As dusk began to settle, the two men finally started to let their guards down. The territory became more and more familiar. The large shallow water ways had given way to first a short span of sinking, sucking, mud, which the men knew well to navigate around--albeit slowly. Then the terrain turned into rocky shale, sand, and finally firmer ground along a wall of thorny black berry and bushes and firm ground with sparse grasses sprouting up here and there. The open water of the vast wetlands lapping gently, like a sea.

Rusk and Koran typically kept several caches hidden across the western territories  both north and south of the Domes, and even some deep into the east. Some even had small little hidden refuges where the men could rest without too much bother of setting up camp or scrounging to around to set up a security perimeter. They were drawing closer to one of the later now, which put both in good spirits.

The high thorny wall black berry bushes dripped heavy with wet berries. The men ate the sweet fruits greedily as they followed the high wall along a south easterly descent. It wasn't far before they came across the first  small but brisk brook running into the great shallows appearing from under the forest of vines and thorns, They stopped to capture and filter water for their canisters and gut the eel.

Koran made short work of the task, leaving the guts where they landed; rather than wash the area and throwing the guts into the creek. He and Rusk had  just spent a good portion of the day crossing and working around that vast shallow lake and he needed to conserve his energy.

The two hadn't gone much further when  a coyote stepped briefly out from the sharp, clinging briar. It scooped up the guts and quickly disappeared into the impassable wall . 

The event rattled Koran enough that he forced Rusk to stop, "I think we should avoid the refuge tonight," His typical, I don't give a fuck demeanor, couldn't disguise his unease. Rusk sighed inwardly.

"I am not up for a hammock tonight. You got the lions share of that floor last night."

"Most hunters and contractors like us die in the comforts or near their own safe zones,," He reminded Rusk.

Rusk shrugged began walking in the general direction of the cache.

Koran made an exaggerated gesture of defeat and followed. The blackberry briar was high, even though the lands were relatively flat. It made seeing around any corner uncertain and Koran's attention was on super alert.

When the coyote appeared a second time--this time stopping several yards in front of the two men and staring at them defiantly as if sizing them up, Koran felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

Soldier took one last deep and free breath, then slipped his respirator mask over his head. The musty taste of constant dampness settled in on the back of his tongue and mingled with the tasty cooked grease from his dinner. He savored it for a few seconds before swallowing and taking a long hard pull through the respirator testing the air flow as it passed through the filters. He hated having to make such an exertion for each breath, Of all the climbing, and chasing, and sheer exertion he and Koran had to put out to live each day, breathing was the most exhausting, But, breathing the tainted air in the outside for any amount of time meant and early suffocating death.  He sucked hard drawing his diaphragm in then released and took a deep pull trying to let his breath flow as naturally as possible, even if the taste of the air was filled with the chemical plastic smell of the mask.

He stepped away from the building where Koran lay sleeping. The wood was old and slowly rotting. Fifteen meters on the other side of the knoll, and near the top of the next hill top there was an Aspen tree with a perfect view of the building. To Soldier's amazement, it even had a few leaves. He walked over and climbed into the lower branches to settle in for his watch.

Morning found the men making fast tracks in the dull grey twilight that comes slightly before the twilight preceding the sun's rise.. They traveled a good distance before taking a reprieve. Just as the fuzzy lighted glow of the sun that beat heavily down through the constant low cloud cover was at it's highest point directly above them. 

There was no tree cover, only brambles, muddy patches and brush so they used the two large wooden sticks that each carried across their backs to erect a lean too which provided both shelter from the heat of the sun and escape from the constant drizzle. 

There would be few dry patches between here and the Omeless city domes where the two men lived between out-of-dome excursions. They would keep to the edges of The Great Shallows and a if they continued at their current pace they would sleep in the relative comfort of a cache and hidden refuge they had left behind on the way up into the northern passes.

After the afternoon's rest, the water grew gradually deeper and deeper until it seemed that an endless shallow ocean had swallowed the land. Koran trudged out in front, keeping a keen eye out for eels and using his wooden stick to strike them when they came too near. Some scurried off. Most lay stunned for a few moments while the men passed. One, particularly tenacious creature refused to stay still after several blows to it's head.

Every time Koran struck it, it would quickly slither away and return a few moments later from another direction until finally, Finally, Koran skewered the creature at the base of it's skull, then dragged it up and out of the water.

Soldier smiled, "dinner!" 
Koran laughed and slung the eel over his shoulders to keep it away from the other hungry creatures in the knee deep water.

Just as the sun,  an obscure ball of light through the cloud cover began to reach the western horizon the depth of the had receded to no deeper than their ankles. 

Dibber dobber, dobber dibber, dibber dobber SPLAT!
​
Look out world here comes Dobbi the Cat!

Dobber dibber, dibber dobber, dibber, dibber, do.

​That's right little one I love you too!

A large darkly clad man held a smaller, almost frail, lifeless body, by the hair with one hand while twisting a thin silver rod in the body's chest clockwise a full rotation. He released the dead man's long tangled hair and the body slid from his fingers onto the watery ground.

   "You OK?" His similarly dressed companion asked, speaking over loud through his raspatory mask.
   The first man nodded. Raising his head to survey their surroundings.
   "Was that your last rod?"
   "Yep, unless you got one to loan me."
   "No. I used mine on the woman" Shame, he thought to himself, I usually like to hold one  back for the trip home. Just in case we come across a high value target. Like the one they had missed on the way in.
   "Then I suggest we ignore the other one and get back as quickly as possible." 
   The other man shrugged non committedly
   "You been inside yet?"
   "No, but I creeped the windows while we were stalking." He gestured towards the dead man a few feet behind them. "It'll do if you don't mind bunking with a couple of rats!"
   Then the second man grinned beneath his mask, "don't mind if I do, He lifted the dark respiratory mask back to expose a fair but weathered face, with gaunt edges. He smacked his lips, :"you know I love rat. Let's go get some."

   A few hours later they found themselves .warm and satiated. Both men had their respiratory  masks and jackets off and were leisurely licking  lips and fingers covered with the tasty grease of their dinner. The fair man's companion was his exact opposite. Rather than fair, lean, and lithe looking, he had thick dark hair and while his face was fair it was covered with a curly thick beard. He was built thick and strong--brutish. He motioned to the his friend, "Sol, what do you think they would do in decontamination if they knew how much we ate out here?"
   Soldier stretched his long legs out in front of him, perfectly built for running and chasing, "I don't know, Koran, Maybe they don't even care." He leaned back, "I mean why would they. Everyone knows Contractors don't live very long.."
​   "But that's because most die out here. I don't intend to,"
   "Some just decide to stay."
   Koran leaned back against his pack, tilted his head slightly, ascertaining Soldier's seriousness. "Yeah, but we kill most of those." He tapped the side pocket of his pack. The spent retreival rods jingling quietly.
  A faint shuffling noise interrupted the conversation. Both men sat up, instantly at full awareness. They sensed more than saw a rush of movement just inside the doorway of the ramshackle hut. 
   Koran ignited a small liquid light rod and flashed it over the entrance and into the corners on each side. As he passed over the second corner, something scampered out of the light towards the door. 
   With a quickness that belied his size, Koran reached out and grabbed one of the creatures by the tail and lifted it to the light in his other hand. Both men winced a little as they surveyed the smaller rat. It's  little  body  covered in tumorous growths. Koran quickly swung it against the door jam, crushing it's little skull and flinging if from the shack.
   "Hey," Soldier consoled his friend, "there are still those that would consider that a good dinner." But he couldn't hide his own shudder of revulsion.
   "Someone already did," Koran countered.
   Neither wishing to discuss the subject further, Soldier began pulling on his respirator mask and jacket. "I'll take the first watch. "Sleep friend."
   But Koran was already spread out lifelessly on the dirty floor snoring soundly, 

​Rain pelted continuously over the marshy hills. A lone man splashes out of the brier and into a shin deep puddle. He wears no protective gear, his lungs heaving with exertion.

The smell of fear emanates from him. He is coiled tight, like a trapped animal--deadly and unpredictable.

He senses he is being hunted and that his hunters are close, though he can neither hear nor see them through the ceaseless rain. He sprints over the hill top to an old rotted building at the bottom of the other side. 

As he reaches the building, a rotting shack, his blood is pulsing loudly in his ears. He takes one last look around--nothing. He leans in against the wall under the eaves and wipes the rain and sweat from his brow. As his hand moves over his face, he opens his eyes and is confronted by a black masked man staring him intently in the eye.

He springs forward, water splashing all around in his wake. Panicked he stumbles towards the back of the building just as another black form steps into his path. He skids to a halt just in front of the giant. 

Breathing heavily he could hear the other approaching from behind. A settles firmly on his shoulder and swings him around to stare into the masked form of his death.

He dives at the peddler, clawing with desperate ferocity, seeking to catch a hold of the rim of the peddler's mask. Another hand wrapped itself in his hair and ranked his head back, ripping him back with such strength that his neck popped back almost separating from his body. He had just enough time to see the thin metal cylinder flash amidst the rain drops before he felt it penetrate the thin clothe of his jacket, his skin, sternum, diaphragm, and heart.

He felt his body tighten and contort one last time and blackness engulfed.

Graphic By ,

​ 
Mr Logan

Good bye Mr Logan
You grabbed her tit
The party’s over
Here’s my fist
How’s your threshold for pain
 

 
Plastic bags

I sit
No sound
I utter
The fridge
Drones on
Intruding
Upon wind
Rustling by
Down streets
Filled with discarded plastic bags
Tumbling
Into gutters
Washing, churning
Breaking down
Through clogged sewer pipes
Emerging
Blasting
On frothing waves
Crushing in
Upon the shore
Breathing, beating
Back to us

 
 
Sanctuary

In a life and time
With so many ups and downs
Open and closed spaces
Even at peace
There will always be a need
For sanctuary
 

 
Queen of the dirty laundry

I am queen of the dirty laundry
But cooking, washing dishes
And scrubbing toilet bowls
Are also in my realm
 
No king decides to join me here
No man at any helm
Of my fleet that sails
Through sudsy water
While never leaving home
 

 
 
In a mother’s cry
​
One treat drop fell
A child was lost
Ripped from her bosom

 
Foot in mouth disease

They told me not to do it
And
I did it anyway
And
There it went
Into my mouth
 
I tried to stop it
The ceaseless flow
Tongue dancing
Saliva churning
 
It had already bypassed all forms
Of anatomical control
And tapped somewhere in there
Beneath the medulla
K+ ions synapsing
Long after the unbalanced electrons
Being so disrupted and displaced
Into the pre-space – time – event state
That xxpressed
In the most inappropriate way
resounding shock waves
charging along neurons
through this scrambled network
where if finally landed
in my mouth

First, to all my international friends, yes, we do have ghetto's in Canada. Just ask any Whalley resident out in Surrey, or indigenous First Nations child living in Northern Ontario or Manitoba, Or take a stroll down East Hastings Street in Vancouver and you will get a good idea of just how desperate people can be in Canada.

I have never experienced the desperation of Pender and Hasting type poverty, but both of my children started their lives in the ghettos of Surrey, After a short reprieve during their formative years, we all three returned during the final years of my undergraduate education.

Back in those years it often felt like we were fighting for our very lives there and it was hard to stay focused on the end goal. Both of my children returned to the Surrey ghettos as young adults, even as I returned in my early 50s.

There are many experiences and lessons that I have learned as a result of my time in the Surrey ghettos--some good, some unintentional. I have tried to distill it down to 10 key lessons that have had the most impact on my life and they way that I view the world. These are listed here in no particular order of priority:

1. Not everyone who lives in the ghetto lives poorly. Of those that do, well, bad things can happen to good people too. Not everyone who lives in the ghetto deserves to be there. Lots of people do seem to thrive there: street hustlers, junkies, hookers, small minded , people that want to hide. However, there are also working people who are simply unable to earn enough money to live anywhere else. That said, many of these people are also the transients, from new immigrants and students to druggies and thieves making a pit stop for whatever reason.


2. People are more desperate and do more crazy things to survive. Almost everyone you meet in the ghetto is just one short step from homelessness. Every week or so you see someone's entire belongings strewn across a trail, pathway, back alley or street. People will break a car window for a Toonie or even a Loonie. People do a lot more damage for a lot less in the ghetto.

3. That excess is as much an issue in the ghetto of western countries as anywhere else in the western world. When you are in the ghetto you can't help but notice the number of obese people is higher. Excess is everywhere. I am not talking about excess in terms of good nutrition. I am talking about excess of calories, empty sugar calories. Excess in the form of  more drugs, more excess drinking, more obesity, more crime, more violence against the vulnerable, more, more, more. I often felt guilty for indulging in the excess sugar myself. It is quite a bit more difficult to eat less and better foods when you live in the ghetto.

4. It's not so terrible to way until next payday. I can't stress this one enough. I ended up in the ghetto the last time of my life mostly due to the fact that people in my life couldn't exercise the patience to wait until we had earned and saved the money needed to do the things we wanted to do in our lives. Play now pay later doesn't work. If you work hard and earn a decent living, next payday is only a week or two away. 

5. Post Code Envy is a real thing. Institutions and businesses treat you like you are "less" worthy than everyone "not in the ghett0." They spend a significant amount of money profiling demographics around postal codes and zip codes. People with little or no money, and few options are typically attractive to predatory type businesses.

6. It's isolating. Friends and family avoid coming to your house because they worry about their cars getting broken into while they are visiting. OR they worry about picking up some bugs from sitting on your furniture. Not only that, it isn't exactly someplace you are proud to invite friends and family over to. 

7. Bad habits follow you out of the ghetto. If you are a smoker, you won't just quit because you have a new postal code. Likewise if you are dishonest, distrustful of others, that doesn't just get left behind. I think for those of us that do make it out, we don't change overnight to be people who have never felt the pain of life there or the bad habits that pushed us there, or even the ones we developed while we are there. it takes many years of both conscious and unconscious effort like any other positive behavioral change.

8. Not everyone is trying to get out. Living in the ghetto doesn't always feels as bad as it looks from the outside. I met many people, particularly this last time, that have made good honest lives for themselves living in the ghetto. People who have no desire to leave, are humbly satisfied with their lives, and who make it a more tolerable place. As one woman explained to me, "my children get what I can afford to provide. I can't feel bad because it isn't a big fancy house." For those people in particular, I am thankful. 

9. The Freaks Come Out at Night. While the "ghetto" is one of the most colorful places for people watching that I ever lived. People watching needs to be enjoyed from the safety behind a dark window on the second floor. I don't exaggerate when it is say best never to go outside at night in the ghetto. This is when people are most at risk of being hurt there. It could be a working woman trying to protect her income and place of business from perceived competition, to a opportunist preying on the vulnerable, to some erratic person flipping out on fentanyl. People of the ghetto, in fact everything about the ghetto just seem more intense and amplified in the evening.

10. Getting out is very hard, some do, many don't. For those that do, it can cost almost everything you have and hold dear. Not only do people exiting the ghetto have to bare all the regular costs of living in more costly housing (especially in places like British Columbia), but almost everything must be left behind when you leave or you bring the bugs and filth with you​. And trust me, no new or neighbors will thank you for bringing hitch hikers with you. When I made what I hope to be my last exit, I was happy to leave the roaches, ants, and bed bugs behind, but I was also highly vigilant not to bring them with me.

Everything thing else aside, I think being so close to having nothing, really made me learn to be thankful for what I have.
​