The Small Death of Sleep - Nov 7 2026

 

The Small Death of Sleep

Nov 7 2026

We slept all day.

While the sun completed its rounds

indifferent to us,

casting its brief winter light

on a restive world

that got up in the dark and went to work.

But we never noticed

behind closed lids.

Dreams played out,

and lying half-awake

in the doldrums of dusk

I clung to the dregs they left behind,

grasping for the rest 

like water through an open hand.

But what they meant

I could only guess at.

The sheets lay twisted

pillow damp with sweat.

The air was close

smelling of farts and bad breath,

the room warm

from body heat and shallow breathing.

Like the middle ages

when at night, the cattle were brought inside

to heat the one room hovel.

Animals, even us, despite the conceit

we’re higher beings.

Am I replenished, restored, made whole?

Or after so much sleep

is my mind more woolly, body softer,

have those hours

been simply lost?

Can I reconstruct my dreams

and find some meaning there?

Or did time just pass and dust settle

as the darkened room

got even more unpleasant?

And now, having overslept, I’m up all night.

But the brain fog won’t lift

and my legs disobey

as if I’m still in bed.

So I push through the dark

as if it wasn’t the absence of light

but had mass and weight. 

Am I a somnambulist

half awake?

In some hypnopompic state

I can’t break out of? 

Or a lucid dreamer

who lost control of the plot?

I thought sleep would mend me

   — the more, the better.

That the gods would reward my offering

with a fair exchange;

rejuvenation

for  an entire day 

sacrificed to Morpheus.

I tried to find refuge in dreams

but now can’t remember them.

I gave my body rest

and all it wants is more.

What could be left, I wonder, to refresh my soul

if not oblivion,

the small death of sleep

and pleasant dreams to lull me there?

Overslept egregiously today.  Needed a make-up sleep; but still, this was quite indulgent. Especially considering that there isn’t much light these days anyway! 

Unlike the character in the poem, I do feel refreshed. But there’s also a hangover of laziness after too much sleep. Nevertheless, I’m a great believer in sleep and its restorative power: never had any of that macho pride in getting by on minimal sleep (the “I can do that when I’m dead” crowd). Tweet all night instead of sleeping and you risk the brain rot of Donald Trump: a notorious non-sleeper and ignoramus. 

I don’t expect dreams to be meaningful. I think they’re simply a epiphenomenon of the sleeping brain going about its business:  consolidating memory, repairing neurons, cleansing itself of the toxic byproducts of metabolism. Especially the first, because memories have to be recalled and perhaps re+experienced in order to be sorted. David Eagleman, the polymathic neuroscientist, has advanced the theory that they’re produced by the specialized regions of a highly plastic brain that keep just active enough to defend their territory. Because we know that one part of the brain will encroach on another that’s not being used, just as hearing colonizes the sight centre in blind people. So your brain, deprived of sensory input but trying to maintain its boundaries, keeps generating a low level of random output.

“Hypnagogic” is that twilight state when trying to get to sleep; “hypnopompic” (a distinction and word I just learned) is at the opposite end of sleep — when emerging from it and half awake. Hypnopompic is when your body can still be paralyzed, as it is in REM sleep, but your brain is otherwise awake: a state in which dreams have a sense of reality similar to that of hallucinations. This is how the experience of the incubus and succubus are explained. 

Btw, the “we” in the poems is not a spouse or lover, I’m afraid, it’s me and my two dogs. Animal heat indeed! (Although, to be honest, the farts are more likely mine. I’m the one on the high fibre diet!)

Your Nickel Is Up - Nov 5 2026

 

Your Nickel Is Up

Nov 5 2026

Alexander Graham Bell

thought phone calls should begin with Ahoy.

As if we were ship-bound, surrounded by sea,

or hailing a passing vessel

from a madly pitching deck.

A non-stop cacophony 

of disembodied voices

saturates the atmosphere,

electromagnetic waves

washing over you

like a man overboard

swamped in roiling seas.

If you could prick up your ears

and catch the tinny frequency 

it would be like your bad neighbour

having a party next door

all day, every day,

raucous noise

coming through the wall

no matter how hard you bang.

Countless voices jamming the air,

garbled

gabbing

overlapping;

enticing snippets

cut off

by the next bit of talk.

Now, we know how to answer a call,

and since that first Ahoy, the conversation’s never stopped.

So much to say

of little import,

such impatient listening

when you’re keen to interrupt.

Small talk,

like dipping a toe

in a cold forbidding lake.

Yet that voice

you’re delighted to hear

coming from so far.

Just the voice

doesn’t matter what they say.

And it can be oddly more intimate

to speak without being seen.

More confessional

ingenuous

and self-reflective,

stripped down

like a swimmer

keeping his head above the waves.

Even though, in that unguarded exchange

you risk regretting what you said

or wish you hadn’t heard.

It’s not the hello that’s hard

it’s how to say good-bye.

Was it Bell who proposed That is all ?

There was also Your nickel is up

and Right you are,

but nothing formal stuck.

It seems we’re on our own, free-style.

So I wonder,

can you purse your lips

and blow a kiss 

a thousand miles away?

A sound not only heard

but felt?

Couldn’t resist the nautical metaphor. I wonder if Ahoy is an artifact of Bell’s time in Nova Scotia?

I was only intending it for the first stanza, but then realized the poem needed something to tie it together: a through-line to bridge the rather abrupt change in tone from amusedly quizzical to unexpectedly intimate. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/11/09/the-telephone-james-gleick-book-review

A Smart Way to Save - Nov 3 2026

 

A Smart Way to Save

Nov 3 2026

“To Save”:

to keep safe,

preserve, rescue, economize

There are “smart ways to save”

according to my bank.

Not socks, like the pensioner

who distrusts compound interest. 

Not the punter

who puts it on a sure bet;

saving time

but losing big.

And not with some shyster,

who will bugger off with it

and never be heard from again.

And not as my grandfather did

in the 2nd World War

when his family fled,

sewing gold coins and wafers

into the lining of a coat.

A safe haven

in winter outerwear.

Yet I think of saving

and picture a drowning man

and the desperate look in his eyes.

Of saving from temptation

and unseemly thoughts.

And of saving souls

for the promised afterlife.

Even think of salvation 

in the second coming of Christ;

even though the first

clearly failed to save humanity

restore a fallen world. 

My own modest hope

is to save what time I can,

rescuing it

from to-do lists and busywork

and traffic that only gets worse.

Saving a second here or there 

as if I’ll get back it back at the end.

But save

to leave a big estate?

Save

to take it with me?

As if I could buy my way to salvation

by slipping a few gold coins

to St. Peter at the Gate

and be spared eternal fire.

Like the precious gold

stolen by their captors.

Savings

that also couldn’t save them,

if not from hell

then the temporal fire of hell on earth.

The glowing ovens

packed too full to fully burn,

rancid smoke

that smelled of burning hair and rendered fat

and gaunt bodies

reduced to ash.

Higher Ground - Nov 3 2026

 

Higher Ground

Nov 3 2026

The third day of rain.

Should I be thinking

at least this isn’t snow?

Should I stop feeling smug

we built on high ground

and the power’s still on?

I remember the flood.

The torrent

roaring under the steel bridge

inches below my feet.

How it trembled and groaned,

a low mournful sound 

that came from some deep sepulchral place. 

The trunks of long dead trees

swept down to the lake

that was never there before.

That would remain

on the newly dried ground

surrounded by fresh green shoots

and precise little flowers

without much time to bloom.

Heavy trunks

like those boulders as big as cars

that stand in grassy fields

and must have been dropped from space.

Only later did I learn

it was glaciers.

I am a toddler again,

splashing through puddles

in high-top gumboots

as if impervious,

too innocent to get

it’s luck that decides

not us.

And I am a weary old man

in a bright yellow slicker

who has seen rain come and go,

witnessed blizzards and floods,

and dry spells lasting months.

Does rain have a memory?

Back before it fell.

Before it rose with the sun.

Before it was even an ocean

that smelled of fish

and stung of primordial brine?

That it once was ice

locked away for millennia?

These days, I too forget.

That it snowed this time last year

but didn’t stay.

That the bridge was left

while others fell.

That there is no ground high enough.

That there was a Biblical flood

that cleansed the earth

but was merciful, as well.

That Bible stories

are merely allegorical

and change in the retelling.

That I don’t believe in angels, prophets, or miracles

no matter how miraculous. 

That rain is life, as well as death,

and, if I remember

will end

as it’s always done before. 

As If We Were - Nov 1 2026

 

As If We Were

Nov 1 2026

Frank Lloyd Wright

once sketched a blue and gold spire

a mile high;

the city of the future,

the orderly metropolis.

A tapered needle

rising up from tasteful homes

and green Arcadian fields

  — an obelisk

in the countryside

cleansed of city rot.

With offices, like stratospheric aeries,

atomic elevators, with ear-popping rides,

and a sleek exterior

sculpted by wind.

Because he always favoured buildings

in tune with their surroundings;

as Fallingwater

nestles in its sandstone cliffs

as if it belonged.

Even though no one wanted it.

Could afford it.

Or knew how to build

to such a nosebleed height.

He was a visionary

but misunderstood city life.

That you cannot sanitize

its disorder and dynamism,

its mongrel origins

and mix of people,

its organic urge to grow.

That no one wants a monument

to one man’s ego

standing in a field of corn.

But still, it’s beautiful.

His ambition is admirable. 

And the compulsion to go higher

has driven not just him

since the first time

we fired mud into bricks.

To get a better view?

To get closer to God?

Or to look down on the world

as if we were?

Or simply for bragging rights?

As if a city that’s “world class”

needs to prove itself.

Anyway, I’d rather stay earthbound

despite the chaos, din, and squalor.

Because building taller

seems an unworthy object of human pride.  

Because looking down

from above the clouds

is no view at all.

And because every building

from Babel to the Burj

will eventually fall.

(“Burj” referring to the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest building in the world.)

I just read an article about this ambitious architectural sketch. Visions of the future are, in retrospect, almost always laughable. And clearly, cities are not being levelled and then compressed into single buildings —no matter how high and monumental! But this poem isn’t meant to diminish Wright. Rather, it’s a cautionary tale about hubris, as well as — although perhaps more tangentially — our culture’s unsustainable ethos of perpetual growth.  

Today, it may be technically possible to build a mile high. But I can’t see any other reason than bragging rights and human pride: doing, just because we can.

I can’t think of a great city that’s more insecure about its status than Toronto — my home town. It seems the more you invoke the words “world class”, the less it makes you seem!

A Killer Last Line - Oct 31 2026

 

A Killer Last Line

Oct 31 2026

The short story of my life

still isn’t over

but will remain just that,

more than flash fiction

but hardly novelistic

and will never be a multi-part.

Or perhaps just a poem.

One that rhymes poorly,

tries to impress with fancy words,

and will end who knows how.

With a rhyming couplet

that seems too cutesy to be serious?

An incomplete sentence

that trails off like this  . . . 

  — an open-ended finish

that leaves you unsatisfied? 

Or a killer last line

that transforms all that came before it?

A Haiku, even

  — 3 lines

that go 5-7-5.

All odd numbers

in a formulaic poem 

that’s oddly short.

Although that’s the challenge, isn’t it?

The power of constraints

to drive creativity,

the limits that make us nimble

the struggle that makes it worthwhile.

And indeed, while I outwardly appear 

according to the formula

  — conventional, conservative, bourgeois —

inside, I’m decidedly odd.

And while I chafe against my limits

I’m still far too rigid

don’t push hard enough.

Still, I’d prefer something short

you can read in one sitting,

a story

that leaves you wanting more.

Want   . . . longing  . . .desire.

Which, according to the Buddha, are the bane of life

the cause of human suffering.

But also the unhappiness 

that makes you try your best

to write your way out.

The title is not a case of immodesty. Because it would be a terribly presumptuous thing to declare: it’s hard for me to even tell how well or poorly my last line works. Rather, I just thought it would be a good title to grab the reader. Because isn’t that a lot of what a title is supposed to do: act like a billboard?

But I do love a last that can transform all that came before it. A short pithy poem that gets turned on its head at the very end. Considering all the poems I write, hardly any succeed at this!

I think a good short story does leave you wanting more. Novels are for the completist:  they encapsulate a life, leave no loose ends. While a short stories touches briefly down on a life already in progress, then departs, leaving a future that’s yet to be written. It’s a chapter in a life, not the epic biography.

Although the short story here is more metaphor than literary commentary:  a metaphor for a thin unsatisfying life that will likely end with too many regrets unless something comes along that unexpectedly transforms it.

Btw, I use “fancy words” ironically as a comment on pretension, and not as self-criticism when it comes to my writing. With poetry, I consciously avoid them. I think a good poem enters the mind like music: directly, with a minimum of processing. While big words stop a reader cold. Or even worse, send her to the dictionary. Rich language doesn’t mean fancy. In prose, I’m fine with them: not to show off, but because they provide nuance and precision. 

Don’t Tell Me How It’s Done - Oct 31 2026

 

Don’t Tell Me How It’s Done

Oct 31 2026

The clocks fall back tonight.

The precious hour

that’s been biding its time

since set aside last spring

will return to us,

a little grizzled and stooped

and rubbing the sleep from its eyes.

What legerdemain, manipulating time like this;

like a magician

pulling a card from the deck

then making it reappear.

How we love illusions

love being fooled.

Especially when outsmarting the clock

that so strictly rules our lives,

shifting time 

with an incantation,

a wave of the hand,

a tacit understanding. 

We all knew time wasn’t real,

that clocks don’t set themselves.

But please, don’t tell me how the trick is done.

I want the magic. 

Want to be dazzled.

Want never to see

the trickery

fakery

and simple distraction

that so easily fool rubes like us.

To believe

I can pull time from behind my ear;

make it disappear

or never run out.

I’ve been watching a lot of magic lately. I suppose that’s why the metaphor came so easily to me. I’d suggest you check out Penn and Teller’s Fool Us, or anything by Shin Lim.  

Of course, time is real (and, unfortunately, only goes in one direction!): the universe changes, energy runs down, atoms disintegrate. How electrons in a Cesium-133 atom change under microwave radiation can be measured. Atomic clocks work this way. The time until the death of the universe can be predicted if all the variables are known, such as its current state well as total mass, energy, dark matter etc. Even though we’re just a blip on it, we’re still on the clock. Just not one of our making.

But still, clock time is a construct, and our perception of time is highly subjective. As for me, I notice the lost hour in spring a lot more than the extra one we get tonight! 

(More and more jurisdictions are choosing to eliminate the clock change. Most are opting for permanent DST. Even though data on human health and productivity suggest Standard Time would be better. I agree with that.)

You Mostly Forget - Oct 30 2026

 

You Mostly Forget

Oct 30 2026

What I learned in high school.

 That answers were either right or wrong

   —  2 + 2,

the spelling of quandary.

That girls were mysterious.

A lesson I kept;

because even all grown up

they still are.

That football hurt

worse than losing.

Which I learned to get used to

because we often did.

How to type.

Back then, on big steel machines

that clattered instead of tapped

and took up most of a desk.

Before screens.

Before IBM.

Touch-typing

on mechanical keys

you felt in your hand

   —  the thunk of the slug

on white bond paper,

the heft of the type-bar, platen, bailer.

Later on I would learn

that spelling is simply convention,

and once auto-correct is invented

mistakes aren't held against you.

That while 2 + 2, incontestably, is always 4,

right and wrong are not arithmetic;

that moral quandaries

often land in the middle

and there’s always “it depends”.

If only life could be as simple

as end of term exams.

They taught us well

but not all lessons have served.

Because no one’s hiring cornerbacks

with bad knees,

even for office work. 

Because you can’t cram and forget

  —  someone always remembers

even if you don’t.

And because life isn't multiple choice

   —  no categorical boxes,

no checking-off

either/or.

It gets complicated.

You get old.

You mostly forget.

And your high school sweetheart

while just as hard to figure 

is now perimenopausal

and a mother of two.

But still, you’re glad you can type;

who knew

it would be the only thing you learned 

of any use.

I’ve actually been saying this for years: that the only useful thing I learned in high school was how to type!

The IBM Selectric had no type-bars, just a clever little steel sphere that looked like a golf ball-sized glitter ball. It bounced and rotated at hypnotic speed, striking and inking the document with every keystroke. Before those, typewriters were fully analogue: mechanical machines that directly connected your hand to the result. There was haptic feedback. Perhaps there was a greater sense of agency.  

Now, on my iPad screen, I’m reduced to 1-finger typing! (Don't get me started on the dictation option!)

Of course, good teachers don’t just cram you with facts, which don’t have much of a half life. Rather, they teach critical thinking skills, impart a respect for nuance, and model good behaviour. Convey a love of learning. Nurture curiosity. So it’s true, the facts are gone. But I went to a good school,  and the habit of mind is still there. And there’s no discounting the critical developmental stage of life that overlaps with one’s high school career. 

(Just for the record, I was a linebacker (although not a good one), and there was at least one season our team actually won a lot (a great quarterback, nothing to do with me!); the knees are OK (so far!); and I’m quite a good speller. And it could be argued (not by me, but I’m sure by someone!) that men may be just as mysterious to women as they are to us:  it may not be gender that matters so much as the unknowability of other people in general.)

Cold Cuts - Oct 28 2026

 

Cold Cuts

Oct 28 2026

It dipped below freezing

for the first time this fall. 

So on our late walk

under clear sky

that must have kicked-off its blanket of cloud

I felt thin-blooded;

even winter clothes

couldn’t keep out the chill.

As if summer had softened me,

poaching my brain like a 3 minute egg.

Had made me one of those southerners

with a honeyed drawl

who walks slow and talks even slower;

because while cold kills, if you dawdle

hustling in the heat

just makes you sweat more.

Cold cuts

like a knife filets fish,

its rapier-thin blade

slipping through the clothes

and slashing my flesh

down to naked bone.

Hairless, thin-skinned

and walking upright on two long legs 

we are not made for this;

we aren’t sleeping bears

with layers of fat

jiggling beneath the fur.

Our ancestors

out of Africa

would perish here.

Like adversity, cold hardens us

builds character. 

The way a morning plunge

in a glacial lake 

stimulates the blood and exhilarates the brain.

Or how a cold shower steels you,

standing there

unflinchingly

as your pulse quickens and body puckers.

Resiliency

for the next test life throws at you,

your next trial of will.

I picked up my pace

and felt a stirring of fire 

a spring in my stride

as my body began to acclimate.

Looked up at a sky

spattered with stars

like glitter flung at Mardi Gras,

sharp points of light

on a black abyss

that seemed to swallow light.

And Venus, by far the brightest,

the hothouse planet

shrouded in sulphuric cloud.

Atomizing heat 

that would vaporize me

just like that;

like water

on a red-hot grill

sizzling instantly to steam.

But here, in the cold, I stay whole.

Cold preserves

and energizes.

The kind of cold I prefer

over summer’s sultry heat

walking on an autumn night

under clear moonless sky.

Feeling my blood rise

and mind sharpen

to a carbon steel edge.

Looking out at space

through air so still

it doesn’t scatter light.

Pinpoint stars

through optical glass

polished to perfection;

a celestial lens

you can’t tell is even there.

I take a little mischievous delight in the title’s misdirection: is “cuts” the noun or the verb?

After all, a poem about deli meats hardly sounds promising!