Gone Are The Days

Gone are the days,

When I never knew what writing pays.

Because, it’s taught solely in the classroom,

With many pupils like the broom.

Gone are the days,

When happiness brought about gays.

Even though some have different expression,

Like one’s view becomes impression.

Gone are the days,

When there’s many rail-ways.

This made traveling alternatively easy and fast,

To some, all are things of the past.

Gone are the days,

When barter became the terminology as some says.

Now, money and currency are used in the daily economy,

This is based on the system and not vasectomy.

Gone are the days,

When I’d no cap nor hat to walk under the sun rays.

Due to careless and reckless life of the hood,

Even when it’s possible to change the mood.

Bed Bugs Story

Bed bugs story,

It makes me feel so sorry.

How they’ve invaded the rooms,

As if there’re no sweeping brooms.

Some have hidden under the soften chairs,

This needs some sort of repairs.

They do their mischief in the middle of night,

When we’ve slept so tight and dreaming under the light.

It a wonder, how they befriend the skin,

And pierce hard like the pinch of a pin.

Bed bugs story,

It makes many feel the worry.

How their blood stains stink,

So terrible red, not pink like the colour of ink.

Of course, some are smaller others bigger,

They’re equal to the gold digger.

One can wear the cloth and feel their damage,

In fact, the can spoil a person’s public image.

By virtue of their painful bite which shake so severe,

They need to be killed without any revere.

A Ship of Hope and Dreams

My ship is lazily drifting along the waters of life. Yet, I seem to have a large porthole where I can experience and feel the beauty and love of life. Through that porthole, I seem to be in darkness until the I see  the rising of the moon showering it’s light beams upon the earth. Those beams of light can reach into our souls giving strength and goodness to a renewal of spirit.   For many of us that gift can bring us to that point of understanding and our ability to withstand the storms of life.

Morning comes and the sun is slowing rising with it’s healing rays bringing beauty to the world of nature. My mind can see the flowing streams and brooks and the wind blowing through the trees.  I feel the waves of the water slowing cradling my ship and bringing a harmony between land and sea.  There is also a harmony between the sun and the moon giving nature and man a time of health, peace and love. 

Madam in Silk is an historical romance with lots of adventure. It takes place in the 1850’s, in the infancy of San Francisco and when Chinatown was known as Little Canton.

Ah Toy and her companion Chen are on a voyage from China to San Francisco when her greedy and abusive husband dies of consumption. He is buried out to sea. By Chinese custom she is supposed to go back to China to marry her greedy and even more abusive brother in law. However, Ah Toy along with Chen find themselves finally free of years of abuse and fear. When she looks for some kind of employment, she finds she cannot work any service positions due to her feet. Her feet had been disfigured when she was young so that they would remain small and she could wear lotus-shaped shoes on her feet.

She and her companion find a shanty in Little Canton to live in. In order to survive, she opens a “lookee shop’ where men pay to glimpse her naked. She becomes quite wealthy. When her brother in law sends Lee Shao Kee to kidnap and bring her back, she goes to China. She goes to Officer Wong for help. There he suggest she open up a parlor house.

This novel is based on historical events and is loaded with adventure and excitement. You will be rooting for Ah Toy all the way through. This is the perfect book to read during this time of sheltering in place.

Gini Grossenbacher’s Madam in Silk is available here.

hoarder
 
she doesn’t get it,
this noxious undergrowth
of plastic bags and containers
boxes, guitar strings, magazines
bottles, business cards
beneath sinks, in closets, drawers
 
but all the hands
careful and careless
as those of inconstant lovers
that touched these things
 
and my plan to master a craft
needing endless bags, et cetera
 
while there is despair to them
as if they know
they’ll never be unearthed
to second life in antique stores
or museums
 
and my sense each yielding
of thing as of person  
prepares that parting at which
you can’t hold anything
or anyone
 
 
 
vagrant
 
raining to beat hell -
under garage eaves
on the light over the door
it huddles
 
not quite the picture
in the bird-book:  too plump
with feathers puffed up somehow 
 - for warmth maybe, a thousand miles
from the tropics
on a perch out of the rain
 
crouching though, head down
he is spied:  a large magpie,
plumed natty as the rest,
swoops down and scares him off -
struts and stares on the light
then back to his perch high in the trees
 
magpies have their case:  they were here first
and you let in one, next it’s a hundred
 
still, you can tell he enjoyed that
 

vagrant:  a stray bird far from its normal ecological range
 
last night’s storm
 
left crab-apple and cherry petals
spattered over the patio
like confetti around church-steps
Sunday morning
 
I’d never seen a wedding
just flowery cars honking
and those festive full-stops
littered, damp with dew or rain
on concrete and earth
 
the peonies hang their heads
 
                      at a puddle’s edge
a lilac scrag dries in the sun
like some dead thing
     on the shore
 
 
 
honour 
 
in memoriam S. L.
 
 
 
you eyed each grab and punch
till I tasted your brother’s fist,
blood and damp earth -
when you stepped in, grim
as your school-play MacDuff:
never hit a man when he’s down
 
soon your family moved -
a hundred miles and two years
out of mind, when the paper said
you’d been hitch-hiking home,
the body found in Burwell Harbour
 
time enough, two years
to join the heroes
in a child’s ever-after
 

 
unemployed
 
 
 
 
                       this white-haired editor
                           at Dominion House as agreed
               too polite to see I’m angling for
                       the ghost of a long-gone job
               - though he allows these kids are good
                                 with their journalism degrees
 
                         travel pieces he says they sell
 
                               I don’t travel much I say
 
                                     he draws back
                               wide-eyed - you don’t have to
                          GO anywhere
 
                                       we swap beers
                               swill stories
 
                               then maybe I should stay
                           meet the philosophical welder
                               the dour professor
 
                           drink and talk go down easy -
                                 I’m asked back for next Friday
                                                                  and the next
                                                  - before last call
                                      promises are warm
                            possibility forever
                                      
                   but in the bus-stop air
                        fall’s first nip - truth is
                                I’m out ten-fifteen bucks
                           for my rounds – a small price
                                  for friendship
                                                        but too much
 
                                                last bus gone
                                 I button my jacket
                             turn up my collar
                                                       start walking
 
 

Biographical Statement

James Thurgood was born in Nova Scotia, grew up in Windsor, Ontario, and now lives in Calgary, Alberta.  He has been a labourer, musician, and teacher – not necessarily in that order. His poems have appeared in various journals, anthologies, and in a collection (Icemen/Stoneghosts, Penumbra Press).  He is also the author of His Own Misfortune, a work-in-progress. (James A. Thurgood’s Word Salad)

Is “digital cloning” of actors the future of movie making? 

I have a very positive view of the technology that allows for the digital creation of a person’s image. Therefore I have signed a paper giving permission to clone myself for the purposes of filmmaking. But all the uses of my image, all the films where my clone appears, must be aligned with my values of peace, human rights and anti-racism.

It turns out that I am the first actor in the world to have signed such a consent form, but someone has to be the first.  So digital science has assimilated my creative output – my looks, movements and mannerisms – to create and personify ten roles. These include roles created by ancient Greek playwrights including Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, and ancient Roman writers including Horace, and 17th century writers including Shakespeare, and luminaries of modern theater, including Pirandello, Beckett, and Schiller. I’m also allowing for my cloned image to play characters in my own stage and screenplays.  

So whoever wants to see me, or other actors who will eventually give their consent to being cloned, will be able to see me, first in the role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

My clone will also act in my own play The Creative Mechanisms of Enchantment, a drama that I wrote twenty years ago, using the method of automatic writing, inspired by the spirit of Shakespeare.  Finally you will see a very complex work, where ‘Shakespeare’ reveals his creative processes!  

The cloned form of an actor perfectly meshes with the person’s real artistic expression on stage. I’ve acted onstage since I was 14 years old and almost always in front of an audience in public stadiums or large theaters.  And often I am alone onstage.  You cannot imagine how much strength the audience gives me and because of Covid-19, I have had to go without the audience I miss very much. This is the greatest loss that Covid-19 has brought me.

Fortunately, I recently starred in Hollywood on January 19, 2020 to celebrate my hero, film legend Federico Fellini. Now through cloning, everyone will soon be able to see my performance in “Federico and Fellini” in three-dimensional form.  Meanwhile, it makes me happy that an artistic short film that I wrote entitled “Cloned Life” has just been made with cloning.  It’s not three-dimensional, but it’s perfectly natural.  

Seeing myself acting in “Cloned Life” without ever having practiced or acted as the characters of “Cloned Life” was a strange feeling: my self wondered how it was possible to see myself doing something I’d never done.

Time and space are normally linked by means of physical matter. If one of the three elements, time, space, or matter, is removed, the other two are automatically gone as well.  Cloning is the first step in overcoming the limitations of matter, space, and time in a revolution on par with Galileo’s discovery of the planets revolving around the sun. 

Man is migrating to another world.  Aliens are said to have taken this step.  There’s a theory that each of our actions is recorded by the universe and that the past, present or future are the same thing. Artistic cloning embodies this theory, muddying the gap between the past, present, and future. There are many organizations and institutions working on perfecting cloning, including some in Hollywood. This is the beginning of a new era.

a trip to Miami August 1, 2011

by:  Norman J. Olson

I normally do not do shows of original art, so this summer of 2011, I decided that since I retired from my day job and had some extra time…  I would see about having a couple of showings of my originals…  I am not sure why…  but bringing art out of my personal space, which I normally do by publishing drawings and paintings in literary journals, is really important or at least feels really important to my image as someone who does art that has some public importance…  and is not just a personal or therapeutic exercise…

the first was in Jay Gallery in Seoul, Korea…  that was cool because I love what is going on in Asia these days and so was very excited to go to Seoul, have my art there, etc…  I have written about that trip elsewhere…  the second art show was at Naomi Wilzig’s World Erotic Art Museum (WEAM) (now called the Wilzig Erotic Art Museum) in the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach, Florida…  this amazing museum houses Naomi’s vast collection of sexually oriented art objects ranging from ancient sculptures and artifacts from the far corners of this planet to contemporary American paintings and drawings…  I am a huge fan of this museum because I am fascinated by sexuality and how artists have given serious or sometimes not so serious consideration to this most human range of activities… 

I knew Naomi had traveling shows of erotic art in her museum and although my art is not strictly speaking “erotic” in that it is seldom intended to inspire sexual feelings in the viewer, it is certainly full of nudes and deals often with the various subjects around human coming together, sexual and otherwise…  and of course, my subject is often simply the nude and while female nudes are welcome everywhere, male nudes are not…  especially if they show any sign of sexual arousal…  and since my works show plenty of hard ons, I thought that WEAM is one place where my work would not be out of place and where all the pussies and dicks would not surprise and offend anyone…

Naomi has been very supportive of my work and was willing to put up a show…  I sent her images and she selected the works to be hung…  and we settled on the month of August 2011 for the show…  I framed the works and packaged them in homemade cardboard packing crates and brought them to Miami in late July…  and they were put up on a wire rack in the center of one of the rooms at WEAM…  I am writing this August 14, so the work will be up for 12 more days and then I will go down and pick it up…  the cheapest way for me to move the art is as checked luggage using my wife’s employee passes to fly down and back…  and there are usually seats to Miami at this time of year…

so, Naomi scheduled an opening reception for August 1, 2011…  my wife and I flew down July 31, 2011 and she had found an interline rate at one of the fancy downtown Miami hotels for that night…  I had worked out the bus routes in advance…  I know that Miami is a city with some pretty tough neighborhoods, so one needs to be careful where you go on public transportation and it is always best to travel in the daytime…  many years ago, when my kids were small, my rental car was attacked in Miami when I accidentally drove through the wrong neighborhood after getting off a cruise ship late at night…  I was very lucky to get out of that situation with my skin and learned for sure to be very careful in bad neighborhoods… 

it must be due to the cab drivers lobby or something but while there is a direct bus from Miami airport to Miami Beach, in fact, there are several…  there is no direct bus from the airport to downtown and since the fancy hotel did not have a shuttle, we had to take two buses to get from the airport to downtown… and since Miami Transit no longer uses transfers, we had to pay two fares or $4 each to get from the airport to downtown by bus (a distance of about five miles)… 

we caught the #J bus at MIA with no problem at about 2 pm on July 31 and a half hour or so later got off on Biscayne Blvd to transfer to the #3 downtown bus…  there was a Denny’s restaurant and since we flew down coach and had not eaten, we stopped and had lunch there at the corner of 36^th Street and Biscayne Blvd…  I had the $2 pancakes which were very good and it is amazing that a meal can fill one up for $2…  anyway, we then caught the bus to downtown…  it was a very hot day and I am quite paranoid about being on time for buses, flights, etc.  I made Mary go to the bus stop about 20 minutes before the bus was actually due, so she was pretty warm by the time the bus came…  the bus was nicely air conditioned when it did come…  and very full…

all of the buses we took in Miami were quite busy stopping at just about every corner for people to get on and off…  the bus riders mostly looked like service workers, some wearing fast food uniforms….  with a sprinkling of middle class people and tourists…  most of the bus riders were dark skinned black or Latino and every bus had at least a few people who looked absolutely down and out homeless…  and a few very tough looking teenagers…  people were uniformly polite and friendly to us and the very few other tourists we saw on the buses…  when we got downtown, we asked the bus driver for directions to the fancy hotel and he did not seem to know where it was but gave us directions that seemed to be exactly opposite of where my had drawn map (from Google screen) was showing us to go…  but he was so friendly and helpful that we did not want to make him feel bad, so we waited until the bus left and then followed my map a few hot and sweaty blocks to the hotel…

we joked that we were probably the only people who ever checked in at that hotel who arrived via the local bus… and  when we walked through the glass doors into the palatial marble lobby, dripping wet from the very humid 94 degrees outside, the front desk person had the bellhop bring us bottles of cold water…  and then she gave us a huge suite looking out over the water for $76 a night…  so, we had a really amazing hotel room with four big windows looking out on a spectacular view of Miami’s waterfront…    so, after ohing and ahing about our fancy room for a while…  we went for a walk along the waterfront to Bayfront Park where we found all kinds of inexpensive restaurants serving various mildly ethnic foods…  and had a great dinner…  then we walked along the waterfront looking at the lights across the water…  the bridge and the headquarters buildings of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines the lights of which shimmered in the water….  appropriately, I guess…  the night was warm and gorgeous and huge powerboats would come by looking at the people on shore who were looking at the people on the boats and so everybody was seeing and being seen…  then we walked back to the fancy hotel…

the next morning, we took the bus back to the airport to meet my daughter and son-in-law who came down for the opening…  we met them and took the express bus to Miami Beach which costs $2.35…  first, we waited a half hour and tried to take the free hotel shuttle, only to find that our Miami Beach boutique hotel was not one served by the free Miami Beach hotel shuttle…  as we often observe to each other while traveling it is really really hard to get good information when traveling…  what the fares are, where the buses go… where the rail lines go, how you pay…  where can you walk and where can you not walk…  etc. etc…  things are often a little different in person and a detour that only takes 20 minutes by car can cost hours to one walking or using public transportation and so much of the information available about traveling in the usa is of use only to motorists…

anyway, the Miami Beach express bus called the “Flyer” ends up at the northern end of South Beach at 16^th and Washington Streets…  we stayed at something called the Haddon Hall hotel which was a very funky South Beach hotel with mix and match furniture in the room and blond woodwork from the 50s? 40s? 30s? in the room…  but the beds were comfortable and the hotel had a nice pool…  most of the boteque hotels in South Beach do not have pools and was only 3 or 4 blocks from WEAM…  and two blocks from the ocean…  it also had a huge lobby and two lounge rooms with overstuffed furniture, books on the walls and in one a large tv…  so, for $89 for the four of us, it was very nice… 

we parked our stuff at the hotel and walked down Ocean street across the street from the dunes that lead to the beach… and had a nice lunch at one of the sidewalk cafes…  with some fancy drinks…  and then walked on the path across the dunes to look at the ocean…  the beach here is wide and white sand down to gorgeous turquoise water…  my daughter and son in law waded in the ocean a bit…

then we walked back to the hotel, changed and walked the three blocks to WEAM…  where Naomi greeted us with her usual charm and grace…  I thought my work was very nicely hung (maybe since this is an erotic art museum, I should say “well hung”), and I thought it looked great (of course, all artists always think their own work looks great, even if they do not admit it!!!  as my brother used to say, “the monkey likes the look of his face in the mirror”)…  I had a great time talking about art to the few people who showed up and showing off my beautiful wife, daughter and son-in-law…

at ten Naomi came up to me carrying her purse to say goodnight…  we were leaving and she was leaving…  she looked like the lovely grandma that she is…  a lovely grandma who happens to own the best museum of erotic art on the planet…  it is great to see people my age and older who are still alive to the music of life…  when so many of my peers seem ossified or stuck some place back in the good ol days… 

anyway, at ten, we took the elevator down (WEAM is on the 2^nd floor) and walked out into the warm, tropical Miami night…  we walked over to Ocean Street where the restaurants, clubs and bars were going full blast, never mind that it was Monday night…  and beautiful tourists in tank tops, bikini tops and flip flops were everywhere… the South Beach night is lush and the vibe is hot and friendly… 

our trip back to Minneapolis was uneventful…  on the bus from Miami Beach back to MIA, I sat next to a very tanned and pretty woman from Italy…  her equally tanned and pretty husband was across from us managing two massive suitcases…  as I talked to them and looked at them, I thought of Italy, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael (who died so young) and of all the amazing art that has been made down through the years…  I felt honored and humbled to think that I could deserve the name “artist” and in my own small way was doing what those great minds and hands of the past had done…  after all, a blank surface is a blank surface and they had the same paints and brushes, pens and papers that I have to use…  well, they did not have the ball point pen, but then I do not have good quills…  well, WEAM amazing as it is, is not the Sistene Chapel and I am not even a small blip on the History of Art radar, much less Michelangelo…  but still, if Michelangelo had put his work at WEAM nobody would have had to hire Daniel De Voltera to paint over the genitals of the blessed or the damned…

about my trip to Miami August 1, 2011

we flew into Miami like

turquoise gods.  banking over the blind

white sand,

gliding above ragged palm tree grids,

we rode the old MD80

to the ground…

in bubbling heat, we walked from the terminal to the bus stop

on the J bus and later the 3, we

saw tattooed teenagers

as sad and sleek as Da Vinci angels,

a young black junkie with paralyzed fingers

and scarred veins,

and

a broken man with a rope for a belt

and Ezekiel’s beard…

I called those buses the limos of lost dreams

and with our own dreams

in our hands, we glided like cardboard ghosts

through the pastel desolation

of Miami…

of course, as we sweated from the downtown bus stop

to our fancy glass and marble hotel,

it was clear that we were not gods or ghosts, just

very white, very hot, very lucky tourists

from Minnesota

I want to fall in love

I want to fall in love,
With the emerald green vines,
That glisten in the sun,
Reflecting brilliance in my eyes.

I want to fall in love,
With the tint of rosé,
That unfurls into the azure sky,
As the sun sets into the bay.

I want to fall in love,
With the peals of echoing laughter,
That resonate round the room,
And make my gut ache after.

I want to fall in love,
With the fragrance of fresh tea,
That teases my nostrils,
As my languorous eyelids unseal.

I want to fall in love,
With a stranger’s soft eyes,
As I muse over the cache of secrets,
That dance in disguise.

I want to fall in love,
With the gentle zephyr,
That splays a wisp of hair in my face,
Imbuing chaste pleasure.

But most of all,
I want to fall in love,
With just being,
me.

2) Manifestation of My mind

I write,
To reveal the sorrows,
Trapped beneath my skin,
As I yearn to distill,
Turbid thoughts that lie within.

I write,
To pave the path to,
Uncharted corners of my mind,
As I peel away the layers,
Always beguiled by what I find.

I write,
When I want to bawl,
And bellow from atop the roof,
To run from deafening silence,
To meet eyes with the truth.

I write,
Because I don't know how else,
To oust this gnawing pain
I long to be understood,
But my effort is oft in vain.

I write,
When I can't enounce,
To give voice to words unsaid,
Words that always lose the battle,
Between the heart and the head

I write,
What I crave to feel,
Exhilaration to be alive,
Electricity coursing my veins,
Fulfillment even if I die.

When I write,
My heart bleeds,
As pen and paper bind,
A beautiful symphony,
The manifestation of my mind.

Cry

Feel the weight of the world,
On her wearied shoulders,
Strives to stay stoic,
As the tension smolders,
Her hands start trembling,
Her lower lip quivers,
Her eyes reveal,
A tell-tale shimmer,
A lonesome droplet,
Spills down her cheek,
Deceived by emotion,
They surmise she is weak.

The brackish water,
Stings her aching wounds,
That now lay bare,
A plight so cruel,
It wracks her body,
Relinquished control,
Once tears of affliction,
Now cleanse her soul,
She takes a deep breath,
Stoic and somber,
You thought it was weakness,
But she..
She's never been stronger.
 

 Reminiscing of Colour

Violet,
The pretty periwinkles,
That adorned my hair,
When I was ten.

Indigo,
The ink I spilled,
As I scrawled on the wall,
With my brand-new pen.

Blue,
The way I felt,
That gloomy winter night,
When my friend left.

Green,
The grass I rolled in,
Eyes opalescent,
With joy and zest.

Yellow,
The dainty dress I wore,
As I pranced around,
With my favorite kite.

Orange,
The luscious apricots,
My brother and I,
Cherished with delight.

Red
The blood I shed,
As I matured,
And first felt pain,

Grey,
All I see, and all I feel today.
Dreary,
Bleak and boring, grey.

Disillusioned

Warm, sultry night 
Garb of a teenage lass
Blissfully unaware
Dancing to the pulsating rhythm
Wide grin, short lived.
Malicious eyes
Locked on it's target
Languid walk, smooth talk
Stepped out for some air
In the alley, eerie silence
Within a heartbeat
Inhumanity was there
The air escaped her lungs. 


Disarrayed. Sullied. Violated.
Once. 
She thrashed in agony
A blood-curdling scream 
The music was louder 
Twice. 
Tears streaming down her cheeks.
Please stop.
He paid her no heed 
Thrice.
Protest rendered nugatory
Flailing ceased...
Unconscious 


Glaring white light. 
Probed everywhere 
Throbbing pain, unfamiliar surroundings
The black curtain falls
The show is over.


Mother at her bedside,
Eyes swollen and red,
Pulled into an embrace
Familiar territory. 
But she squirms
Skin scorching, afraid to be touched
Scarred for eternity ,
Flesh once pure,
Tattooed by his grimy fingers.
He served five years
She, imprisoned for life.


Thousands of candles,
Her flame, extinguished.
Surrounded by rings of darkness
Cried herself to sleep
For that's when she saw him.
Three years later.
Music blaring through the speakers 
A stranger's eyes met hers 
He saw sombre beauty.
She saw hope.