One of the sure signs of spring in Toronto is the appearance of toasters!
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Toasty Toronto Spring
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Tag: toaster
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Talking About My Girls
Night & Day is a stand-alone compilation of Cole Porter songs performed by an array of jazz icons such as Shirley Horn, Billie Holiday & Fred Astaire. Each song is a classic & this a good introduction to the stylists & to Cole Porter.
Next on the shelf is a fun, wonderful, sometimes heart breaking, mp3 collection by various female pop singers who reflect, in sometimes dismaying ways, the roles that women were expected to play both in reality & in the music industry. Filed under Sandy Posey – with a hits collection including her songs Born A Woman & Single Girl (both by Martha Sharp). Both delivered with a combination of harrowing fragility & fuck you self-realizations. Not quite angry enough to become feminist anthems.
Skeeter Davis: Here’s The Answer: cover versions of hit singles by country artists and answer songs to the hits. ie Last Date & her response: My Last Date (With You). More country than Sandy & perhaps even more compliant with the gal’s cultural role.
Of course women suffered at different levels & some like, Leslie Gore made it clear she wasn’t going to take it with doing like You Don’t Own Me. I have her Golden Hits, knowing she eventually came out casts an interesting light on her teen angst & willingness to make Judy cry. ‘why is she wearing his ring when she could be wearing mine’
Another 60s icon is Connie Francis. I have her My Happiness collection & it’s clear her happiness is a man who treats her well. Her voice is emotionally laden with neediness & the arrangements are perfectly overwrought.
Somewhat different is Petula Clark. On her Greatest Hits she has a more sophisticated lightness about life, men & taking the subway. She knows a place were there’s more than men to fulfill her sense of self.
Remember Mary Wells? She cut tracks with Marvin Gaye that appear on the Motown collection Early Classics. Her My Guy is another of those songs pledging her heart to the perfect man who makes her life complete. She set the musical template for the Supremes – in fact she left Motown because profits from her recordings were being used to promote The Supremes & not her. Her life would make an excellent bio movie.
When Dionne Warwick sings Only Love Can Break A Heart, on her album of the same title, you know she knows the role of a woman – to be disappointed in the search for true love. Great melodramatic songs about that search on her way to San Jose.
Can’t get enough of girl groups? Then try the compilation Ultimate Girl Groups: 26 tracks including: Passionettes, The Gems; with endless, sometimes funky, songs about unfaithful men by an array of excellent almost-made-it girl groups modelled after The Supremes.
Also in this mp3 collection is the expanded Hairspray (original film) soundtrack. Classic early 60’s dance music with tracks by Chubby Checker & too many others to list. An excellent movie worth seeing for the music & for Divine Vs Debby Harry. Finally, to round out the collection, Joan Morris: Vaudeville: Songs of the Great Ladies of the Musical Stage. This puts the suffering ladies of the 60’s, 70’s, into a historical context starting with a delightful ‘I Don’t Care’ but really know she does.
Holy Toaster
Holy Toaster
you saw the face of christ
in a piece of toast
yet you don’t own a toaster
<>
you can’t even boil water
you have enough trouble
opening a granola bar
<>
you aren’t the first
to have seen the face of christ
where it doesn’t belong
<>
why was it only the face
was the piece of bread
too small to hold his entire body
<>
was the holy toaster
limited by propriety
to specific body parts
<>
was it the result of
ancient aliens
who after they built the pyramids
<>
designed a toaster
specifically to replicated
the face of christ in toast
<>
a pleasant enough face
that seems rather caucasian
for an ancient alien
This is a fun, almost silly, piece ripped from the headlines – based on a true incident! You can now buy a toaster that will singe the face of christ, or the virgin mary, or even the name of your diner into every piece of toast. Apparitions of icons have now become kitsch icons. This hasn’t stopped stories of these sacred faces appearing in unexpected places & those places, for a time, becoming shrines.
It was a simple leap from the sacred toast to aliens. I’ve seen a few TV documentaries that prove, by reinterpreting ancient texts, cave drawings, hieroglyphics, that we were visited by advanced civilizations. Yes, there is one in which Jesus was a spaceman. In the typical modernist mind if we can’t do it, clearly those backward civilizations in Egypt or Peru clearly lacked the ability to build pyramids, construct stone cities in the Andes. Aliens with levitation devices did it.
The people who testify to the veracity of their insights are so invested in their truth logic doesn’t sway them. I sometimes think they are trying to convince themselves a much as anyone else. History is rarely objective – it is seen through the filter of the times of the seer. Like that face in the toast – why is it not, say, Czar Nicolas of Russia? or John Lennon? Much like our Santa Clause, the face of christ we see is one invented for commercial purposes to appeal to the middle-class Caucasian market.
I guess those advanced civilizations have decided we aren’t worth re-visiting, or perhaps they are still here disguised as toasters 🙂
Upper Reaches
Time to continue the tour of my house as we move upstairs to bed & bath. The bathroom has remained one of the least ‘decorated’ rooms the house – too, much moisture for one thing. There are shelves of towels, body wash, shaving stuff so the room is cluttered enough as it is.
This stained-glass star is in the bathroom window. Handmade by my partner before we met it is one of the oldest object d’art that isn’t shop bought. He made couple of such pieces at a workshop he took one summer. We did have remains of this stained glass supplies for decades & I got rid of them in my covid cleaning frenzy.
I won this sunset (or is it sunrise) train track photo in a GenX Bears fund-raising raffle in the early 2000’s. I think they were raising money for their Pride Parade float. A friend was a member of the group. It was, as I recall, a ‘blind’ raffle, in which I knew the range of prizes but they were assigned randomly. I was happy to get this & it was perfect for over the toilet – I can gaze down the endless track of life as I pizza my life away 🙂
Across the hall is my bedroom which is relatively uncluttered – unless you count the dressers, racks of cds, book case, shelves of frequently used clothes as clutter 🙂 This wonderful Tarzan poster what a birthday gift from my fans at Cabaret Noir. I have seen the film – Acquanetta fulfills hetero teen boy exotica fantasy, while Weissmuller & Sheffield fuelled many a confused lad’s sexuality as, like me, we wondered how they kept their junk hidden under those loincloths while swinging through the jungle.
While I’m going about exotica fantasy – these jungle ‘epics’ were where many saw an abundance of hairless male flesh in our formative years. In particular, when I’ve seen some of these recently, as well some set in the jungle serials – I am delighted by the abundance of bare chested native guides, bearers & tribal kings. I wonder if any historian of black performers in movies has looked at this pool of performers.
This Japanese noren was a gift from a Japanese friend. It is a door hanging, about half-a-door in length, split down the middle. The samurai protects my room from negative energy 🙂 While the celebrants usher in good vibes. The leaf leads to my Peace Lily.
On the wall, by the door, is this marvellous piece of religious kitch. A print I bought framed at an antique store, not longer there, near Queen & Broadview. It was love at first sight. Early 1900’s. This was a very popular subject – there are dozens of variations of the trouble soul clinging to the rugged cross in the storms of life. I love the face of Christ at the top of the cross – almost like seeing him in a piece of toast.
You Never Know Where He’ll Pop Up Next
<>
you saw the face of Christ
in a piece of toast
yet you don’t own a toaster
you can’t even boil water
you have enough trouble
opening a granola bar
<>
why was it only the face
was the slice of bread
too small
to hold His entire body
was the holy toaster
limited to specific body parts
<>
was it the result of
ancient aliens
who after they built the pyramids
designed a toaster
specifically to replicated
the face of Christ in toast
a face that seems rather caucasian
for an ancient alien
<>
beside you aren’t the first
to have seen the face of Christ
where it doesn’t belong
– sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
Time Waits for No Mask
Sept 2020 Recap
Time flies when you are having a good time, but it also flies in a time of turmoil. Recently a friend wondered where the summer went, he couldn’t really recall spring either. He was one of the lucky ones those job allowed for work from home so he isn’t fully idle during the lockdown as it becomes less a lockdown & more a social distance challenge.
I told him that as one gets older time seems to move quicker plus in a time of crisis it moves even faster. One of things I learned when I was involved in palliative care in the early days of HIV is that one loses awareness of the ‘stress’ – I think the same thing is true of the covid19 crisis. The stress becomes normalized but the threat hasn’t gone away. With both the fluctuations of numbers, restrictions & the civil war news from the USA one loses track of the passage of time. Thus time moves faster.
At the start of the lockdown I joking told a couple of friends ‘see you in September’ – they thought I was being overly pessimistic, little did we realize then that I should been saying ‘see you in September 2021.’ We have learned more about covid & its transmission since the first of the year but the threat still exists.
September has been a month of living in this new reality. Masks are fashion accessories. Social distancing is an acceptable excuse for avoid people you don’t want to see anyway 🙂 Masks as seen as infringements of personal rights by the same people who berated gay men for not wearing condoms. I use both but masks are much easier to get on & off 🙂
Blogging less has been productive as I have been writing more. October will see some of that new work with a fresh set of spooky poems to show up on Fridays. I’m still working through the annotated Distant Music. One of the books I read in September was Allen Ginsburg’s look back at Howl in which he discusses inspirations, explains his intent, names & context – which is pretty much what I’ve doing with Distant Music.
Time for stats 🙂 Over the month my TOpoet.ca following blog grew to 385! The WP map show my hits have come from 31 countries around the world. That India still tops the list is interest but Portugal & China are now in the top 10. Venezuela! America Samoa!
My Tumblr is at 292 – it would be higher but I block buxom babes & guys who slam drugs, not poetry. Twitter is at 226 followers it would be higher but I block buxom babes, editorial services & mavens eager to show me how to make big bucks on the internet. Picture Perfect: 37 sections, about 58,000 words posted so far with 130,000 approx to be edited then posted.
Fog Tarantella
<>
for too many years
I was in a tree top
shouting out for love
I didn’t care where it came from
the louder I shouted the less I heard
the higher I climbed
the further I got away from it
yet I didn’t think of climbing down
I wanted the love that was in the air
not the common stuff of the earth
not knowing then
that was where love grew from
<>
one morning during a snow storm
the first after a long hot autumn
of yelling myself hoarse
give me love I want love
blood flecks dappling the leaves
the snow at first a few darting specks
then a steady scrim hush
to cool my eyes
flakes on my fevered tongue
letting the sky satisfy
as best it could
but the sky doesn’t love back
except with echoes
<>
while the snow cloaked me
my own limbs mantled like branches
a peacock
clumsily descended
a bird that at a distance has stunning beauty
but this close it was motley
squawking as it settled by me
our eyes met
his tail opened
the breathtaking fan of feathers
stopped my shouting
I reached out to touch
fell
earth bound by beauty
at the foot of the tree
<>
a mist arose around me
through the winter fog
came men dancing
their arms around wisps of white
the imagined bodies of lovers
caressing the backs
touching the hair
making it as real as they could
kissing empty haze
could I join them
should I
was this all I could expect on earth
or would I be bold enough
to allow one of these dancing men
to dance with me
before I climbed a tree
lost in the fog
sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
Voyeur’s Picnic
Working through the 227 Rules For Monks.
Who knew the simple life could be so complex.
Voyeur’s Picnic
I only close the blinds
to sun
to too much light
never to the eyes of others
we’re on the 2nd story of my house
you can’t see in from the ground
from across street
not even from the 2nd story
of the house across the street
<>
they can’t see us
naked
on the bed
not that I’ve tried to look
into my house from their vantage point
but I certainly can see nothing
when I look across to theirs
besides
there is no one in their houses
I’d care to glimpse
taking off clothes
making out
<>
so I only close the blinds
to sun
I keep them open most of the time
if they can see in
they to be working at it
I’m rarely that close to the window
if they are working at it
they are welcome to see me
dry my ass after a shower
Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees – thanks? paypal.me/TOpoet
You Never Know Where He’ll Pop Up Next
You Never Know Where He’ll Pop Up Next
you saw the face of Christ
in a piece of toast
yet you don’t own a toaster
you can’t even boil water
you have enough trouble
opening a granola bar
why was it only the face
was the slice of bread
too small
to hold His entire body
was the holy toaster
limited to specific body parts
was it the result of
ancient aliens
who after they built the pyramids
designed a toaster
specifically to replicated
the face of Christ in toast
a face that seems rather caucasian
for an ancient alien
beside you aren’t the first
to have seen the face of Christ
where it doesn’t belong
Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee at Capturing Fire 2020- sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
TOpoet 