London Open Mic Poetry Archive
  • Home
  • Frank Davey Blog
  • Stan Burfield Blog
    • Fred Burfield's Homestead Memoirs
  • Our Events
  • News
  • PHOTOS & SUMMARIES
    • Season 5: 2016-2017 >
      • June 7th, 2017: Summary & Photos featuring Stan Burfield
      • May 3rd, 2017, Summary & Photos featuring Jason Dickson
      • April 5th, 2017 Summary & Photos, feeaturing James Deahl & Norma West Linder
      • Mar. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Andy Verboom
      • Feb. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Ron Stewart
      • Dec. 7th, 2016: Photos & Summary featuring David Stones
      • Nov. 2th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring Don Gutteridge
      • Oct. 5th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring David Huebert
    • Season 4: 2015-2016 >
      • June 1st, 2016: Photos and summaries: featuring Lynn Tait
      • May 4th, 2016 Photos and Summary: featuring indigenous poetry
      • April 6, 2016 Photos & Summary, featuring Steven McCabe
      • Mar. 2nd, 2016 photos, summary: featuring Andreas Gripp
      • Feb. 3rd, 2016 photos: 3 Western students.
      • Dec. 2, 2015 photos: featured reader Peggy Roffey
      • Nov. 7, 2015 photos: Our Words Fest open mic
      • Nov. 4, 2015 photos: featured reader Charles Mountford
      • Oct. 7th, 2015 photos: Madeline Bassnett featured
    • Season 3, 2014-15 >
      • Aug. 16, 2015 photos: The Ontario Poetry Society's "Sultry Summer Gathering"
      • June 3rd, 2015 photos: John B. Lee featured
      • May 6th, 2015 photos: Laurie D Graham featured
      • Apr. 1st, 2015 photos: John Nyman & Penn Kemp featured
      • Mar. 4th, 2015 photos: Patricia Black featured.
      • Feb. 4th, 2015 photos: feature Gary Barwin
      • Dec. 3rd, 2014 photos: Feature Debbie Okun Hill
      • Nov. 5th, 2014 photos: feature Julie Berry
      • Oct. 1st, 2014 photos: feature Roy MacDonald
    • Season 2, Sept. 2013 to June 2014. >
      • June 4th, 20114, featuring Monika Lee
      • May 7th 2014, featuring Susan McCaslin and Lee Johnson
      • Sept. 4th, 2013 featuring Frank Beltrano
      • April 16th, 2014, featuring Penn Kemp and Laurence Hutchman
      • March 5th, 2014, featuring Jacob Scheier
      • Feb. 5th, 2014: featuring four UWO students of poetry; music by Tim Woodcock
      • Jan. 2nd, 2014: featuring Carrie Lee Connel
      • Dec. 4th, 2013, featuring M. NourbeSe Philip
      • Nov. 6, 2013 , featuring Susan Downe
      • Oct. 2nd, 2013, featuring Jan Figurski
    • Season 1: Oct. 2012 to June 2013 >
      • June 4th, 2013 featuring David J. paul and the best-ever open mic
      • May 1st, 2013, featuring Sonia Halpern
      • Apr. 24, 2013 featuring Frank Davey & Tom Cull
      • Mar. 6th, 2013, featuring Christine Thorpe
      • Feb. 6th, 2013, featuring D'vorah Elias
      • Jan. 3rd. 2013: John Tyndall featured.
      • Dec. 5, 2012: RL Raymond featured
    • Dig These Hip Cats ... The Beats
  • Poet VIDEOS (open mic & featured readers)
    • 5th Season Videos (2016-2017)
    • 4th Season Videos (2015-16)
    • 3rd Season Videos (2014-2015)
    • 2nd Season (2013-2014) videos
  • BIOGRAPHIES - Featured poets & musicians
  • INTERVIEWS & POEMS (featured poets)
    • SEASON 6 - Interviews & Poems >
      • Kevin Shaw: Poem & Interview
      • David Janzen - Interview
    • SEASON 5 INTERVIEWS & POEMS
    • SEASON 4 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 3 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 2 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (only from Dec. 4th, 2013)
    • Season 1 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (& 1st half of Season 2) >
      • INTERVIEWS of Featured Poets
      • POEMS by Featured Poets (1st Season & to Nov. 2013)
  • Couplets: Poets in Dialogue
  • Future Events
  • Past Events
    • 5th Season: 2016-2017
    • Season 4: 2015-2016
    • Season 3: 2014-2015
    • Season Two: 2013-2014
    • Season One: 2012-2013
  • Who we Are
  • Testimonial
  • Our Mission
  • Links
  • Contact us

Here’s my inch, for what it’s worth

5/12/2017

Comments

 
Picture
I was walking back downtown from the Cardiac Institute, wearing a heart monitor now to check how the new pills are doing. They’re supposed to be smoothing out the weird heart rhythms that come with atrial fibrillation. If so, they may give me a few extra years of life. Possibly. In any case, I’m getting used to closing in on the end. And partly because of that, and partly because of being retired and having more time, I’m living my life more intensely now.

So anyway I got to Richmond Row, looked into the shops, then stopped to talk to an artist working on a painting beside Victoria Park. (We discussed some of the similarities and differences between poetry and painting.) At the other end of the park, I noticed someone hustling into the beautiful big St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica. I wandered along the front of the building, ogling the gargoyles that were staring down at me, including one of an actual person wearing big glasses. What the heck; I’m always a sucker for these strange, awesome, somewhat beautiful architectural creations so I stepped inside. Luckily there was only a scattered audience and the back row was empty. I sat there and admired the great stained-glass windows and high arches and tried to follow the voices of the stream of people who read from various things. But I soon gave up as the sound system seemed to conflict with the size of the room so that most of the voices were unintelligible. And anyway I didn’t know anything about the rituals that were performed in silence between the readings so I ducked out, and picked up a copy of the church paper on the way.

A café I had never been in before enticed me and I flipped through the paper there looking for something that might catch my eye. There was a message from the rector, something about a fiftieth-anniversary thing, a photo of a grand new painting of the rector who stood importantly in front of it, with an interview of the artist, nah, nah, hah. And there was a double spread about international students visiting, with photos of actual young people, African, Indian, etc. The article itself, like all of them, was set in an extra large font, obviously for old people with poor eyesight. Which, I had noticed, comprised most of the people I had seen in the pews. Times are changing; this is an increasingly secular world. There was a list of parishioners who had died, most in their 80s, with the headline: We Remember… For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die…

A time to die. Okay, now I was alert and relating. Because I’m slowly getting ready to die myself. And quite often lately I’ve been feeling the size of the arc that goes back to my birth. How short it is. And how I seem to pick up speed along it as I approach the endpoint. Then I read again the first phrase on that line: a time to be born. Suddenly I’m seeing the immensely long timeline of human beings on earth, and also, just at one very precise but random point along it, I was born. And there my arc began. Me. This extremely complicated, very conscious being. Only at that one point. I had no say in when I was born (or where). I could say I was partly lucky, and partly unlucky, but, in any case, my little arc exists only at this one inch along those miles of timeline. I’m stuck with this inch. Can’t see back from it or ahead. Boy! That just feels so weird. If it was somebody else’s life I was looking at, I would just say, well, that person belongs at that inch, and that other person at that other inch, and so on, all along the road. But it’s me, sitting here aware of myself for what I am. And I feel like a cobblestone.

It is so weird to be a unique, very complicated, very conscious human—this special thing, or so it seems—and yet, at the very same time to see my true place in reality: just one little bump on a very, very long line of birth-and-death arcs. We can see how truly amazing each one of us is, then fantacize it to an even higher level of importance if we need to in order to tolerate our smallness--in our arrogance and narcissism or whatever bit of stretching we have going on in our minds--but, that simply doesn’t matter: in every case without exception we are just a little bump occupying our inch of the road. And even that disappears from existence as the wave of the present moment passes over it.

Comments

A random two-hour stretch in one of Linda's days

5/7/2017

Comments

 
Comments

Silverback

5/6/2017

Comments

 
The sun-hammered zoo
was crowded, families shuffling
into cool, barred halls,
 
their little ones pointing at the lumbering,
muscle-swollen gorillas whose leathery children
tumbled in the distance, their mama alert,
 
big Papa swinging his
bulk to the front, his back up
against a trunk, glancing at a weaker
father through the glass,
 
slowly scratching his chest
with one rough hand, rubbing with the other
his penis as
the kids giggle, then drops it, shifts
 
his weight to pick the broken
edge of a toenail,
then back again—that demonstration.
 
Finally, Mother coughs
and the weaker Father
finds his voice:
“Let’s go.”


A couple weeks ago I attended a workshop organized by Frank Beltrano, the Lois Marie Harrod Poetry Writing Workshop, and one of the things we did to get the juices flowing was to write a poem on the spot, based on a prompt, a number of which were provided. One prompt situation mentioned monkeys and a zoo, and the memory in the poem above, from maybe forty years ago, came to mind.  I've never liked writing poems from prompts, from lack of confidence, but this one worked out well. And, while writing it, I came to a new understanding of the event that had never occurred to me before: that the male gorilla came forward and sat between the female gorilla and the man behind the glass on purpose, to show him just who was the man around there. So having to write something you wouldn't on your own can have its rewards.


From Facebook: likes...7...Jeremy Nathan Marks, Frank Beltrano and 5 others
Comments

إبراهيم أشعياء عوض I think it has a good flow of images.
LikeShow More Reactions
 · Reply · 1
 · 19 hrs · Edited
Comments

I was reading “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World”...

5/6/2017

Comments

 
I was reading “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World” by Henry David Thoreau and came across this passage, from March 30th, 1840:
 
“Pray, what things interest me at present? A long, soaking rain, the drops trickling down the stubble, while I lay drenched on last year’s bed of wild oats, by the side of some bare hill, ruminating. These things are of moment. To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this sombre drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country o’er, the impression of inward comfort and sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides dropping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature’s English comfort. The birds draw closer and are more familiar under the thick foliage, composing new strains on their roosts against the sunshine.”
 
Our weather here lately has been very similar. 


From Facebook: likes...17...Robyn Marie Butt, Catherine Morgan and 15 others
1 share
Comments

​To read all the comments, press Read More.......................................................

Read More
Comments

New diary plan

5/2/2017

Comments

 
Picture
I've started writing a diary umpteen times in my life, and quickly stopped writing it as many times. It always seemed like too much work at the end of the day, and pointless work considering that the next day, not that one, was when I hoped to begin accomplishing my big things. The ones I had not already given up on, that is. 

Also, much of the ordinary drivel of the day always felt negative to me one way or another, and no less so when I tried to put it on paper. Which is typical of someone suffering from chronic anxiety, I expect. I would rather not dwell on most of those things. Nor even admit their existance. 

The trouble is that if everything has a negative feeling attached to it, no matter how neutral or positive it actually is, then it's like having a low-level version of PTSD. Actually it's even worse than the real thing, because it's not just a few horrifying things that hit you hard with their memories, but nearly every little thing every day. And, as with heavy-duty PTSD, the bad memories are self reinforcing, because they just keep recurring, and every time they do, they're more unforgettable than before. Whereas the few good things that happen are forgotten right away.

I'm exaggerating, of course. (Which is typical.)

So writing all the day's events out in a diary doesn't help. However!! My new idea is to keep a diary of only the things that made me smile. The truly enjoyable things. That way I would reinforce them and not the others. If I can get myself to do that, and keep it up, maybe I'll end up feeling like someone living a not-so-bad life. 

This idea is my first diary entry. 


​

From Facebook: likes...1...Meredith Moeckel
To read the comments:....................................................................................


Read More
Comments

How'd she get in there? Then out?

5/2/2017

Comments

 
Picture

After plunking on the computer a while, I wandered out to say hi to Linda. But she wasn’t in the living room, or the kitchen. Or the bedroom or bathroom. But I had definitely heard some sound coming from somewhere, so I was sure she hadn’t gone out. The only other place she could be was out on the balcony. But she wasn’t there either. So I gave up and called her. 

“Yeah?”

Hard at work on some obscure thing. I never did find out what. Part of her new spring balcony design.




FACEBOOK LIKES...8...Robert Gregory Seaton, Linda Eva Williams and 6 others
1 share
Comments

That's just weird

5/2/2017

Comments

 
At breakfast this morning I found we had run out of milk for cereal so I went to Plan B, a bagel. I put it in the toaster and got the butter and jam out ready to get it on there while the thing was still hot. The butter's got to melt into it, and the whole thing has to be warm when I put it in my mouth.

Linda saw what I was doing and asked me to get a bagel out for her too, since she hadn't eaten yet either. While mine was toasting, she started spreading butter on hers cold, and then peanut butter on top of that.

I looked at it, and looked at it again, and said, "That's weird. That's just plain weird. Aren't you even going to toast it?"

"No. I like it cold," whereupon she walked out into the living room with it and plunked herself down in front of the TV.

That got me thinking. "You know," I said, as I sat on a chair at the kitchen table, "it's good that we all have these little differences in what we like. It makes us feel like individuals, instead of just doing what we're supposed to do all the time."

Without turning around: "That's for sure."

At our advanced age, we've stared at all the supposed-tos in our lives so many times, and catered to them and fought with them so often, that they're like heavily armed jailers always crowding in on us wherever we are, just now leaning down over my bagel with their typical grim expressions. 


fROM fACEBOOK, LIKES: ...
7...Meredith Moeckel, Yvonne Maggs and 5 others
Comments

Erin Kelly were you eating Russian 'black bagels'?
Like
Stan Burfield No, brown, whole-wheat ones. Why?
Like
Erin Kelly Something about your metaphor reminded me of Russian literature...
Like
Stan Burfield Ha ha. It would be so much fun having a conversation with you, Erin.
Like
Erin Kelly Stan Burfield same!
Like
 · Reply · 2 May at 20:38
Comments

It happens like this...

5/1/2017

Comments

 
​As I get older, I'm seeing that, more often than not, it happens like this: instead of our minds and bodies slowly decaying away, as we had always feared they would, we feel little changed as we look out through our eyes on that same world, which, if anything, we can see more clearly, not less, as we age. With a little tweaking now and then, life seems like it could go on forever. Day to day, from youth to old age, we carry on quite normally. As with evening and the approach of night, there is never one moment that is suddenly on the night side of the day.

​So it happens like this: in the middle of some sparkling afternoon, we hear a roar behind us, find we can't move, and turn into the headwind of the freight train of death.
​
Comments

    Stan Burfield's Blog

    Organizer of London Open Mic Poetry. former support worker for people with autism and developmental disabilities.  former farm boy, former adventurer, former florist.
    The 2014 Ted Plantos Memorial Award

    Interview in Your Old South Magazine
    Interview: The "My Writing Process" Blog Tour

    RSS Feed

    Going Out
    1. House Fly Dancing to Mozart

    Videos
    *Linda at the Christmas Craft Show
    *Our apartment
    *The  indigenous poetry event
    *Lake of Fear
    *The art of the slow talk
    *Our new Guerrilla Poetry series at the library
    *Stan discovers some treasure.

    Photo Albums
    *2 hours in one of Linda's days
    *How'd she get in there? 
    *Before the leaves
    *Pensive in winter mist.
    *New Year's Day, 2017.
    *Linda's Christmas decorations 
    *Linda and her Christmas display
    *Linda made whole wheat scones.
    *Seeing Linda off
    ​
    *Linda in first day of snow. ​
    *Balcony finished?
    *Linda relaxing
    *We'll see...
    ​*Linda and I in the Rose Garden. 
    *Listening to the leaves popping open. It sounds like rain, or crickets.
    *Fred, my father
    *​A perfect day to stroll in the woods. 
    ​
    Short Blurbs
    *Voting Booth
    *Screaming and shouting
    *New diary plan
    *That's just weird
    *It happens like this...
    *Kevin Heslop as an actor!
    *repair of damaged DNA (aging)!
    *Paterson: great movie about a poet 
    *I learned from Thomas Moore...
    *Linda' skills are blooming
    *Here's how my day began...
    *...or we don't.
    *An actual woman to a man...
    *On this Valentines Day... ​
    *How little I've changed!
    *A sunny dream, with no fear.
    *Little mistakes....
    *A label for the essence of something
    *​Dream of a typed poem
    *Here's what I want:
    *I like her quirks.
    *A little success
    *The course of history...
    *From "The Cat's Table" by Ondaatje
    *Happy to be a citizen again
    *I THINK IT’S LIKE THIS.
    *I'm so lucky.
    *After rollercoastering, I'm excited!!!
    *Old photos
    *Fire!
    *A memory that keeps returning.
    *What is TRUMP''S AUTHORITARIANISM all about?
    *Practising morality on Halloween
    *Hanging on to an ethic
    *LOOK OUT!!
    *Out of a harsh thing...
    *Mr. Moon comes rolling in.
    *What if...
    *Will I and the Open Mic both survive?
    *I'm now a published poet! Finally.
    *Well, the MRI is done. 
    *Yeah!!! I'm finally a published poet!
    *Medical Update, for those interested
    *Yesterday I had a mini-stroke.
    *We being ourselves.
    *Enormous relief
    *Orange-oatmeal cookies!
    *To put London Open Mic behind me
    ​
    *She sings!
    *Worried
    *While walking home from the store with cherries...
    *Science
    *Standing Still
    *Hey, get a job!
    ​
    *Linda and I are learning to trust.
    *Linda is away visiting relatives. 
    *"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
    ​
    *"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
    ​
    *Diet and health/longevity
    *Edward Hopper: Woman in Train Compartment
    *A pea and a bean in a pod
    ​*Colt!
    ​*Don't get it off your chest.
    ​*In a world that is neither Heaven nor Hell, hope drives everything.
    *Roy is 80
    *What is going on with these incredible coincidences I keep having?
    *My world of coincidences
    *Is that rumble a distant train or the city?
    *Revelations are everywhere.
    *Knowing you
    *Despite...
    ​
    *The sound of love
    ​
    *Our smile for the day
    *Hurricanes Carla and Esther
    ​*Time Warp!

    *The Pow Wow
    *The Polar Sea
    *Other people
    *Moccasin Bells
    * Stories from my life
    *Je  suis Charlie Hebdo, mais....
    *Life at a fire lookout tower
    *Dominoes
    *Grinch
    *This was my dad in 1965
    *Blue

    Personal Essays
    *Here’s my inch, for what it’s worth
    *Freedom to talk
    *I wonder
    ​*Will I and the Open Mic both survive?
    *Medical Update, for those interested
    *Fred, my father
    *THIS  IS  GETTING  TOO  WEIRD:  the nearly-impossible coincidences are rolling in en masse now.
    *After four seasons, I'm flying!
    ​
    *True North
    ​
    *Back to work on poetry, finally!!
    ​
    *Maybe it's time to see a psychiatrist.
    *66: My best birthday ever.
    *Out of darkness..
    *Hacker attack. Oh man...
    *Jean Vanier, what is this thing he's discovered?
    *Jean Vanier and L'Arche
    *But then again...
    *A Most Useful Invention
    *Building my next beater.
    *My dreams are full of people now.
    *Dear Diary: Relax. Take your boots off. 
    *Those big pictures
    *An UnSilent Night
    *Urban Legends
    *Familiar
    *I  had a glass of Landon Cabernet last night
    *The Less-educated Imagination
    *Listen, I'll tell you something that's really got me worried
    *Can't get enough


    Poems
    *The universe as a poem
    *If you don't know
    *A meander through Euston Park 
    *The Picard Card
    *To Open the Morning
    * We'll see...
    *1st published poem: On a Crate 
    *We decide
    *Standing Still
    *DRINK
    *Oblivious
    *Some Other Place
    *Tinnitus
    *It seems you just have to be still
    *In the Night
    *When I was young
    *Not for inspiration
    *Oh
    *Concerning our Glorious Future: (2nd prize winner at 2014 Poetry London Contest)
    *Yes I heard Ginsberg read once he said prepare for death
    *Amazement
    *Getting used to it
    *And now the news
    *Heart Shaped


    Archives

    July 2018
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Aboriginal
    ADHD
    Aging
    Albert Katz
    Anxiety
    Barbara Green
    Basic Poetics Study Group
    Blog
    Blog Tour
    Carl Lapp
    Charmaine E. Elijah
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Coincidences
    Community
    Creativity
    Death
    Donald Trump
    Dream
    Dreams
    Ethics
    Father
    Fear
    Frank Davey
    Fred Burfield
    Guerrilla Poetry
    Health
    Henry David Thoreau
    History
    Humour
    Indigenous
    John Nyman
    Kevin Heslop
    Landon Library
    Lawrence Of Arabia
    Linda Burfield
    London Open Mic Poetry
    Love
    Martin Hayter
    Medicine
    Meredith Moeckel
    Movies
    Music
    Nature
    Outlook
    Penn Kemp
    Personal Essay
    Philosophy
    Photos
    Poem
    Poems
    Poetry
    Psychology
    Reading
    Relationships
    Religion
    Revelations
    Roy MacDonald
    Science
    Shelly Harder
    Shyness
    Sidewalk Poetry
    Soul
    Space
    Stan Burfield
    Strength
    Trust
    Understanding
    Video
    Volunteer
    Walt Whitman
    Writing Poetry
    Youth

Proudly powered by Weebly