and there stands this crumbling statue
framed by the doorway to our loft
such solid stone
so cracked and broken

oh god, babe

and I just sit you down on the couch
and I turn on the hockey game /
turn on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ / turn on ‘The Bachelor’ /and we eat take-out / watch movies / upload photos / upload music / read Wikipedia / read celebrity blogs / quit smoking / get drunk on Friday afternoon / resume smoking / fight about rent / think about moving / take a nap / watch Dr. Phil / feel better about ourselves / go to a bar / go to a club / go to a strip club / feel naughty / buy new lingerie / fall asleep / wake up / get stuck in traffic / read women’s magazines / go on a diet / buy cases of VitaWater / go to Home Depot / renovate our kitchen / fuck in the kitchen / watch YouTube videos / go to the mall / eat at Harvey’s / buy more records / take up yoga / do a cleanse / get drunker than ever / fuck in the kitchen on the new granite counter tops while watching ‘The Bachelor’/ sit in the den / watch the game / smoke some pot. / fall asleep / upload photos of all of it to Facebook

once in a while
maybe every other July
we go up north
rent a little boat

we float on thick black water at dawn
breath in this minty evergreen wind

and you tell me
you always wanted to be a fisherman

The tired elderly book must now attempt to exist alongside flashier and more youthful forms of entertainment (how many among us even consider a book a form of entertainment?) such as, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, DVDs, TV, and the latest gadget, ‘Kindle’ (a handheld device on which you can download and read books).
But before we rent out a church basement and hold an egg–salad-sandwiches-with-no-crusts sort of funeral for our fading friend, let’s look at a more joyful event: the birth of the book!

After Gutenberg developed the first printing press in the early 16th century, it wasn’t long before the modern book was developed. Innovations like pagination, punctuation, paragraphing and indexing soon made up a standard format and this, in combination, with translation (ie. the bible could now be read in common languages instead of exclusively in Latin) lead to the widespread diffusion and distribution of information.

It is easy to argue that the birth of the book was also the birth of the information age. Books meant that information was on the loose and available! In the 150 years following the introduction of the book, the number of schools in England rose from 34 to 444, in an attempt to direct and control all this wild info. Suddenly people could acquire information themselves and could make their own decisions, without the ‘help’ of community authorities.

So if that sly old book actually spawned the information age, could this modern information age (you know, the one birthed by computers) really take aim at killing the book?

My guess is: no way! Books, in their infinite ingenuity, may change and evolve but they will live. Books will exist online, expertly embedded with active links to other relevant texts (how convenient!), they will exist as little Kindle files and fragments, and they will exist on books.google.com!

But most importantly, they will exist as they always have, as a tactile consumer items that we can buy at a store, hold in our hand, and display in our home. Technological advancement has yet to hinder our rampant materialism!
So long live the book! ☺

she opens the tiny window
Toronto cold comes quick and fresh
a sharp intake of breath
the snap and shake
of a clean white sheet

they huddle together
smooth mattress of ice
warm tangle of skin
they are refugees camping in caves of cloth
and winter will surrender to them

if he so wanted
he could read the crumpled take-out menus to her
for his voice is the safest darkness
a warm towel on the forehead
a heavy hand on the belly

there are words that chink
like cups and saucers

strings of sounds
that crackle like sparklers

a pop and a hisssss

a low rumble
(marbles on hardwood)

the rustle and fade of sentences

papers on a desk

scrappy leaves on frozen asphalt

the crack and suck of the refrigerator door

sometimes
the thin red wail of a siren
snakes round their heads
crosses words off his lips
a teacher’s marking pen– making tidy omissions

these blank spots
stuffed with the sounds of the street
poke holes in the prose
and pull it apart

but she makes meaning
from the missing bits
then falls asleep
to this lullaby of lost words

to this poetry of the city

baby?

You were asleep.

Did you not realize?

You were dreaming.

You dreamed that it was a dry peach morning in early October. You woke up on the couch (we’ll call it the bed) in your tiny basement apartment and the first thing you saw was the mass of dishes in the sink directly across from your bed-couch. This meant that the itchy image of a rodent was the first thing to enter your heavy head.
I am going to get rats. That’s what you thought.

But you didn’t get up to do the dishes. You scrunched your eyes closed, defiantly rolled around and smacked your face into the couch cushions. You breathed in the dusty scent of tweed and tried to think about not rats.

Pointless. The smell of the dishes is thick and mustardy and it fills the room. Without opening your eyes you stuff your hand under a pillow and feel around for your cell phone. You wrap your fingers around the cool silky plastic, but then a pang of anxiety bolts through your barely awake body. You pull out the phone, flip it open and scroll through your list of contacts. You want to make a call, but you don’t want to phone anyone that will pick up and answer. You see the number for the health clinic. You know it doesn’t open ‘til nineish. Call. You listen as the phone rings once, twice, three times. The answering machine picks up. “Hello, you’ve reached the Toronto Community…” You close your cell with a quick click and smile. Your phone hasn’t been disconnected yet. You have at least one more day before Rogers cuts you off from the world.

Within the next hour you are up and walking to school. Clean white wind nips at your flushed cheeks, which are still warm from your pillow, from sleep. You go to class and you sit with some people that you recognize as friends from Facebook, but you’re not totally certain of anyone’s name, so you don’t say too much. The professor’s words make you feel dazed and sleepy, and you wonder how you can be tired when all you do is sleep. (Last night you got almost 13 hours). You get your essay topics and the one that you choose is pretty cool. You feel excited about it and think about maybe doing some of the research this afternoon. Somehow you know that this will not happen, and that, despite your interest in the topic, you will end up relying on Wikipedia and feverishly writing the paper the night before it is due.

After class you think about heading home, but it’s only 1 pm, and you don’t have anything to do for the rest of the day, and you don’t really want to spend the next 11-12 hours sitting in your apartment. (You don’t have cable). You decide to stay on campus so that you won’t have to feel so all alone. You go to the university library and take the elevator up to the sixth floor, a floor that has five private computer desks that no one really seems to know about, or at least nobody uses. You step off the elevator, round the corner, and sure enough, there’s not a single person at the desks. You take the desk on the far end, in case some other clever student shows up later, and you sit down, put your feet up on the desk, and let your chin fall to your chest. You close your eyes. You like to sit here all by yourself, surrounded by the movement of campus, it makes you feel, at best, sort of productive, and at least, calm.

You think about one hot night in mid-July when you and your brother sat up on the rooftop smoking cigars and waiting for a thunderstorm to break. The night air was dark and heavy and wild. The shingles beneath your bare feet were still warm with the heat of the day’s sun and the air was smelled of sweet vanilla smoke and muddy rain.

You think that if you could only re-visit that evening for one moment, if you could just feel that electric humid air right now, then maybe everything would be okay. Yes, things would be okay…

Wake up now, baby.

It was just a dream.

Wake up
Wake up

I’m here.

shake your perfect Pilates bum

prepare your deadly Friday night party dress
turn up the beat

tap French polished toes on glazed cherry hardwood floor
that thumps with base all the way to city skyline windows

little goddess
adorn your tight tan skin with crystals and pearls

slick lotion, lingerie
wet wild perfume oil

now put on your Vuitton, your Jimmy Choos
put on your eyelashes, your wet plasticy pink lips, your rubber tits

call your friends and mix some sparkly sloppy drinks
at midnight emerge into a neon parade of blurry beautiful people
in this damn dress you giggle and you shine and you bypass every guest list line

show off those thin tan legs, let that soft shift of silk swish and sway
you can make them do whatever you want, in these sweet snake skin heels
hum and glow and grind, shimmer in this club, you’re looking so

cokey
and foxy

oh baby

swing your hips
twitch your shoulders

flap and fold those arms
snap ya neck

dance
dance

a bedside prayer
‘cause she lay sick now
yeah she got that virus

can she see you shaking?
and dancing’?
she don’t blink no more but her wild black eyes, well  they don’t move together
and she staring at nothing but the same muddy wall

gulp down this tangy fermented air of rusty tin buckets stewing sour bloody bile
no fucking peep show window in here
but oh the rotten humid stench of dead dog on the roadside flesh

see her gnarled thumb stuck to leathery ribs
damp vomit bed sheets and those damn buzzing flies
they love the thick shit and her wide-open eyes

when she goes she won’t be no different
than those hairy chicken bones in the dusty black fire pit
so twitch your skinny legs in prayer and keep yo mother safe

yeah dance baby dance

Ah Google, the friendly ghost who knows everything. I found photos of elderly people being washed in robot bathtubs — a bit car-washesqe, yes, but probably more comfortable than being bathed by a pimply high school kid, no loss of dignity there.

There are also these cuddly new robot teddy bears. Each resident of a nursing home gets a teddy, and the teddy asks grandma a question every hour or so. Grandma’s response time determines whether or not teddy should alert a human nurse. This part fell into the ‘creepy’ category for me. I mean, are these bears used in the palliative care unit? Is teddy just checking in to see if grandma is dead yet?

Oh, surely my slightly-luddite mind is jumping ahead and assuming the worst again. These new additions to nursing-home care don’t seem too intrusive. But the Japanese elderly of the next few years will have to battle an entire army of robots. Currently, mechanisms are being developed to serve as automated nurses, food-administrators and bathroom-helpers. The jury is still out on how much care should be left to RJD2 and Gork.

If my grandma feels confused and angered by the TV remote, then how well is she going to interact with these possessed teddy bears? Imagine a war veteran waking up in the night to a glowing-eyed teddy demanding: “What – is – your – name?” I think I can assume (with a sort of pride) that this teddy would not survive.

When I am elderly, it might be a different story entirely, for I will have come of age in a technological world. Google and me are like, bestest buds. So if the ghostly hands of technology care for my elderly body, I might not mind so much. I might feel comforted knowing that the robots and computers will not make a mistake in my care.

It would be me, the old human, who was mistaken.
Mistaken in my assumption that I could die happily, surrounded only by machines.