to its pristine blueprints, I mean,
get back to Eden. But my shaky theories sabotaged
our wham-bam, shindig shebang.
XV
I dubbed that stubby, chubby, fedora’d fogey,
hoggin the corner of Maynard and Cunard,
a stogie boogyin in his choppers,
“The Dictator of Guff”—
that actual roller of shit-smell cigars—
as if he were the Chairman
of funereal, unreal, Bluenose Halifax.
Split-secondly, O. evolved into “Layla”—
Aury’s O (as drawn by Derek and the Dominoes)—
and erased me like obscene, sidewalk chalk.
What else could I do,
but go underground,
mine authentic B.B. King howls,
undermine my M.L. King dreams?
XVI
I went down into my Aunt’s house, “Big Grey”
(named to honour The Band’s Big Pink,
the house that begat The Basement Tapes,
Dylan’s Nobel Prize album), above the charcoal harbour,
and bid an Underwood 315 cloacal typewriter
replace a real-gone girlfriend,
her spectral, holy eyes burning
holes in my haunted sonnets.
Typewriter keys croaked crookedly,
spewing pages askew with garbage feelings,
Country-n-Western stupidity, because …
I couldn’t admit O. had trashed—
dumped, dismissed, and dashed—
me like an anorexic Buddha.
XVII
Zigzagged I cross that niggardly no-man’s-land
of no-woman.
Cooped up in an odious cave—
that basement, quivering with cockroaches—
I had to don reflective sunglasses
so I’d not reflect on my J¯ovan Musk tears.
I couldn’t box my way
out the stocks I was in,
and the clacking typewriter rounded that fact,
orbited the pain,
by locking, into their serial place,
imprints of cast-metal letters
that nailed down every vision
ink and drink brought up.
XVIII
I felt “Down and Out” without
ever having risen
from the catacomb’s dim damp—
those tearful aches, beatific pangs—
lusts purpled and steeped in Concorde wine,
or dyed blue by T & A mags.
I hustled an escape—like Houdini
or Eldridge Cleaver or Ovid,
to neither be ungodly nor satanic,
but adverse in verse alone.
Whited out by burgundy-black wine,
my nerves off-key
(like my typewriter keys), I chose to toodle-loo
to Waterloo to seek a “Victory.”
XIX
Shortly, I dallied, delayed, with Suzette,
Mahogany doll who was smokin,
I mean, searing, smouldering, who made love
day-long, night-long, and unpocketed
silver-cased, tobacco cancer-sticks,
and lounged in silver, polyester panties,
and dollied in my lap while I typed (or tried),
jubilant in a brand-new grotto.
Suzette took up Huckleberry Finn and downed
Tia Maria pon Tia Maria,
and mailed letters postmarked from a town
in the bucolic, ass-fucking Annapolis Valley,
callin out Love. Then, she grabbed me and dabbed a goodbye,
when I nabbed that night train to Ontari-ari-ari-o.
XX
(On her birthday, her virginal sixteenth, precisely,
Neanderthal yokels had coaxed her
jokingly into their Coke-and-rum camp,
then spliced her, each one, twice each.
A K.K.K. Rape: They’d been stalking, frothing.
The young, dirty wolves would grunt;
the old dogs would just drool, dreamy.
Then they dragged her down, broke her:
They copied their cutthroat throwbacks
who’d miscegenated “Negress” slaves.
Suze vented this nausea twixt cigarette-blue breaths
and tears and gulps of Tia Maria.
I had to get away from Nova Scotia,
not from her, but from Nova Scotia.)
XXI
To Waterloo I shipped, shelving a gangrenous heart,
to now besiege the Canon’s heavyweights—
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Hopkins, Yeats—
and smash a train through their fortress.
I used to go nights and stand beside Lake Columbia,
letting the wind splash those shallow waves
high enough to baptize me with a false image
of the Atlantic.
Or strolled I always along Laurel Creek,
planning to elegize Monsignor Moses Coady
and be that black-and-red plaid-shirt, Baptist Marxist—
to wield the hammer-and-sickle and crucifix.
I declared myself now “Nattt Moziah Shaka!”*
Riled, a pink-faced Tory thrust five pinkies gainst my face.
*Cf. Nat Turner (1800-31); Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), and Shaka Zulu (1787-1828).
XXII
Wasn’t I ridiculous? Sho, I was ridiculous!
High-steppin in crayon shoes and high-hat Afro,
Ogled I a tall, thin, tan, and tantalizin, bo’n Jamaican,
with streaming noir hair, dove breasts,
occupying that hallway in Modern Languages,
in her blue-jean skirt and Ilsa-She-Wolf black boots.
I deemed her a dazzlingly sable Venus,
rising from demure, but glossy waves,
and she—unlike some Ipanema gal—purred hello
when I wafted her my welcome.
Miracle! She materialized in three classes, Fall 1980,
this earthy, divine Miss H.,
as pretty as Easter lilies,
as pure as lilies in April rain.
XXIII
Yep, she was as Pentecostal as Easter:
Her fire-branded lips were instantly randy,
carnivorous to bolt plush, plump kisses.
Though her Ideals magazine shivered
my erected Penthouse,
the apple blossoms we angled beneath
were non-judgmental, perfumed, secular,
serenading Nature’s catholic sexuality,
even on the emerald banks of Laurel Creek,
with its black, Shakespearean swans
and white, Blakean ones,
or in the weekend-emptied, suburban bungalow
where I had a room and no scruples,
and she joked I imagined her “barefoot and pregnant”!
XXIV
I bade us execute what we could prosecute,
negotiating railway mix-ups,
classroom metaphysics, missed-bus fiascoes,
church non-attendance,
her odyssey by VIA to Ville de Québec,
my “Long March” hitch-hiking to Vancouver—
all the way from Barrie,
trembling all night in freezing dew,
or thirsty on the Prairies, swallowing litres of o.j.,
slogging kilometers that were umpteen miles long,
snapping pics, thumbing rides, praying, writing,
hungry, wolfing wild blackberries,
swatting mosquitoes, getting shat on by gulls,
then kiting from Vancouver straight to her bed in Québec.
XXV
Madelle “Ash” opened to me Ramparts, not her own.
Sir Justice opened to us Le Château Frontenac.
We forked caribou; spooned crème brûlée; swooned:
my crayon Sis Corita poster got all crumpled up.
Trembling
, I embraced the waist of that wraith,
and unlaced her wraps. Faith collapsed;
we lapsed; and I had to exit Sainte-Foy,
leaving Mamzelle à l’Université Laval,
and to attentions and intentions of Afro’d Alpha.
Thus, I pissed myself weeping back to Waterloo,
then slipped into still-hippy Integrated Studies,
governed by Dr. De’Ath, cosmo anthropologist,
who, thanks to his studies in Maori New Zealand,
espied—at once—my Black New Scotland roots.
XXVI
Baptist, but funky, Miz H. illuminated Beauty.
So illogical was I, I was pathological.
She was a trampling gazelle.
I was a trampled-under gazette.
We blossomed with “Being With You”
(Smokey Robinson—1981),
but withered into “I Can’t Go for That”
(Hall and Oates—1981).
Damn! Our deep-black Motown Soul
bleached into blue-eyed Soul—
the Spirit sunk back into matter.
Every blues ballad stuck me deeper in Hell.
Nights, I snuck into the old Hogtown City Morgue
to punctuate my woes on an I.B.M. Selectric.
XXVII
Stealthily, but brazenly, I stole the plum Poli Sci job
for undergrads, though CBC Radio X’d me
cause I came late to a Current Affairs exam
I nailed—
explaining the ins-and-outs of Parliament
and all the Parties and players
in five minutes, not the thirty given the white-bread, et al.
So, I vamoosed to Queen’s Park,
and the Ontario Elections Commission,
and thrived, easterly, in the tide-sodden Beaches,
and etched an electoral history of the Constituency
of Algoma-Manitoulin.
(Maybe it’s still there, decidedly dusty,
on a back shelf—musty—of the Legislative Library.)
XXVIII
Ontario Liberals— da “Grits,” under then-dorky,
not yet contact-lens- chic, Peterson,
readied me an intern cell (well-padded).
But I fled the Provincial Parliament
(ochre architecture plagiarizing a Hindu temple),
sick of seeing Rhodes Scholar Socialist flinch each time my black face
surprised him in a stairwell.
I dieseled back to Halifax, dieseled back to O.,
to resurrect our ephemeral, teen-age intimacy,
with candles, Joan Armatrading acoustics,
Pusser’ s Navy Rum, ideas of Egypt, and high-jinx—
plus nostalgia for our adolescent gymnastics.
Yet, too soon bore I to Tunnel Mountain, to study, again,
how I was supposed to imagine this stuff....
XXIX
Learned I can’t muffle my cantankerous, blues Muse!
I autographed Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues,
while Madelle “Ash” sashayed taut hips to Ottawa
to score a Bachelor in Kindergarten tutoring.
Now enduring solo, torturous, redoubled yearning,
strayed I to Y.Z., Hong Kong Buddhist,
who abided with me while I helmed
a psychedelic, sex-savvy, crypto-Plato tabloid,
Imprint: student organ of the University of Waterloo.
Y. boiled bok choy, tolerated my Tu Fu sessions:
She was as delicate as a butterfly,
and kindly, very kindly, and ever quiet,
quivering tenderly, or sobbing,
when I was (often) ugly and untender.
XXX
That never choking—always strangling—sheet, Imprint
dangled a sophomoric politico
from its lines of lawyer-vetted speculation
and proof-backed “told-ya-so.”
Next, Whiz Kid veered into urinal backrooms,
and got caught living off a Liberal-licensed dole,
granted at aggrieved, taxpayers’ expense.
(Nice to witness Leftist thinking proved right.)
Shortly, my preppy ex-opponent
found it less possible to become prime minister
than I did to be a poet.
When next I broke with Ontario,
a decade had died since I’d first begun to backtalk—
i.e., break into print—in hellacious Halifax.
XXXI
Getting back to basics (or just fierce frustration),
I had to let Y.Z. jet to Hong Kong,
though she really didn’t want to “get.”
But I really didn’t want to get hitched.
Craved I still Ms. H., her willowy hoodoo.
But when that woman drove down from Ottawa
to Waterloo, and dished me saltfish and ackee,
she looked away, distracted, her heart not in it.
Vitiated, I loped to Europa*—
red-double-deckered London, red-light-anointed Amsterdam,
red-wine-flooded Paris—
stripping my bank account in just three weeks.
Dismayed, I sat on a dock on the Seine,
and wept much and chugged much red wine. Sad to say.
*Since 1985, I’ve shadow-darkened America, Austria, (The) Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Czech Republic, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saint-Pierre (et Miquelon), Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tahiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, and Zanzibar. Home? Three Mile Plains.
XXXII
Madame H. selected a Sunday School saviour—
an architect who liked sleepin outdoors
(and so his buildings stayed sketchy).
Well, I crawled back to HFX and clawed out
a job I couldn’t do well—
social work: driving
rusted-out, busted cars,*
definitely without a license,
and dropping in on country folk
to eavesdrop on their speech
for Rock-Steady poems and undulant Soul and what-not.
I was always ready with incisive ink
to be a holy-roller terror of Truth,
an impeccable imp.
*Cf. “Cisshie” and/or “Sock.”
XXXIII
Interrogating Highway 1 West,
Halifax to Weymouth (Falls), I spied
lyric birds music-staff Byzantine apple boughs,
horses gawk while a train (stabbed by politicians)
limped to its death in a meadow.
Negro spirits led jamborees in Friday eve barns;
I heard iron-fisted men make steel guitars go crazy,
make hay of Music,
the way a Kama Sutra poetess makes love.
I lived on wind rendered into wine,
breath become bread.
I composed a Bible ( The Rap) outta gossip ooze
and neighbourhood drippings—
the genial muck of Eden.
XXXIV
Lightning could father rainbows, right?
One night in Digby, rain punctured my brother’s roof,
while my voice funneled down an unctuous phone line,
trying to tunnel into Miz Lady’s heart,
but she was laughing, I was flailing.
“Our” Love was truly “lost like lightning” (lb.).
Man, her wrong words hurt my throat
like I was draining absinthe.
Every maverick thought
leapt and pulsed with clean blood.
Now, the only rainbows fathered were black ink
and black vinyl 45s—
dark prisms of spilled gasoline, oozing,
then catching—like a cold or napalm.
XXXV
&
nbsp; Round the Falls—epiphanic, nights brought
ice cream scooped up nigh a French Shore cathedral
and fully dressed sirens just as sensual
as undressed nymphs.
(Nay, call them nymphets;
but imagine nymphos.)
They slaved, gutting fish, but vroomed scarlet roadsters,
with room only for hugging, kissing, drinking,
simultaneously, yeah.
What geniuses of Beauty!
So sincerely, searingly, unerringly cute,
acute, cantilevered, frank, they were,
with nudity more naked than any autobiography,
and infinitely more honest....
XXXVI
Thanks to seven sylphs’ audio-visual attractions—
I mean, their blues, their beauty, their funk, their fire—
Whylah Falls got conceived—maybe—immaculately.
My inspirations: Liquored-up fits among lilac,
Wilson Pickett bending the ears of a stereo,
Aretha bending her knees to Marvin Gaye,
and a brown-black WOMAN with a voice like lighter fluid
and eyes of archetypal lightning—
a Country-n-Western Cleopatra,
Conway Twitty’s very own Diana Ross.
(To find Shelley’s like, you gotta be an Egyptologist
spelunking dark pyramid innards,
then cracking open a gold sarcophagus
inscribed with Song of Solomon hieroglyphics.)
XXXVII
But despite Shelley’s, my, Love, unrequited,
I couldn’t quit the notion of that hoity-toity dame,
Miz “Ash,” sassy temptress, with her cinnamon tresses
and little tits heightened by tight-tight dresses,
and her epigram telegram haiku letters,
that I endorsed by acclaiming her “Scintillant Being,”
the Queen of Ecclesiastes.
And I could too easily get drunk and cry,
cry and drink, slobber tears into my rum,
already sour, because because because,
ex Halifax, I rode a hard-ass bus seat to court her—
now a teacher, classy bourgeoise, in “Bytown,”
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