RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): JONI MITCHELL GOT IT ALL WRONG ABOUT THE PARKING LOT

JONI MITCHELL GOT IT ALL WRONG ABOUT THE PARKING LOT

Forty years of travelling down to Toronto’s Kensington Market

Beautifully located City of Toronto Green P parking lot

Right behind Carlos Spice Market and the Portuguese quasi department store

A thirty second walk through a rather dirty lane then into the heart of the market!

Well

Carlos is gone; name remains but owned by a Sri Lankan

Portuguese store closed

Where did the Green P parking lot go?

Condo development!

No “they paved paradise and put a parking lot up”

But

“They destroyed my parking lot paradise and put what is marketed as Paradise Condo’s up!”

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Never to Return to Filth Pit “Good Beds for Single Men” (George Orwell)

“In the morning I was woken by a dim impression of some large brown thing coming towards me. I opened my eyes and saw that it was one of the sailor’s feet, sticking out of bed close to my face. It was dark brown, quite dark brown like an Indian’s with dirt. The walls were leprous, and the sheets three weeks from the wash, were almost raw umber colour. I got up, dressed and went downstairs. In the cellar were a row of basins and two slippery roller towels. I had a piece of soap in my pocket, and I was going to wash, when I noticed that every basin was streaked with grime-solid, sticky filth as black as boot-blacking. I went out unwashed. Altogether the lodging house had not come up to its description of cheap and clean.”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.

RKS Literature: Back in London Still Impoverished Staying at “Good Beds for Single Men” (George Orwell)

“Several noises recurred throughout the night. About once an hour the man on my left-a sailor, I think-woke up, swore vilely and lighted a cigarette, Another man, a victim of bladder disease, got up and noisily used his chamber-pot half a dozen times during the night. The man in the corner had a coughing fit once in every twenty minutes, so regularly that one came to listen for it as one listens when a dog is baying at the moon. It was an unspeakably repellant sound; a foul bubbling and retching, as though the man’s bowels were being churned up within him. Once when he struck a match I saw that he was a very old man with a grey sunken face like that of a corpse, and he was wearing his trousers wrapped around his head as a nightcap, a thing which for some reason disgusted me very much.”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.

RKS Japanese Literature: Pimping to American Soldiers in Post War Japan (Akiyuki Nosaka)

“I needed English for my pimping-if you can call getting one or two women a day for soldiers pimping. The girls were all pale, boney-shouldered aspiring whores who had word that they could meet America-san and get chocolate if they came here, the soldiers all sad-faced boys would stood watching what was then the swift, clear flow of the Dōjima River, maybe thinking of home, but not over here in Nakanoshima because it was supposed to be girl-hunting territory. Amateurs, the girls had no idea how to turn their nicely bagged spoils into cash.”

Akiyuki Nosaka, “American Hijiki”

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds)

DDR Circus Memories

Somewhere in the deep Romanian countryside

My feelings debased on the circus ring

Subordinated to the vulgar popcorn mouths

Soon the master with the whip with the back ripping sting

But I’ll look so pretty

Shiny fear and gleaming coat and white fangs on those with dignity and pride

They came to see the untamed beast

Ruffian and uncouth champion of the jungle

I attempt a roar

The tears choke

I should be laughing

But the whip exclaims, “NO!”

Not here for the public currency declines

My worth depends on them

The ugly crowd, judge and jury

Guilty is the one without the big clap

God help those whose cage has no bars

And they slowly strangle their pretensions of dignity

While I at least have none

That being the dignity they will never see

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Fear of the Mob (George Orwell)

“Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races like negroes and white men. But in reality, there is no such difference. The mass of rich and poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. For what do the majority of educated people know about the poor?”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom” :THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY: FLYING THE COOP INTO THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE

Singapore Times Exclusive: SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY: FLYING THE COOP INTO THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE

Some you holier than thou readers may be tsk tsking me for contemplating Bobby Jr. was a decent fellow. OK, he might have exhibited brutality to others but I saw him as my protector. Perhaps it was that hostage identifying with the captor psychological phenomena?

And yes, due to the Singaporean penchant for air-conditioning which freezes a Scotsman’s blood cold I have hopped on Bobby Jr.’s bed and rested at the foot of the bed. Cold air sinks remember?

I never forgot Bob and Fay my master and mistress but being a mindful mutt, I must live in the moment and the moment was keeping on the best terms with Bobby Jr. the man that promised come what may no harm would come to me.

You wanted me to be the fearless Westie that escapes to the streets of Singapore with animal control as efficient as the Gestapo! I am brave but not stupid. It was not the time to fly the coop and end up in the slaughterhouse.

RKS Literature: A Wild Saturday Night in Paris Ends (George Orwell)

“By half-past one the last drop of pleasure had evaporated, leaving nothing but headaches. We perceived we were not splendid inhabitants of a splendid world, but a crew of underpaid workmen grown squalidly and dismally drink. We went on swallowing the wine, but it was only from habit, and the stuff seemed suddenly nauseating. One’s head had swollen up like a balloon, the floor rocked, one’s tongue and lips were stained purple. At last, it was no use keeping it up any longer. Several men went into the yard behind the bistro and were sick. We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours.”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.

RKS Japanese Literature: Hiroshima Aftermath: People Looking Like Baked Rice Crackers (Yoko Ōta)

“The number of people on the riverbed increased minute by minute, many of them now with severe burns. At first, we didn’t realize that their injuries were burns. There were no fires, so how could they have been burnt so badly? Strange, grotesque, they were more pathetic than frightening. They had all been burnt in the same way, as if the men who baked rice crackers had roasted them all in ovens. Normal burns are part red and part white, but these were ash-coloured as if the skin had been grilled rather than burnt. Ash-coloured skin hung from their flesh, peeling off in strips like the skins of roast potatoes.”

Yoko Ōta, “Hiroshima, City of Doom”

RKS Literature: No Sense in Losing Sleep Over a Murder (George Orwell)

“One night in the small hours, there was a murder just beneath my window. I was woken by a fearful uproar, and, going to the window, saw a man lying flat on the stones below; I could see the murderers, three of them, flitting away at the end of the street. Some of us went down and found the man was quite dead, his skull cracked open with a piece of lead piping. I remember the colour of his blood, curiously purple, like wine; it was still on the cobbles when I came home that evening, and they said that schoolchildren had come from miles to see it. But the thing that strikes me in looking back it was that I was in bed and asleep within three minutes of the murder. So were most of the people in the street; we just made sure the man was done for and went straight back to bed. We were working people and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder.”

George Orwell, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, 1933.