Poetic Inquiry: Rosepoo

The other night my son told this funny story about eating potpourri. He was only eight years old at the time, and wondering why something that looked like food would be so tantalizingly displayed in a bathroom, of all places. So, yeah, he took a nibble, realized it was NOT food and got the vile tasting stuff out of his mouth with as much speed and dignity as an eight year old boy can muster. I'm not a big potpourri fan.... incense is more my speed... smoke, spark and ember bathed in a spicy haze. But I don't have incense burning in my bathroom. Mostly my bathroom smells like, well, a bathroom, this in spite of my spouse's occasional jests about alien shits (mine, apparently). I leave these behind in my own and in many other bathrooms with no small sense of pride, happy to take the credit for the products of my labours. But, I digress. I was going on about bathrooms and the means used to keep them appropriately fragrant, and the dangers of inedible fragrance makers to unsuspecting or just plain curious bathroom users.

Bathrooms --not only those in the home but, increasingly, public ones--are well dispersed across a spectrum of odour intervention. I've been unduly - some might say, morbidly-fascinated by this phenomenon over the years. I've been exposed to magnificent opulence, wing chairs, draperies, soft lighting, floral displays, bowls of potpourri and floating candles. I am almost embarrassed to do my business--much less the paperwork--in such luxurious and sacred spaces. There are also bottom of the barrel grunge pits with such well entrenched odour it has morphed into a slick--or, slime, perhaps?--that creeps over floors and walls. Breathtaking... indeed, breath-holding... in its glory. One feels privileged to add to such a body of work.

being present with odour...being present with fragrance..... who can make scents of it? one person's odour is another's fragrance; one person's fragrance ... another's odour. Tolerances are idiosyncratic, and, to be fair, it's not only bathrooms where odours dwell and flourish; it's also kitchens and basements and elementary schools, nurseries and brothels and diners, airports and bus stations and..... well, you can see the sheer immensity of it all.

I am struck, however, by tolerances around bathrooms and, it grieves me to say, around bodies. Human ones, anyway. Shit--ok, I'll be more genteel-- poo blends with the various masquerading contributors to olfactory comfort and joy and visitors encounter not one, not the other, but an even more exotic hybrid: rosepoo. Some bathrooms waft this remarkable achievement via sprays, candles, plug-ins and, yes, potpourri. My hands and nostrils carry away its remnants as a damp and tepid memory of time well spent. A body may smell like a meadow or an ocean, a flower, tree, herb, spice or breeze.... anything other than smelling like a body. Scents are the means by which women fling themselves uncontrollably at casually sauntering men, and are no less the means by which men are mesmerized by the allure of chest heaving, pouting, glassy-eyed, wild -maned women. Common scents, I suppose; or uncommon ones.

Fragrance, odour, repulsive, compelling; the desire to draw closer into a pungent nearness, seduction and ambush, all that awaits, riding on something as personal and fragile as scent. Still.... I have to say, I know it's you before I see you, and I take a tender delight in that sweet anticipation.

In the news.....

There's a word for that....

Crowds gathered at the site of an unexpected collision earlier this week at the opening of a Chapters bookstore in Niagara Falls. A cube van carrying a shipment of dictionaries and thesaurusae was t-boned by a large pick-up truck attempting to get through an intersection on a swiftly changing amber light. No injuries were reported, but the driver of the pick-up was vocal in his displeasure over on-site law enforcement's confiscating of his supply of 500 rubber chickens. Onlookers were shocked, dismayed, distraught, agitated, bothered, distressed, perturbed, nonplussed, troubled.......

Not a rhetorical question

What is / are the downside(s) to being underestimated across the many dimensions of self ? *




* ( ..... thus far, I cannot think of any; but I'm open to being persuaded)

Short Play: about play

Dark, black stage area; black floor with large rubber squares distributed across the surface, resembling a multi-coloured chess board ( no pastels... primary and stark colours only with occasional black and white squares); black ceiling with star shapes all over. 5 people are scattered on the board, wearing a colour that contrasts with the colour of the square they are on ( red, blue, green, yellow, pink). Back wall is concave and hung with a thick,black, velvet curtain. Scene action begins with a visible ripple in the curtain from a forced air movement somewhere off stage. Players are positioned on their respective squares, seated in tightly curled ball shapes. Curtain ripples, players begin a slow and gradual uncurling process until all are in a standing position that they then hold in stillness. And then, simultaneous shouts ring out.....
Red yells to Blue : how can I move across this space
Green yells to Yellow: how can I reach across this space
Pink yells to the stars: what is this space? who are these others?
Players begin reaching out and up, without moving their feet, and then cautiously begin to creep themselves to the edges of their squares. For no apparent reason Yellow yells: travel on our colours ... let's meet on the blacks and whites.
Other colours mutter initial agreements.....ok, sounds good, that's a plan, where's my square.... utterances spoken at once.
Green yells out: is this a game? and then there are many voices, shouting and yelling : is this a game? what is the game? are we the game? what are the rules? there must be rules !? must there be rules? must there be....
Colours are scurrying , running, sliding , gliding from square to square; halting spontaneously, forming groups into moments of stillness on black or white squares, breathing audibly, then dispersing again.
Pink yells: the rules are no game
Blue yells : then let there be rules
Red yells : such as they are
Yellow and Green chant then whisper: such as they are, such as they are, such as they are.....
colours hold their positions on the squares where they are, such as they are whispering continues, colours swaying on the spot, making subtle and obvious figure 8 movements with their hands, audible breathing continues, black velvet curtain is rippling, colours look up at the stars, swaying and hand movements continue, and even though all have been trying to cling to their separate squares, their movements and swaying pull them together like magnets until all are clustered near centre stage.
Pink says, clearly: rules are not the problem; the game's the thing
Red and Blue call out ( making grandiose accompanying gestures in the direction of the audience) mesdames right arm large presentation gesture messieurs left arm large presentation gesture and the gods !! both arms cast upwards toward the audience in a gesture of greeting and adoration.
Green and yellow call out.... the game's the thing ?! the play's the thing.... and then there are many voices, the game's a game, the play's a play, the play's a game, the game's a play.... all the colours are turning and flailing, moving away from centre stage, and then, in a moment of perfect hovering stillness, all call out in one bold proclamation: the game that can be played is not the game that is played....
and then.....
then, as swiftly as it took form, the stillness dissolves, and all colours move into a row, on one square, very close together. There is a sharp intake of breath, and then a trembling held breath as all gaze into the dark audience space, finally exhaling into relaxation and, with the audible exhale, the words, given over as a finishing sigh... is it?
Their heads lean softly onto the shoulder of the next colour, with pink at the end of the line, leaning on her ( or his) own outstretched arm, with its hand turned upwards to the dark... or the stars.

Limerick

There once was a chemist named Sue
whose workplace was next to a loo.
She thought it was art
to camouflage fart
with concoctions of sweet smelling goo


(eewww!)

Preference

I see you gazing at her
feel the heat that used to be
ours
no more
no longer
strange
how that move to casual
( or worse, tolerant)
begins in one
seldom both
seldom simultaneous
you gazing at me
incredulous
that I would dare to make that first move
usually yours
for the taking
having been both
having done both
leaving by far the tougher
sentence
surviving remorse
seeping poison
every breath
a little death
grateful for your leaving
after all

Tableaux

I. I grew up in poverty & not only did I not find anything noble about it, I never thought I was all that different from others..... I wondered, how would you know, just by looking, or listening, or noticing, where I came from or how I lived...
...in those dwellings where edges overlap & walls are skin, the space crawls upward and carves out a vertical horizon
amidst the dank, tin, boards, wire & squalor there are flowers of dignity, lines of pride, the clothes I wear that reveal & conceal who I am & where I dwell.
You think you know me.
Maybe, you do.

II. I hurt you it seems
all I do
is move words around in the service of some
elusive clarity
& even that movement
continues to offend
when I had hoped to express
gratitude & admiration
instead I dig the hole
deeper
than sky or sea
earth or fire
elemental & hopeful
I seek a grove
there, I'd lay down
the sound of trees
streams & rain
bearing witness
there, I'd bleed my motives
& if you chose
you could inhale the copper
scent & wonder
about the wisdom of Sequoias
& the risks of assumptions