.
I am so happy to end this year’s posts with a wonderful new poem by our own Shane Koyczan:
Shane Koyczan’s “A Tomorrow”
December 31, 2021
Leave a Comment » | 
Literature, Other Writings | 
Permalink
Posted by jakking
Image: Canada Goose Icon
December 31, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Photographs | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Now Where Will My Squirrels Sit?
December 30, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Memoir | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Flash Fiction: Window of Opportunity
December 30, 2021.
Standing on the steps of the ancient Town Hall, she faced the battery of microphones that reared up at her like a porcupine’s back. “We have a window of opportunity now,” she said, turning first left and then right to ensure that as many cameras as possible caught her face as she spoke the historic words. “We have a chance to bring peace to this benighted region of earth, a chance we must grasp or lose it for another generation.”
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
A sudden breeze caught a lock of her hair and, as she tried to compose her thoughts to bring forth more statesman-like sentences, she found herself in the future, watching herself as she would appear on the six o’clock news that evening, as her hair was mussed by the wind. Her right hand moved swiftly to her forehead and dealt firmly with the straying strand.
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
“Rarely have we witnessed such cooperation from so many disparate groups. Rarely have we been privileged to see such hard won handshakes across a table.” She paused, the slightest of smiles on her face, her eyes widening as she sought out and found a favoured photographer.
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
Now, moulding her face into that stern and steely gaze that scared the most experienced diplomats, she spoke again. “But there is much serious work still be done, much more to accomplished before we can rest on our laurels. But we can be proud today.”
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
She paused, pleased with her speech so far; and even more pleased with the agreement she had forged in those ancient halls. It was an agreement she would sure would win her the nomination.
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
As she raised her arms in a triumphant wave, she caught a glimpse of an upstairs window across the square, a shadow, the slightest movement.
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
The crack of the rifle was buried beneath the sounds of the press.
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
Click. Flash. Whirrr. Click. Whirr. Flash.
Leave a Comment » | Flash Fictions | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Image: Cozy Apartments
December 29, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Photographs | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Remembering Wounded Knee
December 29, 2021On a cold morning 131 years ago today, the US cavalry massacred more than 250 disarmed Lakota men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. A few days earlier they had murdered the great chief Sitting Bull.
The massacre at Wounded Knee was one of the final and most vicious military acts in the government’s century-long plan of genocide against native Americans, and twenty soldiers earned the Medal of Honor for their part in the brutal affair.
We must never forget that the American’s vaunted Manifest Destiny was colonialism of the most brutal kind and meant death for millions of indigenous peoples.
Image: Arrow Lake From The Leland
December 27, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Paintings & Prints | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Poem: Driven
December 27, 2021He
drove
her home after dinner.
They dawdled for a moment on the porch until the wind
drove
them inside where, after drinks,
their mutual passion
drove
them to seek the comforts of the bedroom, and where
her exuberant energy
drove
him mad with desire, and where
he
drove
his knifeblade deep into
her heart
He was
driven
they said, seeking to excuse
his excess,
his access to those parts of
her body which even this exhorbitantly open society doesn’t allow.
Driven
he was
they said by television violence and devil music and commercial
radio and the
drive-throughs
he was forced to eat at as a child by
his working mother.
His vanished other parent
driven
he learned to drink by
his inabilty to access the excess promised to all by the features
he sat through at the
drive-in.
His mother and father coincidentally killed in
drive-bys
he read about two continents and two decades apart.
Driven
they said by these circumstances to commit
his act
her death
they killed
him by
driving
his last of a long line of needles deep into
his arm. And then, in an unmarked car,
they
drove
his body to
his last home, just as
he had
driven
her to the first and last home
they would ever share.
Leave a Comment » | Poems | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Night Music: Down To Zero
December 26, 2021In my opinion, Joan Armatrading is one of the most under-rated UK artist of the last 30 years.
Leave a Comment » | Music | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Night Music: Fairy Tale of New York
December 24, 2021The greatest song ever recorded about Christmas Eve.
Leave a Comment » | Music | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Flash Fiction: The Wind Came In From Africa
December 23, 2021.
I was lying aboard the hammock on the verandah of the Colonial Hotel just up the beach from the old town of Puerto Duquesa. I’d had a whiskey or two. OK, OK — goddam you truth-mongers! — I’d had a damn near bucketful of the stuff, and I was just resting it off as I liked to do in the late afternoons, listening to the “Blue” tape while the sun melted slowly into the sea.
There was a light breeze and then there was a bigger breeze and then there was damn near a hurricane or a typhoon or a whirlwind or something. And I sat up in the hammock to see what was going on and that wind was pushing me from side to side and turning me around and I felt sick to my stomach. And that’s when I saw them, coming out of the dust of the beach and the spray of the ocean. A dozen of them, maybe. Or eight or some. Who the hell could count straight with all that damn wind?
They were like Arabs or Saracens or those guys that Richard the Lion -Heart used to fight in those movies with Douglas Fairbanks or whoever. And they had a huge cart or stage coach or some such that was filled all up with jewel boxes and bows and arrows and swords and shields and cartons overflowing with clothes and sandals. Two or three huge Arabs were hauling this heavy-laden carriage out of the water.
There was a silence about them; a stillness within this storm. But the smells of the East washed over me like bathing in perfume: soft incenses and aromatic barks and sandalwoods and something like patchouli.
I lay there swinging in the hammock, smelling their smells, and watching them pull their cart silently across the beach until they disappeared in the swirling mist about a hundred yards away. And as they disappeared, the mist seemed to clear behind them and they were gone.
I don’t know how long I laid there watching where they had vanished, but it was dark when I wandered back to the Marina Bar in the old town and ordered a whiskey straight up. I didn’t tell the barman. I didn’t tell Pepe when he came in later. Don’t know why, just didn’t.
Leave a Comment » | Flash Fictions | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Night Music: History of a Boy Scout
December 22, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Music | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Winter Solstice 2021
December 21, 2021
Instead of those man-made artificial holidays this time of year, this is what we should be celebrating — the turn of the year at the solstice: a natural celebration that humanity has recognized for more than 30,000 years.
Happy solstice everyone!
Leave a Comment » | Moments & Celebrations, Other Writings | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Image: Commercial Drive: Licorice Party
December 21, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Photographs | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Night Music: Love’s Been Rough On Me
December 20, 2021
Leave a Comment » | Music | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Poem: Creating Collage
December 20, 2021
we sleep together,
for sure,
but mostly we share together,
cutting out our memories
from the bark of life’s tree
— like pieces of collage
laid out on the floor
before an exhibition
celebrating our anniversaries –
unhurriedly pasting them together
— refocusing colors and shapes
and forms –
until it is late again
and again
for sure
we sleep together
Leave a Comment » | Poems | Permalink
Posted by jakking
Jak's View of Vancouver v.3 