Half a pound of freckles

Half a pound of freckles
___or so
___I think
God played connect the dots
___and made you
___joined one to the other
___one to the other
___ ___with skin
What will His picture do
Will it
___stand up and hold me
___offer me wine
___bear me a child
___hold my hand as sight grows dim
Or will it move
___animated
___a walk cycle that grows
___ ___ever more distant
Freckles fading

The Foreskin Project

THE FORESKIN PROJECT
A QUICK AND DIRTY PARODY OF
THE FORBIN PROJECT
by
Andy Byers

INT. NORAD HEADQUARTERS
A bunch of scientists and military men are going about their business at the height of the Cold War. The President strides in.

THE PRESIDENT
Okay, would somebody please tell
me what I just sold Puerto Rico
off to Sweden to finance?

SNIVELING SCIENTIST
Oh, Mr. President! Such news!
We've just created the world's
largest dildo! We call it
COLOSSUS.

THE PRESIDENT
Awesome. Why?

GENERAL WHUPASS
We're gonna shove it right up the
Russians' ass!

Alarms suddenly begin to ring and red lights flash.

THE PRESIDENT
I did not have sex with that
woman!

GENERAL WHUPASS
No, Mr. President, it's not
Congress. It's a national
security alert.

THE PRESIDENT
Well, what the fuck's going on?

COLOSSUS
(via overhead
teletype)
THERE IS ANOTHER DILDO

SNIVELING SCIENTIST
Oh, no, Mr. President! COLOSSUS
has detected that the Russians
have built a giant dildo too!

GENERAL WHUPASS
(reading from a
printout)
It says here the Russians have
called their dildo GUARDIAN, and
they intend to shove it up their
own ass so there'll be no room for
ours!

THE PRESIDENT
Those treacherous fucks.

Once again alarms go off and lights flash.

THE PRESIDENT
Aw, Christ, now what? The Chinese
just create the world's biggest
coal-powered vibrator?

SNIVELING SCIENTIST
Sir! The dildos are talking to
each other! They've just teamed
up! They say they want to fuck
everybody in the world!

THE PRESIDENT
Well, they certainly have a keen
grasp of American foreign policy.

NARRATOR (V.O.)
Will the dildos fuck everybody in
the world? Will the President
come out of the closet? Will you
tune in next time to find out?
Tune in next time to find out!

Solar Landscapes

They held me down and giggled
It was over in a flash but felt like days
And how long is a day on the sun?
Sweating without mercy, light exposing every sin

They spent those evenings
grasping at bras
looking for any way out
of an innocence
___perennially protested

All quiet,
All encompassing,
All forgiving the forest loomed
___swallowed us up undigested
___raw, and weeping from every pore
It might have been Mars
It might have been death
___:it was neither
___:it was only respite
___:it was moments spent in misplaced
___ ___unknown
___ ___ ___dis
located

We always came back
always came back
___for more

And more
___there always was
___ ___Sweat
___ ___and light unbounded

Falling sin

Bare of foot and
Fair of hair she stands
Bat at her shoulder, cap at a weird angle,
Saucy snap of bubblegum
Swing and a miss, one foot in the puddle
Of the once and future rain.
Innocence is painted over with toenail polish
That’s the falling sin.

Where is Heaven?

Where is Heaven?
Silently the trees point

The milestones of Heaven—
Here is one of them:
That first unsheltered glimpse
of another soul
___fragile and frail
______at your mercy
Here divides the road

Whither Heaven?
Seek the trees.

In chorus

Sing invisible
Pour your throats out into the night
Across the lake
___The ripples spread in all directions
______Forever
My ears drink the wine;
My mind sets sail upon it

Northern

The only snow
is the stars in the sky,
shovel-thick,
spread over the blacktop of eternity

Shaded

In here
In never noticing you
the small soft spot in my soul
___Leaf-guarded, armoured by
___wind and sun and rain
Survived to blossom
Without the need to push
___through the pavement

Constitution

As darkness falls, we'll candles light;
When all around us vision fails:
And guard them closely through the night,
Until at dawn the light prevails.

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.

The Near Unborn

Here defending it
Without respect
___The rights of others
______ near unborn
______ never offered up a single thought
______ or uttered word
___ Sugared with correctness
___ Peppered with democracy

Don't bother to forecast, not in these winds;
___ as yet unknown the storms
___ on horizons themselves unimagined

Hard-boiled

Smoke another one, she said
You're never more a man than when
___you've got something long in your mouth

I sneered
Pulled down the brim of my hat
___The winter rain was waiting like a shark
I said
You shouldn't open your mouth as much
___as you open your legs
___it's a lot less becoming

She slapped me
___or tried
I caught her hand in midflight
___A dove murdering a hawk
Be still,
___I told her with a kiss

Truck in the Driveway

Dad came home today
This afternoon
Content with the day's work, and
___not reeking of boozy sweat
Dad came home today
Early, now, on time:
___Not tonight,
______after a pensive supper
______eaten in silence
______between mother and son
___Not out of the darkness adults call 'morning'
______wanting to talk, argue, shout
______after the house was silent,
______the lights out

I must have lived right today
___Been kind and humble
___Observed the rituals, avoided the cracks
___Took the right route home
___Whispered the effective prayer with
______true conviction
___My karma aligned; this the reward
______of a loving son;
___a kindness
______to a small animal
_________in a cage a city wide
____________and a bedroom deep.

Thank you, God; my
Dad came home today

That's It

I drank a beer
And I couldn't shut up
Every smell made me five years old again
—I want that I want that—
And the words flowed out like piss
And it was a relief to
__let them go

Charcoal ablaze
the hiss of meat
the promise of comfort
of plenty
and the idea that
it would go on and on—

There are no more dinosaurs
Eat them while you can

O Suburbs

O Suburbs
Do your trees embrace you
Like lovers?
Are your ample lots the full breasts of
__Middle-class dreams,
Dotted with the nipples of four-bedroom houses and
__the aureoles of driveways and swimming pools?
Do you quiver to open your legs
__to coming cocks of immigration
__and moan to the prowess of
__North America
__as the children spill out
__thirsty for the milk of gasoline
__crying for the cradle of the SUV

O Suburbs
Do you lick your fingers as
You suck the bones of
Africa, Asia, and Latin-inflected lands?
Do you lick your lips
__as they watch you
__fuck yourself
__on screens 30' high
__and wish they were
____inside you
______like me?

May I...

Women appear with their kids to
Celebrate the end of May
Warm sun and cloudless skies
__The only weather in all of Canadian experience
__That's perfect
Their minds greased by
Fruit-flavoured drinks, their thoughts turn to
Reveries of fruit-flavoured men
They talk to their sons like
The men they will become
While their husbands dial cell phones
To make arrangements to
Be late again

Beyond the Glass

Sometimes I imagine
I'm this unemployed but brilliant writer
Living in one room and somehow
Scraping by as
Every day
I sit at the same table
In the same bar
Drinking the same draught
Writing the novel that will make me famous as
Outside
The snow falls
Like the icing sugar of my life
__Just beyond the glass

Bit Part

She follows a well-blazed path through the park
As if not to travel in a straight line would never occur to her
Dogs orbit her like electrons as she makes her way across the universe
To where the car’s parked

Different Kinds of Cancer

She had a hard time putting it into words herself. "I'm not a goth. It's not, like, goths. Well, it kind of is, but—"

"Not all the black clothing?"

"Partly, yeah," she said. Indeed, she looked like someone who'd woken up to find herself naked in public, snuck into Liberace's wardrobe, and come out to hail a cab. Purple frock coat, ruffled sleeves. Now that I come to think of it, more like Prince.

She lifted the frosted mug to her lips and then shaved off the beer mustache with her tongue. She had such gorgeous eyes that she might have been a cat in a past life... so much of that had spilled over into this. "But it's more than that. I mean, I guess we're kind of a subset, but not really. We hang out at a goth bar in the west end, but, like... goths, they're so down. Everything's pointless to them. But vampire fandom's not. If you read Anne Rice, her stories are about really embracing life. Even in death, you know?" As if beckoning it, she raised the cigarette to her lips and drew deeply.

I watched her. My parents smoked; I'd seen people take a drag on a cigarette a million times but she seemed to make it real. I didn't want to take up the habit, she did make it interesting. Her narrowed eyes met mine and caught me looking. She took it from her lips, blew a breathful of smoke at the ceiling; a dandelion casting its seeds to the wind. She looked at the thing on gentle fire in her hand, wages literally going up in smoke. She said, "Can't believe they banned it. Maybe in restaurants with kids, okay, sure. But bars? It's going to kill the night life in Toronto, if they really go through with it."

I wanted to keep my opinions on the matter to myself so I flooded them back down my throat with the beer.

"Ever seen those cartoons, commercials, with Fred and Barney smoking?" she said.

"Yeah, I have them on tape, as a matter of fact."

"Do you? You should bring them in. Everyone would get a kick out of those."

"Imagine animating something like that."

She snorted, butting the cigarette out as the waitress arrived. "Oh, yeah, you think that shit we're flogging is that much better? Sugar and chemicals, and we're selling it to kids."

"We're not, our clients are. Or their clients, really," I said.

"Same dif'." She hoisted a burger that could have kept someone of her slight frame alive for a week and bit into it. It didn't stop her from talking. "Just different kinds of cancer," she mumbled over bun and dead cow.

I couldn't explain it. At 23 or 24, she was two or three years younger than me, but the smoking already made her look ten years older. She wore pancake make-up an eighth of an inch thick and routinely dressed like someone from The Muppet Show. But I liked her. I wanted her. I cherished even moments like this.

She swirled a French fry around in ketchup. She knew I was squeamish; she teased me, "Looks just like blood, huh?" Popped it into her mouth and winked. "Do you believe in saints?"

"Saints? What do you mean?"

"Y'know, like, really good people who get promoted in Heaven. Special good people."

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Like Joan of Arc. Doesn't it seem kind of arbitrary? She's burned at the stake, right? A witch. And for hundreds of years, she's a heretic. Some nut who heard voices. Demons. Then one day someone up and decides the voices were angels after all, and she gets beautified. And then not too long ago, a saint."

"Beatified."

"Hmm?"

"You mean beatified."

"...Oh. Yeah, whatever. But my point is... was she right all that time? Did she really have a mission from God? And if she did, then wasn't she a saint all along? And if she was a saint all along, then does it make any difference what the Pope says?"

I thought about it for a moment. It got boring. I said, "What brought this up?"

She held up a fry. "French fries. You know, that old line about "one order of Joan of Arc". French... fry? Get it?"

I nodded, a little bemused. "French fries make you think of saints," I said.

She wielded the fry like a Frenchwoman waving away the world with her cigarette holder. "Well, I didn't go to university like some people. I never learned there were some ways you're not supposed to think."

"I was just kidding."

"So was I..."

I smiled. I felt like I'd just gotten a report card with does not play well with others in the comments.

The restaurant had a dedicated 1950s theme (except for the prices, of course... those are forever contemporary). Everything Pepto-Bismol pink and rounded, chrome-plated and futuristic in a lost sense. License plates from other provinces and states on the wall, expired before we were born. The silence between us was mortared up with soft vibraphone jazz, the kind of departure from the usual Buddy Hollyesque, incipient rock and roll that suggests some real thought and experience went into crafting the ambiance. If not for the shapes of the cars blowing by on Parliament Street, I might have imagined us back in time for a moment. "How's the beer?" she asked.

I was trying something from a local microbrewery. "It's a little bitter."

"Can I try a sip?"

I nudged the glass towards her. She raised it to her lips, sampled, nodded.

"So what do you think?"

She looked me in the eye, those long, Tammy Fay-plastered lashes dropping lazily. "Not bad, but not really my thing," she concluded.

I glanced at my watch, feeling in so many ways out of time.

o(r)bit

when the snow fell
and the wind performed its tuneless dirge
between the runner rows where life walked
___was the proof
like a photo scribed in minutes
___ stretched in yards, printed fine
___ the snowflakes held with their very selves
___ the shape and honour of passing boots
___ the parallel lines of the sled dragged home
under the monocular gaze of a streetlamp
___ in whose sight it all went wrong

somewhere bells tinkled
___ coloured lights blinked drunken
___ a world stopped, ended
______ orbits changed

They Come Standard

they can't sell you bare feet

_____or skinny dipping's latest styles


___the thing that really makes them weep

_______is people wearing only smiles

up up and away

she sent up nipples like balloons
my mouth the unrepentant sky
cloudbursts followed

Sons of Mars

Sons of Mars,
hear my prayer
in rows beneath your banner there:
these ugly ducklings
you would seek
to beautify, but cause to weep—
you don't, by murder,
make them swans.
Just mounds to plant your standard on.

O sons of Mars,
the wounded sky
of that land has few tears to cry.
The muted skulls
you liberate
beseech you now to contemplate:
does memory linger,
faint but true,
you once were sons of Venus too?

I'd like to go to winter for writing

I'd like to go to winter for writing
to open up its greys
and seat myself at its cold table
boiling over with ice
and let the snows dance and whirl
Whisper to me what to say

Summer does not want writing
no,
she wants to grab you by the hand
and run off with you
strip you naked and fill your time
and smile at the pen nib, gone to rust

I'd like to go to winter for writing
But it's by appointment only.

Unplanted

The burnt toast and peanut butter
__were the musk of summer days
__come creeping in their morning coats
__to lead me away,
____daring me to burn my soles
____on the hard-packed dirt roads
______leading to the beach
______with her cool blue, soothing hands
Blond-headed, I looked as if I had grown from the sand
__rooted in it
__but just for the moment:
____toes can break free of the ground, feet lift
__Relocate
__The sky might stand still, but
____I would not
Peanut butter in the corner of my mouth,
__tongue caressed
__Now these poor peanuts could move
____at last
__made mammal,
____they could see the sky
__The wheat→toast→me
____jumped into it

Awakened

It offered up its soul; it said
__from this ancient forest, farmland laid,
__take your seat at your desk
____run with your friends
____kiss her
__learn an instrument
__ride back from the movies, retelling the tale
__water the lawn with your own sweat,
____as the hunter, the farmer, upon this ground

There are those who will tell you
__there are those will would say
that soul is found only
__upon the straightest of streets,
__— places without curves,
______________colour,
______________canopy —
__in crumbling buildings where
__people pay proudly too much to live above laundromats
____trap rats, despise their no(i)sy neighbours
or
__bang on radiators in winter,
__squinting suspiciously, out frosted single-glazing,
__at cars
__from other streets,
____other towns:
______places unworthy and homes unequal
like yours

they're lying

say so

Before I Sodomize Your Head (An Ode to Iraq)

Is it soup yet?
Keep stirring.

Plug in your electric asshole
Pity it's just a lease.

Faint Tears and Blood

The war was over. I stood in their once-proud capital, not a soul in sight we wasn't dressed like me... tossing salutes back and forth the way rich men might once have tossed coins from their carriages, cheap and meaningless, utterly for show.

Hidden

carried over/under:
bushes/streams

always quiet:
never uttering
a devastating clue

common to all language
observed in every age
captured in green sundowns

knowing it's not over, summer pulls my tail

i kild lennerd kowin

i played one of his songs in class
__(he was my poet)
up came that improbable line
that opened every adolescent throat in laughter

accidental judas, me
with a silver A-

him,
he died a little
and he doesn't even know it

salt stain days

patch-minding

the good old days when I couldn't care less
are become the evenings when I couldn't careless
without the hidden poisons of sugar
and drifting electrons who sing and dance

I've had a few

Venal Equinox

To try, in simple words, to share
those nights

They don't exist, the ones
that could so deftly ply
__your mind
with just how perfect it was
__to be inside her
__How comfortable
__How right
__How joyous to be tolerated, accepted, embraced
____in such unequaled proximity

fusion

the magic of being
__one part of
____two
__that was one

fission

__for that, too, is magic
____cast in words
______of bone
________that go in the ground
________alone

Black-magic breakfast

skullcap and MiniWheats, bad mix
__milk pours out the eye sockets
picture that all over my slacks
also, a wooden spoon
__that screams like mandrake root
__whatever. Pass the sugar

Dico, ergo sum

He natters
breathless
for fear he will be
__interrupted

headlight-frozen to the core
that he will be nullified
__by a single word from another
that the proof of any other ego
__disestablishes his own

chatter
__quickly
____fight to breathe
______drowning forever
______in others, crowds of one

Jesus left the man at the side of the road

Unbidden by the sleet and rain, true,
__he came anyway.
__Breathless he ran, throat burning,
__eyes smarting, looking through a sea of bitter-hard water
____armed with tiny knives
Still,
__he hurried
__stumbled in the darkness,
__the world itself seeming to recoil as he fell
__the ground barely willing to catch him.

It was only the truck that saved him
__Blew its horn,
____squealed its amazing brakes until
______he awoke
______and reached out his hand
Jesus chewed his gum
__straightened his cap
__left him at the side of the road.

Lines from the Slushpile

Shifty the one-eyed hit man moved his scope of love across the snowy hills of her landscape. Pausing for a moment to draw in the last acrid taste of his moribund Winston, he lined up his target... and prepared to fire. He would not stop until her sweaty need was dead, dead, dead...

Lamb

I came into Walton Tideman's life at more or less the end of it, as is typical in this profession. He was laid up in one of the most ornate bedrooms I've ever seen, and in this business, you see a lot of them, rich and poor, young and old.

If you're not a reader, you might not recognize his name right away, but the bevy of friends attending him in his convalescence would raise the most jaded eyebrows. Foremost of all was Peach Hamilton. Yes, the Peach Hamilton, actress and producer, though more the latter nowadays as her youth faded and her vanity drove her more and more to the blind side of the camera... a real shame, in my opinion. Even though I was there — or maybe, because I was there — Peach had moved into Walton's estate in the spring and had been unofficially, but rather effectively, marshaling the care giving forces mustered around the small, frail man in the big, lonely bed.

I remember one morning towards the end when she just breezed into the room, throwing the drape open wide. “Waldo, look how beautiful it is today,” she demanded, perching her hand on her hip as she posed by the window, for all the world like a game show hostess showcasing the latest prize.

Walton — Waldo, that is — was buying. “Oh, you're all the sunshine I need, Peachy, you know that.”

She spread her arms. “All this, and a view as well.”

Waldo clapped his hands and smiled. “Is Kissy still coming? She promised she would.”

“As far as I know. Once she's out of that meeting with... whatever his name was... she's promised to come over. She says she's got a surprise. Whether she means something you can't eat that she will, or new dirt on somebody, she didn't say.”

“Now, now... be nice.”

“Oh, that was nice, believe me.”

“She keeps me up to date on all our other friends... you know how good she is at keeping track.”

Peach set a glass of juice on Waldo's night stand. “Wally, if loose lips really did sink ships, the Navy could strap her to the bow of a tugboat and win the next world war.”

Waldo dissolved in laughter. Even among his friends, he valued the repartee. “None of that when she's here, now. She won't come back if she feels unwelcome.”

“Then I hope to heaven she makes her exit before Sam gets here.”

“It must be hard on him having to come all this way back from the lot every day. I should really tell him how much it's meant to me.”

“Don't embarrass him,” Peach advised. “You know he doesn't like that kind of thing. Besides, he doesn't want to have to deal with what's really happening.” She sighed. “As far as he's concerned, he's just visiting a buddy with the sniffles.”

“It's nice of him to worry about my feelings... but now it's a little bit in the way. I feel like we can't say the things we need to say.”

“Well, I—”

The doorbell rang.

“That must be Kissy,” Peach smiled. “I'll go let her in.”

“Come back too!”

“No, no... she deserves some time with you. Besides, she might have dirt on me she won't feel comfortable sharing if I'm here.”

“Oh, you.”

Kissy came up to join us and acknowledged me, though she was careful not to let Waldo see her. This was about making him feel normal, not acknowledging the all too obvious.

“Wally, it's been just monstrous out there. You have no idea.” She leaned in to kiss him.

He patted the bed. “Then tell me! You know you're my eyes and ears.”

She hauled up a folding chair, one of those used by the palliative staff, and sat in close conspiracy with him. “Well, you know, Mitch Keller has left Brenda. Again. Had you heard?”

“No, I hadn't! Oh, the poor thing. What does she see in that beast? So what's the name of the new girl?”

“New boy is more like it.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes. Mitch is branching out. And you'll have heard of him. Kyle Tombeau.”

“Kyle Tombeau? That unshaven little wheat stalk? I'll grant you, he's kind of dreamy, but about as deep as a spoonful of molasses, and every bit as thick. So what's the attraction?”

“Apparently he has the libido of a jackrabbit,” Kissy said.

“Oooo...”

“But, unfortunately, I have it from the same very reliable source that he's about as well-endowed as one as well.”

Waldo pouted. “Oh, that's just tragic, isn't it? So who's your source?”

Kissy smiled, patting Waldo's hand. “My dear, that would be telling.”

The two of them shared a laugh, which degenerated into a brief coughing fit for Waldo.

“Wally, honey, you mustn't strain yourself. Perhaps I should let you rest.”

“No, you're good for me,” he said. He shook his head. “Poor Brenda.”

Kissy nodded. “Yes... can you imagine? All those cackling fiends out there... I mean, it's one thing to tell a joke about the kind of woman who would drive a man to be gay, but to actually be one...”

“And it's a terrible lie! Brenda is an angel and any man would be lucky to have her.” Waldo suddenly smiled and added, “Well, almost any man.”

Kissy patted his hand again. “We wouldn't have you any other way.”

“Quite a few of you might have had me another way,” he teased. “Well, I would have tried, anyway.”

“With a charmer like you around, who among us would have been safe?”

“Think of the stories you could have told.”

She leaned in close. “You don't think you've been interesting enough as it is?”

He laughed. “You wicked devil.”

The clock ticked away without anyone paying attention, just the soft drum beat of this parade of schadenfreude as, for most of an hour, Kissy stripped their friends naked and danced them around before Waldo. And Sam came in without so much as a how-do-you-do. “Getting caught up on your gossip, I see, Waldo...”

“Big Daddy,” Waldo smiled. “I've missed you.”

“Hello, Sammy,” Kissy said.

“So who's the latest scratching post, Kissy?” Sam said.

“Oh, bring your eyes over here, Sammy, and I'll show you.”

“Do I still have eyes, Waldo?”

“She hasn't said a word about you,” Waldo smiled.

“Hmm. I must not be living right.”

Kissy stood. “My dear Sammy, if you weren't, I'd have had something to tell him, after all,” she said, slipping past him and running a finger under his chin. “I have to go anyway,” she told Waldo. “We'll talk later. Nice seeing you, Sammy.”

“Don't forget to tell everyone I was drunk,” he called.

“Why waste my breath with what they already know?” she called from the stairs.

Sam shook his head. “I swear, Waldo...”

Waldo chuckled. “Oh, come on now, Big Daddy, I'm a writer. I need to hear these things. Just so it all sounds more believable when I make it up.”

Initially, I had wondered why Walton called Sam 'Big Daddy', particularly since Waldo was five or ten years Sam's senior. Just about the only one of Walton's friends in regular attendance I could ask was Sir Keith Monaghan; I had known him from before. He tended to drift through on his way from one appointment to another. He told me, “Sam Feist is everything you've ever heard him to be. He's an uncultured lout who's openly betrayed every woman who's ever loved him, and landed himself in either hospital or jail times uncountable with his brawling and brainless displays of bravado. His excesses are legendary and he's burned more bridges with producers and directors than most actors meet in a career. But the public love him all the more for it so the studios keep giving him work.”

“Walton seems to adore him,” I said.

Sir Keith nodded. “For all that, let me say this. No man ever had a truer friend than Sam Feist. Once you're considered a friend by him, you can count on him like a bulldog. God help the man who works evil against a friend of Sam Feist. In Waldo's case... the story goes that they met on the set of A Small Easement. Sam was starring and Waldo was writing. At first Sam had little use for Waldo because of his ways. Sam's a man's man and Waldo is anything but. Sam threw a fit one day about how his character was being written, right in front of Waldo. But instead of getting his back up, as most artists would, Waldo went 'round to Sam's dressing room, offering to hash out the scene to his liking. Well, after that, things were different. Sam became the little scribe's fierce defender. Not long afterwards, on the set of another picture, some up-and-coming young pretty boy with more face than talent took a shine to tormenting Waldo about his, shall we say, fey manners. When Waldo arrived one morning with a cold, the young boor began suggesting, rather too loudly for his own good, that Waldo was infected with a certain socially unacceptable virus. Waldo retreated in tears. Someone in the crew told Sam. Well, I won't torment you with the details, they're far too sordid. Suffice it to say the matter was eventually settled out of court. Anyway, from that time on, Waldo has referred to Sam in all matters public and private as 'Big Daddy'.”

“That's endearing... in a way,” I said.

“Yes. In a very basic, scruffy, meat and potatoes sort of way, I suppose it is. You know, Sam is fond of telling people his last name, Feist, is German for 'fist'. It is no such thing. He does it to project a tougher image. But he does himself far less credit than the name is due. In matter of fact, in German, it means 'protect'.”

How many times had I watched Sam protect Waldo from the truth of what was happening to him? Today he stood at the window, overlooking the bay, a view Waldo himself had not been strong enough to take in for several weeks now. “Sailboats. I gotta get another one. It's been too long.”

“What will you call it?”

Sam smiled. “Milady's Tits.”

Waldo winced. “Ohh, Big Daddy... why don't you call it something like Persephone? Or Zephyr? How about Achilles? That would be so much more apropos...”

“You think?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“Achilles it is. But you have to get yourself out of the rack for the maiden voyage.”

Waldo smiled wanly. “I'll try, Big Daddy.”

“Don't make me kick your ass. You know I can.”

“I know. And I certainly don't want that!”

Sam came over. Sat on the bed, thinking. Raised a finger before Waldo. “Thirty-footer. None of that automatic shit. Everything by the sweat of a man's brow.”

“Ooo... sign me on, captain. May I swab your poop deck?”

Sam laughed. “I'll let you steer her. You better get good at it because I'll likely be drunk most of the time.”

“Yeah... just don't go crashing this one on a reef. It's too much money. You'd better really get someone who can drive straight.”

“Well, that's you, isn't it?”

“Oh, Big Daddy, what'd I ever do straight?”

“Checkers?”

“Oh, even that's sideways.”

“No, I mean, how a game?”

“Oh, sure... I have to be black, though. It makes me feel dangerous and mysterious.”

“Red suits me. Ask anyone I've put in their place,” Sam said, unfolding the board.

They played a few games, nattering amiably, Sam eating a plate of fries Peach brought him. As usual, Waldo had little appetite, but seemed to gain something by watching his friend dig in. “Ketchup and mayonnaise, my goodness... Europe really has make a mark on you.”

“Don't tell anybody.”

“My lips are sealed. Well, unless...” He waved a hand, sparing Sam the innuendo.

“We have to find you the right girl.”

Waldo feigned shock. “And what can you tell me about 'the right girl'? How many times have you been married and divorced now?”

“Well, there you go, see how many right girls I've found?”

Peach came back, taking away the empty plate. “Are my ears burning?” she joked.

“Maybe my tongue could put them out,” Sam oozed.

“You'd be more likely to put out my eye,” she teased. “Sam, you're going to be late for your appointment with IHT.”

“Screw 'em.”

“You can't just blow them off, Sam, they're trying to plan your next picture. Go and see them, then you can come back here and we'll figure out what to do for supper.”

“What do you feel like,” Sam asked Waldo.

“I'm not... very hungry these days, Big Daddy.”

“You gotta eat something, Wally. You're getting thin as a rail, and you have to be strong to steer... what was it called?”

“Achilles.”

“Yeah. To steer Achilles.” He stood. “I'll be back in a few. Everyone keep the lid on till I get back.” He gave Peach a peck on the cheek and she patted his shoulder. He bounded down the stairs, slammed the door, and roared off in a clear invitation to every cop within earshot to chase him down, ticket-happy.

“Oh, how I wish you two would get back together,” Waldo sighed. “The universe just isn't right till that happens.”

Some might have resented the interference but Peach seemed to take it in the kind spirit Waldo must have intended it. “Sam is a lot more fun to go on vacation with a couple of times a year than to be married to full time. He's just not wired that way. I can accept it. To tell you the truth, we get along a lot better this way.”

“Well, true, some of the vacations have been fantastic. The ones I know about, anyway,” he teased.

She smiled and sat on the end of the bed. She leaned in. “Do you remember,” she chuckled, “that September we all spent in Milan?”

“Do I? Honey, I'm reliving it every day. It was one of my favourite moments. Yes... a perfect moment in time.”

“The food...”

“The wine!”

And together they said: “Those handsome Italian men!”

Peach shook her head. “And Sam managing to break his arm.”

“Oh, yes... that did kind of slow us all down a little. Do you still have the picture of him with the mermaid?”

“I send a copy of it to him every birthday to remind him. I think it helps,” she said.

Waldo said, “I swear, when he fell into that fountain, I thought my heart would stop.” He reached his hand over and pretended to study his heartbeat. “Nope, still going,” he joked.

She smiled, tightly. Very tightly, her cheeks drawing up. But the tears welled up anyway.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you... it was just a joke,” he said. “A very bad one, it seems.”

She raised her hand to her cheek and pressed her face into it.

“What is it?” he said, as if there could be something else in the world troubling her.

Breathless, like an ice-choked November wind through barren trees, she managed, “It's just something Sam said yesterday...”

“What?”

She turned to him. “Oh, Waldo, you have to promise you'll never tell another soul. It was a beautiful moment, and if it were anyone but you... It would destroy him if anyone found out.”

“You go ahead and tell me,” he said. “Tell me the beautiful moment.”

“You remember that yesterday he and I went to The Occasions. He didn't have a thing to drink. Now that was rare in itself, but... I... talked to him about... some things that we might need to do... after...” She nodded, not wanting to say the rest. Waldo nodded back, acknowledging the ellipsis. “And for the first time, he didn't change the subject. I think he was starting to come to grips...”

“He's always had a hard time facing it. Harder than me, even,” Waldo said, softly. “It's because he wants to save me... and he can't. So he pretends for me, and I pretend for him.”

“He doesn't want you to give up hope.”

“Hope? Of what? That I'll get well? That I'll leave this bed, this room, alive?”

She nodded.

“That man...” he said. “He's like an ocean... but this time there's no shore he can crash against. All that power, but it can't change anything. He's suffering. Oh, Big Daddy...”

“You don't know how much,” she whispered. Swallowed. “Last night, he said to me that he felt as though... when you go, a part of his soul is going to go with you and be lost forever. And there were tears, I... I've never, ever seen him weep. Not even when his father died.”

“Oh, Peach. How can I leave him like that?”

“He's just going to have to face it in his own way,” she said. It was all said. She rose, and drifted off to attend to other things.

He sighed. With only me there, he muttered, “I'm going to have to betray your trust, Peachy. And you're just going to have to forgive me in your own way.”

* * * * *

Waldo mostly slept the three or four hours till Sam was due back. I kept a close eye on him and Peach came in from time to time to check in. The scent of stir-fried vegetables began to creep into the room. Dinner came and went with no sign of Sam. I sat with Peach for a bit while she ate, and then we headed back upstairs to sit with Waldo, and she read to him a little... from one of his own books, which seemed to please him.

It was in the morning that Sam arrived, early, full of vim. “Found it,” he said as he crashed into Waldo's room.

Waldo was still groggy. He didn't sit up. He said, “Excuse me?”

“Achilles,” Sam said, closing the space between him and Waldo. He opened the manila folder in his hand and produced a photo of a massive white yacht.

Waldo held it gingerly in his fingers. “Good Lord,” he gasped. “A hundred Vikings could go to Valhalla in style in this thing. Did you buy this?”

“Not at the price that putz is asking.” Sam turned to the window, and shouted, “Don't you wish you may get it! Not likely. Not from me. I let him know I'm interested, though. Let him get hungry. He'll see it my way. But I wanted to check it with you first.”

“With me, why?”

Sam pointed to a row of windows along the main deck. “There's a big room in here. It's a workout room right now, but I was thinking, it wouldn't be hard to set it up as a room. For you. While you get better. You'd be on the deck, so—”

“Big Daddy... we both know I'm not going to go sailing ever again,” Waldo interrupted, gently.

“Don't say that. Don't give up hope. Because if you do—”

“I'm dying, Sammy. I'm dying. Any day now I'll be gone. You need to accept that.”

“I'm not... I'm not gonna sit here...”

“It's not that I want to. Nothing would make me happier than to stay here for another thirty years and sail with you and Peach and gossip with Kissy and write with Tanya and golf with Merle, but... that's not going to happen.”

Sam leaned in, his teeth gritted. “I'm going to buy this boat, I'm going to make that room, and goddamn you, don't you waste it.”

“You know, Sam... Peach told me the most wonderful thing about you today. She swore me not to tell... but you know I'm no good at keeping secrets.”

Sam stiffened. Darkened. “What'd she say?”

“You won't tell her I told you...”

“What did she say?”

“She said that last night, you told her that when I go, you're afraid part of your soul will be lost with me.”

It happened. There, before my eyes, the keystone was pulled. His eyes grew red-rimmed, and his lip trembled; this mountain of a man transforming into a little boy. His hypocrisy was laid bare, and there was nothing more he could say. His eyes flicked away toward the window.

Waldo said, “I don't know if that's what will happen, but—”

“Don't...”

“—but if it does, you don't have to worry. I'll take care of it. I'll cherish it... like a pearl,” he said, the word coming out on his breath stretched out, as though it were already his last.

The tower was shaking. Sam's breath left his body in barks, as though some massive invisible man were punching it out of him.

Peach was in the doorway. She eased in, almost fearful.

Waldo's hand reached out to cover Sam's. He said, “It's okay, Big Daddy. You don't need to be brave for me anymore.”

And that vast tower came down. Sam broke, sobbing into his hands like a child as Peach embraced him from behind, and Waldo stroked his hair, the benediction of some loving uncle. There was a terrible beauty to it, seeing all that strength crumble, knowing that soon it would rise again in some other form. But for now, it was felled, simply felled, and sorrow stormed the gates of Sam's heart.

* * * * *

It was as though Walton finally had permission to leave. Sam spoke honestly with him, and after that, the hours seemed to wear on Waldo like years.

In the afternoon, the calls went out. Cars began to arrive.

Friends crowded the bedroom, taking turns in shifts, rotating in and out to other rooms. There was weeping. There was loud laughter and reminiscences. The sound of ice in glasses, the curl of smoke, bits of food and gossip and recriminations.

In the evening he was drifting in an out. The medical staff was working to make him comfortable. In his lucid moments, he accepted the plaudits of friends and colleagues, all under the glare of Sam Feist warning them silently to say nothing upsetting. “It's an honour to be here,” Waldo offered on waking at one point, giving rise to a hearty chuckle in those around him.

“The honour is ours,” Kissy told him.

“Oh... I hope it wasn't too expensive,” he muttered. “I don't know if I can manage much of a reading tonight.” Another laugh.

Peach dabbed his glistening brow. He tried to swallow; she brought a cup to his lips and he sipped. Closing his eyes, he asked, “Is Sir Keith here? Did he make it?”

His friends looked at one another warily. Heads hung.

“Not yet, Wally,” Peach said.

Waldo was suddenly taken with a coughing fit. His friends crowded around. When it seemed it would never end, he was suddenly calmed.

Suddenly Walton caught sight of me. He turned his head toward me and in a feeble voice they all heard, said, “Who are you?”

“A friend,” I smiled.

“Ooohh...” he breathed, the little sound full of surprise and delight.

I reached out my hand to him. Gentle as a lamb, he took it.

Damaged Goods

It was one of those blazing summer afternoons where the hands of the clock seem for a while to run backward, extending time, winding the clock tighter until it springs, suddenly, releasing night like a trap at the end of too much light, the famine brought on by the feast itself. I used to believe that God was doing it that way, really making time backwards to work it just like that, and it was as though I was the only one who'd ever guessed it. I didn't know if that would make God angry or smile that I was so clever. In my dreams, it could be either.

That day, I was tending my angels.

There's a flower that grows in the Maritimes... I suppose it grows elsewhere... but down east we called them lady's slippers. Somewhere along the line, I had realized that that the pale, delicate, frostly blossoms that hung like the scrotums of ghosts were the houses of angels. And not just their houses, but their birth chambres... they were the means by which angels entered our world, and their dwellings while here, all at once. This seemed self-evident. What else could these little chambres be? And once in Heaven, would it not be the same for us?

After lunch I would set out with a small tin watering can that had once belonged to my sister. Up along the path behind our street, into the worn hills behind our home at the edge of town. There was a patch of them on a hillside overlooking a stream and overhung by birch and spruce, the sun dappling the ferns that guarded them, plain plants of a lesser order given this great commission to which I was, in my own way, party as well. And I would crouch there, sprinkling water, showing my devotion, talking to the angels.

"Ellen, what are you doing?" My brother Chris.

"Well, what does it look like?"

"They get water from the rain, they don't need you."

I ignored him, turning back to my mission. "Other plants, maybe. These ones need more."

He came forward, the ferns licking at his tan shins, powerless to stop him. "Why? What's so special about them?"

I looked up at him. He had the sun behind his head; I could barely see his face. It was like he was Jesus. Maybe that's what fooled me. I said, "Well, the angels live in these, Chris."

He laughed, "What? Oh, man... come on."

I ran a finger gently under one of the blossoms; I could almost see it smiling up at me, the angel within it curled up, fast asleep. "No, really, it's true," I said. "The light is too strong for them. So they hide here all day and come out at night when we need them. When monsters are out, and the bad men."

"Guardian angels?"

"Yes." I nodded. Hummed. Tilted the can.

He crouched beside me. "You know what I think?"

I looked at him, uncertain what was coming. "What?" I said.

He reached down, taking the stem of one of the flowers between his finger and thumb. There was a moment where I knew, and he knew, but I didn't believe. Before I acted, he plucked it.

"Chris, no!" I made a grab for it, as if there were anything then I could have done to save it, reverse the damage. Chris's other hand flew to my shoulder and pushed me back.

He waggled the flower before me, and then caught the blossom in his fingers. The flower might have been picked, but at least the angel's home was still intact. I pleaded with him. "Chris, no! No!"

But he crushed it, grinding it back and forth between his thumb and index finger, until it was a pulpy mess smeared over his skin, and he tossed it aside. He paused to smell his fingers, interested in the scent he'd liberated, a Vandal pausing to admire the fragmented chisel work of a masterpiece he'd just smashed.

My face was hot and my eyes stung with tears. "It's just a flower," he said, mocking me. And a human is just a beast, all the more monstrous for its pretentions. He gave one shoulder a shrug. "Do what you want, crybaby," he breezed, rising to his feet and moving past me.

I was on my hands and knees, sobbing. "It was somebody's angel! Somebody's angel! What if it was my angel? Or Mom's or Dad's or Jamie's? What if it was your angel?"

Down the path he called, "There's no such thing as angels!"

And I forgave him. In time, I outgrew my vocation. I decided that God must have called some other little girl to take my place, and the idea absolved me somehow. I wished her well, whoever she was.

Years passed, and we were in high school. Young adults. Just after his 17th birthday, Chris was swimming with friends when someone's skiff caught him in the back of the head, knocking him out. He went under, and his friends couldn't find him... he drowned. I don't know how I got through that evening. I prayed as hard as I could for God to forgive him what he'd done, to forgive me for abandoning my call. In some way, I think I've continued to do so, every day since. While I know it isn't real, deep within I know it is.

Yank

Known for his winning ways,
he sometimes steps down into these lost regions
as though his footsteps could pin them earthbound
and right us for a while
It would seem he can
The smile that finally explodes
when it can no longer dam back song
is first sunshine
and then fertile rain
Like flowers, they turn their faces to him
then one to another:
___his presence makes a community
___of a collection
All but me,
___poisoned by envy

leaves

tender in waiting
goosebumps on naked branches
sun-worshippers soon

A break in the clouds

Toronto in 1960 had the flavour of boiled zucchini floating in too thin a broth. But even then the air hung with the scents of more interesting courses to come. The snowflakes around me in Kensington floated here and there on the odd word of Hindi or the first intonations of Cantonese, cultural tendrils of the first shoots of foreign blossoms arriving on these shores. That had been the nature of the country centuries before, and was about to be again. But for now, the flowers were rarified and even the prissiest of waspy gardeners was still able to pretend that, while weeds they were, they would soon wither and die of their own accord in unpromising soil, this environment too hostile for their like. The young, open to possibilities, could imagine alternatives, and with mingled trepidation and excitement, I imagined a future that did not in every aspect, feature, and nuance, identically resemble the past. A new flag, a new pride, a new people... it was easy to imagine, but who could really have believed it?

Posing was really about the breaks...

That was the afternoon that Bolt let me feel his cock.

This kind of thing was not uncommon in the circles in which I ran at the time. Now, you have to understand, none of us was screamingly gay or anything (well, not among my immediate friends). It was simply a matter of opportunism. A group of young, quasi-employable twenty-somethings with too little self-esteem to imagine chasing down all but the very easiest of skirts; it was all too natural for us to turn to one another... friends, sympathetic fellow travelers. It felt forbidden and exciting. Just as well; it was just about all we had.

He was at my place, and he was posing for me. Among my crowd, most of us fancied ourselves reasonably good artists; it was, in fact, what brought most of us together in the first place. So these posing sessions were fairly common. Bolt had done this before with others in our cadre, but for him and me, this was a first. My folks were at work, and so there we were, downstairs on a bold, empty summer afternoon with nothing to fill it up with but one another. And he was naked, and I was sketching — also naked, ostensibly out of a spirit of democracy and egalitarianism. Bolt, it should be said here, was kind of vain. He worked out a little. In truth, he was nothing special; he wasn't dedicated enough to it for it to really shape him. But it made a difference psychologically, I suppose. That is to say, as I drew him, as I studied him, as I set every detail down on paper, he gained an erection, and a rather persistent one at that; so insistent that it ultimately had to be represented in the sketch. Bolt got off on being on display, being noticed, being admired.

After a bit he said, "Wanna take a break for a minute?" It seemed the moment had arrived. I paused and set down the pad and the charcoal. He remained upright, in both senses of the word. Holding his pose. Smiling at me.

An awkward moment went by, and finally I trusted on his reputation and simply reached up, cupping the length of his cock in my hand. "Hmmm..." he sighed softly. I moved along the couch, drawing closer, and raised my other hand to fondle his balls. He grinned down at me as I explored his maleness, pleasuring him furtively, indulging his vanity. He said, "Whattayah think?"

What was I supposed to say? It was a cock, not a Rembrandt; they were his balls, not Fabergé eggs. So I nodded and said, "Nice..."

"Yup," he said, the quiet centre of the universe, standing there while I felt him up. It seemed that this had to go somewhere; I either had to stop, or take it to the next level. My choice was to lean forward, and take his cock into my mouth. He moaned, his hands cradling my head, finally touching me. It didn't take long; maybe a minute or two until he had what he'd really needed out of the posing session. I swallowed him — I never had a problem with that — and drew off of him. He flopped down onto the couch with a contented groan, fondling himself, sighing and smiling as if it had been the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders instead of an ounce or two of cum out of his balls. "That was great," he told me.

I didn't even bother asking. I'd heard what he was like, even seen him in action at a few parties. Sober, there was no chance; he had too many hang-ups about what it implied for him to reciprocate. Drunk he could get past them most of the time, if grudgingly. Stoned, though, he was a madman... some other aspect of his ego would float to the fore on marijuana smoke and he'd be overcome by the desire to demonstrate himself the most accomplished cocksmith in creation. It's like pot turned him into the Blowjob Fairy or something. Unfortunately for me, there was none available that afternoon, so I was on my own. No problem; I sat back and did it right in front of him. Through heavy-lidded eyes he watched me with lazy intent as I took myself most of the way, made half-hard again by the spectacle, and then, taken by some charitable urge, leaned suddenly forward. He brushed my hand aside and replaced it with his own, taking me the rest of the way. I sat back and watched him masturbate me, and the two of us were treated to the mutually satisfying vision of my load launching out of his pumping fist.

I sat back, panting. "Thanks," I said.

He sat back as well, and in a move I found somehow even more erotic and intimate than if he'd gone down on me, he wiped his hand across his own chest, spreading my essence over himself as if it were some manner of clear, glistening warpaint... a manhood trial successfully undertaken by two young comrades together. "What are friends for," he told me.

Terrorist

if they learned
if they knew
that on that tuesday morning
God turned to new york and said
“yes, it is time”…

would they change
would things be different