Monthly Archives: May 2016

Roy

poems, stories

WHEN MAN IS BLUE

He stood alone to let the blue go by

And waited half impatiently

For longer than he would dare admit

And yet the blue went on

 

It always passed before

I have always mastered every test

Outlasted some, blasted them or damned them

Until they fell submissive at my feet

 

Why won’t the blue go by

This time

I no longer understand

 

Where is my power to control my fate

Have I lost my grip

I see others fly on ahead

While l am at this intersection

Waiting for the signal to go on

When the blue will pass

And I can go on again

 

I know that blue and other blues

I’ve analyzed them, crystallized them

Written about them

Hung them in my spacious mind to dry

 

And can name all the varied aspect

of their hues in most elegant and scientific words.

 

What’s that you say, my friend

You say I think too much

Seek too hard to understand

Is that not man’s greatest gift

To think

 

What’s that you say

That man is brain but God is love

That God is love and he who lives in love

Will live in God

And God in him.

 

It makes no sense to me

For I’m not God

I’m only man

 

And man is bound to seek his fate

By the sweat of his brow

By the power of his mind

His indomitable mind

His will to succeed

 

Alone he stands against his blue

Around his blue, between his blue

His blue which this time will not go away

 

Not by itself

And so far not by the power of his mind

His powerful mind

His indomitable mind

 

It will not go away

 

What nonsense

All I need is time to sort it out

To let my mind work on it

Until the blue disintegrates

And I’ll go on as I always have before

With my mind in control

My powerful mind

My indomitable mind

 

He knows no other way to break

The sea of blue that will not go away

Not by itself

Not by his powerful mind

His indomitable mind

 

But the blue is his

His prize possession now

 

He owns it

For he is the blue

Himself the blue that will not go away

His mind

His powerful mind

His indubitably indomitable mind

The blue that will not go away

 

 

 

 

Silicon Valley

poems, stories

 

COST OF LIFE IN SILICON VALLEY

Alone in air-conditioned SUV’s the drivers

Pulse through the clogged arteries of commerce

Like rosary beads amid titanic trucks and gargantuan car-carriers

Spewing tons of toxic fumes into an atmosphere heavyladen with sickening smog.

 

They swarm like tenacious ants over the faulted earth

Touching without feeling

Talking without communion

Breathing without living.

 

Their children have never stepped into a fresh cow pie

Or munched sunwarmed carrots from a backyard garden

Walked barefoot through a meadow in dewy dawn

Or gaped in wonder at the Milky Way.

 

Nature lies buried beneath the shuddersome sameness of colorless apartments

Overlaid by pitchblack parking lots of outsized shoe-box megamalls

Leaving only barren hillsides and sterilized lakes

Where once wild things roamed at will.

 

 

 

images from a prairie road

poems, stories

 Images on a Prairie Road

By

James Gerwing

 

A halfburnt house gapes

stupidly at scruffy trees

behind a green field.

 

A church steeple

waits patiently

in the thinning poplar bush.

 

Grey clouds weep unashamedly

on the shoulders of green hills.

Spindly telephone poles

march quietly

beside a thin dirt road.

 

Fat cattle

gorge themselves

in luscious pastures.

 

crows

poems, stories

 

 

                                            CROWS

Greedily

Silently

Methodically

Relentlessly

Two rough-feathered crows

Took their turns at the robin’s nest.

With frightened spurts and alarming cries the robin

Dove at them. They flashed an occasional disdainful glance

Finished the scraps

And

Flew away.

 

 

 

Schnockdurgle #3 Cat Catapult

Schnockdurgle stories, stories

 CAT CATAPULT CASED BY COPS

By Finkus Frownbottombly

In a classical example of cop cooperation across international boundaries a plot to catapult cats into outer space using backyard technology was foiled in James Bay.

“For the past ten years information has slowly led us to the conclusion that this method of ridding the area of unwanted cats was hatched far away from this quiet neighborhood in James Bay,” said Constable X, whose name could not be released because of international prohibitions against naming police individually in local publications.

Because this reporter has always made it his policy to supply the James Bay Beacon with lucid and accurate reports, he is constantly chagrined by such tactics that keep the public ignorant of criminal activities about which they ought to be fully informed.  Now the truth is finally coming out into the open.  James Bay has suffered the devastation of feral felines ferreting out the last few squirrels, mice, rats, and assorted other benevolent rodents, including termites and cockroaches.

As police rounded up the last of the gang they made a significant discovery as to the identity of the ringleader.  Using a variety of aliases this young man has moved from low rental to lower rental, and was now holed up in the newest building on the waterfront.

Fingerprints and DNA confirmed that he was the long-lost nephew of the noted archeologist, Sir Rodney Schnockdurgle.  He had been taken from his mother’s knee twenty nine years earlier and forced to live in the depths of old growth forests with Big Foot and his family on Vancouver Island, not twenty kilometers from Port Alberni.

Asked about his early life, he shrugged his massive shoulders. “What’s to be said?” he sighed sadly.  “Given my condition could it not be considered that I not be cast into confinement among castaways?”

                                              catapult

Schnockdurgle #2 Penny farthing

Schnockdurgle stories, stories

Watch out, Motorists of James Bay!

By  Plinkus Bikepennybly

Victoria Police reportedly issued a warning to James Bay residents to watch out for a man on a Penny Farthing bicycle riding erratically around the area of five corners.  They have not come out clearly on exactly who this individual might be, but the description fits none other than our own good little doctor, Sir Rodney Schnockdurgle.

Dr. Schnockdurgle himself was mystified by this unprecedented public statement questioning his ability to navigate the streets.  “I can’t imagine why they are doing this to me,” he wailed.  Without further warning he broke down, as is his wont, in great stentorian sobs that convulsed his tiny frame.  “What is this world coming to?”  I wondered.

 

the bike

Schnockdurgle #1 Dinosaur bone

Schnockdurgle stories, stories

 

DINOSAUR BONE AT BEACON HILL PARK? 

By  Finkus Downbottomly

 

Reports of the discovery of a dinosaur bone in Beacon Hill Park appear questionable.  However, Sir Rodney Schnockdurgle, a noted archeologist insists that the matter is far from resolved.  Officials are discussing the advisability of closing the park to visitors despite the tripling of tourists to the area after news of the find was leaked to a local radio station.  Many of the business community of the city of Victoria openly support the widest possible dissemination of whatever bits of evidence reaches the surface.  The potential cash cow so near downtown may yet be the saving of the city’s rotting downtown core.

Beyond the barebones revelation, not a great deal can be corroborated as factual.  This reporter spoke to one of the diggers on condition of anonymity.  This worthy gentleman informed us that the find was approximately fifty meters from the surface in a solid rock formation.  He would not elaborate as to whether it was a bone or a tooth, nor would he speculate on the precise nature of the dinosaur.

Dr. Schnockdurgle is clearly impressed.  “I believe we have here a find of great significance.  Such a mysterious relic of the deep past of Vancouver Island is not something to be ignored by scoffers.  I am amazed and frankly angered at the skepticism of the scientific community at the university.  I would have thought . . .”   He was unable to finish his thought.  His broken sobs will haunt me till the day I die.

The mayor of Victoria was unavailable for comment at the time of this writing, but the mayor of Esquimault could not suppress his excitement.   “I am ecstatic.  I really am.”

Folks at the James Bay Beacon laughed their heads off, and now the paper is looking for new volunteers.  Must have a sense of humor.

the bone

 

A Camping Encounter

stories

A Camping Encounter

Our family didn’t do a lot of camping, but we had some friends who spent most weekends  in the woods during the summer and they often invited us to join them.

This time we joined them up in northern Alberta, near Lac la Biche. It was a warm summer evening. We set up our little red seven-by-seven tent at a campsite next to theirs. After getting it all up we barbequed some chicken legs.

It was almost dark by the time we put everything away and walked over to our neighbour’s site for stories and beer. It was pitch dark by the time we turned in. I slept in the middle, my wife, Ruth, to my right, and our seven-year-old daughter Jennifer to my left. At her head slept our feisty little schnauzer, Bertha.

Now, I had been warned that this was bear country and that we needed to put all our table scraps in the garbage bins. Obviously, I forgot. I was awakened well before sunrise to rustling and shuffling nearby. I turned on my big flashlight and shone it toward the table, but all I got was a big white triangle of nylon mesh. I zipped it open and again pointed to the table from which the sound was coming.

Yikes! A family of skunks, squabbling over the remains of our chicken. Mother skunk was very busy pacing around the table while her family of three or four snarled their warning to their siblings to let go of their piece of chicken.

I woke up my wife to inform her that we were under siege, grabbed Bertha and told Ruth to shove her down into her sleeping bag.

“What do we do now?” she whispered.

“Nothing much to do but to wait and be quiet. Just make sure that Bertha doesn’t get out, or we will have hell to pay.”

I had visions of trying to clean up after being sprayed by a skunk. We would likely have to burn the tent, and we had nothing along to do any clean-up job. Every once in a while mother skunk paid a visit close to the tent. She walked around it once or twice. Each time I held my breath, fearing the worst.

After what seemed an hour or more, the sun decided it was time to get the day started, allowing me to see more and more of what was going on. The little skunks finally left the bag. The mother lit into it to get the last few scraps.

Then she decided to check out the tent. She came right up and looked straight at me, her beady little eyes darting from side to side. She stopped about a meter away. I got my pillow ready to shield my face when and if she decided to turn around and give me a jolt of her perfume. She decided not to do that. Maybe she was just there to say thanks for the good meal. She gathered up her brood and went on to her next adventure, leaving me heaving a great sigh of relief. I waited a few more moments and opened the tent flap. “What are you doing. You can’t go out there, can you?” Ruth sounded frantic.

“”Oh, it’s all right. I know a thing or two about skunks. They will not use their weaponry unless they are threatened. They don’t like using it any more than we like to be sprayed. I will move slowly. Mama skunk will tell me which way not to go. She will just let go a little whiff that tells me to stop. And I will go the other way.”

And that is what happened. I could follow her meandering progress to a wood pile and beyond, and then I returned to clean up something I should have taken care of last night. And to thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t a bear sniffing out our site. Lesson learned.