Friday Night
 
It’s Friday Night
& the olds have
caught the CPR
train to St Jean to
catch the Digby
ferry Phil comes
over & we down
some beer the Expos
are losing again an
ad with an elephant in
a swimming costume
is on & I walk down the
stairs & listen to a
Humphrey & the Dump
Trucks record the right
Speaker bass distorted
take a leak finally
catch the bottom of the
ninth rusty staubs strikes
out again Phil is slumped
over ten empties he yells
out ‘useless expos’
and lurches backwards
onto the bed and hits his
head hard on the steel
radiator there is a pulse
of blood weeping from
his hair he clutches the
back of his head shrieking
in pain he seems disorientated
so I walk him up the street
my left arm clutching his
shoulder and then shove him
in his porch way & ring his door
bell and split before his mother
answers I stagger through the park
and call on Big Al but he’s out
I hurdle over the catholic school’s
steel mesh fence as a short cut home
looking skywards there is a wide
spray of glinting stars dogs barking
and for the first time a throbbing
unexplained emptiness in my chest.
 
 
 
 
Turning Thirty
 
I fly from Australia to my birthplace-
Montreal
for my thirtieth birthday
 
1
Outside my brother Bruce’s place in Dorval
we sit in the Pepper’s modified van
and wait for the rain to ease
the rain spilling in rivers down the windscreen
the neat houses across the street distorting
The Pepper paralysed from the neck down
after driving his truck through a brick wall
green smoke wafting out his open window-
‘I can never get used to this’, he says
 
2
Later that afternoon in the back yard
the undercarriage of a Boeing 747
thunders a thousand or so feet above us.
Bruce says,
‘That’s the 367 United flight to London-
half a million tons of thrust, carries 398
passengers, arrival time 830 Greenwich
mean time’.
 
3
Jean’s paranoid dog Maddy is deeply suspicious of us
and yesterday shat under our bed
Bruce says she was probably beaten up as a pup
I put my hand out to pet her and she gallops
terrified down the yard
 
4
I talk to Maurice
I haven’t seen him for more than ten years
His mother used to lean out from her second floor balcony
& bellow out his name across our neighbourhood:
MAU-REE-CHIO! & then wrap her fingers around her mouth
and screech out an ear piercing whistle
 
He wants some advice (he’s effing 32),
‘I don’t understand my girlfriend
all the time she wants me to tell her I love her
What kind of bullshit is that?’
 
5
Toe looks well
He is fostering two girls
@ $168 per week each
‘I’m really raking it in’, he says
He rings his younger brother Ten O’Clock
(Who used to be drunk by 10 in the old days)
Toe hands me the phone. Ten says,
‘I don’t want to talk to HIM.
I don’t want to talk to anyone.
Just LEAVE ME ALONE!’
 
6
Doug looks grim
something is on his mind
he has done some questionable things
to questionable people in the past-
I remember the time
he pulled a baseball bat from the boot of his Caddie
at a stop light
and pulped a driver’s face for cutting him off
 
I take another long cold swig of a Molson Export Ale
the beer of my youth- it tastes like shit!
 
 
  
Centos
 
I better start here
kicked out on the full
2 colonoscopies revealing nothing
without semblance of order without purpose
the microscopic letters indecipherable
the spa bath delivered cracked
I want to look back
You can’t stand to be around me
see this as a seminal point in my career
I don’t text you to tell you I had a crap
cut your fuel, don’t eat grease
to quicken his pulse
to help me remember
lacked the momentum
each ensuing issue an extraordinary feat
‘It’ll all be in the autopsy’, they confirm
to find vision on a clear day
there’s not a washer or plug hole he does not know
on the back of cereal boxes, parking ticket
her chest swinging off the page
the south Koreans heavily subsidized beef cattle
railway steps, on the wings of planes
the vomiting why she couldn’t eat or shit
He couldn’t teach a pig to be filthy
The voice is shrill curdled in its own venom
You hate me don’t you?
You walk into the next room whenever I enter
I started this poem because
I forgot what I was thinking
so I wrote this
without the cabbage leaves
bart barn bust broken
but I can tell you
‘I can’t remember, I can’t remember’
EAT THIS or DRIVE THIS or WEAR THIS
something like a found poem in 7 enchiladas
the half time siren sounding
sealed the awkward
the doctors couldn’t explain the abdominal pain
about a bout boat boot
sans ks last week we
arrive late at the hotel
without delay
photos blurred of the moon
we throw in 20 bucks each for the Cox Plate quinella
throwing logs on the fire
use of flashback technique dual narrators
he flew a kite high above his house
the flutter of his diaphragm
now close your eyes and think about this
env. ds. dr. top
studied the sky
I tell her ‘too much information’
you wish you visited the bark earlier
hand puppetry
one missile could feed 50 people 3 meals a day for 5 years
asympope time
digging a hole
un.d.
broken gates of certitude
two tries to nil
1st pl. in her tray
cabbage top d. dozn
brain’s 2b.
without god
$540.45 $203.92 $312.45