Playing Possum in Canada to Escape Trump?

            On Sunday, before the morning was over, I got sleepy and took a siesta much earlier than usual.

            Since I was four books ahead in my reading for my Canadian Poetry course I spent a lot of time working on writing poems for the final project in April. The poetry is supposed to be influenced by poets we’ve covered in the course. Sometimes though I find that I start out trying to be inspired by one of those Canadian writers but my piece takes on a life of its own until the end result bares no stylistic relationship with the work of the other author. Of course it’s not supposed to be an imitation but it should show in the process where the influence was derived. So far I’ve only got one that looks like it was inspired by another poet, and that’s one called “The Rat”, which can be seen, if I explain it, to be in conversation with E. J. Pratt’s “The Shark”:

            The Rat

A rat ran across Bathurst

making its nightly rounds

nose like a dagger

spotted like a heifer

belly to the ground

Its back was so much higher

than its scavenger’s beak

had that rat-slant forward

but was much bigger

than any rat I’d seen

When I got home I wondered

“Was it really a rat?”

On a search engine

I wrote, “Large rat shaped creature”,

with remarkable result

It was a deep southerner

escaping politics

Had crossed the border

to play possum up here

and avoid the rednecks

            I started working on a long autobiographical poem inspired by “Autobiographical” by A. M. Klein. I’ve got a feeling that one will work out okay, but after writing two first draft verses in the afternoon I got tired again and took another nap.

            That night I remembered that it was the fifteenth and that I had to send in my income report to social services. Since I had nothing to report I just signed it, sealed it and mailed it.

            I met my neighbour Greg in the hall and he wished me a happy new year. He’s living upstairs now while a guy who I think is a friend of his but whom I hardly ever see is living in his old place. Greg always had his door open and one could often hear him singing, usually along with Whitney Houston songs, but this other guy is extremely quiet and almost invisible. Since he’s living down the hall from David, I asked about him. He said he thinks he took a trip back to Ethiopia to visit his mother.

            I ate the rest of the ribs with some fries and a beer. I watched two episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Rajesh has hooked up with a cleaning lady at Cal Tech but he was embarrassed to tell his friends about her profession. When she found that out she was insulted but he managed to save himself by telling her things about him that she would be embarrassed by, like the fact that he likes to let his dog eat from his mouth.