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Some Other Place

8/31/2015

Here is all
blank walls of buildings
blurred faces
devastation
of ordinary life.

It must be
my own life exists
in some other place,
one I might
slip into

the way I do
a poem.
.
.
(I wrote this some years ago, before I figured out how to properly tackle my shyness, by moving towards people.)
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This is my Day-5 poem of the 5-Day Facebook Poetry Challenge.
I was nominated for it by Martin Hayter and Kevin Andrew Heslop. I, in turn, nominated Koral Scott, Scott Alderson, and Andy Verboom.

4 Facebook likes

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Stories from my life

8/27/2015

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I've decided to write up some of the more interesting situations from my life, and my parents' lives. There are a lot of adventures to pick things from: my father's life of homesteading, first on the prairies, then in Northern Alberta, and then going blind, marrying, raising a family and farming. And my life on the farm, then working in lookout towers, foolhardy attempts to deal with my anxiety, hitchhiking in the 70's around North America and Mexico, mountain backpacking, which preceded backpacking from the coast of BC to Thunder Bay, canoeing from Calgary to Quebec City, bicycling from Thunder Bay to NFLD, the married life, the adventure of learning to see through the eyes of women, also of working with people with disabilities, and, probably the biggest adventure of my life, that of a shy person venturing out into the social world as a form of therapy, successful this time, and, oh yes, the adventure of life itself.
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I will not be writing it in chronological order. The stress of having to write an entire chronological history from beginning to end would no doubt stop me before I began. No, I will write a story whenever I get inspired to write it, about whatever situation gets me going, no matter when it actually happened. Doing it this way has a number of benefits, aside from making it fun for me. It will also be much more fun for you. You won't have to read this endless history. Instead, each story will be preceded by a very short paragraph setting it in its place.

Another benefit of doing it non-chronologically: Most of the dross of life will automatically be skipped, leaving only the pure gold. My memory has already done that job, de-emphasizing the boring parts, so I will just jump to wherever my memory wants me to go.

But THEN it will be organized into its chronological place, so anyone who wants to can read the stories of that particular adventure in chronological order, to the extent that they have been written by then.

This is how: From here, on my Facebook page, they will go to my website blog: http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/stan-burfield-blog. The blog is like this Facebook page in that everything disappears down into the past, but I will be able to organize the stories from there, either in the blog's sidebar, by entering the titles and links in chronological order there under their main headings, or by giving each heading it's own sub-page. Not sure yet. Probably the subpage idea, because the sidebar would eventually extend from here to China.

But first I must bring the blog up to date. Last winter I began losing interest in re-posting to it the blurbs I had written here. So I will get that done as fast as I can. Also, I will go back through the blog and gather up and organize under their proper headings any appropriate stories I've already written.

3 Likes Some great comments:

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tinnitus

8/26/2015

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the chatter and bang of things
the daily battering
distracts from that whisper

But listen
when
the generators of sound all
shut down
But no try not to

My skull then still
insists on
its wide wavering
hiss in on
me and

will not end
ever so I create of it
all these shooshing leaves
these trees of leaves
that swirl in a rush
on down this twirling
world

otherwise

it will
become
too hard to bear like
that constant quake
of city roads
the piss
of pain and news
and need
to be alert
to who
is where the long
snore
of worry and
but and but
let us now emote
but be
polite
and pick
ing your self
up and get
on with it
now
and now
just

do it

before

I wrote this poem for my Day 4 of the 5-Day Poetry Challenge on Facebook,
nominated for it by Martin Hayter and Kevin Andrew Heslop. I, in turn, nominated Koral Scott, Scott Alderson, and Andy Verboom.

10 Likes, 2 Comments

Shelly Harder, Paulina Szczesny, Annie Frances Wesko and 7 others like this.
Scott Alderson love shoosh. big fan of onomatpoiea.
Like · Reply · August 26 at 6:56pm
Stan Burfield me too. Take out the o's and that's pretty close to what it sounds like.
Like · Reply · 1 · August 26 at 6:57pm

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Dad milking cows, 1966

8/25/2015

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I took this photo of my blind father milking cows when I was 16. My job was to go out in the bush or pasture and bring them in. I could locate them in the bush by the bell one wore. We had all of three milk cows at the time. The chickens would sit up on the stanchions, and sleep there at night. In the photo, Dad is milking the little Jersey, whose milk was about half cream. The Holstein behind it produced a lot more milk, but less cream, and the Hereford less of each, but more meat to eat. The pail hanging from the hook has a lot of dents in it. Those were from the cow kicking forward when Dad was milking and happened to hurt the teat a bit. The rope tied to the leg in the bottom of the photo prevents that. The bucket is probably full of milk and it is hanging because Dad was blind and if he were to just set it on the ground he would kick it himself.

After the milking, I would separate the cream from the milk in a centrifugal separator in the basement. I always enjoyed that heavy whirl of it. It was an amazing piece of technology that demonstrated to me, a simple farm kid, the power of reason to solve problems, and so planted the seed in my mind of a future totally changed by science and technology. Soon science fiction supplanted the separator, and then science supplanted science fiction.

Comments copied to here from my Facebook page:

23 Likes, 16 Comments

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Some Other Place

Stories from my life

tinnitus

Dad milking cows, 1966

Stan Burfield's Blog

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