Possessions

                  My Copper Lamp

My father’s parents were first cousins.

What’s your excuse?

One of the other aspects

of this close family relationship

is that, as far as I know,

my great-grandparents,

and probably some of their parents and grandparents,

were all coppersmiths.

What this means in practical terms

is that I have a lamp about a metre off my left elbow,

as I key this onto the screen,

the base of which is a large copper pitcher

that one of my ancestors

made some time in the 1840s.

Don’t make me an offer on it.

              Sartorial Elegance

The shirt that I was wearing

as I composed this was frayed

at the collar and cuffs in such a way

as to seem tipped with a darker-coloured fibre.

My trousers,

the most recent ones that I’d acquired,

had worn holes down near their cuffs.

My black cord waistcoat,

which must’ve been about twenty years old,

had just a few loose threads

and some slightly off-coloured splotches

where I’d repaired a bleach stain

with black vivid marker.

As far as anything I’d actually wear goes,

these were my A threads,

the reality of the situation being

that I really don’t need nice clothes.

                        Cycling

I am, of course, favourably disposed

toward bicycles and cycling, in the abstract,

for all the usual reasons,

but because my cycling skills were so limited

and the traffic in Hamilton was so unforgiving,

I sold my bicycle at a Green Party garage sale

after a terrifying experience on the Cobham Bridge in 2002.

It’s not that I was afraid of dying –

fear of death is for fools of a different sort than I am –

but I had no desire to spend the final decades of my life

dependent on a wheelchair, a drool cup,

and the care of people who only care

because they’re paid to do so.

          Return to Weights

I used to be a gym junkie

until not all that many years ago.

Then, when I began to make

a sustained effort

to shift my being

into neutral,

I ceased all exercise

except long daily walks.

I don’t know why,

but one day

toward the end of the summer

I started doing exercises

with my five kg hand weights

whilst waiting for my

ten-year-old slow-mo computer

to respond to simple commands

when, all too often,

it’d become confused.

The benefits

were noticeable and immediate.

I slept better.

My digestion improved.

My neurodermatitis quieted.

My muscles felt good.

Within a day or two

I was, whilst nearing sixty-seven,

an endorphin addict

again.

    At Least Some Compensation

On a Wednesday morning

I took my first shower

with the new showerhead I’d just bought

and it was a noticeable improvement

on the crucial five minutes or so

I spend daily under flowing hot water.

At other times that morning, though,

I came up against several triggers

– of emotional flashbacks flowing all over me

more than visual memories –

forcing me to relive moments

when others joyously tormented me,

or when I consequently failed to experience

pleasures that seemed within my grasp.

I don’t think these experiences ended up

balancing each other out,

though.

  Real Deal Auction

An auction

of antique

or otherwise collectable

ceramic pieces:

watch

the faces of the people

there to bid.

All so different,

and yet …

faces of people

of a kind I don’t understand

or even want to know,

as they prepare

to spend middling

(I suppose – it’s relative)

yet absurd

amounts of money

in order to possess

– not use –

objects.

                     Fan Dreams

It was late October.

I awakened before midnight

covered with sweat,

my metabolic thermoregulation shot to hell,

a hideously demonic horror dominating my mind.

I thought, “Oh, hell – just something else I’ll have to endure,”

but an hour or so later I decided

to provide myself with some relief,

so I got up, switched on the light, plugged in the fan,

and turned it on for the first time that season.

For the next four or five hours

I enjoyed steady, therapeutic REM sleep –

interrupted only by a couple of trips to the loo –

characterised by constantly segueing absurdist dreams

that I knew were just dreams as I dreamt them,

enabling me to enjoy the show without stress,

knowing that their events

would have no consequences

and that they imparted no meaning at all.

In addition to cooling me down

and stabilising my body temperature,

it seems to me that the fan’s white noise

had helped me regain my dream worlds

each time I returned to bed,

and then to keep them going.

                               Shabby

I have a word collection

that I’ve obtained from memory,

reading books,

the documents I’ve edited,

and playing hangman at the free dictionary website that I use.

I usually post one of them on facebook daily,

and have been doing so for years.

I have that many of them.

Some time back I noticed the condition

of the garments I was wearing and posted:

“shabby, adj. 1. Threadbare or dilapidated in appearance.

2. Wearing threadbare or dirty clothing; seedy.

3. Despicable; mean [a shabby trick].

4. Ungenerous; unjust; unfair [shabby treatment].

5. Of mediocre or substandard quality [a shabby performance]”

… along with a selfie I took

and a comment that numbers one and two applied to me –

and maybe sometimes number five –

but I flattered myself that numbers three and four did not

at all.

Somebody else commented that I shouldn’t put myself down.

I wondered what that had to do with it.

                         My Brown Hat

I bought it in August 1972,

just before I left LA.

I don’t remember how much I paid for it.

It’s a brown felt fedora.

I got it because it looked

like something a detective or a reporter would’ve worn

in a black-and-white movie.

I was wearing it when I checked in with the Norm Crosby show

at the Sheraton Biloxi,

and the woman at the desk

said, “Mmm-mmm-mmm,”

or so she later told me,

and within months she was my first wife.

When the tour company I worked for,

called Star Attractions,

went belly-up

with me in a hotel room

in suburban Atlanta

that they couldn’t pay for –

making it advisable for me to

cash my worthless paycheck at the desk

and split quickly –

in my haste I left my brown fedora behind.

Two and a half years later,

my fellow roadie on that tour

returned my hat to me in San Antonio.

I didn’t wear it a whole hell of a lot,

more sort of on-and-off and sometimes,

except during times when I had long hair,

for about three decades there,

but I wear it often now,

even though it has a hole at the point of the crown

and another that seems to be growing

on the front part of the brim.

It’s not just sentimentality.

The brim wears a white splotch as well –

a reminder of how fortunate we all are

that cows can’t fly.