Title: Journey to Love
Adapted from a book by Chimezie Ihekuna (Mr. Ben)
Screenwriter: Robert Sacchi

Genre: Crime/Family Drama

For reviews, production consideration and other publicity, please contact us through the email addresses below.

mrbenisreal@gmail.com

rsacchi@rsacchi.20m.com

Synopsis/Details: 

Born and raised in Calgary, Tyler grew up with the care of his loving single mother, Grace. Having to raise the wheelchair-bound Tyler for over fourteen years was difficult for Grace, who had two jobs-teaching and factory work. Despite the challenge, she gave her son the best of love and care. Since birth, Grace made it a number one priority to be there for her son, regardless of how busy she was with her job.

Tyler always did well in school. He wasn’t the dull type. His intelligence attracted his classmates to him, even though he was fun to be with only once in a blue moon. His peers, both boys and girls in his class, liked him. But he felt incomplete since he was in a wheelchair. His unhappy mood drove people away. But this attracted the attention of his class teacher; he would do his very best to instill in him what he deserved-happiness.
However, this would be short-lived as home for Tyler meant being attended to by his mom but pushed aside by his neighbors. His mom’s efforts to make him fit in with everyone didn’t work. As Tyler grew older, his confidence and natural exuberance dwindled when he realized he wasn’t able to do what able-bodied juveniles were doing. This affected his relationship with his peers, especially the female ones. But someone, who, from childhood, had always accepted Tyler the way he had been, was…Thomas.

It was during his senior years at Calgary Secondary School Tyler saw the need to fall in love…with the opposite sex. Although Thomas would prove useful to him in a way, his predicament wouldn’t help matters! Tyler looked forward to the time in his life when the right woman would love him for who he is, accept his physical predicament, be in a serious relationship with him and possibly walk down the aisle with him. But the more Tyler searched for her, the more she kept eluding him!

Love: Long Lost But Now Found…The Background

From one girl to the other, Paul had experienced sexual pleasure for years by taking advantage of a whole host of women. Paul walked away from any consequences or relationships and ended up unharmed because of his influence! ‘Identifying’ with women at the tender age of twelve, Paul had been in fruitless relationships with twelve ladies before he met Tania at twenty one; Maureen, Cynthia, Antonia, Linda, Danielle, Katherine, Edwina, Knowles, Twain, Sharon and Faith. He had a free ride with them until he met Tania…

Tania was the only girl with whom Paul had an actual relationship. It was after three years of enduring the pains he inflicted that Tania called it quits with him. Paul looked forward to talking with Andrew, his good friend of seven years, about his fall-out Tania. But Paul was in for a big surprise…a surprise that would bring about this: “Love: Long Lost but now found!”

Five Poems

By Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri

Translated by Manu Mangattu

The Song of the Universe – Thy Song

Sweet soul,

Let thy breath be sweet

Let thine eyes shine as the stars

Reflect about what thou shalt see!

Thou shalt forget the words

The song of the universe is thy song

The peace of the universe is thy peace

If thou shall speak

It is almost like God

Let there be light! And there was light.

宇宙的歌声是你的歌声

甜美的灵魂

让你的呼吸甜美

让你的眼晴多如星辰

想想吧  那时你将看到什么

你将忘了词语

宇宙的歌声是你的歌声

宇宙的宁静是你的宁静

如果你说话

那就如同上帝

要有光  于是就有了光

On Angel Wings Heaven-Bound

Pluck out a star from the night sky above

And let it sing to you within your cranium

It shall bring to you the interplanetary song.

Let thine eyes reach the edge of the Milky Way

The earth is just a small stone;

Yesterday is just a butterfly.

When the angel wings conduct you to the Kingdom of Heaven

Ah! That sweet lightning will indeed make you forget the world.

当天使的翅翼驮来了天国

摘一颗星辰在夜空之上

让它在你的头颅里歌唱

它将带给你星际的乐曲

让你的目光抵达  末来的银河之城

地球只是一枚小小的石头

昨日只是一只蝴蝶

当天使的翅翼驮来了天国

哦  那甜蜜的闪电让你把世界遗忘

Home Sweet Home beyond Milky Way

Nestled in the wings of night

After the pearl gem sets in heaven

I climb to the roof of the earth

To gaze at the star.

Gazing at the star,

To witness the coming century, the city of the giant

Blossom like a silver Garden.

The Music from that mysterious Galaxy

Soothes my soul like the rain.

In the light, let my form alight

Back to my home, beyond the Milky Way.

2015.9.9

银河之外的家园

黑夜的翅翼

镶嵌了天堂的珍珠宝石

我在地球的屋顶之上

向星际凝望

仿佛看见未来世纪的巨城

绽放如白银的花园

来自神秘星系的乐曲

是一阵阵灵魂的甘雨

让我的身体乘光而行

回到了那银河之外的家园

Day and Night in Kingdom of Heaven

Last night, gazing at the stars

I saw those countless gems smile

Numberless from my past life

Limitless in the silver kingdom

Sprang from the light of thought

Forging ahead to superluminal chi

Five hundred years later, or, may I say

After a thousand five hundred years of the world

I saw a giant of a spacecraft

The eyes of those men and women

Were tranquil, serene as a diamond

Then I knew, once and forever: On the new planet,

In the Kingdom of Heaven, there is neither day nor night.

2016.2.8

没有昼夜的天国

昨夜仰望星空

我看见无数个笑容

无数个我的前世

无数个白银的王国

思想的光芒

以超光速驰来

我看见了五百年后

一千五百年后的世界

我看见乘坐飞船的巨人

男男女女的眼睛

宁静的钻石

新的星球之上

没有昼夜的天国

 2016.2.8

Distant Heaven

Often I have a foretaste of the future city of the giant.

The young giants in platinum Villas

The young giants in and out of the great mansion in platinum

And I’m one of them

In the body the sacred flame burns

On the head flickers the signs of zodiac

And the Diamond eyes glimpse the distant kingdom of heaven!

2015.12.28

遥远的天国

我常常看见那未来的巨人之城

那年轻的巨人们  进出于白金巨厦

而我是他们其中的一位

身体里燃烧神圣的火焰

头颅里闪烁巨多的星座

钻石般的目光仿佛看见遥远的天国

Bio: Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet’s Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Acumen, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are Platinum City and Golden Giant. His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization.

About the Translator

Manu Mangattu is an English Professor, poet, editor, director and rank-holder. He has published 7 books, 73 research articles and 36 conference papers apart from 14 edited volumes with ISBN. He serves as chief editor/editor for various international journals. He has done UGC funded projects and a SWAYAM-MOOC course (Rs 15 lakhs). Besides translations from Chinese and Sanskrit, he writes poetry in English as well as in Indian languages. He was named “Comrade to Poetry China” in 2016. A visiting faculty at various universities and a quintessential bohemian-vagabond, he conducts poetry readings, workshops and lectures when inspired. After an apprenticeship in Shakespeare under Dr. Stephen Greenblatt, he currently guides 23 research scholars and mentors NET English aspirants.

one deadly hoax
 
whispers turn
to screams as
the number of
dead start to
rise
 
this sure is one
deadly hoax
 
it's amazing
to think such
incompetence
still exists in
this day and
age
------------------------------------------------------------------------
parading around as a man
 
purple daydreams
 
the coughing lady
will kill us all
 
just another child
parading around
as a man
 
thank god she
had an abortion
 
any child of yours
would destroy
society as we
know it
 
another sunset alone
 
destiny is a dancer
that teases her big
ass in your face for
a few extra dollars
 
if you're lucky
 
she'll slip off her
mask and lick you
 
you don't want to
know where that

tongue has been
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
from the inside out
 
remember the crazy ones
 
the ones that would call
at four in the morning
because the world was
burning from the inside
out
 
the ones that would get
you so hard you had to
let go on the side of the
road
 
the ones that would ask
for a little dirty talk right
before the meeting with
her boss
 
the ones that told you
you aren't special
 
you have no talent
 
you will be as worthless
as your father
 
that your death will be
as meaningless as your
life
 
the ones that loved you
only to change their minds
 
the ones that stole from you
 
owe you money to this day
 
the ones that never bothered

to remember if you still exist
----------------------------------------------------------------------
the day before thanksgiving
 
the experts
say we might
get some snow
the day before
thanksgiving
 
given the
pandemic
and how
easily it
spreads
 
a little havoc
on what is
usually the
busiest travel
day of the year
 
is probably a

good thing
---------------------------------------------------------------------
checkout lane eleven
 
this fine as fuck
black woman was
working checkout
lane eleven at the
grocery store today
 
i wasn't like these
other lazy white
fucks,
 
i helped her and
bagged my own
groceries
 
she thanked me
over and over
for doing so
 
i laughed and
said not all of
us are evil
 
i'd like to think
she was smiling
under her mask
 
she doesn't want
to know what i
was doing under

mine

A Corpse like a Homeland

My friend said that he would never disappear
Conceivably, the authority found him dead in the
park, he looked like a corpse like a homeland
the more I stayed with him, the more I sobbed

I wanted to read his motherland language of his
eyes, to learn about his country and his household
Unfortunately, it seems that he already read mine
I have forgotten to close the curtains of my griefs

I remember when he used to say that we are drops
of rain from the dark clouds falling miserably dead
on the green grass, where we live alone with a cloudy
mind and heart, we are no longer too loud but quieter

He struggled with being independent, from screaming
in tears and laughing whenever he attended a funeral
”nobody is my friend.” he used to say that while dreaming
of his dead friends from the war, until life closed its door

against him…

journey of a baby boomer from the country to the suburbs

by:  Norman J. Olson

in 1959, at age 11, I moved from a small failing dairy farm in West Central Wisconsin to the slums of St. Paul, Minnesota’s East Side…

I went from a one room country school set in a sheep pasture, to Erickson Elementary which must have had about 500 kids….  a tough school in what today would be called an “inner city” neighborhood…   we lived upstairs from my mother’s parents in a big old house on Desoto Street (which I thought was named for the car)…  this had once been a nice house with a marble fireplace and a stained glass window over the front stairway, but had been divided into a duplex many years before and was now just another rundown house with brown shake siding on the rundown East Side of St. Paul…   the only tougher area in St. Paul at that time was the black neighborhood on Rondo Street…  which was demolished in the 1970s when the freeway connecting St. Paul to Minneapolis was by some mysterious chance run right down Rondo Street…  through the middle of the city’s black neighborhood…  so much for the “good old days…”

I remember the first night in the new apartment…  it was in late fall so cold weather had set in and the apartment had a space heater…  the farm house had been heated with wood or coal in a parlor furnace and had never been really warm in the winter…  with the natural gas fired space heater, we were amazed that you could make the inside of your house warm like summer, even in the middle of winter and for the first week, we kept it at like 80 degrees in there…  we were so amazed to be really warm in the winter… 

I also had my eyesight checked for the first time that fall and it was discovered that I was extremely near sighted…  I remember going to Dr. Shultz’s office in the old Lowry Medical Arts Building…  going up in the elevator, still a great novelty to me…  and then on the second visit, putting on the eyeglasses and having the world beyond arms reach come into focus… it was amazing to be able to see…  I remember looking out the window of the optometrist’s office and seeing a billboard outlined against the sky and being able to actually see it…  it was so amazing when the world went from being a blur to being something I could see…  no wonder I was not much good at baseball, I realized that other people could actually see the ball… amazing…

going to school was kind of a culture shock…  I was not stupid, but due to my very chaotic homelife, I was not very successful academically after the move…  the teachers were kind and told me I was “college material” if I would only do my school work…  but I just could not make myself do it…  and so was embarrassed every day to be the one in class who did not have their lessons prepared and was always on the verge of failing…  the teachers were mystified…  I think I was mostly just unhappy and depressed…  I would sit in class and draw…  pictures of ships and hot rod cars…  pictures of tough guys in leather jackets…  I was not very good at drawing, so the teachers could not understand why making those crappy looking drawings was more important than doing my school work… 

I did not have a lot of friends but I found that I was good at getting into fights…  I thought I was a tough country guy and could take any of the city slickers…  but it turned out that attitude got me beat up more than a few times…  and those little Italian, Irish and German kids were every bit as tough as I was and mostly much better fighters…  I remember this bigger kid named Karl…  he must have repeated a grade because he was a head taller than the rest of us and in sixth grade already had his hair combed in a cool ducktail…  and wore cool high school type clothes…  while the rest of us could not have combed our hair if we wanted too and dressed like little kids in jeans and polo shirts…  anyway, Karl had beaten me up without even breaking a sweat, or messing up his ducktail…  and so, I waited after school one day…  standing on the stone foundation of the school building which stuck out from the wall and made a stone platform about four feet off the ground…  I waited there because I knew Karl always walked that way leaving the school building…  and so when he went by, I jumped on his back… knocked him down and sat on him and punched for all I was worth until he started to cry….  then I got up and ran because I knew, if he got out from under me, he would kick my ass again…  but from then on, he left me alone…  I think he thought I was crazy… 

but mostly, I just got beat up…  I came home from trips to Wilder Playground with my clothes ripped and a bloody face…  my mom told me to stay away from the playground…  I did not stay away from the playground because that was where everybody went but I eventually wised up and started trying to avoid the tough guys…  I did beat up one kind of effeminate kid that everybody else also beat up…  but then I felt really bad about that for a long time…  I still feel bad about it…  so, had I won any fights, I don’t think I would have felt better about beating people up…  than I felt about being beaten… 

I had a bicycle that I had cobbled together from parts of other bicycles… and I liked to ride around…  I did not go very far, but felt that I was somehow mobile…  that I could go someplace if I really wanted to…  and I knew that someplace, there had to be a world more interesting than the Eastside of St. Paul…  a place like the neighborhoods I saw on television where everybody looked nice and had nice clothes…  where nobody got in fights and where parents were sober and looked at their kids…  I suffered terribly from night terrors, had terrible vivid dreams about being attacked by monsters, vampires and Frankenstein monsters, flying reptiles with human heads…  my mother would hear me screaming and try to sooth me by telling me that it was just dreams…  which helped a little, I think…

I really did not have any friends so would ride my bicycle around by myself…  this bicycle did not have any brakes and so whenever I was on a hill, I had to drag my feet to stop and it really is a wonder that I never was run over… because coming down the Desoto street hill, I could not have stopped for cross traffic under any circumstances… 

I had a cousin who lived in St. Paul, who would take me around to see the sights…  we would take the bus downtown where we would climb up all the steps to the dome of the state capital to see the gold horses…  there was an old mansion across the street from the state capital  that housed the Science Museum…  they had a mummy which we thought was really cool that was kept in a turret at the corner of the old sandstone mansion…  which was kind of creepy but cool in a way that sixth graders could understand…  we liked open stairways and knew of buildings downtown that had open stairways where you could look down over the stair railing and see the floor far below, once you had climbed to a high story… 

I liked to make kites and made box kites out of paper or plastic wrap and lilac sticks… the kites flew very well…  I once made a huge kite in the attic of the house on Desoto street out of a big sheet of plastic I found and some boards…  I had big ideas!!!  but I never tried to fly it…  maybe I realized that it would have taken a hurricane to lift that stupid kite off the ground… and it would not have fit through the attic door anyway…

we lived on Desoto street for two years and then moved to suburban Oakdale…  using my dad’s GI loan, to a housing development that was just being built up in an old farm field…  the contractor had set up model homes and built basements on all the streets and then when a customer came, the contractor would build a house on one of the basements to the plan of one of the model homes…  we used to find salamanders in the basements…  pretty little wet, green lizard like creatures…  and I buried time capsules all over the area…  putting drawings, coins etc. into a jar and then burying the jar near one of the unimproved basements…  this was very much a working class suburb and the residents were mostly people joining the “white flight” from the Eastside of St. Paul, to the bucolic semi urban fields of Oakdale… 

so, my parents went, in about three years, from poverty stricken farmers to working class suburbanites…  and I was along for the ride…

1959 – age 12 in St. Paul, a different (indifferent) universe

summer was sidewalks and

mostly empty streets…  no

more trilliums

and violets…  my own war

had finally begun…

and there I was

unarmed,

nearsighted, confused by

touches

and smells…  sad, frightened and always

in those days, feeling that all I saw

and felt and touched

was like a poorly done theater flat… 

garish…  phony…  too bright

in sunlight…

the entire city scene

and the crowd of people, especially the crowd of people,

was a papier-mâché, plastic, or even gold and ivory mask…

maybe somebody’s gentle

Protestant god hunkered

behind

the mask…  waiting to jump

out at the last minute…  like

some fool

at a lame surprise party…

or maybe nothing…  or maybe

deep wells of space and

time…  a cosmos

of galaxies spinning like

pinwheels

above a black and

            bottomless

            abyss…

or maybe just the gray/black

streets of St. Paul…