Lord the Landlord

On Sunday at midday I weighed 93 kilos. That’s an increase of 2.3 kilos from Friday. On Sunday evening I was 92.5 kilos, so it really seems to bounce around.

I spent a few hours working on a poem so I could have one new one to present for my Poetry Master Class on Thursday night. I came up with “Raja”:

My landlord’s name means, “lord” in his language

so it’s like calling him “Lord the landlord”

or “My landlord Lord”.

Lord!

My landlord calls and asks how I am

He has never asked me such a question

I say “fine” and ask the same of him

I’ve never given him such a greeting

With both of us shovelling so much charm

something not nice must be going to happen

My landlord suggested that I forgot

when I paid the rent by email transfer

that he’d given notice the rent would go up

effective the first day of the new year

I told my landlord I did not receive

a proper notice of rental increase

He then demanded to know what I meant.

I told him to re-read the document

or that he could have his wife or lawyer

read and help him decipher the paper

He said, “I gave you sixty days notice!”

I said, “You have to give ninety days notice.”

As I expected he started to yell

and let me know I’m a “fucking asshole”

I said “Relax and just follow the rules”

But saying “relax” never does seem to help

"You wanna follow the rules?

You wanna follow the rules?”

He said, “You fucking asshole!”

and ended the call

The rent increase was thirteen dollars

and so my landlord millionaire would be

poorer by about fifty dollars

three months from the start of February

I would lose the same every three months

till next year he raises the rent again

but in between us the difference

is that I don’t start screaming and calling him names

Two years ago his stomach exploded

because he was full of anxiety

I’d offer to teach him some yoga

but doubt he would take instruction from me.

The next day my landlord came around

to hand me a brand new notice of increase

He warned me, “This time don’t fuck around!”

and said if I did well then maybe he’d kill me

            I finished reading “The English Mail Coach” by Thomas de Quincey. His prose is better than any of the Romantics we’ve covered in this course, and at times he’s quite funny.

            I read a short biography of Lord Byron. As a writer he was highly influential and he seemed to end his life trying to imitate the heroes he created. He’s a national hero in Greece.

            I started reading “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”.

            I had an egg with toast and a beer for dinner and watched an episode of Peter Gunn.

            This story begins with a singer named Julie being killed by an unseen boyfriend. District Attorney Lockwood hires Gunn to find out whom the killer is because his son Neil is a suspect and he wants him proved innocent. The evidence though is strong that Nil is the killer. Gunn goes to Julie’s apartment and finds in the garbage drain a scarf that is sold by a haberdashery that is a front for the criminal organization of Eddie De Santis. When Gunn asks Eddie about the scarf and Julie he gets beaten up by Eddie’s men. The attack makes Eddie look suspicious but in a second encounter Eddie says he had nothing to do with Julie’s murder. Gunn discovers that someone came to Julie’s apartment to plant evidence after she was murdered. It’s finally concluded that Neil did it after all.