Poetry and Conspiracy Theories at the Shab-e She'r Reading Series

            

            On Tuesday, May 31^st, as I was preparing to leave for the Shab-e She’r poetry night, I had trouble printing up “Killing Jar”, the poem I planned on reading on the open stage. Windows 10 had recently installed itself on my computer without my permission, and the new operating system had decided that my Brother printer was in error because it wasn’t the default printer that Windows had in mind for me. I had to uninstall my Brother and then reinstall it before it would work.

            Despite the delay, I arrived early, coming out of a hot, dry evening into the overly air-conditioned polar region of the Beit Zatoun Gallery. Bänoo Zan greeted me, but I got no hug this time around.

            Nick Micelli was already there, lounging alone on a couch. A few minutes later, someone else came in with whom he was acquainted. Nick told him that he’d received a notification for this event a week ago and had set himself the goal of writing a new poem for the occasion. He declared proudly that he’d written two.

            Shortly after that, I hear a woman say, “Hi Christian.” And I was surprised that it was Jeannine Pitas. I said, “I thought that you weren’t living in Canada anymore!” She confirmed that she isn’t but that she tries to get up here as much as possible. I asked if she came up specifically for Shab-e She’r, but she answered that she has a bunch of things she does when she comes. She added that if Trump wins the presidency she’d be moving back to Canada permanently. “You’re in the mid-west, aren’t you?” I asked. “I am! Iowa!” Then, as if it had surprised her to find this out, she told me that it’s actually pretty nice there. Then she declared proudly, “And we didn’t vote for Trump!” I commented that things are pretty interesting in the States right now, and she agreed. She told me that she’d been hoping that Bernie Sanders would win the nomination but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. I suggested that it would be an entirely different ball game once the primaries were over and that I couldn’t see Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton.

            Having been a child in the 1950s and living near the US border, it was not hard to pick up on the paranoia that US of Americans had about communism and socialism. I would be very surprised if they’ve gotten over it, so I really doubt that they would be willing to vote for a candidate like Bernie Sanders, who declares himself to be a socialist.

            Then I started wondering if Bernie Sanders is really more socialist than Justin Trudeau, who does not say that he is a socialist. I suspect that Sanders is only really a socialist by comparison to the ultra-conservative politics of the United States.

            I overheard Janine tell some one that she got a speeding ticket on her way here, while driving through Ohio.

            I went down to the toilet in the basement. Beit Zatoun’s men’s washroom has a normal sized washing area but a long and extremely narrow corridor leading to the toilet.

            The air conditioning was extremely high. I’ve never understood the logic of making oneself very cold as a response to a very hot day. When we heat our homes in the winter we don’t make the temperature stifling just because it is freezing outside.

            I had a conversation with Cy Strom about Serge Gainsbourg. He wanted to know if he ever wrote any serious songs. I think there’s something serious even about the funny ones, but I mentioned “Le Poinsonneur Des Lilas”, which is about a subway ticket puncher who gets so depressed about doing a monotonous job underground in a filthy Paris metro station that he finally shoots himself.

            As the event was about to start, we went to take our seats. Cy came and sat with me at the back. Bänoo was testing the microphones and spoke English into one of them but Persian into another. Cy commented that each mic speaks a different language.

            We started at 19:20. Banoo announced that this night marked the 40th Shab-e She’r event. She added that 40 is the age at which prophets begin to receive visions. I said to Cy that Jesus got started early.

            Bänoo told us that we were going to be surprised by who would be on the open mic that night.

            She told us that Jeannine Pitas would be our photographer for the night and then she listed several other people that help out either directly or indirectly and then mentioned my reviews. I’d never really thought of writing about these events, sometimes critically, as helping out.

            As is usually the case on the Shab-e She’r open stage, if the photographer is a poet, since she would be busy for the rest of the night, Janine got to read first.

            She asked us who has heard of Augustine of Hippo. A few had and Janine told the rest of us that he was one of the early Catholic Church fathers and that he had written “The City of God”. He was famous for living with a woman for fifteen years and for the prayer, “Lord grant me chastity, but not yet.” Jeannine wrote a poem from the perspective of the woman who bore the child of a saint – “ … Did he say, it’s not you, it’s me … Did she gather up his robes and fling them into the dusty street … Hadn’t she always known this day would come … I’d canonize her myself … I’d pull her from the shadows …”

            Next was Charles C. Smith, who told us, “I didn’t know I was gonna be up this early. I was relaxing. He said he was going to do a poem about Bert Williams, who was the first Black actor to ever star in films. Charles stated that Williams “had t wear blackface” while performing but I can’t find evidence that he was forced to do so. Perhaps he felt compelled to for theatrical effect because he was not a very dark skinned Black man. W.C. Fields said of Williams, “He was the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.” Charles’s poem was called “Natural Born Gambler” – “ … The black paint on your brown skin … and that bleached white shirt … pressing through the grimace … setting bodies into a flurry of smoke and steam … a Bohemian inside a tavern, standing still … cutting you inside more than out … your contempt clouded in laughter … devices: the shifty and lazy and dumb … the navy crowned a ship in your name you would not have been allowed to board …”

            After Charles was Sharon Goodier, who before starting her poem, wanted to add to Charles C. Smith’s reading by telling us that Black musicians were not allowed in Toronto jazz venues in the 1950s. Later, it took me only a quick search to find that Oscar Peterson had played in Toronto jazz clubs in the 1950s, so I doubt if he was the only African American to do so.

            Sharon’s first poem was entitled “Don’t Go Near The Horses” – “ … tired horses … rippled in sweat … The horse grabs her nose and flings the rest of her body across the street …”

            Her second poem was “Collateral Damage” – “ … Mr Oliverra opens the front door … Neighbours wakened by the noise and the flashing cruiser lights ask, why are you beating Mr Oliverra? Young officer says, oops … sometimes we get the wrong man.”

            Then it was Marketa’s turn. She told us that on the first of April she went to Germany because her ex-husband passed away. Her poem came out of that experience – “With April mandate, years separate … too much salt thrown into the flames … in rising fog, a cat in a window … words like bright half peaches …”

            When Bänoo called me to the stage. I read my poem, “Killing Jar” – “ … Many poems migrate over long distances, crossing borders or morphing to other languages

Poems feed on arousal, long walks on the beach, rolls in the hay, relationship feces, desolation and decay.  Many species of poem can live for centuries on one single carcass

and the nutrients that are collected from solitude’s detritus are frequently offered as a nuptial present to lovers during mating, along with the poetic spermatozoa …”

            Following me was Karen Lee, with a poem named “Flight” – “Wings forgotten … hope thickens blocked throats … push upright hard against the wills they own … the space they rent … curled backs shun blood spattered dreams … only to lose their tongues …”

            Bänoo then asked us if we wanted more open mic or if we wanted to hear the first feature. I think she’d been expecting a more enthusiastic response. No one seemed to have a preference, so she said, “Let’s have one more open miker!” Then she invited Georgia Wilder to the front.

            Georgia told us she would be doing something she called “Bliss In Ten Haikus”. I used to make the same mistake of adding an “s” to “haiku” to make it plural.

            From Georgia’s haiku set – “a three legged beast / bliss snips every snare / turns safewords into safe words.” This is a good poem but it is too idea based to be a haiku. Not one single line captures a moment in time, which is essential for haiku.

            In introducing the first feature, Robert Priest, Banoo told us that he had sent her at first a twenty-word bio. When she asked for more though, he sent her one that was too long to read.

            Robert began by informing us that on Facebook he had promised that he would be reading new poems that night, but then he forgot them at home. He shrugged this off though by noting that since he didn’t see a lot of familiar faces, his old chestnuts would be new to most everyone.

            Robert’s first poem was entitled, “A Streetcar Named Delay” – “Standing … we are in wait training … waiting is good for the economy … a few of us step out repeatedly … the words ‘out of service; become legible … our breath mists mingle in the night air … like a lateral rapture our car will come …”

            His next poem was “Aztechs” – “Aztech drones… obsidian missiles … Aztech jets … Here’s Sadam, his chest excavated …”

            To set up his third poem, Robert told us that the late poet, Milton Acorn, committed many acts of civil disobedience on behalf of free speech. Robert’s poem was called “Acorn’s Oak” – “ … The place where Acorn broke the law, when he shouted, I shout love, in Allan Gardens week after week, where Acorn spoke there should be some kind of oak … Where Acorn roared through streams of reeking cigar smoke … and mark the time and the law he broke by speaking in a public park to all the crowds of Sunday folk who came to Allan Gardens week after week to hear him speak …”

            Then, “The Book of Jobs” – “Once god was talking to satan and he commented how pleased he was now that people were finally good. Now that they finally truly loved him. But satan said, ‘They love you because you have given them abundant lives and much freedom. It’s not yourself they love you for.’ In this way god was tricked into testing people … He destroyed all unions … took away safety regulations … took away health care … people continued loving god. Satan was not persuaded. ‘They still have jobs … purpose. That is what they love.’ Ten million jobs disappeared … God took away their social assistance … their homes … their rights … he began to kill their children … but the people fell to their knees and prayed …”

            Robert said, “You can probably tell I write for children.” Then he read one of his children’s pieces – “My mother has millions of mothers … It took millions of mothers to make her … mothers of daughters who grow up to be mothers … It took millions of fathers to make my father …”

            Another poem was “My Father’s Hands” – “My father had so many hands he had almost three … My father had almost three eyes but not enough to see me perfectly … Beating at his children … My poor factory father …The winds gave him only one heart … Grit your teeth and count your children … My father had so many hands and he waves them now … What are they when they are not fists …”

            Robert told us that his dad actually apologized to him a while ago, and admitted that he had been rough on him. He said, “I haven’t written a poem about that yet.” Someone in the audience quietly asked, “Why not?”

            Robert moved to a poem named “Meeting Place” which he explained is what Toronto means in one of the aboriginal languages. From what I’ve found it actually means “the place where trees stand in the water”.

            From the poem – “Someone spilled the whole spice packet … we are rubbing one another raw like sandpaper … I come away, my skin with impressions of scars that are not mine … I dare say there are some days when I get a little Gay … The wind is full of colours that were once ours …”

            Then Robert did his “Marching Song” – “Rights left, rights left, we still have some rights left, right … What if we left right at the moment someone was trying to reduce the number of rights left …”

            Then he read “Poem For A Tall Woman” – “If you have ever seen the green in water in water that is forever flowing out to mystery and adventure then you know something of the colour of her eyes … there is a space in me that she steps into … an absence that howls like a grave or a dead wind when she is not there … I love Marsha Kirzner like the taste of my own spit … ready to melt in her heat like snow carried south and dropped in Pacific surges … She is another tall self I keep inside and lean on like a prop … Let me just lick … this lightning filament of her love and I will sizzle with it, a long green furrow in my spirit where a jade lake reaches for the peaks … draw the bow down again and play the long sweet notes of our love.”

            From “Reading the Bible Backwards” a poem entitled, “Noah’s Dark” – “ … Noah built an immense dark and he gathered the shadows of his family … all the herds of shadows of beasts and birds … and when the light finally came they were carried off beyond the cruel reach of resurrection.”

            Robert told us that the next poem was for Mohammed. “Everybody loves Mohammed!” Somebody whooped. From the poem – “Ali was the champ, bam bam bam … He laughed and he twirled … Now in those days, blam blam blam, there was a war in Vietnam … and when they called Ali to go … he just said no … I’ve got no quarrel with Vietnam, why would I kill my fellow man … If you don’t fight for Uncle Sam we’ll lock you up in the slam slam slam … He just said no to Uncle Sam … Not till the war came to an end would they let him fight for the prize again … He darted and he danced, spoke poetry and twirled … He was champ in the ring and a champ times two because Ali was the king of not fighting too.”

            Robert read a few of what he called “micro poems:
            “Resistance is fertile.”

            “Whitewash comes in many colours.”

            “O Canada, our stolen native land.”

            “In my country we don’t have free speech, but the speech we have is very, very cheap.”

            “Would you like a little assault with that pepper spray?”

            “I’m so far out I have to pull the envelope.”

            “People start as dreams and end as memories.”

            “The bomb that only destroys poetry is called poetry.”

            “Turn the other cheek, or I’ll turn it for you.”

            Robert read one more of those and then he received the biggest round of applause for any feature that I’ve heard at Shab-e She’r.

            Robert Priest is very much both a people’s poet and a populist poet. He writes cleverly and creatively in a manner that is accessible to most people, with very little symbolism or metaphor. The finest piece that he offered us though was “Poem For A Tall Woman”, which did lean heavily on metaphor and abandoned the clever and pithy lines that are his mainstay.

            Banoo announced that there would be a fifteen-minute break.

            I had noticed during the first half that Cy had been making little sketches while many of the poets were reading. I asked him about them and he showed them to me. Some of them captured the character of the reader.

            A couple of people approached and told me they liked my poem. Cy told me that the part of the piece that speaks of punctuation when applied to poetry as if it were the pins that fix a butterfly to a display was particularly strong.

            I was standing and chatting with Sidney White when George Elliott Clarke suddenly appeared, moving around the room like a nerdy whirlwind, handing out his business cards that read, “George Elliott Clarke: Parliamentary Poet Laureate: Parliament of Canada”. I remember when he was the poet laureate of Toronto, but this was a surprise, not because he doesn’t deserve it, but just because I didn’t know. It’s a two-year title and he’s had it for just over half a year. When I looked it up it up I was astonished at how little money the Canadian poet laureate gets: $20,000 a year plus $13,000 for travelling expenses. The U.S. poet laureate gets $35,000 a year.

            When George handed me his card, he recognized me and asked how I was doing. I wanted to know if he would be reading on the open stage and he said he would. I realized that George was the surprise guest that Bänoo had hinted about earlier.

            When the break was over, before the bringing up the second feature, she introduced George Elliott Clarke, the poet laureate of Canada.

            George that this was his first open mic in years. He was very up-beat and high energy as he began to read a poem called “Abandonment” – “I saw her who my soul loveth, I was languishing … I brought a dark, crimson wine …I wanted our bed to turn into a cake with frosting spilled about … She won’t be mine, not unless her church okays her … She’s a Bad woman, will make Bad wife, will make a Bad mother … This air has fangs, trees shriek back … I must cross over to New Brunswick … to find a dirty little pigeon … down on all fours.”

            Somehow I don’t think that Stephen Harper appointed him poet laureate of Canada.

            Then it was time for our second feature performer. Cassandra Myers is a slam poet.

            The first thing she did was to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that she was wearing a dress. I can confirm that she was wearing one, long and black as I recall.

            “Whoop whoop for dresses and summer!” she called out, and then added, “Boo for men who think dresses are an invitation to talk!” Then she proceeded to tell a story about how someone tried to chat her up on her way to Shab-e She’r. I don’t quite get the statement about dresses being an invitation to talk. I assume that if someone is attracted to her when she is wearing a dress, people who feel compelled to act on their attraction will approach her to speak. Is she saying that it’s wrong to approach and talk to someone with whom one is attracted?

            Cassandra’s first poem was “A Feminazi Walks …” – “A feminazi lights a match … refuses to put herself on the pyre … He offers you a drink … Accept and he won’t throw acid in your face …”

            Cassandra told us that a friend pointed out that her Facebook persona is angry.

            Sometimes it was hard to discern the line between Cassandra speaking to the audience and reciting a spoken word piece – “There was a time I didn’t believe I was Indian … When people look the same you can’t see colour …” She said of her father – “He’s so Canadian … He jokes that at least he wasn’t raised a towel head … We eat curry on pasta … They call us the mixed kids … Can choose to hide behind the privileged curtain … I am still my father’s daughter … I love my dad … We watch Food Network together … Poutine man makes butter chicken poutine in a crock pot …a collage of flavours … a chef is not required to reference his sources … My grandmother spends twelve hours in the kitchen, I’ve never seen a brown woman on Chop Canada …”

            “Mahatma Gandhi is another hero of mine … Gandhi was racist … In 1918 the Ganges turned from blood pudding to curdled milk … His corpse baptized the river … My people are prone to glaucoma … Gandhi saved my people … I do not call him a racist … If I did, who else would I call a hero?”

            Cassandra said she is going to enter the Miss India Canada contest – “Want to see brown faces … What better way to infiltrate?”

            “I wear shorts, and when I’m stretching you can see my pubic hair … There is a razor somewhere in my DNA curling with regret … I tug at my womanhood … misshapen jewellery …”

            “My mother and I have a difficult relationship. I am recently learning how to navigate that.”

            “The first stop on the guilt trip is the grocery store … the second stop is the Esso station … She kills the engine, hand to the keys like a shovel … your beginning and her end …”

            After that poem Cassandra said that she needed to clear the air so she asked everyone to rub their hands together and then hold them out to send energy around the room. The last time I saw this done was a couple of years before that at Shab-e She’r by another female slam poet. I rolled my eyes.

            “If being born is not a child’s choice, is your mother your first oppressor … My mother jokes, I brought you into this world, I can take you out … I’m sorry I look so much like my father … Infants are aesthetically pleasing to increase their chances of survival …”

            To set up her next piece, Cassandra let us know that she is studying to be a counsellor. The poem was entitled “A Voice Mail To The Crisis Line Worker Who Saved My Life” – “As a crisis line worker an answer could be a gunshot … What’s the salary to be god’s secretary … You’re not the only one to try to tether their souls with two tin cans on a string … I told you I was hanging on by the thread of a telephone wire … I do have a voice and every time I use it I’m saying thank you.”

            For her final offering Cassandra asked her friends in the audience for suggestions for her final poem. She seemed to think their choice was a bit risqué, but she did it anyway – “Never have I ever took it in the … This game is too easy … separate the girls from the sluts … That girl gets to be the best fuck in his memory … Why else would I have a copy of the kama sutra next to my vibrator … Would you believe the first time I gave a blow job I cried … Every itch will feel like chlamydia … When he offers you money you’ll wonder if your whore was showing … You can’t fuck away the lonely.”

            As I mentioned earlier, it was hard sometimes to tell the difference between Cassandra Myers’s spoken word compositions and her patter with the audience. Her writing had creative moments and sometimes it dipped into being poetic, but for the most part it came across like a motivational speech or a talking cure. There is no rhythm to her delivery and very few artfully sculpted phrases.

            Upon thanking Cassandra, Bänoo immediately returned to the second half of the open stage.

            First up was Giovanna Riccio, who read from her book on dolls, a poem about Cindy Jackson, the human Barbie. The poem was called “On Plasticity”- “On the cusp of the age of better living through chemistry … miracle fibres form … bewildered by a chaos of replicas …”

            Next was Natasha Khan, who told us a story – Once upon a time in Persia there was a king. This king loved riddles …” Someone presented the king with three identical wooden dolls but was told that there was a difference between each one. But they – “weighed the same … smelled the same … Called wise man …” but the wise man saw no difference – “ … Bring in fool … juggled dolls …no difference … Bring story teller … plucked hair from king’s beard … put it in the doll …” It came out straight through the doll’s mouth – “ …This is the wise man …” He plucked another hair and ran it into another doll’s ear – “ … in one ear and out the other …this is fool …” He plucked another hair and inserted it into the third doll – “ … hair came curly out of doll’s mouth … This is storyteller, because will give own twist.”

            After Natasha was Sidney White, who shared some of a series of short pieces that she refers to as “Thoughts That Stray”:

            “People make churches because they can’t forgive themselves.”

            “Do I only see the worst in people or do I only know the worst people?”

            “I can’t kill myself. People would talk.”

“‘I want to find myself’ he said. I said, ‘I hope you’re not too disappointed.’”

“I’d like to sell my soul to the devil, but I hate standing in line.”

Then there was Nick Micelli, who read the new poems that I’d overheard him say he’d written for this event.

The first was called “Potato Paradox” – “From your damp, dark underground home … your seductive delight of sugary goodness … sleeping in endless peace … the mystery of the carbon molecule.”

His second was “Swimming In Infinite Choice” – “All in perfection, the great unfolding of me from the dead, fertile shadow …”

Before introducing the next open stage performer, Bänoo told us, “If you just make sense to people who look like you, you’re not making sense.”

Following Nick was Transient (aka Ikram) – “ … He said, I can tell you’re a daddy’s girl … I’ve only seen my father once … The male prostitute I met in Rome … He asked to take me out … Vaginas and wieners are everywhere …”

Bänoo commented before introducing the next performer that Shab-e She’r is getting more and more exciting every month.

Next was my old friend, Tom Smarda, who first of all let us know about a petition he had against an Ontario nuclear power plant in proximity of which two million people live.

Tom sang a song to the tune of Kerry Livgren’s “Dust In The Wind” – “Garbage dump, just a pile of crap that nobody wants, throw it away, but on a finite planet where will it go? Drowned in our shit, drowned in our poopies. Don’t buy crap, toxic waste ends up in our rivers …” Tom stopped to tell us, “Some guy wanted to punch me out in the subway for singing this!” – “ … Don’t give up, change our ways, we can live in harmony here on the earth, sustainably, we can all live sustainably.” Tom then urged us to send an email to Kathleen Wynn.

After Tom was a friend of Cassandra Myers named Londzo. She first of all exclaimed that she “loved Tom’s song so much”. From her piece – “They upped my dosage when I paid … I wasn’t willing to die … Speaking in tongues … Sometimes I feel that my therapist is not human … It hurts to heal … In this moment among the sallow imagery … This vacant chair sings songs to me … Father, it feels good to heal.”

Then Katch was called to the microphone. He wanted to first of all talk about the death of Prince. He declared that Prince was the most prolific artist of the last one hundred years. Then he wanted to emulate, for Prince, Cassandra’s rubbing of the hands and asked people to close their eyes while they did so.

Katch also wanted to acknowledge Robert Priest and to declare that “Song Instead of a Kiss” is one of his favourite songs. He confessed that until that night he hadn’t known that Robert had written it. Actually, I’d never heard of the song or even heard it before. After looking it up later, I saw that Robert didn’t write the whole song though, just the most important part, which was the lyrics. The music, written by Alannah Myles and Nancy Simmonds, is not particularly memorable. Of the lyrics, they don’t really say anything that hasn’t been said before, but I like the rhyming of “clutch” and “much”.

Katch finally got around to his poem – “Palestine in a state of decline …”

The penultimate poet of the night was Sarah Amelia Sackville-McLauchlan, who told us that she usually performs under the stage name of “Phantom Fem”. Before she could do the piece she’d planned she needed to find something in her purse and it took her a few minutes to do so. While she was searching, she commented that her “purse is a blackhole!” When she found it she declared that the “techno gods are kind!” What she had been looking for was her smart phone. The title of her song was “Catch 22” and she used a voice command to call up the music for the piece, which was kind of a gothic metal melody – “I’m afraid of what I see … dangerously close to places I don’t want to go … I hold onto the safety line of what I know is right … The world says you have to choose and you know there’s hell to pay if you lose … The smallest flame, like the darkest soul, give the monster a name …”

Before introducing the final performer, Banoo told us that it is our job to dominate this space.

Norman Perrin told us a story to close things down – “Once there were three young men … very poor … went to rabbi … who gave them seeds … first two cast out their seeds and grew crops … Third grew weeds … had nothing … The two others said they would share … He said they will each sell what they have grown … In the market he shouted Nothing for sale … People laughed … One person didn’t laugh … His daughter was dying and nothing could save her … He gave him money for nothing, then went home and found his daughter was okay.”

At the end of the night I had another chat with Sidney White. Sidney frequently identifies herself in conversation as an investigative journalist. Her area of interest is conspiracies and she has been lecturing at U of T on the subject for about sixteen years in a non-credit program. I think the university just provides the space and she does what she wants. In conversation I’ve heard her make some pretty bizarre claims.

Somehow this conversation ended up centred on the death of Lady Diana. She claims that she was pregnant at the time of her fatal accident. I have heard that claim, but had also read officially that it was false. She insists that there was a cover-up because Diana was pregnant with a “Muslim baby”. I had no idea that babies were religious. Sidney argued that the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking family which, according to Sidney control the royal family, Britain and most of the world, would not allow the world to know that a “Muslim baby” had come close to being born into the royal family. I was very sceptical. Sidney’s proof was that she’d heard the ambulance drivers say in an interview that Diana had said to them, “No drugs, I’m pregnant!” Sidney started getting mad at me when I kept on asking questions as if her evidence was not flawless. I just find this whole idea of the Rothschilds being powerful enough to alter official medical reports to be very far fetched, and more than a little racist. It’s this theory of the world Jewish banking conspiracy back in the 1930s that fuelled the world’s distrust of Jews and helped lead eventually to Jews being placed in concentration camps and ultimately led to the Holocaust. I didn’t quite get how the alleged testimony of a couple of French EMS workers could stand up against all the official reports. Sidney eventually walked away looking a bit pissed off at me.

First of all, what if Diana did tell the ambulance drivers that she was pregnant? Does that mean that she was? She happened to be dying at the time. Maybe she was delirious. Maybe she actually thought she was pregnant but hadn’t been to her doctor yet for him or her to confirm it. If she said it, did she say it in English or French? Could something have been lost in translation?

Diana was technically not even a member of the royal family when she died. Upon her divorce from Prince Charles, her title of “princess” had been removed. If she had been pregnant by an Arab man, why would the Rothschilds care? Chances are that her Indian great great great grandmother was a Muslim. If they didn’t care about her ancestry before she became a princess why would they care about her descendants after she was no longer a royal?

While I helped put the chairs away a couple more people came up to me and let me know that they’d liked the poem I’d read. One person wanted to know if I had a website. I told him that I have two blogs, but only know the address for one of them, which was my translation blog at www.fromthefrench.blogspot.ca but he could link to the other one from there.

Tom asked me if I wanted to sign his anti-power plant petition. I said that I didn’t want to sign anything.

On my way out the door, Katch came running after me to tell me how much he’d liked my poem. He also took down the url to my blog. He asked me for advice on his writing. I told him he was putting me on the spot, since I didn’t have a clear memory of what he’d read without my notes in front of me, so I just told him to keep writing. Upon reflection now I’d say that he should read his work out loud and edit it objectively, trying to develop rhythm with each rewrite. The only thing that I could comment on was what he’d said about Prince. I thought it was a pretty extreme claim that Prince had been the most prolific songwriter in a hundred years. I asked, “What about David Bowie?” He reminded me that he’d said “prolific” and I see now that to be prolific is just a matter of amount, whereas I’d always thought it had something to do with variety. I told Katch that Prince did repeat himself a bit, such as in the song “1999” the body of which has the same melody as that of “Manic Monday”. He didn’t think the songs sounded the same.

Then Katch began to make the claim that Prince had been murdered by Warner Brothers Records because he was worth more dead than alive. He said that the same thing had happened to Michael Jackson. He insisted that Prince could not have died from a drug overdose because he didn’t do drugs. At that point I recalled that Katch had been talking to Sidney earlier and that I’d overheard him tell her that he’d attended her lectures. That shows that he has that same mindset that leans towards conspiracies. The fact is that Prince’s people called up an addiction doctor and made an appointment for Prince the day before he died.

Whenever I talk to conspiracy believers though I always see a certain look in their eyes that suggests that there has been a lot more faith involved in the accumulation of their knowledge base than there has been investigation.