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Tag: Honesty

Very bad, no good, awful poetry : Series 3

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The best part about doing this series of early poetry written by myself as a teen, is that it has garnered exactly zero attention, and thus has gained no traction online, so while I have the catharsis of sharing it, I know deep down it will remain just as hidden to the outside world as it would had I left it untouched in my note book, on the shelf in my office, where it has sat since late 2009. Oh the unbridled joy of on line anonymity. Plus I’m a straight, white male, so not a whole lot of flack comes at me, unless I were to go out of my way to be a huge asshole. And I save that sort of thing for snide remarks at a movies expense while at the theater. So Boo.

If you’re just joining us now, or me, now, a few things you’ll come to understand. I’m not a professional writer, though at one point in my formative years I had ambitions for becoming a comic book creator / writer. I did give serious thought to Journalism school at Sheridan College, but did art instead. Probably money well spent given the caliber of the work if you look across the length and breadth of my old written pieces. Yikes. So feel free to curl up and have a good chuckle at my expense. From what I’m seeing as I revisit these old works, is they aren’t terribly offensive, except in that they are just awful. Low grade, faux depth, pretentious gobbledegook. Another three hot, steaming turds for your viewing delight.

1.) The sky at night Circa 1999

A lone ball of flame. Gas from an unknown region. Source of light in an uncaring life. A wonder. All ablaze, separated by nothingness and the cold distance between us. I can see you there, hovering, seemingly still, yet you twinkle. Do I dare dream on you tonight, what a wish, what wish, my wish, my right.

What I think is going on here, is like a version of wish upon a star, but kind of mopey and murky. I don’t think I had started to work nights yet, as a high schooler. I did work one semester for a place called Norkim Distributions in Brampton, a job I got because of a former girlfriends parents. I was lucky enough that they drove me to work and picked me up for the 90% of the time I worked there for a semester out of high school. I remember not being able to talk to anyone for most of the day, then as I got home, tired, I’d just natter away until I made my parents angry and they told me to just shut up. I get it now. I’m not a big fan on inane nattering. It was more as a way of dealing with being virtually silent the whole day, and feeling like I might explode if I didn’t just get a days worth of talking out once I got home. It definitely felt solitary. Doesn’t make the poetry any better though now does it. And they say that pain and sorrow create great art, no!, Talent, talent creates great art. Not merely being a morose mother fucker.

2.) Gripe : Twice daily Circa 1999

Whatever I mean, whatever I’ve said, it won’t matter much if I can’t get out of bed. Whoever I am, whomsoever I was, it doesn’t mean anything, and it didn’t mean much. Wherever I was, wherever I go, I won’t do anything, if I go it alone. With, without, what can I say.

Some of these I remember writing, even if vaguely. But this one eludes me, almost completely. I think I am really absorbing a lot of Temple of the Dog at this point, and trying to skirt the notion of completely ripping of Chris Cornell and the Mother Love Bone guys. It doesn’t flow together at all. The rhythm is off, and it sort of just fades away. Like I was trying to be prophetic, and found pathetic instead. On a second reading I guess, I wanted to be told I had something to say, but there really is no “there” there. It’s just pure, unadulterated cheese, “Fromage” for the old school Much Music Ed the Sock crowd.

3.) The fix is in Circa 2000

Sure, I still feel miserable three months down that road. A long hard journey through the vast unknown. But what’s to worry, because when I’m dead and gone, all those years from then, what will it matter, if I was a little mixed up inside my head. Time off, time alone, time apart. It’s all a healing process taken for a broken heart.

Whoo, that ones a bit of a floater. But I will say this, it follows a through line, and doesn’t get too heady. No major calling cards of a bloated sense of writing skill. Fairly layman in execution. No changing places with the man in the mirror. A break up poem if ever I wrote one. That’s it for this installment of terrible, awful poetry. If this does anything at all for you, feel free to post any of your own, miserable teen angst prone writing. Be free of your poor choice of prose! let the wicked underbelly of flatulent poetry free. Blast it into the ether! Fill the void with your own stinky mass of blind ambition.

More Of That Terrible Poetry : Series 2

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Back faster than I initially imagined. I had a good talk with a friend, and we thought it was a good idea to revisit the terrible mush that we all produced as angsty teens. It’s all in good fun, and a hearty laugh at my own terrible ambitions to be a comic book creator/writer. Plus some of this tripe is absolute dog shit, so I need to loosen up and let the pretentious blatherings of my youth out into the great wide open for mockery. Can’t always post your best self. I also recollect that some of these were to be song lyrics, given how I have them laid out in my note book. But I’m not really able to replicate that here, so they instead read as longer form sentences, rather than curt sentence chunks. Anyway, on wards and upwards.

Grab a drink, and a warm blanket and get ready to retch:

1.) Thirst Circa 1995

I’m so thirsty that if i drink in your love I just might drown. Pulled down into the icy bleakness of your heart, so cold it fills up my head. Breathless voices, dance at the edge of my vision, like heavenly bodies glimpsed in the inky night sky. I’m just so thirsty. I want to drown in it. I want to breath it all in, cold choking my lungs. Pulled to the center of the void, where I’ll find you. I’m so thirsty, I’ll lay myself down. I want the darkness to expand into my everything, explore the corners of nothingness that I have never seen before. You’ve leached into my every pore, weighing me down, thirsting for my touch. To you, thirst is life, now I’m soaking wet and the waters all around me, pulling me down.

This one is a tad more cohesive, but still not exactly stellar. But I think I was trying to get over a breakup at this point, if my memory of the time is right, or maybe not. I thought the first big break up was around or some where near 1998. Not sure, could have been the medication I was on making me feel a bit, tweaked. On the bright side, it all seems to work as far as using drowning as a metaphor. Also that it feels like some one else’s personal darkness was having both an inward and outward effect on me. I will state, clearly, that in 1995 “Thirsty” did not mean horny, sexually affected, or have any kind of romantic connotations.

2.) You can’t call home? Circa 1995

Times a wasting, I’m heading home, late for dinner and I didn’t phone. Can’t call now, eleven’s long gone. I’ll say ciao and be home before long. Light of dawn is breaking, chills of the night, suns coming up as I run, temperature rising and I’m just too tired to fight. Last night was a blur, but now that I’m home I’m sure I’ll never go out again, not while I’m so immature.

A quick little ditty about how I usually ended up getting grounded in my teens. Staying out far too late, and not calling. But in my defense, we weren’t drinking, or smoking or doing drugs, and at that age I sure as hell wasn’t having sex. So being tardy (late) and not bothering to call home, was sort of my jam as a teen. Disrespectful, sure, but odds are we were playing our instruments, jamming and having Street fighter tournaments with Zero chance any girls were present, unless one friend or another had a younger sister.

I’m not sure why, but there is a significant time jump in my notes, as though I didn’t write anything down here between the tail end of 1994 and some time in 1998. Maybe the notebook got misplaced or packed away during a move or a bedroom remodel.

3.) When death had eyes Circa 1998

Stand back and watch the parade of clowns walk by. Teary eyed and wavy haired, marching single file in despair. For a candle has gone out and we’ve laid you down to rest. High above the clouds, the empty earth your bed, you will rest for eternity. When we call, if we call at all, I’ll name you – beautiful. You cannot turn back the hands of time, for they’ve been set, not to be touched – cold. The flame has flickered out, and we had to put you down to rest. With you, our hearts got buried in the ground. Sending up your soul, so high, drifting on the sound of our lonely weeping. A string of silly shoes, marching in single file, sad eyed clowns, calling out your name, songs for the void on their lips.

I can’t honestly tell if I wrote this after the passing of a family friend, of if I had just gotten into Temple of the Dog, and was trying to be deep, where I have no depth to speak of. At least by eighteen. Nothing much of anything had happened. I have such a bad memory, I can’t tell if a grand parent had died that year, or what. Certainly had a thing for death or dying. Makes all those “wish I were dead” memes you see on Imgur make far more sense, in context of having been a moody teen myself. Here I was thinking I was actually a pretty chipper fellow. I’ll have to ask some childhood friends what their honest opinion of me at the time was. I distinctly remember my favourite pass time being adding dirty lyrics to songs on the radio, as they came on, like an impromptu improve session with friends when driving anywhere.

Either way, this was series two of terrible, bad, awful poetry from my youth.

Living with Crohn’s. [warning: GRAPHIC CONTENT]

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This has been an entry I have meant to write since I purchased this blog space on WordPress, but I haven’t really managed to put what I want to say down in words as of yet. I came by Crohn’s Disease honestly (not sure there are other methods other than sudden trauma, sickness or stress, and in my case genetics). So why now, well I was fully diagnosed in 2005 after I graduated from University (I had all ready graduated from a 1 year college program at this point with some interesting developments in my illness & symptoms). Up until now, that had been the last year of a major flare up and a follow up colonoscopy. I haven’t had a flare up, but since it has been 8 years, and a new gastro Dr, and some changing symptoms we felt it best to have a poke round.

Part of why I am writing is that as a thirteen year old tween, I felt pretty different, and uncomfortable, and had some unpleasant bouts of depression, and low-ish self esteem. But Crohn’s isn’t a reason to give up on everything you enjoyed before being affected by it. Mind you, while I had a nasty and confusing case, I haven’t needed a Brookes ileostomy, or a colostomy bag (so I count myself as lucky). I do have a very ulcerated bowel, a mess of a Duodenum and ileum. The next step up in prescription medication are the Biologics, and that’s about $25,000 a year. So yes even with the pain, and blood and threat of a stress induced flare up I count myself lucky.

You can go to school, play sports (I wrestled and played soccer in between flare-ups in high school, and played Rugby and rowed a little bit in university) I also sang, danced and played trombone from grades school through until university. All in all, over my high school career I didn’t miss that much time to illness, although my roughest patch from what I recall was about 1-2 months off school. I had good enough grades prior to, and was doing homework issued to me by some understanding teachers, that I was able to pass on to the next school year uninterrupted. Yes there were a lot of sucky, sad, depressing weeks and months interspersed in there, but it gets better with age, and as you build character and gain a better perspective on what really is important. As shitty as I felt, I didn’t have cancer, and more likely than not this wasn’t going to outright kill me. Even when it felt like it was. So chin up. Find a hobby you can do sick or healthy. Drawing, painting, singing, playing a small to mid size instrument. These things will keep you in a happy place when everything else goes to pot.

I was about 13 years old when I had my first bout. I had been really ill over the Christmas Holidays (as was the usual case for me when vast quantities of food was available) I think I had a crazy flu, that led to some nasty night sweats and hallucinated dreams, and general unpleasantness. A few months later while on a school graduation trip (Grade 8 Wonderland trip). I ate some questionable items from a snack bar and then spent about 5 hours in the mountain toilet feeling like a balloon was inflating and then constricting in my bowels. By far not the worst bout I’d had, but for a first introduction it was enough. Then the big symptoms sort of went away, and I spent a great amount of time feeling bloated and uncomfortable after every time I ate (anything, could be fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, sugar, starch, water, rice etc etc…) all of it left me sore and in some sort of gastric distress. By the time I was sixteen, and in high school, I was going to the toilet about 16 – 20 times a day (Gas, mucous, and lots of abdominal pain). I had a few odd moments of throwing up in my principals car one time when he was the only one available to drive me to my Dr’s office. (Did I mention that at that time I lived in rural Ontario (Erin. Pronounced Air-in to those who weren’t born there, and Ear-in to those who were). Any way, I had a fair few occasions where I had to rush to one Doctor or another for a shot of Demoral or whatever in my hip/butt.

I was put on Diecetel, and had a stash of some other prescription that dissolved on the tongue and numbed everything from my mouth to my anus. (Levsin I believe) or some such like that. I had a few colonoscopy’s and gastro-oscopy’s (4-6) of them between 15 -18 years of age, and they all turned up inconclusive. Seems my body does a good job at camouflaging any internal damage. Later I would also find out that the effects of Crohn’s on your innards is very similar to that of Celiac Disease. Although with drastically different methods of control and containment.

There is about 20 years of stuff I can tell you. Gory details, and graphic explanations of things that happen to your body. Take vitamins early on, and although you may vomit an awful lot, protect your teeth with as much vim and vigor as you can muster. Hair grows back, and looks a whole lot nicer after a lengthy flare up, but your teeth & bones not so much. In between flare ups you should really try to maintain a work out regimen. Stay positive, and stay healthy.

Anyway, with a scope to under go tomorrow, I just thought I would take some time and put some thoughts down on paper, such as it is. I’ll have more to say on this at a later date.

Cheers! -M