after one last summer of cottages, palm-beers floating on the lake,
faceplanting into the waves while trying to kneeboard,
badly-planned but perfectly-timed trips to toronto for shows
(getting kurt viled)
the family casa (host of
many ragers and teenage kicks) was sold and georgian bay was no longer home.
my parents bought a new truck and moved what was
once 15 quesnelle drive
down to cape breton island, three quarter million in pocket
and i,
i had a resurgence of old feelings towards a girl i won't name
brought on by our rekindled friendship after the death
of my best friend, (nothin' helped me get thru those months
quite like that smile)
and after an embarrassing night spent having various altercations
(fisticuffs)
with a young birch tree behind my pal's place
i hopped in my '03 volvo and sped west like that old man once told
dean to do.
dust flying thru the open windows and my split knuckles
smilin' at the fat old sun.
that summer the bookstore,
where i bought so many weathered novels, died and
the man who was its overseer, with whom i spent so many evenings philosophizing over cups of joe in the closed-up shop ,
sort of faded away; i'd see him thursdays at the study sipping whatever he drank there in the corner and always felt too bad
about the closing of cottage books, ashamed in a word, to
ever go over and buy the guy a beer.
still don't know why.
guess i'm a bit of a *****
that drive out west was good. made 10 mixes in addition to CDs
i already had and slept on the highway side and stopped
where ever the hell i wanted to stop. smoked cigars while blazing over the pavement with my life in the backseat at 120 km/h
not knowing how to feel,
but doing alright.
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC
i am on the beach /
waiting for my resurrection
with the sand in my bad eye and
the smell of goose **** pungent and intrusive, uninvited.
2:30 pm , friday of may 24 weekend;
the beach is flat and empty of girls
(for whom i am waiting)
(will they know
how to save me ??) .
so far i have avoided sitting on a 3.5" nail, rusted, protruding from the duneside,
and several shards of a broken bottle beer,
keen to shred my winter-softened feet with their angry brown fangs.
i will pick up as much of the glass as i can find and go home, calling myself
a good samaritan.
"you're a **** some seagulls say from the lake.
i pick up a rock and let fly; they are just out of range.
"you're a **** they repeat as i walk back towards the footpath.
and yeah, they are probably right.
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 11:17 PM UTC
spin—for a moment even some yarn
in which we both give a ****
and we spend long, quiet evenings quoting
out of biographies of JFK or Bryan Ferry
and forget for a while all the things
we hate about each other, the things that
make us spit on the ground when they
come to mind;
forget them and maybe make love like
normal people. not against the counter before work
lifting your pinstripe skirt—rolling it up, really,
over your *** to gird the top of your hips.
(chaffing crown of ****** thorns)
maybe instead give me more than
5 minutes
and let me bury my face down in you and
you can wrap your legs around my head
to keep me there as long as you please.
and maybe later i'll laugh, sitting against the headboard, long-hand writing,
at something one of my characters has said and looking up
from an account you're working on you won't
understand my laughter but you will be
glad of it.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 11:26 PM UTC
creek in th'dark
w/brightest stone baubles, dappled riverbottom pebbles under moon-water,
a thousand faces glinting, smiling upwards.
school of carp in the reeds, the stalks rasping in the warm air
as the tails swish them back and forth.
the unheard steady **** of flapping, feeding mouths --
drawing in of algae, snails, waterbeetles;
soft crunch of shell and exoskeleton.
two legs on the dune by the stream wishing
there was two more legs on the dune, angling
down toward the stream.
a tender accompanying voice singing maybe Piaf
avec un accent provincial (de châtillon?)
hair wet, tangled;
sporting powder-white two-piece,
fresh from having swam with strong, slow kicks of slender pale legs,
long in that green water.
legs that look good in black heels.
their clicking imagined in the head.
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 2:10 PM UTC
FEB 8 2013 -- i swear there is a good 6 feet
fresh powder outside.
mountain of blankets in my bed & i don't know why i even got out of them. one more
bad decision.
half-pot coffee and club songs to try and get into some kind of (productive) zone but
feel like any semblance of true rhythm is practically impossible,
given current situation (i.e. general vida) , won't really get into it.
feeling also great need to desist with all this
introspective poetry
and move into non-diaristic phase. successful phase. difficult when so preoccupied
with issues (doubts, too, i suppose. though these could easily be done away with, if i could get
a steady pattern going once more. regular output.
creativity buried by oppressive, continuous snowfalls. // excuses.
think often on verses written
in Spain.
-- verses written on THE BALCONY or THE OPEN WINDOW COUCH,
(surrounded by a beauty complex in its simplicity. by beer and cigarettes and
people who truly know what it is to be unsure in almost all things,
yet are satisfied and grateful.)
-- verses now sitting on a shelf unread by anyone.
my "best work", to-date.
i wonder sometimes if i am losing my party face ..
simultaneously want to hang out with Crystal Castles or Justice but
drink bourbonne (hah) or OE and listen to Ray Price.
putting on something like the Steve Miller Band or Sam Cooke often helps. lifts.
just need to stop moping round like a sad old dog. in all honesty i have probably been
mildly depressed on & off for about two years. months in Spain excepted.
having said that i can't really think of anything else worth saying at the moment.
anyway, i wrote something today, i guess.
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 1:45 PM UTC
last night i almost
gave up thinking of bronzy brazilian girls
perspiring pure coconut oil, eau de margherita ;
supermodelas eating my dreams like concord grapes, lionesses
lounging on new york balconies, lithe, reading céline.
(esti ginzburg, on the phone, considers another pomeranian) .
almost stopped.
almost derailed strange vogue-like fantasme of irina shayk, standing legs planted
left knee out-thrust and foot
in ebony heel, cocked against the earth.
set being imitation of gloomy coal mine, east of prague. thin arms firmly controlling the
arc of her pickaxe, clothed in leather, high heels;
sheen of sweat holding her feline body in sweet embrace.
imagining that when shift's end buzzer echoes thru the tunnels she smokes a cigarette
on a bench in the women's locker, apple planted on old planking, elbows on her knees.
cover-alls peeled
down to her waist and her hair,
free at last.
(click)
on the tram back into the city all the smoked glass
cartier storefronts pass by like polaroids held in the hand. the same speed.
giggling, 'rina thinks of the six she could place
along her arm; gilt gold, brushed silver, diamant...
there are 11 smoked belmonts by the back steps; i did
little with the night. (tall shadow of a woman in a black dress and my mouth
a cotton ball)
that is to say:
i did almost give up thinking about bronzy braz ilia g rls ,
-
but i didn't/and so there's nothing else.
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC
i became the jumpin' jack flash in november '77.
there was slush in new york city and the bums at the piers
still burned trash in metal barrels you could see from over on coney island even.
just like kerouac said.
in the daytime foolish kids picked weeds in central park
and called them flowers. they got laid by stringing charming words together as they gave them
to the thousand daughters of manhattan's old monied men,
the wall street hacks hanging from the teats of the
great & frenzied cash cow of capitalist interest. the milk
came slow that winter.
one week, early december when the slush gave way to furtive snowfalls
i took a bus to patterson, NJ
for a few days, drank a lot of awful coffee writing obscenities in my journal but speaking
them aloud in the restaurants and bars and so
was deemed just like everybody else in patterson, NJ.
drunk & high, helicopter tours, stuffed with bread and half-truths.
and when shortly my irish luck ran out i raced back to the big smoke
in a drop-top mercedes driven by a man whose thick accent i couldn't quite place.
whose only serious question was whether i knew anyone
who had good coke.
in the city it rained for three weeks straight and
david byrne, in some bowery apartment wrote a song called 'flood'
which was never released on any talking head's album
but lingered in his brain as a reminder of the three weeks
he spent cooped up, eating saltines and dancing to the rhythms of the thunder and rain outside.
totally alone with his mind & a bass guitar. tina weymouth, naturally, was furious.
the bass was the last thing she had left in a band she half-started. and david had stolen even that.
but that was tina weymouth, that was new york.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 9:33 PM UTC
(in the dream it is late March)
there's a light rain in Montréal & the sky
is a gorgeous, early-morning variety of slate grey. imagine the lid
of an old metal garbage-can.
everything is dismal, perfect. and quiet; even the people leaving the bars are silent.
dismally, perfectly, silent.
ghosts of old cats—belonging maybe to ghosts of old ladies who lived, say, just off St. Lau, back
in the eighties—ramble downhill, in the direction of rue St. Catherine (Saint Cat! O patron of felinity!) ,
between the legs of those spilling out from the trendy & ****** clubs.
some of the ghosts wander out into the street, flash thru car tires that would've (& have) (at one time)
smashed them to pulpy carpet on the asphalt.
(who goes to pick them up then? when the tires have had their way with them over & over?
when they are just hair & porridge by a sewage grate?)
after a greasy smoked-meat-on-rye or a nightcap at somebody's place, just off the drag,
i'm in a sodden, but warm overcoat, hands curled in the bottoms of it's pockets; mis-shapen mass
of hair plastered to my scalp; walking en bas de la montagne just past the McGill Medical Centre.
—this late, the busses back downtown are never on time.
(driver's probably having a few smokes before he starts that long tour down. full up of drunk kids,
taking one another back to their dorms, etc.)
(and what does he have, to look forward to at shift's end?
i. a cranky wife—past her prime?
ii. a buncha dogs—yapping for attention?
iii. some ******* kid—who's disrespectful & won't shut up or turn his stupid ******* punk-rock down?
—it's enough to make me patiently wait. i'll wait forever, as long as that isn't me.)
...'spose I'LL have a cigarette too. waiting
in the bus shelter on Ave. Des Pins looking down over the
football fields of the McGill Athletics Dept.
still lit up. no sun yet but
now at 4 AM a dull inch or two of lightened grey out there on the horizon.. dawn will come,
though i'd rather not face the day. all the mornings are so hard after nights like this.
bound to be hungover &
spend the day hiccuping in bed texting some girl; maybe get up
in the late afternoon t'fix coffee, toast & eggs.
sit on the balcony,
make my little guitar sigh,
and try to feel normal until i [have to] puke.
"—and who was that girl i spoke to for so long at St. Sulpice last night? how many gin-tonics did she let me buy myself, nattering on?.. probably too drunk to even get her number."
"—maybe Sean or Dylan will know if she came thru with anyone we knew.."
the bus is finally here. twenty-and-three minutes late. the back of it probably smells of
stale smoke, dim sun, and sweaty, rain-soaked cloth, absorbed from jackets into the seats—the eau du jour.
it's always a bump 'n **** ride down the hill; bound to,
with the other handful of dumb & silent riders, drunkenly sway,
(or is it a natural compensation of the body, to groove along with the curves and stops?)
back & forth like carcasses of half-dozen slaughtered pigs
swinging on their hooks in back of a meat wagon..
(i'll end up getting on, but only for three blocks. i'll ******* walk the rest of the way home,
after that comparison. to hell with the rain.)
SIX MINUTES LATER:
(Avenue Des Pins still—4 blocks closer to downtown)
directly in line now with McGill campus via McTavish; this way i can
cruise down thru the silence of the main drag having a couple smokes drinking beer
(copped a 40 at a Dep before i left St. Lau—frosty under my arm enshrouded by brown paper.)
& be left to my own thoughts for fifteen minutes 'til i get to Sherbrooke
—i adore that fifteen-minute stretch down thru the jumble of
student associations, clubs, faculty offices, administration buildings, resources centres & the like;
all contained in the same red bricked, white trimmed victorian monster, multiplied threescore
on either side of the lane; all built in the early nineteen-hundreds, all acquired by the university in one of several expansion initiatives in a decade i won't bother to guess at, it doesn't matter. you don't care..
midway down the hill i stop and go sit on the verandah of one of the buildings,
the graduate studies in math offices —
cccrack that forty.
sit there with the sun JUST barely splitting the seam of the horizon feelin'
like the lyrics from a Sun Kil Moon song. nothing more or less.
"off to a good start," says i.
Nov 26, 2012
Nov 26, 2012 at 11:14 PM UTC
noon grass, gin & my eyes.
heart attack
in back of a fancy/long/black/car.
fall skies & sun thru the trees.
(ashes in a bowl)
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 12:28 AM UTC