Break the Rules and Stop Time

            On Tuesday morning I still had a lot of cold symptoms but I had my energy back. That was good because I had to work at 8:30. As time goes on I’m becoming less interested in working as a model but that’s especially true that early in the morning. I had to cut my song practise and some of my writing short.

            I worked for Greg Damery, who’s a nice guy, very perceptive and quite knowledgeable on a range of topics. He could tell right away that I had a cold and I had to reassure him that I’d be able to work.

            Greg told me he had a Martin guitar with him and I could play it on breaks if I wanted. I told him I had writing to do. He was anxious to show me this low C tuning that he was excited about and so he sat down to run me through it. I’d known for years that he played guitar but this was the first time I recall hearing him play. I explained that I’m not really a musician. I just play the chords for my own songs and for those that I translate. I guess these different tunings are okay for finessing a song or piece of music but really, there’s no song in existence that can't be played with standard tuning. He agreed that was true.

            I did one simple pose that wasn’t very difficult to hold. When Greg was trying to adjust the heater for me and asked, “Is it okay like that?” I answered, “Mmmwyeahhh." Greg said, “That’s Canadian for ‘No’.”

            I skipped taking a coffee break in the middle so I could leave twenty minutes early.

            I mentioned that I was going to a poetry reading that night. Greg said he used to go to readings and remembered, “That poet who used to drink at the Waverley”. At first I didn’t remember his name but I knew to whom he was referring. I commented that in addition to being an alcoholic he was also addicted to not bathing. Then I remembered it was Milton Acorn but Greg said, “No, that’s not it! There’s a statue of him in a park.” I said, "The statue is of Milton Acorn!" and Greg said, “That’s it! Milton Acorn!"

            Greg asked me if poets as young as his students are going to readings and I said they were. There was one young woman who said she goes to a reading at The Free Times. I told I boycott the Free Times because I don’t like how pushy the owner is.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought blackberries, raspberries and some more of those cocktail wiener grapes.”

            That afternoon I took one of my favourite journal entries, which is from August 8, 2013, and started turning it into a poem.

            That evening when I was on my way out of my building, as usual I poked half of my front wheel onto the sidewalk and stuck my head out the door to look both ways and make sure I wasn’t ramming my bike into someone. One person was passing and I recognized him as the skinny old man with the short white beard who babbles loudly but mostly incoherently below my window and in front of the donut shop. He usually arrives before the Coffeetime opens to begin banging on their door and shouting. He looks something like Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” except that he doesn’t have a guitar. As I waited for him to pass he asked, “Are you a cop?” I responded, “Am I a cop? Are you a cop?” Then he said, “You’re stupid cause I know you.”

It was damp and chilly as I rode along Bloor. I was glad that I had a scarf in my backpack because I was definitely going to wear it on my way home that night. As it should be this time of year, my path was scattered with fallen leaves but it was sad and disappointing to see that so many of them were green.

Bänoo Zan was having her pre-event cigarette outside of the Tranzac and waved to me as I walked down Brunswick. She threw her arms open to give me a hug and came forward, but as the fronts of our bodies lightly bumped I promised her two hugs next time but that I was just getting over a cold and didn’t want to pass it on.

Inside, Marta and Giovanna were sitting at the reception table. I put $10 in and told Giovanna that I wouldn’t donate anything next time but she said she had change, so I took a $5 with the Canadarm on it. On of the features was standing there and said that she recognized me from the church. I told her that I don’t go to church because I’m an atheist. Giovanna said, “You could read atheist poetry.” I told her that all of my poems, including the ones about god, are atheist.

There were no mics on the stage. I walked onstage to check out the space and how I could use it for a future open stage performance.

Sarah Green, who often tends bar, but sometimes hosts the Monday night open stage at the Tranzac, was on the phone with someone that was guiding her through setting up the sound for The Main Hall. I’d seen her set up the sound for the Southern Cross room lots of times but I guess the Main Hall is different. It took a long time and she finally got some help from someone else, but Shab-e She’r started a little after 19:00 as usual.

Bänoo welcomed us to the 67^th Shab-e She'r.

Terese did the land acknowledgment.

Bänoo asked for everyone to stand in silence for a minute for the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Bänoo said she was going to read a poem she'd written for Khashoggi, but gave it an introduction-

“We Muslims begin a lot of important things with the name of Allah.” She added that traditional Muslims even do so before eating. She said the word “batan” means “homeland”.

From “Elegy” - “Banished from faith and love ... I'm mourning my death ... I have witnessed terror ... my sons beheaded ... my daughters deprived of light ... my body dismembered ... I am seeking hearts to take me in ... Bleeding ... I wonder if I will survive ... Free Allah from despots ... With batan soaked in worshippers' blood ... which god do you worship?”

The open stage began with Ian French. Ian said that he doesn't live in Toronto anymore but was in town from Montreal and just coincidentally discovered that Shab-e She'r is now at the Tranzac. He introduced his poem by telling us that when he was 18 and got out of school he convinced his girlfriend to hitchhike with him from Banff to Whitehorse. In Whitehorse they got kicked out of the hostel where they'd been staying because Ian started throwing furniture out the window. He admits, “I was an asshole back then.”

From “A Story Worth Telling” - “I inherited your job, your position, your pay-cheque ... You were a legend ... You could hold two pitchers of beer ... You built two cabins in the bush ... Nobody mentioned the other stories ... your feet nailed to the floor ... Your lungs filled with ice water and gravel ... No one was sure how far you jumped ... Like you I hated that fucking church ... the same church where white fathers in black robes had taken your confession as if you needed to be forgiven ... By the time your funeral arrived I had your job ... As they dropped your body into the ground I wept … I picked up my tools and went back to work.”

Bänoo reminded everyone of her zero censorship policy. She said the answer to a poem is another poem because “if we go the other way we become a country like Saudi Arabia”.

It was my turn. For the first time in the Main Hall I eschewed the microphone and I think that everyone heard me.
            From “Fuck Off!” – “ … A cyclist asks for an Allen key / I pass mine over and it’s too big / but we have a conversation / and whenever I surprise him he tells me to, "Fuck off!”  // From his accent I think he's from Newfoundland / “Fuck off! How could you tell?” / I tell him I'm from New Brunswick and he says, “Fuck off!” // … He pulls out a pack of cigarettes / and offers me one but I say I don't smoke / "Fuck off!” he says and I’m relieved that he can't find a match // He tells me he’s Joe, I say my name's Christian / and he says "Fuck off!" as we are shaking hands / He tells me he’s on his way downtown to get drunk / ‘Cause I’m a Newfoundlander and I don’t give a fuck!’”

            Bahar Ebrahimi read, “This is to my father, beyond the Caspian … Recently Facebook put our pictures together … We meet each other so far so close … Facebook celebrates the three years friendship of my father and I … We meet on the borderline … beyond the Caspian.”

            Bänoo told us that at the last university she worked at before she left Iran, she could see the Caspian from her office.

            Dapper young Stedmond Pardy read a love poem that he said was inspired by “Three’s Company” – “Clasped asphyxiatingly from the surface of the shifting garbage littered sand … I constantly pine to return … awash in neon … an even more alienated rendition of Travis Bickle … The decree of the cat’s paw of fate … outside a Scottish village once every other century … Most people are criminally blind to your peculiar magnificence … Our troubled schizophrenic species … aiming the shotgun of undying love … while the owners of our unpopulated store wait for a customer …”

            Dan Balken read us some jokes – “I’m 25 and I take the bus … Nothing good … My high school bully is now an award winning real estate agent. I found that out at the bus stop, so he’s still bullying me … The difference between the ads on the inside and outside of the bus … Inside … the flu could kill you … Outside … The Avengers are great … My dad has a creepy face while my mom looks normal … When we’re all together it looks like three generations of the same criminal kidnapped my mom … Dear New York filmmaker Dan Balken, you don’t have to change your name … Dear Toronto comedian Dan Balken, this was a strange email. I’m going to copyright the name Dan Balken … Just kidding … Dear Chicago magician Dan Balken, I like your magic but there is room for improvement … signed New York filmmaker Dan Balken.”

            It was time for our first feature, Sheila Tucker. She began by reciting some light verse that seemed to have been written specifically for her feature at Shab-e She’r – “Well I don’t know you and you don’t know me … Let’s have tea … Give me the jitters … I need to chatter with you.”

            From “Tribulations of Fish Life” – “The Cheshire cat circles around the bowl … The fish is pondering the sharpness of spiky teeth … Forced to see all without the mercy of a blink … Stars … become star fish … Huge cars become fish bowls.”

            From “Those Eyes” – “Your eyes as a hippy … as you made love not war … Your eyes as a father … crinkled in the corners … Those eyes once torches … that shown so brightly … now a curl of smoke.”

            From “Youth and Beauty” – “An office chair sits empty … waits in vain for bicycle clips … Adventure calls … From the high office window … a tiny speck … heading west.”

            From “Under the Moon” – “At quarter moon he pats a neighbour’s retriever … At half moon he inhales fear … At full moon he jumps from the window … He sucks blood.”

            From “Gardening in Japan” – “He pulls and pulls and trims and yanks … until he is defeated by the black belt cherry blossom.”

            From “Ripple Effect” – “ … Wet, murky tunnel of light … soft, blue sea beneath …. The small plastic reel … asthmatic death as a bottom feeder swallows it whole … One decade later a bear starves to death.”

            From “All His Life” – “All his life the alarm went off at 6:30 … Stuck in shelves … All for a pittance … His parents told him live within your means … The 16 year old became 64 … 65^th birthday, a big trip to Montréal … Instead of living within his means … he learned to live without.”

            From “Everything is Gonna Be Amazing” –“Who is gonna be amazed? If an elephant begins discussing quantum theory … Do you think this is a game?”

            From “Old Man Selling Poppies” – “I see an old man selling poppies … As he pins the poppy to my collar I do a double take … A Victoria Cross … tiny kings meditating … I catch my breath … Eyes of a young man going to war … His hair is now brown … Jumps from the boat … They’ll get no sleep for the next four years … purge lands of vicious invaders … gunning Jerries … He limps back to base camp with a thousand scalps … We are now free … His mother died … He has a life to resume … I look at the young man before me … I point at the medals … Nice collection … Thank you … No. Thank you … A young boy charges into my legs, pulls out a water pistol and then yanks … 70 years from now he will stand on a street corner and sell mutant poppies.”

            From “Puddle” – “The man shoved a newspaper into his poodle’s mouth. Carry he said … The poodle dropped it into a puddle.”

            From another poem – “In my little world … a log cabin resides … English rose, violets, invisible pixies … At the end of my lush, long lane … darling pet dragons … Every time a mosquito hovers close they zap it.”

            Sheila’s last poem was “Huge Franchised Bookstore” – “You’ll find magazines and DVDs … comics for kids … One of our stores in every city … You want what? You’re out of luck! The protagonist is a queer! We’re a family bookstore! You’ll find your book where? That little bookstore is no longer there.”

            Sheila Tucker is a poet who rarely breaks the rules. It’s suburban middle-class poetry that seems like it began more as a late life hobby than a serious attempt at producing art. Her sentiments are sincere and there is real wisdom in her work but even the heavy topics are handled in a light, fanciful and non-self-challenging manner. The result is really a kind of plebian body of uninspired verse.

            A note on Sheila’s last poem: She said in the introduction that she’d had stores like Chapters in mind when she wrote the poem. But there are lots of queer books available at Chapters and I can’t think of another huge franchised bookstore that wouldn’t have queer literature. I suspect that she just assumed that would be a large store’s limitation without doing any research.

            We took a break.
            I chatted with Cy Strom. I shook his hand without thinking when he offered it but immediately warned him that he should wash his hands. He said nice things about my poem. Bahar came up and told me “good job”. She encouraged Cy to read something next time. She informed us that the second feature, Khashayar was giving away a chapbook. I wondered if Khashayar gets any Star Trek references because of his name but Cy didn’t know what I was talking about. I explained that in the first season of Star Trek: the Next Generation there was a character that died named Tasha Yar. Cy said he never liked Star Trek. I tried to win him over by telling him about my favourite Star Trek story called “Darmok” in which the crew of the Enterprise encounters a race of aliens whose way of speaking is incomprehensible because they just say things like, “On the lake, at Tanagra!” Cy figured out right away that the aliens are poets and I confirmed that it was eventually discovered that they speak only in metaphor; much like people on Earth probably did when ancient texts like the Bible were written. Cy said that once he figured out they were poets he would have been bored with the rest of the story. He says he doesn’t really like science fiction unless it’s based on pure science. He hated Frank Herbert’s Dune but likes Isaac Asimov and is a fan of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.

            After the break, the warm-up open stage performer for the second feature was Meena Chopra. Meena was having a hard time seeing her text and so the sound person came up and moved her lectern into a better light.

            From Meena’s first poem – “She sticks to the tacky, damp earth … dreading devastation … Her mouth is full of clay … The streams swim in her eyes …”

            From “Kaleidoscope” – “Dodging the entire cosmos … fleeting skies … Limits have scraped her soul …”

            It was time for the second feature, Khashayar Mohammadi.

            From his first poem – “I slept another morning through the crack of dawn … Iridescent sunrise caught a disease … Wild men bathed in thickening sunlight … the only nature I’ve known in my Bible-black night of electronic kisses … against the crimson backdrop of crimson lips … Beauty is the carbonized crow’s flight.”

            Another – “Laughter at trivial jokes … I saw death in your eyes … reciting premeditative thoughts … I wondered if you ever had a face … We spoke ill of the sunrise … A river grew inside of me … Discombobulated … we rode glares … Your blind eye bled incarnations … I peeled you off into a constellation … I spoke ill of you.”

            From “Crack of Dawn” – “In faded windows … a refection … What you know best becomes a house … What you know least becomes a road.”

            Khashayar told us that a lot of his poems are entitled “Dear Kestral”.

            From “Dear Kestral” – “You dust the evening off your shoulders and ball up on your mattress … You avoid eyes by dancing alone … You spend spring walking through cemeteries … The static of Sunday … Comedy happens to you … Anger inspires ecstatic laughter.”
            Khashayar says that he pairs haiku to make what he calls “butterfly poems” – “Gas station flowers / in mud cone red shoes … A bucket of fried chicken / food court sparrows flock … Sunday subway ride / a dog under my seat … Snow has disappeared /car tires turn / pebbles crackling … Dumpster diver / leopard skin raft.”

            From “Ode to Mr. Churchyard (a love letter to North York)” – “Electricity gathering on transmission towers … Bouquet of floating traffic lights … an echo of an echo of an echo … This impertinent uneasiness … this holy hypochondria”.

            From “Nipples Al Dente” – “ … Bite marks embolden … My skin came alive … warmth permeates.”

            From “Words Are Clumsy Hunters of the Truth” – “A accident unprecedented … Smiles exchanged … Her fluorescent vending machines … trapped in a lover’s arms … a silence for impermanence … eviscerated closets … sobriety chipped into pockets.”

            From another “Dear Kestral”– “Subtle things about Montreal … watching Hasidic Jews … Will I embody enough paradoxes? The bedbug smears on the wall remind me of you … Dear Kestral, Don’t hesitate, just write.”

            The chapbook that Khashayar was giving away is of translations of female Persian poets.

            From “You Don’t See Me” – “One by one cigarettes … you don’t see them shrink … If I stay awake two more days every day remains Thursday … I wrap a blanket around my books … All this rush I have unfortunately inherited from this canine life of mine … to lie down on objects till those who love you knock on the window … Cigarettes emit white smoke … One under the table … You don’t see us shrink.”

            From “The Beginning” by Roja Chamankar – “I arrive at the sea … When I speak of the sky … the seashore is leaking.”

            From “The Smoky Flavour of Water” – “The Moon doesn’t suit the deplorable sky of this city … You know that waste of blood never returns … Lost homelands … our hands … You know how bitter this water tastes.”

            Khashayar’s final poem was called “Chachkie” – “Summer is gone ... My corridor is mall white ... She admired the orange scarf ... placed orange peels on the mantle."

            Khashayar Mohammadi is a poet with a talent for finding new images to convey meaning. When a poet can reach into moments to stop and study them, turn spots of them around, inside out and blow them out of proportion, there is art.

            Bänoo announced that her opera, “The Journey: Notes of Hope” would be performed at 19:30 on November 2 and at 21:00 on November 3 at Agricola Lutheran Church at 25 Old York Mills Rd.

            Leah Cohen kicked off the second half of the open mic with “A Poem for Tyrone” - "Once I met a man at a cocktail bar in Tel Aviv ... We drank out of elephants ... velveteen wallpaper ... How you make a life-size thing ...  I remember we walked through that winter ... January here just doesn't feel the same ...”

            Myles began by telling us, “I’ve never done this in my life … I was sexually abused as a child and I’ve had a thing with the LGBTQ community but thanks for helping me grow …"

            From Myles’s poem – “I’m like the cigarette of a fiend … I got the spirit … hope’s hard to come by … Let me set you down in your crib like an au pair … Thank Abba I’m still here …”

            “I went to Central Tech … A friend got murdered at the Ex when I was in Colorado …”

            From the poem – “Rollin through the country the other day when I heard Lewis got shot … All heart and no love … Book of life pages torn out.”

            From his last poem – “I’m not the judge … I’m not the law …I don’t issue no statutes … your mind isn’t safe … Be sharp like a black suit.”

            Shehzad Chowhan read first in English – “Why the silence is wearing a black shawl … Why this Earth? Why this ocean? Why this broken star welcome me?” He then read the same poem in Urdu.

            Bänoo said that of all the languages in which poetry has been read at Shab-e She’r, this was the first time Urdu has been spoken.

            Chai told us that even though his mayoral campaign is over, we could still photograph him if we want. Without his mic and from his phone he read “I and iphones” – “I phone anyone anywhere but me … Why is knowing anyone’s business more important than knowing myself? Am I the shadow under the lamp?  I am lost … You have robbed me of my silent moments … Can we not meet at a quiet spot? Let us not replace our hugs and kisses with text messages … With so much information, why are we heading in the wrong direction? Is knowledge good enough? Where is the button for wisdom on the iphone? You have taken me further away from it … Google takes me to my destination but I am lost nonetheless … iphone you have taken her away from me … You are her constant companion and I am alone … You are our new anti-social group … Many with earphones are as good as deaf … Walking is risky … You bring far away Facebook friends close to us … Now our near and dear ones are not near …”

            Gavin Barrett read “Alphabet for My Daughters” – “Ages between death and I see the road ends here … Erecting monuments for myself … effulgences can’t be indulged … A fine end to a night … Illumination …. The switch emanating menace … A letter or a book petering out before the halfway mark … We are relatives after all, chained to the same cycle … Forgive as we forget our lines …”

             Sargon read three poems. He said that they were a haiku, a short poem and another haiku.

            From “Pink Vibrator” – “I am stained / the black blood / is covering my body”

            From his poem – “My fingers smell like pussy … Again I have to question my sexuality.”

            From his last “haiku” – “Not a human / I am considered an asset / or trash”.

            The last reader was Bänoo’s co-host, Terese Pierre, who read “Mitosis” – “In the mirror my mother’s eyes assess my chest … burning the back of my neck … I stood no chance … turning into and onto myself … In this darkness I have made stone fruit … I still want to reach beyond the glass and kiss her face”.

            The next Shab-e She’r will be on November 27 and it will be an anniversary event.

            I was unlocking my bike just south of Bloor when a middle-aged woman who’d been in the audience at Shab-e She’r stopped to chat with me. She told me she’d enjoyed my poem but hadn’t understood a lot of the poetry that had been read. I asked if she was going to come back with one of her own poems. She said that she always throws away her poetry because she doesn’t believe art is meant to be kept. I suggested that maybe she’d feel differently about that if she read her work in public. She agreed that was possible. She said she gives poems to friends.

I asked her name and after she told me I repeated it. She nodded but I was doubtful that I’d gotten it right and figured she was just being polite or was tired of teaching her name to Anglophones. I asked her if I was pronouncing it correctly and it turned out that I was right that I'd been wrong. Once the door of my interest was open she became interested in me pronouncing it right and corrected me. On my second try she nodded more sincerely and sounded impressed that I’d gotten it. But I'm writing this down days after she told me so I don't know if I'm remembering it right now, but what’s in my memory is “Naranaday”. She said it was Persian but what I’ve written doesn’t match with any web search for any Iranian names, so I’ve probably remembered it wrong.

When I got home I had a late dinner and watched an episode of Perry Mason. This story begins in a bank as bookkeeper Carl Houser suddenly tells his boss that he is quitting. He immediately goes into a storage room and removes an envelope from a filing cabinet. He takes a large amount of money from the envelope, lifts his shirt and puts the cash into a money belt.
            Weeks later Perry Mason and Della Street are on the deck a cruise ship heading south in the waters off Canada. They are making a leisurely return to LA after a court case in Vancouver, British Columbia.  On the boat are Carl Hauser, his wife Anna and his teenage daughter Laura. Also on the boat is a Nurse Whiting who cares for a man named Cartman who is covered in bandages, wears a hat and is confined to a wheelchair that she pushes. Other passengers are a loud man named Carter and his quiet secretary James. Later Anna asks to talk with Mason. He comes to their cabin when Carl is out. She says that Carl has stolen $100,000. Mason wonders if she’s sure. She says he tells her won it in the sweepstakes but she doesn’t believe him because it wasn’t reported in the papers. He says he’s not going to assume Carl is guilty without proof and so he wires the Paul Drake detective agency to investigate. Paul finds that there is no money missing at all from the bank where Carl had worked. That night the boat is on stormy seas and Mason sees Carl and Anna arguing. The couple go out on the deck. Later the man-overboard alarm sounds. The captain tells Anna it was Carl and he has also found Carl’s gun and believes he was murdered. He finds hanging in her shower a wet black dress and a money belt containing $91,000. Anna is arrested when the ship docks in LA and Mason tells Laura to get a room in a hotel under the name of Laura Wilson because he doesn’t want the press to bother her. Mason visits Anna in jail and she explains that Carl had asked to talk with her alone and had given her his money belt. He seemed so upset that she followed him up to the deck. He grabbed her, kissed her and then pushed her away. That was the last time she saw him. Mason knows that Carl, Anna and Laura used to live in Chicago before he worked at the bank in LA. He asks how that move came about. She says that Carl had been on jury duty in Chicago and had held out until the rest of the jury found an accused man innocent and shortly after the trial they had moved to LA. Mason asks if it has occurred to Anna that Carl might still be alive. Laura never checked into the hotel and has gone missing. In court, Mason questions the ship purser and asks about the last time he’d seen Carl. He says he gave him a note from Nurse Whiting. Paul traces the nurse and Cartman to a large country estate belonging to Morgan Shreeves. Mason and Paul go there and Mason remembers that Shreeves had been on trial for income tax evasion in Chicago but had gotten off. Mason wants to enter the house. Paul says it’s against the law. Mason says it’s only a misdemeanour if one doesn’t enter to remove something from the house, whereas he only wants to leave something there. Paul asks what he wants to leave and he answers, “My fingerprints”. Mason tells Paul to call Burger, disguise his voice and give him a tip about Whiting and the house. The whole point is to put the police on Whiting’s trail. In court the DA has tracked down Laura and has her appear as a hostile witness. She testifies that she saw the man go overboard after a gunshot. Burger announces that Carl’s body has been found in the ocean and that he died from a gunshot wound though the bullet did not come from the gun they found on deck. Later, Della suggests that Carl got the $100,000 from Shreeves. Mason says that Shreeves could have been the man in the wheelchair. In court a fingerprint expert reveals that fingerprints supposedly belonging to the patient Cartman that were found on the wheelchair in Shreeves’s house 24 hours after Carl went missing are the same as Carl’s fingerprints. Nurse Whiting is put on the stand and testifies that the man in the wheelchair was a dummy. She’d planned with Carl to make it look like he’d committed suicide. She took Carl off the ship in the wheelchair. But when Carl found out that Anna was on trial for his murder he didn’t want to continue the ruse and he was killed to keep him quite. But she won’t take the murder rap for the real killer, Morgan Shreeves. Carter stands up in court and says, “You want Morgan Shreeves? Here he is!” He grabs James, his quiet secretary and forces him to his feet.

            Anna was played by Lurene Tuttle, who in addition to work in Vaudeville, radio and films, was a diction coach for many other actors, including Orson Wells. She was known as the “first lady of radio”.