All in a day’s work
The surly
Vodka vapoured foreman
In a flaming pink neon shirt
Confidently clacking dentures
And Mr. Milo racks up a total of 7 unfiltered Player’s
Smoked hidden and in silent terror in the WC
Thank God for the small breaks in life!
Robert K. Stephen
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in he common ruin of the contending classes.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”, 1848.
“Someone ought to stand with a hammer at the door of every happy contented man, continually banging on it to remind him that there are unhappy people around and that however happy he may be at the time, sooner or later life will show him its claws and disaster will overtake him in the form of illness, poverty, bereavement and there will be no one to hear or see him . But there isn’t anyone holding a hammer, so our happy man goes his own sweet way and is only ruffled by life’s trivial cares as an aspen is ruffled by the breeze. All’s well as far as he’s concerned.”
Anton Chekov, “Gooseberries”, 1898.
The Unwitting Hitler within parents
Two sisters some decades ago
Mother and father purchase a gleaming red tricycle
For the other
The victim, the sister of the other, despite salty semi-professional whining, receives nothing
As the government of favours places its tenders
Contracting within the grey matter commandant to supervise the laying
Of the barbed wire
And land mines
Against Viennese schooled underground fighters
Who tack exit lights in the surrounding woods
One a week for thirty minutes
Robert K. Stephen
MIDNIGHT TUNNEL RAT CAPER AND THAT FAMOUS ROBERT DUVALL LINE
One minus 18 evening in Toronto Bob and I finished watching the CBC national news which Bob turned off in disgust. Imagine Adrienne Arsenault the anchor saying Alexander the Great was Macedonian? He was Greek and considered himself Greek!
I slipped out the back door and Bob called me in at 23:30 but as I was having so much fun tearing around in the snow I “didn’t hear him”. When I did hear him his tone of voice was angry. I thought he’d cool down a bit if I romped around a bit more. All was quiet for 15 minutes until at midnight I heard an ultimatum being delivered “COME IN RIGHT NOW!” Oooh I think that means trouble and Bob came charging out….yes I could see him in the frigid moonlight struggling in the snow in his boots and pajamas. I dodged to and fro and like an American soldier tunnel rat in Vietnam zipping in and around my snow tunnels until a furious Bob caught me delivering a blistering tongue lashing. The mortality rate of tunnel rats in Vietnam was close to 90%. I escaped death. I just hope I remember this experience, so it won’t happen again.
Speaking of Vietnam my favourite line in that war movie “Chickenpox Now” was by Robert Duvall that he loved the smell of napalm in the morning. Well for me it is, “I love the smell of toasted bagels in the morning.” Bob gave me a piece the next morning so I guess we are friends again. I love the crunch but those sesame seeds stick to my gums!
“But we don’t hear or see those who suffer: the real tragedies of life are enacted somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics-and they can’t talk. Figures show that so many went mad, so many bottles of vodka were emptied, so many children died of malnutrition. And clearly this kind of system is what people need. It is obvious the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren’t for their silence, happiness would be quite impossible. It’s a kind of mass hypnoses.”
Anton Chekov, “Gooseberries”, 1898.
“A Poet” is the official submission of Columbia for the Best International Feature Film for the 98th Academy Awards in 2026. A co-production between Columbia, Germany and Sweden.
Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios) is a Columbian poet inching toward 60 having won several poetry prizes early in his “poetry career” never making the leap to prominence but then again what poet ever does! Self described as a perpetual dreamer with suffering the cornerstone of his poetry. Extremely passionate and over metaphorical and emotional about poetry he struggles on having lost his creative edge living with his mother in an apartment paid for by his brother. At one point he asks his teenage daughter Daniela (Alisson Correa) to lend him a small amount of money indicative of how hard up he is. What true poet can be hindered by gainful employment!
Forced by his penury and the threat of being evicted from his apartment he takes a teaching job at a high school and with the best intent and drinking liquor from a Thermos in class an even bigger shipwreck awaits him as a result of his attempts to develop his 15 year old student Yurlady (Rebecca Andrade) into a great poet obfuscated by his incredibly bad judgement. A metaphorical iceberg awaits! Through successive gaffes fuelled by an excess of alcohol the viewer will be breathlessly cringing watching if Oscar sinks.
A tragedy poetically recounted with large doses of humour and satire about poetry, poets, the “management of poetry”, justice, the legal system, Columbian poverty stereotypes and the institutional knack for refusing to take responsibility.
Can Oscar salvage any respect from his family and Yurlady? Can he redeem himself? Is he ruined as a human and a poet? Does he survive like Ernest Borgnine or perish like Shelly Winters in The Poseidon Adventure?
Thank goodness for some low key but highly effective comedic moments.
Rios is the epitome of a poet in a meltdown. Andrade pays the disinterested Yurlady perfectly more interested in the material world scamming money for purple nail polish and sparkles and groceries for her family than in poetry. The scene with her obese family matriarchs gobbling chicken legs smuggled out from the Poetry Fair reception is riddled with absurdity and is a classic Larry David “Curb Your Enthusiasm” moment.
The scene in the urinal where Oscar and Efrain (Guillermo Cardona) peek to see whose is more manly an excellent foil to mounting cinematic misery.
80% tragedy. 20% comedy.
You may agree with Oscar that suffering is indeed a cornerstone of poetic inspiration, at least as far as he is concerned.
You may watch the trailer here https://vimeo.com/1142155488?fl=pl&fe=vl
Directed by Simón Mesa Soto.
RKS 2026 International Film Rating 76/100.
“She had married for money because, as her ex-schoolgirl friends put it, he was madly rich, because she was terrified of becoming an old maid, like Rita, because her doctor father got on her nerves and because she wanted to annoy Little Volodya. Had she guessed when she was contemplating marriage that it would turn out to be so nasty, painful and ugly she would never have agreed to it. But the damage was done now, she had to accept things.”
Anton Chekov, “The Two Volodyas”.
Woes of the protestant grave searcher
Journey to find father cremated in 1964 (Anglican)
Soon lost
As 14,867 interned Catholics
Some snickering avenging certain historical losses
A gate
And the wrong cemetery obfuscates the search
Robert K. Stephen
The Manhandlers
Squeeze that meat
Perhaps too much of that white slime
Chunky rump roast
Succulent chop
Once attired by a now despondent pig
And at the grocery store the burlesque show continues
Robert K. Stephen
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