July 2022 Recap

The WP map does show my hits have come from  21 countries around the world. Canada takes top spot for a chance, thanks to the very popular ‘Buried’ post. Turkey in the top 10! Most popular post by far was Buried Moons Drums and Caramel https://topoet.ca/2022/07/26/buried-moons-drums-and-caramel/ – in fact it is my most popular post ever! Over 250 hits in July.  

Picture Perfect: 127 sections, about 179,000 words posted so far with approx 9,000 to be edited then posted. Much of July sections were fresh writing as I flesh out my notes from the rough draft. The same holds true for the coming sections too, but some of that will be tying up some loose ends, another melodramatic confrontation & Dan finally takes a vacation.

Watched ‘The Hunger’ from 1983. Catherine Deneuve is stunning, her performance is stellar, her look is breathtaking with incredible clothes, hair stylings & make up. Susan Sarandon is an incredibly stylish biologist scientist of some sort. Hr performance is solid. David Bowie is cast because he is David Bowie. His look is fine, his acting is unremarkable.

The director, Tony Scott, cut his teeth on music videos & the look of the film reflects that – every room has billowing curtains – I guess the vampires create their own gentle breeze, doves show up fluttering through every window, open or closed. No room has direct lighting, even the biology lab, everyone is in shadows, plus everyone is either smoking or lighting up a cigarette – even the scientists looking through microscopes. A truly fabulous movie that surpasses its cult reputation.

caterpillar munching parsley

Watched the captivating film Eijanaika or Why Not? (ええじゃないか), a 1981 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura. An astonishing, colour filled epic set in the mid-1800’s. The carnival setting is compelling & the political subtext makes this more than a comedy. After nearly 3 hours I didn’t want it to end. Strong performances, stunning cinematography & excellent music. Highly recommended.

Finally read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum with W. W. Denslow illustrations. As a child I wasn’t much of a reader until I was about 10 & by then I felt I was too old for Oz, bides it was a girl’s book. I was inclined to Buddy & His Friends, advances to Tom Swift Jr., The Hardy Brothers. I don’t recall seeing the movie on TV until I moved to Toronto & saw it in colour. The book is a fun read, the Denslow illustrations great fun. The movie adaptation is brilliant is streamlining the too many plots in the book & making a few changes is the story line, in particular the movie ending – was it all a dream?

Coming up in August is the Stratford Festival production of The Miser.

Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees – thankspaypal.me/TOpoet 

Recap January 2021

Over the past month my TOpoet.ca following blog grew to 455! The WordPress map shows my hits in January have come from 91 countries around the world. Mainly USA & Canada with Bangladesh (হ্যালো) & Malawi (Moni) in the top 10. The most viewed was my post on board Games, https://topoet.ca/2021/01/15/games/ with Ghost of a Chance https://topoet.ca/2021/01/02/ghost-of-a-chance/  close behind. My persona fave is Burned At The Stake https://topoet.ca/2021/01/25/burned-at-the-stake/.

My Tumblr following is at 300. Twitter 230 followers.

Picture Perfect is moving along with 52 sections, about 78,800 words posted so far, with 111,000  approx to be edited, then posted. I generally try to keep the sections at about 1500 words.

I found another cache of old short stories & starts on others. They were in the file cabinet that I use to store Bushwack posters, photographs & articles I had cut from magazines. I haven’t really gone through these files in the 2000’s beyond searching out the posters I designed for my theatrical productions. 

I remember writing some of these stories but in some cases have forgotten the contents. I also neglected to date many of them but there are clues that place them in decades, as opposed to actual years. Some are in dot-matrix printout – we stopped using that in late 80’s – early 90’s – which puts them back into the early 80’s Some are typed or carbon copies – which puts them back into the 70’s, 80’s. Lack of technology dates them – no cell phones, computers or even answer machines. I’ll be serializing them for including them with my music collection post – the music collection is essential an archive too, so it is a fitting pairing.

Stay-at-home covid19 lockdown has ‘forced’ me to start clearing out our basement. When you have a house stuff collects in the basement. Stuff that is now finding the light of garbage pickup 🙂 The shop vac is getting workout. Bye-bye cobwebs. It is so gratifying to see things carted away, sometimes taken by scavengers before garbage guys can pick up them. There’s enough to keep me bust for another couple weeks. The best way to spend a couple of morning hours indoors when the wind chill drops to -20C. 

Day and Night

day never holds me 

as fully as the night

in light there is always

a part that doesn’t get revealed

doesn’t get illuminated

turn as fast as I can

part of me is always in shadow

<>

light is not the total lover

it always leaves one part untouched

night covers all

holds me in toto

comforting tender complete

caressing even where I cannot see

I was submerged and protected

no night burn for me 

for being too long naked in its glance

<>

if I had to make choice 

between night and day

as to which would be the better lover

I couldn’t decide

day brings flowers

night brings stars

both return despite 

my placid display of cliches

tender is the night

bright is the day

as one retreats 

to make way for the other

I am saddened

I want to hold them both

straddle those slippery moments

when one gracefully steps aside

<>

they do not fight 

to see who will be next

there is no resentment

that I have taken each 

in their own time

that I give myself equally to them

give myself without question 

without doubt

so do not make me choice

<>

when I die

will I go into the light

or merely roll over 

into the comforting dark

Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee – sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet 

November 2020 Recap

Over the month my TOpoet.ca blog following grew to 410! The December WP map show my hits have come from around the world. That the USA tops the list is a sign of election fatigue :-). Bangladesh (একটি উষ্ণ স্বাগত) & Italy (Un caldo benvenuto) are now in the top 10! My Tumblr is at 294. Twitter is at 229 followers.

Picture Perfect: 43 sections, about 66,000 words posted so far with 120,000 approx remaining to be edited then posted. I got a little tripped up in sequence & had to double back, as it were, to get the flow back in order. My rough drafts aren’t all done in chronological sequence so when I started this draft I put the individual drafts in order but messed up a bit. Such is life.

everyone’s a critic

TV viewing: Brave New World & War of the Worlds both came to an end. Brave certainly had the look with, for the men, smart costume design – I could believe those futurist business suits & overcoats; but the women suffered from standard illogical, uncomfortable, super-tight dreck. The plot was a bit of a mess & it’s too bad they based it so loosely on its source material. Final episode was clearly open for a season two (which isn’t going to happen.)

At least the Brave wasn’t saddled with the trite backstory family-turmoil that War of the Worlds drowned in. Again very loosely based on the source material but I am enjoying the diversity of the cast, the diversity of locations. Apparently it has been renewed for a second season which I’ll probably keep an eye out for, despite the disappointing reveal in the last minutes. 

Watched an amazing movie: Madeinusa – Spanish, set in Peru. A stranger is stranded in a small mountain village in the midst of one of their religious festivals. The festival reflects the Latino mash up of their ancient beliefs & Catholicism & is stunning. The ritual cutting of the neckties took my breath away. Exceptional & worth searching out.

November was relatively uneventful. Lockdown reduced my outside social distancing even more. The only ripple was an unexpected flare of psoriases – of which I have no previous experience. One morning a trip to emerg to get a rash looked at- they told me what it wasn’t but did know what it was. Referral to dermatology clinic that I went to the next day. The Dr. there took one look & knew what it was. Whew, I guess. It appears as spots not flakes. Anyone want to rub lotion on my back?

Nothing

nothing tastes as good as 

being thin feels

the first glance of anticipation

the sweetest kisses

all lose flavour

in favour of the cling tight snuggle 

skin shrink-wrapped around 

cheeks hipbones

smooth taut as drum

counting ribs more fun

than pulling the petals off a flower

he loves me   thin

<>

the skinny love 

slips between the sheets

cool and light  sheer as linen

that carves the shape of me

pale in the heavy thick night

I waver 

a glimpse of smoke

reach out to stroke

the breathing body beside me

corpulent sighs of pleasure’s resignation

the ghost of a glance come to roost 

for a few chancing movements

not heavy enough to dent the bed

perfection

<>

the weight of sunlight

makes it hard to walk

even buoyed by the adoring glances

of those who envy 

the soundless touch of these feet

on the mass of the earth

my blessed opportunity

to dust dance on mother earth

to float shadowless under father sky 

leave no carbon footprint

<>

my clothes weigh more than I do

wearing next to nothing

next to nothing

who could ask for more

boniness is next to adoration

now to get rid of these bones

become shapeless formless

<>

oh to be free of the body

the encumbrance of personality 

that is invested in this skin

deep in bone density

to lose the self

become the nothing

that tastes better than thin

Hey! You can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee
sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet

October 2020 Recap

Over the month my TOpoet.ca following blog grew to! The October WP map show my hits have come from 37 countries around the world. That India falls to 2nd place with the USA taking first. Hello Luxembourg! Hola Mexico! I even received some donations via paypal 🙂 My Tumblr is at 300, Twitter at 240 followers.

Plugging away at Picture Picture & am into the 2nd nano year of the original drafts. I made an abrupt jump from where I left off in year one. That first year I got really caught up in my hero’s back story – which was threatening to take over the book at the time – so started year 2 with the reality show investigation of those missing children. Picture Perfect so far: 42 sections, about 65,000 words posted with approx 122,000 left to be edited. 

October hasn’t see any drastic domestic changes except for the spike in covid. Restrictions around that have little impact on my daily life. Not giving out candy on Halloween is a bit of a relief – though I did buy a face mask to wear for the occasion. No candy sales in the hotspots though. I have been enjoying neighbourhood dedication to spooky decorating – Halloween is the one holiday that hasn’t been co-opted by any religion.

Wrapped up the annotated Distant Music, I had planned to just do it for the summer but couldn’t stop in the middle of the book. Went back to the inputs of my 1970 novel Allen Time. POV slips around in a fun way. There is almost no action! Allen thinks a lot though. Considering what to do next with this piece of juvenilia. 

Expanded my zoom life by adding another recovery meeting to the two I already log into. Checked out several before picking the one to add. With zoom one can find a meeting to fit nearly any time of the day, though for some you have to figure out time zones, for others figuring out the format is the challenge. I rarely turn on my camera though. Too many moving figures is distracting. I’m really not interesting in watching 30+ fidgeting people at one time & don’t want to add to that number. I end up minimizing the screen anyway to sound only – uses less bandwidth. 

TV remains our prime source of entertainment. Besides documentaries on Ancient Egypt, the science of the brain I’ve been watching an adaptation of ‘War Of The Worlds.’ Some serious eye-candy has kept watching as the plot is over-wrought emotional confrontations between the people under attack. The robot dog/spiders are excellent. Finished season one of Broadchurch – intense but stretched out. We’ll start season two once we finish Brave New World: another adaptation but it stick a bit closer to the characters & general plot of the novel. It even had real laughs.

Also watched some excellent, if a bit difficult movies. Beau Travail dr Claire Denis – (loosely based on Billy Budd – set in Djbouti; Sleepwalking Land dr. Teresa Prata; Mozambique; Mouchette dr. Robert Bresson: rural France. All visually stunning, brilliantly performed – all addressing the nature of masculinity & growing up. Each with a narrative logic that at times makes you question who is telling the story & all leaving some of the story up to the viewer to tell. Rewarding & worth seeing.

November brings back pieces prompted by the 227 Rules for Monks on Wednesday. Music works fine on Thursdays, the Sunday photo blog has proved to popular enough for me to keep it going. Monday remains free-for-all, but also where I’ll chatter on about objects in my house & of course my covid19 musings. Picture Perfect will continue on Tuesdays.

Crawling Back To Me

nothing is more arousing 

than obedience

someone who says 

‘what can I do 

to bring you pleasure

I will to do what you want’

someone who doesn’t 

hint at other pleasures

till the time is right

who is cheerfully compliant

to my desires

each& every time

eager and ready

obedient and responsive

never complaining 

never holding them selves in check

asking

what more would you like to do

someone who has no complaints

about your shoes

or the way you smell at any time

who has enough of a life

of their own

that there are no recriminations 

when you don’t call everyday

someone who doesn’t need 

constant reassurance that you care

even you don’t care

but merely happy to enjoy 

the happenstance of your company

yes give me obedience over looks

over money 

because no matter how cute they are 

how rich they are

if they aren’t willing

what’s the point

if they have their own demands

the balance shifts

takes away my gratification

then it’s too late

for them to come

crawling back to me

Hey! You can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee
sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet

Summer 2020

My TOpoet.ca following blog is at 360! The June WP map show my hits have come from countries around the world. Canada & US top the list with India & Bangladesh near the top. Monaco in the top 10 is a surprise. My Tumblr is at 280. Twitter is at 226 followers

You’ll be seeing some summer changes in the blog starting this week. Wednesday & Thursday will be looking at my Fiddlehead chapbook: Distant Music. In May I input the text & in June I started exploring those old pieces. Not that I remember what I was thinking at the time but I do recall information – what I was reading, where I was etc. 

To give me a break may stop the Saturday covid posts. Things haven’t change much on that front but I will slot covid updates on Mondays to alternate with the Artist’s Way posts. People have been enjoying my posts & pictures of things in my house so they’ll continue on Mondays as well. Coming to the end of the first section of Picture Perfect. It took three Nano’s in a row to do it so by section I mean the first November. In editing I found several places that needed more writing to account for later events. My nano word count included non-plot elements it is still mounting up to a decent count. 40,000 so farI’ve also loved creating the graphic for each week.

Fridays will continue the crawl through my music collection. It is large enough to take me into to the next decade. It has been good to look at what I have, what I like & what I’ll be letting go of. My need to be a music archive has left me 🙂 Boring is boring regardless of its historic importance. Purge is the word.

Speaking of purging – my covid cleaning frenzy though some of the major hoards have reduced them considerably. I still have the basement to contend with which will be nice with the summer heat already on us. The basement is cool & full of my partner’s old school files for starters. Plus a box or two of magazines I’ve had for too long. eBay here I come.

I do have a limited number of the original Distant Music chapbook for sale for $25.00 each (includes surface mail postage). Send via the paypal above along with where to send it.

paypal.me/TOpoet 

Valley of the May Dolls

Over the month my TOpoet.ca following blog shrank to 350! I went through my followers list & cleared some who had never liked a post or who really didn’t have any real connection such as ‘dog training tips.’ Only one has re-followed me.  The May WP map show my hits have come from around the world. Latvia! Indonesia! 

My Tumblr following  is at 272. Twitter at 225. I know these are all low numbers – some people have thousands of followers but on both I delete or block followers who are harvesting rather than actually following. Picture Perfect is up to 32000 words. 

May has been another month of adjusting to the new reality of masks, sanitizer & social distancing. I’ve reluctantly cut back on my morning walks & have replaced some of them with domestic chores: gardening, cleaning, purging but that will come to an end – the house will be clean enough & I can go back to daily walks. I have been doing social distant walks with some recovery friends so the isolation hasn’t been total. Also seeing a couple of my fwb (who are maintain social isolation themselves) for movies & chit-chat. 

Working through The Artist’s Way slowly but surely. It clearly wasn’t written with a pandemic lockdown in mind 🙂 Some of the issues it addresses take on a different sense of importance (or lack of) as the death toll mounts. But it has encouraged me to reexamine my past.

By reexamine I mean that literally literally – I’ve been reading Old Trout Funnies – a book about a comic book, an acquaintance of mine created while I was living in Sydney. We were drinking buddies. I left before Issue 3. The book puts Trout into a context & explains many of the very localized references. Plus I get name checked a couple of times & I know many of the people who show up as characters in the wild stories. Fascinating & highly recommended.

Also literal has been the inputing of my first novel ‘Allan Time’ which I wrote in the late 60’s, early 70’s. Resisting the temptation to edit has been a challenge, though I have made the paragraphs breaks tidier & improved the spelling. It is an interesting process as my memory of writing it is very limited. One thing is clear though is how closeted I was. 

I’m currently re-reading Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. I have read this book several times over the years. It served as the template for City of Valleys. I love this book. Sure it is soap but it captures real psychology with humour & over-the-top emotionalism. I’ll have to watch the movie again when I’m finished.

a piece I performed at Cryptic Chatter June 2007

Try to Remember

there is a moment when 

what I remember 

what I dream

become fused

is this my childhood moment

falling down gashing my knee

the scar is there

but is the picture of me doing it

how it happened

was it a fall off a swing

was I ever on that swing

on the playground 

or was it some other moment

tipping my bike over the curb

was it an accident on purpose

was I seeking attention

or was I careless

not looking where I was going

did I get pushed or just drop

did I cry

the scar tells me it happened

the mind doesn’t tell me anything

was my mother upset or disappointed

I had come home crying once again

did I cry

was I brave little soldier

was I 10 11 15

did I limp around the house

wanly acting as if 

I was and wasn’t in pain

was the trip stumble and scrape

another of my attempts

to be like other boys

playing ball

acting out tough kid stuff

or was I running away from someone

who wanted to beat me up

was I at the play ground

because there was some boy nearby

who sometimes hung out there

did I like boys then

I seem to think I did

memory doesn’t fill in those gaps

doesn’t give me the connections 

I need to make a net 

that’ll explain today

I see the scar

not a pretty one

not an ugly one either

not like my appendix incision

that looks like 

it was made with a can opener

I sort of recollect that

the pain in school

then the hospital for a week or so

in a ward with four others

they were all men

I was a kid in junior high

I liked boys then

I tried to catch glimpses of cock

as the men walked around in pjs

dressing gowns untied

girl friends dropping in 

 rubbing their backs

I would have done that 

how long was it 

before I went back to school

did have my homework brought to me

all that is gone

all that remains is a dim image

untied bathrobes hairy chests

laughing nurses

the scars aren’t talking

only tells me that it happened

don’t even remember going home from there

like the scar on my knee

doesn’t tell me any more

when will my body forgive

what I’ve forgotten

I do have a limited number of the original Distant Music chapbook for sale for $25.00 each (includes surface mail postage). Send via the paypal above along with where to send it.

paypal.me/TOpoet 

WordPress 2018

Coming to the end of another WordPress year & looking at my stats. I’m amazed at my world wide reach of views. India has jumped to #3 for the number of views! Slovina at #4! USA still heads the list but I’m amazed to see it go from A(merica) to Z(imbabwe). I slip by the firewall into China. even Russia. 

My number of followers has jumped from 217 to 298! WTF. The one stat that WP doesn’t provide is where my followers are from or I’d brag a little about that too. Time for Greenland to represent 🙂

 

Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee on my trip to Cape Breton – sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet 

October 2018 Sneak Peek

Before I look forward here’s some stats for September. My Twitter following is up to 209 – not all of whom are book cover designers or internet marketing specialists. Tumblr is up to 208 – it would be higher but I block the frequent hetero porn sights that follow me – oddly I don’t get that sort of queer porn spam. I’ve been posting daily photo set at Tumblr for the last several weeks & will probably keep it up to the end of October.
I’ve been on WordPress for 7 years now & have built up to 273 followers, after 1425 posts. Chances are good I’ll hit 280 by the end of the year. I hope to wake up one morning to find one of my posts has gone viral.

Coal Dusters is moving along nicely. I’ve been taking my time to edit each new chapter & have been expanding them with more period detail & in one case a more colourful physical description, even creating whole new scenes to add to atmosphere. I’ve blogged approx 48,000 words so far with at least another 67,000 to go.

Coming up in October on the blog Tuesday & Wednesday will be devoted to scary poems. Tuesdays will fresh blood, while Wednesday I’ll discuss last October’s fresh blood poems. Friday I’ll post about my favorite horror writers & how they inspired me. Mondays will remain music, Tuesday Coal Dusters continues.

I’ll be going to Toronto Gratitude’s 40th Anniversary October 5/6/7. I haven’t been to the round up for a couple of years now but considering that I was at the very first one it’s fitting I make an appearance. I’ll be staying at downtown hotel so I can enjoy the event without the stress of transit. I’ll also be taking in my last Stratford show of the season later in the month: Paradise Lost. 

Like my pictures? I post lots on Tumblr

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/topoet 

Mi alcance de todo el mundo

WPFeb

My reach around the world – more precisely my WordPress reach around the world. One of the great features of WP is this Top Views by Country, where I can tell what countries have looked at my posts going right back to when I first started it. That the USA & Canada top the most frequent list comes as no surprise. But that Brazil has claimed the 3rd spot for the last year has been unexpected.

wires

the wired corner

What the stats don’t tell me is who has looked, only where they are from, or perhaps where their server is from? That isn’t totally clear to me nor do I really care. I do wish I knew how some of these readers found the blog in the first place.

But to have so many readers from Spanish/Portuguese speaking areas pleases me: Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Costa Rica. Mexico, Columbia, Chile, Guatemala – hola. Drop me a line – google translate will tell me what you say 🙂

blackfile

the cold case files

What always surprises, almost shocks me, is getting hits from China (with how controlled the Internet is there). Russia is 5th on the list for February – with queer life so suppressed, repressed there I am amazed anyone would take the risk to look at my blog. Places where you can be jailed for writing poetry, let alone having same sex sex. Those brave Africans in Zimbabwe, South Africa – wow!

sky

the unwired sky

To get the map graphic I do a screen picture, trim it down some, cut & paste the info to take up less space. Also edit out the number of hits – where is more important that how many, right. But the darker the colour the more hits from that place. I’d love to see more places the color of Brazil & love to see Brazil as red as Canada.

Maybe when I win the lottery I can line up lunch dates with these total strangers & find out what keeps bringing them back to my postings.

samples

The Scope of Things

Dave got a telescope

for his thirteenth birthday

it needed a tripod to hold it up

if the screws weren’t tight enough

the heavy head would drift down

he showed me how to focus on stars

the faces of the moon

people’s roofs living rooms

to see what they were watching on TV

prying spying was sneaky fun

 

when we looked at the Milky Way

I would hum the Star Trek theme

we made notes of constellations nebulas

when we came to Earth

we had no guides for these creatures

observed from our ufo

as it hovered unseen

peering into their windows

as they shuffled from living room to kitchen

sat on the floor to eat chocolate ice cream

directly from the carton

scratched their private parts

which was about as exciting

as those dull humanoids ever got

never found an open bedroom curtain

or some flash of undressed flesh

 

for my thirteenth birthday

I got a microscope

to prepare me for science in school

Dave and I took turns looking at trapped squiggles

water had uncountable live darters

snot was creepy

our shit swarmed with so many  things

I had to wash and wash afterward

I had to do my sperm

in secret

again

I had to wash and wash afterward

 

we tried the microscope

through the telescope

puzzled by things so far

we couldn’t touch them

so small we couldn’t feel them

wondering where did we fit in

soon1

March 7 – Saturday – attending – 2015 Toronto SpecFic Colloquium – Round Venue, 152A Augusta Ave., Toronto

specfic

http://chiseries.ticketleap.com

March 26 – Thursday 8 pm – Judging – Hot Damn! It’s A Queer Slam – Supermarket – 268 Augusta Ave., Toronto

hot

April 26, 2015 – Sunday – 2-5 – Featuring – The Secret Handshake Gallery – 170 Baldwin Ave., 2nd floor, Toronto.

born

May 7 – Thursday – 8 pm – Judging – Hot Damn! It’s A Queer Slam Season 1 finals – Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander St., Toronto –

hdamnfinal

https://www.facebook.com/events/726986450755918/permalink/726987687422461/

June 5-7 – attending – Capturing Fire – Washington DC

fire

http://www.thedccenter.org/capturingfire/

(2015 registration posted but details not posted yet. I’ve registered already 🙂 )

June 21-26 – attending – Rosemary Aubert’s Workshop: The Novelist’s Selfie – Loyalist – Belleville

loylab

Loyalist Workshop is the real deal

page 23 for details next page down for registration info

https://www.loyalistbanner.com/ceweb/doc/LoyalistSummerArts2015.pdf

June 27, Saturday – 7:00-  Feature: Hot Summer Nights at Hirut, Hirut Restaurant, 2050 Danforth Ave., Toronto

summer15

September 3-6 – attending – Fan Expo

Expo15

http://fanexpocanada.com

October 18, Sunday – feature: Cabaret Noir: Inner Child Sacrifice

noiroc15

 

foggy

foggy wires

Like my pictures? I post lots on Tumblr

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/topoet

thanks