Traverse

by George Elliott Clarke

  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,”