Blow My Stack

Syrup flows down my cock; she calls it her
___Stack of pancakes
We laugh,
___but not for long.
She butters me with her tongue

___Jesus

All life came from the sea

the blue-grey of my father's eyes
is warship steel, but
a drop
from a salty sea hangs in sorrow
from his eyelashes
put there by the storm
of his sister's eulogy

The Excalation (ii)

Running through a nightmare from which she can't awaken, she has shrugged me off and run outside into the the snow. When I realize she has stopped in the yard, I hold back, standing on the porch. She takes in the look of her former home. It's a tapestry of change. The muted, sedate colours of her memory have been replaced by brighter, more garish ones in the recent past, and then themselves been weathered and stripped by time. She shakes her head slowly, but there is no waking up.

I come down off the porch, hands in my pockets. She is in a summer dress and black buttoned boots that are no match for December, and I don't have my coat on. "Please, Mrs. Kent, come back inside," I beg her, for my own comfort as much as hers.

"There's not even a fire," she murmurs.

"I can make that right, if you help me."

She turns to look at me. Then past me, to my car parked in the drive. "What is it?"

"That's an automobile. It's sort of like... it's kind of a mix between a carriage and a locomotive. They used to call them horseless carriages a long time ago. It's how I got here today. We're about half an hour out of town."

"But town is a day's journey."

"Well, a couple of things have changed. The roads are better, cars go pretty fast, and the town is a lot bigger now."

There is a whine overhead and she cries out, crouching. Something large and dark moves through the sky high above us.

"...And we're also on the flight path to the airport, yeah..." I say, slightly embarrassed as I come forward. Frightened, she watches it, the hopelessness in her face only compounded. "It's called an airplane. That one is a jetliner. It can carry a couple of hundred people between cities in an hour or two. It can cross the Atlantic in six or seven."

"Have you... have you been up there?"

"Yes. Millions of people fly in them every day. I'll tell you about it if you come back inside."

She is coaxed in, if perhaps for no other reason than to get out from under an open sky full of new threats.

I lead her to the sitting room, where the hearth still stands. "Tell me about this room, please," I ask her. "And I'll make it like it was."

Distracted, but throwing her mind back, she picks through the details of what she recalls. Incidental things rather than the broad strokes I'm really looking for, but if it calms her down, that's the important thing right now. I sit, concentrate, and visualize. I hear her gasp. "It's true," she says. I open my eyes to find her looking around in awe.

"Is it like you remember?"

"No," she says. "But it's better than it was."

And there are practical advantages. Now there is seasoned firewood, kindling, matches, pokers, bellows. I'm no expert, but it's not rocket science to light a fire, and in a few minutes, there's at last some warmth to the room. I remember the coffee I've brought and excuse myself to get it.

Alexandra holds the plastic cup off the top of the thermos in hands shaking not with the cold but nerves. I take coffee black, but in the greatest of ironies, we've been able to lighten it and sweeten it with sugar and cream laid out for her wake a century and a quarter ago. In another irony, since she is drinking from the thermos cup, I drink from the recreated china, noticed only after I'd poured for her.

What do you say to a woman brought back from her own funeral, only to face the reality that her family has, as a result, predeceased her by decades? I say, "A lot has changed since..." Since what? Since you died? "...in the last hundred years or so. Some good, some bad..."

She swallows the coffee in a sudden, impulsive gesture. "What am I going to do? Where will I go?"

Those are good questions. I don't even know how you begin looking for help in a case like this. "Were you still living here when... in 1882?"

"No, Bill and I lived in the village. We moved there last summer."

"Do... did you have any children? Perhaps you still have family living there."

She shakes her head, slowly. "Oh, Bill," she whispers, and begins to cry.

I'm on the verge of saying something... something I know will be blithe and dishwatery, but what do you say at such a moment?... when suddenly she looks up, her face scarlet, her hands clenched in fists set to beat a drum. She hisses, "This isn't real. It cannot be real. This is all a dream, a ghastly dream." She darts her eyes at me. "And you're a devil. I swear."

I feel stung. I have been only kind and patient, and I am, after all, the reason she's alive at all, no matter how bewildering the circumstances might be. She went to sleep, and she has woken up, seemingly hours later, the void of a century of death forgotten, forgiven even. Absolved by my skills, if only in ignorance. Still. "I'm no demon," I coldly reply. "I gave you your life back."

Her face changes. She knows she's been unfair. "I'm lost," she wails; a sort of apology.

"Mrs. Kent..." I take a breath, I dare: "Alexandra. Please. Listen. It's not a bad time to be alive. There's so much that you can do now. I understand, believe me, that you're grieving. You have so much to grieve. But you're alive. There's hope for better days."

She doesn't seem shocked by my sudden familiarity. Either the strangeness of the circumstances has overcome it, or I overestimated the stiffness of Victorian formality. In either case, she seems to settle into it. Her face slips slowly into her hands again, and I am silent as she weeps, the room otherwise soundless but for the uncaring snap of the fire.

The first interruption of her sorrows is the comically melodic ringing of my cell phone. She raises her head, perplexed at the odd little tune I'm suddenly playing. "I'm sorry," I say. "It means someone wants to speak with me." I show her, taking the little box from my pocket. "Forgive me. I'll just be a moment." I rise and walk to the doorway. This must be a new thing for her; a person excusing himself from her company to speak to someone who's not even there; an entirely new fashion in rudeness.

"Hello?"

As I expected, it's the client, Mr. Michaels. "Hi, Mr. Darie, it's me. I'm just calling to find out how it's going."

Instantly I decide the best course is to say nothing; I don't need him showing up full of questions, possibly complicating the deal. The vision of a crowd of reporters hits me square in the face. "It's going about as I well as I expected," I tell him. "Two rooms are restored, so far."

"Oh. That's good," he says, having no idea idea whether it is or not.

"Who is that? Who are you talking to?" Alexandra can't help herself. She's curious. Maybe a trifle offended; it is, in her mind, still her family's house that I'm talking about, with some stranger. My hand shoots up to invoke her silence. She frowns but complies.

Fortunately she has not be overheard. "So everything is on schedule?" he asks.

"Everything is fine," I say.

"Good, I'll see you this evening, then," he says. We bid one another good-bye and hang up.

I turn back to Alexandra. I arleady know there's no way I'm going to get the house done today. But if Michaels has to wait a day or two, well, that's just how it's going to be. Something unforeseen and rather more important has just come up; literally, from the grave. I'll deal with Michaels later, whatever his mood is when the time comes.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to be rude. Obviously I couldn't just tell someone what's just happened here. I don't think either one of us wants a lot of other people showing up. Not right now."

"You were speaking to... who, the man who... owns the house now?"

I nod. "Jason Michaels. He and his wife Cindy bought it last fall. They've hired me to restore it."

"And that's why I'm here?"

"Yes."

Her face takes on a distant look; just a hint of horror in her eyes. "It was typhoid," she murmurs. "I remember hearing them say it. As I lay there. I remember thinking it would be a long time before I was well again." Boy, she got that right. She searches my eyes. "Did I really die? Or has your magic just brought me straight here?"

"I don't know," I tell her. "But I expect you really did die. The photo is from your wake." The details I've heard of cases like this, few and far between, are sketchy at best.

"Then where was I buried?"

"I have no idea. In the village, I guess."

She composes herself. "I want to see."

I almost laugh. "I don't really think that's a good idea."

"What did you say your name was?"

"Raymond Darie."

She straightens in her chair. "Raymond, then," she says. "Please. I must respectfully insist." Her eyes soften, penetrating. "I have to see. I have to know."

I'm at a loss. "I don't even know--"

"I know where the church yard is," she tells me.

"We'll have to take my car," I warn her.

She looks apprehensive, but steels herself and gives a nod. She rises, smoothing her skirts. She lets me place my winter jacket on her shoulders, and I lead her from the room.

The Excalation (i)

It's only new money that makes requests like this, but I'm old. Old, not old money. I need money. I'll take the assignment.

"This is the picture. I want it to look like this again," he says.

I study it. Black and white, faded; it was blurry on the day it was taken. I take a deep breath. "You have to understand, it's just one view of one room. The rest of the room will be an extrapolation. The other rooms, doubly so."

"Just make it look like that," he says. "Please."

"As for colours..."

"Can I choose?"

"Since it's not in the image, it can be implied in the visualization," I tell him.

"Red," he says. "Rich, like velvet. And gold. Oranges, yellows."

"Autumn colours," I suggest.

"Yes. Exactly. And the wood in brown," he sums up, needlessly. I nod. He says, "How long will it take?"

I look around, pretending to gauge the time. Vastly overestimating, I say, "Five to six hours, probably."

"Wow," he says. He doesn't say if he's impressed by how quick that seems, or how long. I don't care, as long as I don't see him till sunset. "Can you... show me?"

"I need to be alone," I snap. "To concentrate. Distractions will mar the results."

He fidgets. Apparently he had hoped, expected, to direct. Which is exactly what I want to preclude. If I let him linger around here, editing every lamp, examining every bauble, having sudden inspirations, this really will take five or six hours. "Is it alright if I come back after a couple of hours? See how things are going?"

"Mr. Michaels, there really is no point. The restoration will be as it must be, as implied by the template," I lie, tapping the photograph. "What appears will be what appears. But the finished quality will suffer if I'm not allowed to focus myself sufficiently on the task."

He sighs and nods. "I'll come back about four, then," he says. "Will it be okay to bring my wife?"

"It's your surprise to her," I remind him. "When you choose to present it is up to you. Though I imagine you'd want to do it when you two are alone, and the work is thoroughly done."

Straited again, he makes a face and heads down the stairs. I hear the front door close. His car start, drive off down the abandoned country lane that will soon be his driveway.

And I am alone.

He's paying well. Paying me nearly what he paid to buy the place, though after sitting empty all these years that's not all that it might once have been. I feel the resonance, the faded vibrations of the last couple to inhabit this place, trailing off in the 1970s... first him, then her. Concluding, in tandem, a pair passing on, hardly a year between them. As it should be, I suppose. And since then, emptiness. The core sorrowfulness of a place of life reduced to a shell. Well, it will be what it was, again. In more ways than one. A young family filling its rooms, and its rooms full of all that it was circa 1885.

Or at least, my best guess. It's not like there's anyone around to second guess me. Not with authority, anyway.

I sit, cross-legged on the floor, and bring the calm. Partly, I'm listening to make sure my patron has not returned, creeping around like a little boy trying to catch Santa in the act... you'd be surprised how often that happens to visualizers. And when the centre is still, cool, frosted to the touch, the branches of my mind hung with icicles and my spirit a wet sheet in a winter wind, it's the time to summon it. And I draw it up, onward, into me from wherever it is it comes from. And then I release it, and things around me change. Waves roll over the room from every angle, making what was, what is. I fall back, arms spread, supine on the floor. The worn wood beneath me is now smooth and varnished under my fingers; I can even smell the newness of it. It took just seconds to do this; I could easily render a house this size in an hour, but it will take something out of me. The trick with people like Mr. Michaels is to do a room every half hour or so, so that if he does return—

"Who are you?"

Startled, I yelp and scramble to my feet.

She is coming out of a box that was not here a minute before. Into the room of red velvet and golden braid, she is sitting up in a wooden box. A coffin.

My God.

"Who are you?" she asks, frightened. She is pretty, perhaps twenty or not quite, dressed in white to her throat. Her cheeks are rouged, and heavily so; her lips a sticky red. The make-up of a corpse. She seems suddenly aware of her circumstances, her gloved hands riding the edges of her strange confinement. "Is this... is this a coffin?" she gasps in horror.

I look at the photo. Yes, there, at the edge; the foot of the coffin. My God. It was taken at her wake. I've heard of this. Rumours circulate in our community but I'd never quite credited them. But here we are.

"Please," I say, palms up and wide spread in a gesture meant to comfort. "Please, don't distress yourself. You've been ill," I say.

"Mamma? Papa?" she calls, looking past me into the dark, empty hall. On the wall, a clock that was not there moments early now cheerily chimes the quarter hour.

"They're not here just now," I say. "You must be still. Please, what is the last thing you remember?"

"Who are you?" she demands.

"Please, your condition..."

"This is a coffin," she hisses at me, her sensibilities cutting right through her alarm. Yes, it's not a sickbed, and she's not in her nightclothes. It's a coffin, and she is wearing the last thing she will ever wear. Or at least, that was the idea in 1885 or so.

"There's been a mistake."

"Mamma! Kale, Bill, anyone!"

I come forward, slowly, gently. "Here, let me help you out."

She looks at me, wearily, but balanced precariously as she is, she offers me her white-gloved hand. "Who... are you... are you a doctor? You don't..."

"I'm an assistant," I tell her, taking her hand, helping her sit up. "You've been... ill for some time now, I'm told. Try to remember, please. Do you remember your name?"

"Of course... of course I do; Alexandra Kent."

"And what was the date, the last day you can remember. Think clearly."

She kneels up, confused. "Why is it so cold?" It's cold because it's winter. "My Lord, this is a coffin!"

"Calm yourself, calm yourself, please, Miss Kent."

"Mrs. Kent," she frowns.

"Forgive me. But the date..."

"It was... it was May... the 9th, I believe."

I prompt her, trying not to be obvious. "Eighteen...?"

"Eighteen-Eighty-Two," she responds.

"Good, very good," I soothe, as if congratulating her on the completeness of her memory after her long 'illness'.

"What is today?" she asks.

There's no denying the room is cool; it's a drafty house that hasn't been heated in a generation, and it certainly isn't May. "Let me get you a chair," I say, and hurry for one of the new (old) oaken seats, with padded corduroy and armrests. Taking her hand again, I guide the dead girl out of her coffin and back into the world of the living. I help her to the chair, where she sits. Her eyes fall on the table behind me, and I glance back to see it as she does, covered with food, flowers, black ribbon. "This is a wake," she quavers, horrified again.

I kneel. "Yes," I admit, softly, studying her eyes. Finally they drop to meet mine. She tells me, "You're not a doctor's assistant. You're an undertaker's. They think... they think I'm dead." Tears spill instantly from her eyes.

"No," I say. "I'm a visualizer. Have you heard of that?"

She thinks, blinking rapidly. Nods softly. "I thought they were a fairy story."

"There aren't many of us. But I was asked here to restore this house."

"Restore? Where are my mother and father? Where is my husband? My sister? I want to see them at once. I'm not dead!"

"No, but I think you were," I tell her. I show her the photo. "There was a wake here. It was yours, I think. And when I restored the room, I think you came back with it."

She takes the photos in her hands and studies it, weeping, her face contorting in confusion and disbelief. "How long... when did it...?"

"Mrs. Kent... it's been a very long time." I draw a deep breath, as if to prepare her for something momentous. "Well over a century."

She slaps me. She can't think of anything else to do. She bolts from the chair, wailing for anyone, anything familiar to rescue her from this nightmare as she clamples into the hallway, holding her skirts up. I rise, hurrying after her, and find her standing in a hall lit up by the snows of winter outside the dormer window at the end, all at once familiar in shape but strange in appointments. I have not yet altered this part of the house. She stands surrounded by electrical outlets, wall sockets with light bulbs and switches, a run-down plastic clock that looks like a black cat with gigantic eyes, and a photograph, on the wall, faded but in full colour, of large family that is not hers. She is panting, as if the breath is being beaten out of her. Suddenly she is aware of me again, and she turns to me and backs away.

"My name is Raymond," I tell her. "Raymond Darie."

She falls to her hip on the floor, unladylike but forgivably so under the circumstances. "They're dead," she wails. "They're all gone."

What can I say? Be happy, you're alive again? She didn't ask for this. Some consolation prize. Yes, she is alive, but suddenly in a world without a single person she knows and loves, displaced in time and custom. She has her language and her country left; nothing more. History has skipped a beat for her and dropped her here.

"I have some coffee," I tell her. Lame. But you have to start somewhere. I help her to her feet, and lead her by the arm back into the room of her rebirth.

Cereal and yogurt, milk and a spoon

The bland, vanilla taste
of Ontarian boyhood
remains in my mouth

The difference extreme
from Nova Scotia
at first

Alone, the silence fragrant with
the death of all snows
She took my hand and led me to new knowledge
Believed in me
Though she barely knew my name
and in vast betrayal I have
forgotten hers

Rigid hot earth
that became highway
Carry me back
for just a little while
Cradle me
in creepers
Clothe me
in mud

Make me forget
___that I have known
______cell phones
______shuttles
______sex
______and death
______and taxes
all.

Tribute

The magic animal. I love him. We love him. He makes the sounds of loving us. Touches us. The stroking thing with many claws that cleans our pelts. He brings the water, fills the bowls with different flavours, changes the shit-piss-sand so it feels clean when we step on it. God loves us. He has given us the magic animal to see to our needs, and we indulge him. How wonderful life is.

Watch

And now I must close up
the chest I once opened to you
All the treasures that were mine to share
I must now guard again

You have abandoned
the key
I must be watchful

judgement

have you ever heard the sound
of a soul
shattered
left to weld
its razor edges
back to something
whole
slowly
smaller somehow
in soaring less regal
and just a little
ugly

she'll be comin' round the corner when she comes

the judo dyke she has a face like a four-eyed hawk trying to swallow a hatchet a personality like a can of soup opened soup gone squashed on one side i know she's into judo 'cause she has this yin-yang thing sewed on her tit i know she's a dyke because well just look at her she couldn't quite shake off the dumpy little girl all my life thing and yet she still has a slightly more manly bearing than me of course these days that's not saying much okay maybe she's not a dyke but it's like tony randall if he wasn't gay he might as well have been

I Slit My Brains

The house has almost finished
___painting me on the inside
___and good, because I have lost all skills
___to live in the forest
______Nothing grows in me now
A rare thing walks into sight,
___the tin him that in truth
___much respects you.
___Given a siphon to lower the smoke,
______he grows bored with my confessions:
______Nothing grows in me now

I'm not invited to the wedding
___That neither fails me, nor do I deserve it
___It's just knowledge I manage,
______a brilliant product,
______a week of concerns never boxed, sent, presented
A good day is decided at high levels,
___designed in the absence of thought,
______bequeathed in ignorance
The trees close ranks
___Nothing grows in me now.