Passenger

In the dark, I try to think about something else
and not think about Rocky in his dogbed
coughing and settling
coughing and settling

If I could replace Rocky’s heart, he would still be he
If I could replace his lungs, he would still be he
If I could replace his cloudy eyes
his insensitive eardrums
his shattered knees
he would still be my Rocky

His body will fail him but his body is not who he is
His body is an old car, running down
If I could just open the door
take the passenger out
keep him safe


Inspired by Misko and his Sister from Another Mister. Photo by Fred Ni.

Say No More

You whittle me down with your snide remarks.
Sub-terrain, I’m surfing now.
Always something to say, to sear me, to expose me.
To make me cry inside. 
You say you’re sorry, it was just fun, but we both know. 
It’s your judging ego.
You think you’re clever and funny.
But you’re a gaping hole. 
Like a dead star, with no light to give.
Combusting of toxic narcissism.
You’ll play nice again for a short while.
Say the right things, taking secret actions. 
Sell yourself a bill of integrity. 
But buying rotting goods. 
You’ll live in denial and die there too. 

Inspired by Like Cats and Dogs. Photo by Joachim Schnürle.

Like Cats and Dogs

I liked cats, but she liked dogs. A real dog person.

     And it showed.

     She tried so hard to be happy, all the time. But when something did go wrong, she was the first to apologize. Just not to me.

Even if she thought someone had screwed her over, she’d still go out of her way to make everything right again. Unless it was me.

     She practically begged for approval, but not from me.

     In all her relationships, she was oh so happy just to be part of the pack. But in ours, she made it clear who was Alpha.

Inspired by Misko and his Sister from Another Mister. Image from some random YouTube video.

Misko and his Sister from Another Mister

Where are you, my old friend? I looked for you in all your favorite spots—Mom’s office, in my puppy bed by the window and even downstairs where the scary roundy-round-soap-monster lives. I wanted more games of Peek-a-Boo, ’Round the Chairs, Under the Table, Over the Lazy Brown Dog. One more drink at our water bowl where I'd pretend to be a wolf, and you a lioness.
      Just one more snuffle. Maybe even a scratch.
     I was your Owl and you my Pussycat on our Pea Green couch-Boat. I’m glad I kept you warm while you sailed away.

Inspired by Sister Warriors. Photo of Willow’s last night by Laurie.

Presidential Afterlife

“. . . like an orange Don Rickles . . .” Reagan was saying. 

      Washington leaned towards FDR and whispered, “Who’s Don Rickles?”

      “. . . obsessed with crowd size! Well, you know what I’d say to that. ‘Mister Gorbachev, tear down his pants!’”

      This got a laugh from the more recent arrivals. 

      “Then he says he’s better looking than his opponent. They never said that about you, did they, Abe?”

      Everybody laughed except Lincoln, who gazed over their heads at a cloud. I had a whole lifetime of that, he thought sourly, and now an eternity of it from these guys. ‘Better angels of our nature,’ my ass!

Inspired by Sister Warriors and the numerous afterlives I've imagined, the first one being here. Painting by Andy Thomas.

Sister Warriors

I went to school with a black eye. We’d been play-wrestling on the bed and my sister kicked me (by accident I’m sure). Once she pulled me off the couch by my hair. In an old photo, Lianne has a great scratch on the side of her cheek. Mom had probably planned the visit to the photographer’s months before and I can just hear her voice: “Of all the days, girls!” In the picture we are little angels—off camera we were warriors. That scrappy spirit has sustained us through life, and we’re still fighting—just not against each other.

Inspired by Rocky Mountain High. Photo of my sister (on the left; look closely for the scratch) and me, circa 1965 or 1966.

Rocky Mountain High

Born three days apart in the Spring of ’69.

More than just cousins, and best friends.

We put on lavish plays and sang John Denver in the back of the RV.

You loved the city, and I the country; and how we loved the boys.

Our childhood years flew—a crevice of independence opened between us.

Poignant and painful, we were lured separate ways.

The road to reuniting lay before us. But I couldn’t find it and you were forced to detour.

We spoke once briefly and softly near the end.

So brave you must have been. Only 27.

Inspired by A Great Looking Couple. Image from Britannica.

A Great Looking Couple

Could it really be that she had never been out with a regular group of guys before?
      “I suppose that’s how heterosexual men behave when they get together,” she said on the way back home.

That was the word she used—heterosexual—to distinguish her new boyfriend from the gay male friend she preferred hanging out with; or at least that’s the impression she gave him, what with comments like that. And comments like this: “People tell me that Alex and I make a great looking couple. Isn’t that funny?”
     Funny, he thought, that no one says that about us.

Inspired by Jan the Jammy Bastard. Photo by Microsoft Image Creator.

Jan the Jammy Bastard

Jan met his future wife on a Spanish beach: They shared a Seville orange under the blistering sun and fell in love. Of course they did, because Jan had a horseshoe up his Belgian ass. We were in a graduate historiography course together and while the rest of us donkeyed through lengthy presentations, Jan would hold the offending book aloft, roll his grey eyes and ask, Do you buy it?
     Our prof, rendered squiffy by his Ubermensch intellect and veiny biceps, just trilled, Yes!! Yes!! That’s it, Jan!
     And we would clop back to the library, hapless and ordinary.

Inspired by Rave. Photo by Eugene Chystiakov.

Rave

She found me in the writhing mass. We danced. Strobe lights, pulsing bass beat, gyrating bodies surrounding us—we spun and moved with them. She wore a black crop top and short skirt, showing off body, booty, fine legs. We danced. Wild hair, eyes darkly lined. She came closer, put her hand to my bicep, brought her lips to my ear. I strained to hear what she said. Closer still, arms now around my neck, eyes locked on mine. I felt heat and sweat. Our heat. Our sweat. She smiled and led me towards the exit, soft fingertips on mine.

Inspired by Eye Soul and Black Roses. Photo by Kena Betanchur, AFP.

Eye Soul

Eyes are the mirror of the soul.
Souls are reflective?
What of a soul darkened by a life of misery caused and earned
such that any light which enters is grasped like greed grasps lucre
such that no light escapes to give reflection?
What of a soul bereft of friendship, loveship, familyship
– malnourished and shriveled –
how does that reflect in the eyes?
Are these the eyes of an ever-stranger?
These flinty eyes accompanying a forked tongue,
such flint of the kind that’s used to ignite corruption.
And can a cheap skin-tone matched foundation and mascara cover that shit up?

Inspired by Black Roses. Photo/illustration by Fred Ni.

Black Roses

“Jesus Murphy Mary and Joseph”, he muttered, admonishing her. “Where do you think you’re going with that black eyeliner on? . . . The sight of you. . . . And those clothes. . . . You’re not leaving the house like that.”

     She threw on a sweater and washed her face. She tried to drum up an ounce of defiance but sank silently in the breaking waves of unremitting Irish shame. 

Shrunken, she rang her friend’s doorbell. “Come in, let’s do up our eyes like Benatar”, Jayne said gently. 

     They pulled out the Clairol lighted mirror and belted “we are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong”.

Inspired by Pat Benatar and the Corpse’s recent posts. Original photo by Lynn Goldsmith. 

Murphy

“I thought things were going good,” she said. “No pressure. No commitments.”
     “But you practically make me hide when your friends come over!”

     “Can’t you just enjoy our time together?” she said. “Besides, you hate it when I ask you to dress nice, and you think my friends are stupid.”

     “I never said that.”
     “And you probably think I’m stupid, too.”

“That’s not it at all,” he said. “All I’m trying to say is that I don’t like being treated like a fucking Murphy bed.”
     “There you go,” she said. “I don’t even know what a fucking Murphy bed is.”

Inspired by I’m Speaking. Image from Detour (1945).

I’m Speaking.

Dumb as a rock, Donald calls me. Horrible and incompetent. Totally failed and insignificant. (Projecting much?) Crazy—“though not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi.” (You just can’t help yourself, can you, Motormouth? Maybe you are too old for the job.)
     His minions aren’t holding back. I’m not grateful enough. I’m just collecting a check. I’m a diversity hire. And they don’t like my laugh. You know what all their dog whistling’s about. This, from church-going, “family values” folk singing hallelujahs for rapture.
     They are losing their shit. You think they’re bothered now? Just wait till they see my running mate.

Inspired by Cooling Off. Image of Kamala Harris (in 2020) by Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Cooling Off

The kitchen table was so close to the fridge that, during family dinners, whenever she felt a hot flash coming on she’d pause in the middle of her diatribe about politics or global warming or ungrateful teenagers, and, without getting up, turn, open the bottom drawer and stick her head in the freezer. Instant relief. Everybody would laugh. But she didn’t mind. She figured it made menopause an everyday thing—not something to hide or never mention. Besides, those cooling-off pauses were useful for changing her words or the mood at the table. Perhaps politicians should adopt a similar practice.

Inspired by Hot & Heavy. Photo of Nancy’s fridge by Nancy.

Hot & Heavy

As we finished up our morning trek, I was about to internally ignite from the stifling humidity and my waning estrogen. I yanked down my zipped tank to air out the fiery biscuits when hubby shot out his arm in a Seinfeld stopped-short-move to shield the girls.

You know I can go topless I retorted, like that sweaty, middle-aged well-upholstered hairy guy that just ran by us.

     And I thought to myself, I wonder what it would be like to go about my business in this world, half-naked and confident with no fear of being objectified, debased or assaulted. 

Inspired by this week’s weather and Seinfeld. Image by eightonesix.

Pantone 124

One day the owners of Rambunctious Software got their hands on a colour chart and decided that their official corporate colour would be Pantone 124. And since, back then, they were still doing it all pretty much themselves, everything they purchased for the company going forward was chosen to match their new favourite colour, but not quite. All this, of course, would eventually end up driving the new graphic designer to distraction, because not only were the colours they’d chosen entirely inconsistent, the closest thing they all did match, to his jaundiced eye, was the distinctive colour of baby shit.

Inspired by Hugh Flung Poo. Image by the author, with some help from Mediamodifier.

Hugh Flung Poo

“Oh my God, it’s worse than I thought!” This from Dan’s co-worker, after he saw a picture of the tiles I bought for our bathroom reno. Porcelain white subways with a distressed, belle epoch-serre-lived-through-the-war treatment. Dan hated them, so called in a second opinion.

     I told him he’d been ruined by all the pablummy-greize rooms he’s worked on. 

     But the coup de grâce was his: “Well, there’s a reason they don’t sell toilets with antiqued brown glazing.”

After that, I couldn’t unsee the ersatz shit smears, so we returned them, but kept a few to tut-tut my execrable misstep. 

Inspired by A Statement by the Artists Collectively Known as Barksy. Loft White Glazed 3x6″ Tiles from the Home Hardware Building Centre.

A Statement by the Artists Collectively Known as Barksy

I’ve come to consider what Duke and I do as performance art. Duke produces the initial piece; I handle installation. Duke is singular of purpose; I’m the one who thinks outside the bin. Our typical work (Panel 1) is conventional, though its street placement is controversial. Panel 2 showcases some of Duke’s solo work. Panel 3 is one of my favourites; I call it “Why knot?“ (And why indeed, when there’s so much open space in the neighbourhood?) Sometimes (Panel 4) we’re just two artists trying to collaborate, and the end result doesn’t come together. Allow us our artistic freedom. 

Libertarian pooformance art images captured by Ron Thompson. Inspired by Steamed Buns and stuff on my shoe.

Steamed Buns

Tail end of the night, I cheekily start shaking my booty on the dance floor with a cutie patootie, up to my keister in beautiful people way younger than me. This asshole butts in. Fundament-ally uncool, I say. 

“Stick it where the sun don’t shine!” he replies. 

I shove hard. He lands on his tuchus. Pretty derrieres flee the scene. The bouncer shoves us out the backdoor. Bummed and rump-led, our backsides hit the pavement. We laugh. 

“Peckish?” he asks. 

I shrug. “I could eat.” 

“I know this all-night Chinese take-out place." 

“Hell yes, I'd love some nice steamed buns.” 

Inspired by Some Butts.. Photo by JJ Wong.