My Journey With Judy Garland

[gregg rowe]

  (For my mother:
I hope we find the love before it is too late)

I leave the Montréal General Hospital
Another blood test
Another track in my arm
Wish the damn nurse would
Learn hot to take blood
Bruises as large as twonies
Nine vials full, wonder if I have any left
In the ten percent floats ninety percent of water
They only need to fill it a quarter full
To get the one minuscule drop of blood to put on a slide
Examine my microscopic bites under a scope

A pause café, fifteen minutes
Off to see my psycho-therapist
It’s only nine in the morning
Been up since six creaking the old bones together
Hearing the snaps as the joints connect
Drug free therapy
Leaving behind issues in his office
Hopefully carrying solutions out

I feel nauseated and weak from the fruit loop pills
I have to eat for breakfast every morning
I skip class for awhile, the pain in my legs
Feel like I have anvils
Dragging on the cement sidewalks of Montréal

Cross Pine Avenue to Guy Street
Instinctively walk towards the Metro
The subway system, not the grocery store

Your angelic voice sings in my head
I’m oblivious to the traffic of cars and people
Sunlight September summer Montréal afternoon
Haunts my memories as your angelic voice floats through my mind

   “The ole hometown looks the same
   As I step down from the train
   And there to meet me
   Is my momma and poppa”

Secret moments I had captured
Through a child’s innocent eye:

An afternoon sunlit room
Open fibre-glass curtains
Scottish hair lights up the walls
Teaching me to waltz
Just the two of us, smiling in eternity
Those stolen afternoon dances
Breaks the monotonous darkness
When he stalks in

Stroll down Guy Street
At the age of forty-three
I have not heard your angelic
Ethereal voice since I was eight

They swim and flush in my head
Break and tear my soul
Create a chaotic ambivalence
That I feel towards you
In every monthly phone conversation
I have never come out
And have really said
   “I love you”

You, the half creator of me
Who endured more pain
In just my birth

“Why after three children already
would you want to have another
if the abuse had already commenced?”

Nineteen fifties
Heterosexual male supremacy dominated
Leads me to deduce
I am the product of
An abusive sexual relationship

False love conceived a human

“I hate him!”
she snarled to my aunt
Over a cup of coffee in the farm kitchen
While I played like an eight year old
Undetected in the sandbox
Below the open window

“He has his father’s piercing eyes
and sinewy artist’s hands.”

Your enclosed terror of the male characteristic
That I carry of my father’s chromosomes
What a legacy!
   to be hated by the woman who bore you

These words are embedded
Coupled with her comment
At my brother’s funeral

“You should be lying in that coffin instead of him!”
Her words bounced off the Church ceiling
Peeled in my ears and rang me to oblivion
Amnesia is my best friend to absorb the pain

A heterosexual brother with a wife and family
Is more important
Than a homosexual brother living with HIV

Words which pierced my heart
A piece of jagged mirror
Sliced in my life’s viens
Another bridge you successfully bombed

That was yesterday,
         yesteryear,
               yestermemory

Today your angelic voice
Soothes me to sleep safely

I get to Blvd. De Maisonneuve
Grey fluffy cumulus clouds
Race towards the towering city buildings
Alfred Hitchcock’s greying of the skies
Before the birds arrive

Glance across the intersection
Notice Uncle
In another man

Amongst a street full of strangers
We both begin to cross
Simultaneously
As he nears, I capture
A photograph image in my mind
Juxtaposed to an eight-year old child’s flashback
Snowy white tussled hair
Youthful face
Brown piercing eyes
Full of shit

Another question unanswered

“Why after thirty four years
he brings up a story
about me at the age of seven or eight
reaching out to touch him sexually
in a public swimming pool locker room?”

An incident I have no recollections of
Yet I remember my temple
Being abused vividly
Selective memory or walking hand in hand with amnesia?

I am not responsible for my actions as a child
I am responsible for my actions as an adult

An uncle, whom I haven’t
Seen or heard from
Since Dad died in a house fire
In nineteen seventy-one

An uncle who never gave a shit about me
As a child
Who went cold as Dawson Creek’s temperature
On a winter day in early January

I had a two hour stop over
In his town and rang his phone
Thought it would be nice to reconnect
After all these years
Meet his wife, shoot the breeze
Connect to my family roots

Yet, was refused to be entertained
By this self-proclaimed high society professor
“Because you do not have an appointment!”

“Fuck you Uncle!”
With your false air of sophistication
I have probably tasted better champagne from a Styrofoam cup
Than the cheap white shit you place in your crystal
I have heard family stories
About the ghosts in your closets
Yet never repeated them

So talk to me, not my back
You slandering bastard

I cry a river within
Am I the only one to admit
I come from a destroyed dysfunctional family
Caused by the patriarch of it all
I live in isolation with my family ghosts
Their burdened cross upon my shoulders

I search for the truth
To distinguish the reality
Living in a fantasy
Sanity as my survival

I am the observer
Of body language
Facial expressions
Movements
Conscious of any discrimination
That might float my way

My world is a moving factor
Time speeds by
The wrinkles are appearing
As I cover them with face cream
Urgency becomes y necessity

   I have aged

      I have aged

         I have aged

Your angelic voice recites in the depths of my mind
Sitting at an outside café
On the streets of Montréal
Composing this poem

     “Ninety years it had stood
         on the old shelf itself
         tick tock tick tock
         one day it suddenly stopped
         never to tick again
         when the old man died[/…”

A summer sprinkle rain
Rises in steam from the Montréal streets
Protected by the café’s outdoor awning
From getting soaked
Sun breaks through the grey cumulous clouds

A rainbow umbrellas the city
Judy Garland dances in my head
Urgency becomes my necessity

   “Somewhere over the rainbow…”

A hurricane hyper than Isabelle
And Juan migrate together
Tumbles in the abyss
Of my stomach

A flock of a hundred seagulls
Flutter above my head
I scream inside:

“Please don’t shit on my head!”
As I depart from the outdoor café

Just one of my regular day trips to the hospital
To prepare for a possible surgery
In December
Ironically, to repair my heart

After it is over
And I am de-etherized
Would I say
   “I love you”

How would you respond?

Whatever it is
My existence is more important
Than the plastic response

In the meantime
I will journey with Judy Garland


Gregg Rowe
October 01, 2003

[Squeaker1]

Gregg,  Reading your stuff, literally tears at my soul.  I only wish that I could begin to express my inner feelings like you do.  Thank you,

Squeak

[robin]

Gregg...I may be wrong by making the assumption, but are you HIV and HCV positive? I wasn't sure if I was reading the poetry correct. If you have been given both these diseases in one life, that really sucks and I'm sorry. Wishing you peace and always, my friend, keep your spirits high...robin

[gregg rowe]

Robin:

You are correct in your assumption:  I have been HIV + for over 25 years and Hep C since 2000, but I went through 72 weeks of Pegatron/Pegasus Interferon treatment and found out that it was successful, now I just have to be careful and not contract it again, that is why I became a monk!  Just joking about the monk part, but have been celebate for a very long, long time in my life.  I've  expereinced a few alternative programs where I am able to re-channel my sexual energy into creative energy and was able to record what I was experiencing whilst I was in pain.  If I was to post a writing a day here it would take three and a half years to post all my works.

Keep in the spirit

Gregg

[robin]

OK...not making light of your post but I think there are a lot of people who "talk" about sex more than they actually have anything to do with sex so writing in lieu of it is totally appropriate in my lifespan. Great that you found an outlet. I'm glad the HCV is no longer active...that is one thing in your favor. Do you have many problems with the cocktail for HIV? Seems like I have read where there are some really nasty sides from the meds. How do they compare with the HCV treatment? If I'm getting too personal or NOSY...just say so...I tend to be rather blunt. Keep your spirits high..robin

[gregg rowe]

First, the HIV medication that I am now on is intolerable but I still take it.  Lots of naseum, vomitting, etc but if I balance my nutirition and intake of liquids I can counteract some of these side effects to a minimal but they are still there.

I found the Hep C treatment more difficult to ingest.  Sunday would be my injection day and I could not get out of bed until Thursday.  I would be lucky enough if Friday was a good day but then the side effects would kick back in on Saturday only to have another injection on Sunday.  I didn't think I would make it through and was finally glad that I had endured open heart surgery the year before in order to take the treatment for Hep C.

The side effects were monstrous on my body, I only weigh 130 pounds average so I was always losing weight and pushing myself to gain it back during the week.  Would I endure it again if I contracted Hep C again?  Definately not!  This is not a sports competition on seeing how far we can push bodies with potent medications.  There are sub-side effects to consider as well, the muscular-joint pains, headaches, intloerence to light, etc.  If it wasn't for medicinal marijuana I would not have made it through this treatment. 

The other thing is the more of the drug you take into the body the more intloerant you become to the drug so you finally become immune to it and it is no longer effective.  That is where I am at the stage with my HIV cocktails.  I have tried every drug and combination possible and because some gave me ulcers, others affected my liver, other my heart, and others created gall stones, I am at the point now where I am on the last cocktail availabe to me out of everything until they come up with something new.

Gregg

[Tom_K]

Gregg,

The only words that come to mind are ...."You're a far far better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

Tom

[robin]

Wow, Gregg, you have really had a difficult life. I'm so sorry. Do they have clincial trials in Canada that you can look into, in case you find this current medication cocktail intolerable, have serious sides or it becomes ineffective? I wish you the best and keep your spirits high...robin