pandemic. It’s all Time and Context. We are a relatively young country so collectively, we behave like four-year-olds: We want to do the right thing yet keep forgetting or reinventing what that means. Then we feel bad, buy a T-shirt, listen to CBC, and start again. But I am grateful to be here, to be born under Treaty 2. It’s sure complicated, being Canadian, but it’s still our home on native land.

Inspired by The Canada Day Convoy. Image by desifoto with graffito by Roy, using a font by Tepid Monkey Fonts.

The Canada Day Convoy

Canada Day, and there it was, a two-truck convoy of flag wavers, headed towards Ottawa. I immediately thought of last year’s lengthy occupation on Parliament Hill. I angled through traffic for a look at the flags, expecting them to propose, with a four-letter Anglo-Saxonism, an act of fornication with the prime minister; or to attack David Suzuki and his ilk for their annoying obsession with science. But no, this was no protest. It was a Canada Day love-in, in more ways than one. Both trucks proudly flew the Maple Leaf rampant and, beside it, a banner that read “I❤️Hot Moms.”

Inspired by stuff you see on the highway and Woodland Protocols for Canada Day.