9 WINDFALL
11 TURNCOAT
13 GANGLAND
15 NIGHT FISHING AT ANTIBES
17 SABBAT
19 SHIVAREE
21 POINT SPREAD
24 (THE TORONTO STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30,1985)
25 READING THE TIDES: PETROGLYPH PARK
27 FABULIST
28 ACE OF SPADES
29 WILD CARD
30 1920'S FLICKER
31 CANDLELIGHT IN BLACK
32 HIGHGATE
34 CAPE OF GOOD HOPE
35 PICPUS
37 ILLUMINAIRE
38 CARNIVAL AND LENT
40 TERMINAL LIVING
45 MIDPOINT
46 TWINKLING OF AN EYE
47 SERENADE
49 HIDDEN AGENDA
50 ADVENTURER
51 SLIPPER
52 HELLULAND
53 TRINKETS
54 A THIEF'S NOTEBOOK
55 WARHORSE
57 TEETER-TOTTER
58 CHEMIN DE FER
60 WITHIN REACH
62 COUNTESS
63 COUNTESS II
64 PALEFACE
65 CUD
67 CURRENCY
68 REFRESHER COURSE
69 GHOST TALES
70 WANDERLUST
73 PASTICHE
76 BOCA
84 WORK IN PROGRESS
88 HARDCASES

"In the five and dime
store where I first fell
in love with unreality."

Lawrence Ferrenghetti

Sitting in the spendthrift dark
lilting pennies away,
deciphering fate ... .
The bed, a warm reach past
the pillow
like personal mortality in the
incest breath of life.

Warm stuff of dreams--
the calender with its days mesh &
march like soldiers
dearly departed
(cindered and bludgeoned)
or the old sea-faring chest
where all men are sailors
past light's corner.

Sturdy trudgeons,
clock bursts thru the room
mindful of time and aching,
decaying things.

Hallow's Eve in movements of the curtains--
a remembered Rembrandt,
self-portrait of the old man
standing alone in a clammy room,
idling the seconds, with drab
browns and grays;
that sea-faring chest, again, speaking
of depleted journeys.

Mystic and occult moods,
worlds caught in a single glance
off the wall paper standing abreast
the lamp
and the mirror, back from
the pace of a single thought.

[11]

A sailor, "tatoo you,"
the cigarette Players
with tape-deck playing
a jaundiced "Yellow Bird",
Cerveza, Dos Equiis, the
two horses, in red flame,
across the label.

Trolling in a deep sea-trench
(spinners and chubb),
the dark night
a religious procession,
acolyte stars in hymnal to the wind.

Across the channel
a Party Boat
--the words almost demand capitals
with actions so diminutive--
creased laughter "to go" cross the waves
flicker of lights, siren call
then a lemon shark strikes the bait
on anchor reel, Horse-Eyed Jack
perhaps borrowing the name
from the Outback--
think pantomime, enter Wahoo
and the aesthetic of fear
crazed fish jack-knifing the boat.

Someone produces a cheese tray,
warm wine
the small shark caught in a
role reversal lies bludgeoned
under the seat, even there
a halo glow surrounds the eye and
cobalt snout, but it is the grin
that takes the edge off antics
of the Party Boat
some bedraggled hundred yards away
this Death's Head cocktail,
"What's your poison" leer
teeth like naked light bulbs
against tenement stairs
protean hoodlum a millenia away.

[13]

A beach back of bric à brac,
wine goblet of sky ....
the horizon beginning
somewhere between Nod &
nigh unto forever with
only the sigh of a Casuarina pine
or sea-grape to force a smile.

It was entering into twilight
--our minds were sailing ships,
mere vagaries upon the waves,
mine more a clippership
on the Frisco to China run.

Soirèe intimée,
apèrtif, digestif?
A bottle of rum
with Eleuthera for a name
--the prettiest coves
have steadfast winds
dark about portside.

Silvery light of stars,
the stars like black hansom cabs
with livried footmen before
shark-toothed clouds,
a shark-faced moon,
the sight of a shark breaking water,
lemon-white its gullet with the
Big Dipper stuck in a shark tooth.

Diamondhead or Copperback?
Carpetbaggers ... the moon's silver tea-set
giving birth to wonderment
flooding in affection
a Raouel Dufy lithograph,
some decrepit Neapolitan fisherman
zoning his epic life
to human proportions.

[15]

Picturesque Tituba, steeped in Obeah,
in a hairball swoon
leads a harangue about witches with
some of Salem's more delicate
women, obedient children.

In verdant outcrops of the imagination
fuelled by a beldame's winter fire
amid sparks that prance with devils
thru tempest gloom
covens are conjured
so they implicate other pretties
with raven hair,
arm curled, in desperation,
about the moon.

With supernatural hands extended
the sea is a wretch's bitter vinegar
pounding the little, eggshell homes
where, at twilight, a dozen village Elders
with bell and taper,
candlelight and prayer
bind parchment oaths
to envisage clandestine pacts, sabbats,
obscene sojourns.

Peculiar cat--
straw hat,
thatch and loft
a drop of blood sputtering
then drawn over piddling flame,
the well-intentioned righteous
demask the pain-fed frightened.

Gibbet, arm's length of braided rope--
gang-plank, gallow stairs that smirk
off into Eternity
--a lucky few strangled,
the adamant burned,
fickle apostates swum
on a ducking stool.

Ice-fire hearths--
bonfire sheaths ravishing the strong
carnival veil
along pebble-strewn trail.

[17]

These kettle bells.
Is it the axe-murderer,
with green garbage bag
in the shadows?

No. Green trees so thick
their tops are folded hands
or knotted knuckles
to make perilous shrubbery
by the garden wall.

Yet this is a state of mind
and shards of multi-coloured
glass dot the top of stones.
Interesting. Should a sociopath put
out his shingle, come calling,
a much under-estimated, rude uttering
would take place.

Still bees are active in the night air,
not swarms, but a hum. Pleasant odours waft
thru stiller air. There is no charged electricity
to things, no

The skull in the box is that of Cornelius A. Burleigh, the first man to be
hanged in London, Ontario, August 19, 1830. The public hanging attracted
an audience of over 3,000 when the village of London numbered only a
few hundred. Because the rope broke, he was hanged twice! The top of
the skull was taken on a world tour by Dr. O.S. Fowler, a phrenologist.
This part of the skull was presented to the Harris family.
(Eldon House brochure)

Off memory
& a dare,
the grave man
coming to a bitter end.
Burleigh, top of his
skull reminiscent of a laundry cup
(or toothpaste cap) separated from
its yellowing, rightful owner.
No jaws of life here--
rather vengeance beyond death,
shellac & varnish twist shoved
to the withering bone.

Phrenology,
sinister "fin de siecle" fingering
of the intellect's character
through guru-dimensions of the head,
(pseudo-savant/skulduggery clairvoyant).

Thimble-full thinker, sleight of hand
smoke'n mirror trophy hunters
boisterous crowd in a
"hanging mood". Coins
flip on the outcome
while town drunks reel;

The village idiot getting
into the "swing" of things. Point spread
across the yawn
of death ...
brittle behaviour,
the sharp edge of beetles
clicking in the dark.

And I thought
of institutionalized evil
& rabid passion for revenge
pursued beyond the final resting place--
most private skeletal remains
held up as curios. Medieval burning of a heretic's bones,
manure pile for those decried damned;
the cross-roads
drive your cart over the
bones of the dead,
the remembered suicide's end.

Not so strange
given human nature,
Lord Byron's silver drinking cup
runaway Ethiopian slave
(twisted paean to romance)
or Hand of Glory,
corpse-fresh from the gibbet &
famed forges of France.
Hair strands as in under
a magnifying glass, then
shards of clothing/clods of earth
covering a shovel.

The autopsy-necromancy
Nazi intrigue,
playing polo with your
opponent's skull
--Carl Sagan's Broca's Brain
red-bearded decapitation
floating in a cloud of formaldehyde;
sale of skeletons/white slavery
filthy lucre all in one utilitarian
lust for cadavers ....

Robber-birds pinioning their prey ...
Mania to collect
mania to re-collect,
shadow-boxing logic
rattle his bones
he's only a pauper
whom nobody owns.

[21]

Bare bones future
Medical schools may be facing a bare bones future,
thanks to a shortage of skeletons. According to an article
in The Medical Post, most anatomy skeletons come from
India and the Indian government has placed a ban on the
export of human skulls and skeletons. At Queen's University,
500 students share 300 skeletons, four or five of
which have to be replaced every year although the head of
the anatomy department says the students take good care of them.
Anatomists say it would be extremely hard to duplicate the surface
details with plastic skeletons but the option may have to be considered.

[24]

" ... A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun
itself out in his brain ... a promise
that the rock of the world was founded
securely on a faery's wing."
THE GREAT GATSBY

Perceiving the universe
as an orchid stem,
wild hibiscus
crane & heron breaking water
--voyage of elliptical, pea-shaped
canoe down dancing images of
the underworld.

This temperature charged,
climate-controlled glass
geode designed to war on
moss and stone munching
aphid lichens seems everybit as
fanciful as any animal totem.

Grim crevice in the rock
(animistic female orifice)
fertility turtle swollen with
eggs carrying Earth thru
gorged labours of darting
salamander & the spaceman snake.

And coming to that rushing sound,
(subterranean, evocative stream)
or so Algonkians, pensive & puzzled,
paused for a thought encased in
deep, riverine bowels.

Glass slipper, blue guitar
--Silent Lake with something
of wild dimensions in Warsas Caves
(Cyclopean boulders), Serpent Mounds,
this runic enchantment with
glyphs & a cabalistic moon of May.

[25]

Riel veritably in a cockpit--
Gabriel Dumont with his buffalo robe
peeking from behind
a blind at Duck Lake
all ingredients intact,
a gallow's walk inevitable
given a series of probable givens.

Given Riel is an illusionist
figuring 3 days back from the grave
--that an early prototype of the Gatling gun
is in effect, that a Ghost Dance
cannot stop bullets.
Superior numbers & discipline'
mandate the West will cringe
to the Queen's Red Coats;
what's more, the iron horse
icon "talking leaves" & the
superficiality of running
a plow over the land's back
all take their calculated toll.

By some obscure, parboiled magic
Riel is transformed to a living
room of today:
heir apparent to the French Canadian
empire (nightmare) or yuppie visionary
illuminaire?
In the Dominion soup kitchen,
the rest of the country acts
as a beggar clutching another pot.

[27]

Parable as

Clayton brothers at the corral,
its Earp City today
tumbleweed junction for numerous lives,
not to mention lies
swift-draw artists
encased in a memory of stone
boots up ...
with all the forlorn grace of
being pushed in front
of a train.

[29]

John Dillinger and Baby-Faced Nelson
in a dream together
--one shooting holes thru
theories of his untimely death,
the other frying in an old-time
(e) Electric Chair
with balloons waving, bonbons
going off, the crowd in a joyous,
boisterous mood.

The marquee reads:
"Public Enemy Number One
laid to rest in a
shallow grave as
gravelly as the heart
that beat in his stoney chest."

An adjacent sign noted,
crime does pay the undertaker
but other, good-hearted folks
need look no further than
the Dempsey-Tunney fight
to see which has the
bigger box office draw.

[30]

The ghosts are marmalade
thin as rinds across toast
or the Weeping Willow, whose
green beard leans,
crane-like, into a child's
backyard.

A Morning Cloak butterfly,
maroon wet with the paint
of morning, cat paws
thin filament leaves
astride a larder
of memories.

Dalliance with the past,
smoke grey these architects
of memory
the privet hedge,
lone pine tree,
jet black caterpillar
poised about a green
carrot top trigger
laced in emperor's gold
like fathoms of the sea
held ... in quiet repose.

[31]

Angel Inn,
come off a sign
blown sideways
in the sugar and ices
night.

Old St. Joseph's
Cathedral, bottom
of the hill, here
Andrew Marvell
of "coy mistress"
fame sports a plaque
remembering "time's
winged chariot" and
farther (further!) up
a quaint pub gives accolades
(Kudos, too) to the fact, 1666
nefariously was the plague year
in London--Parliament Hill,
a brief arm stretch away,
posited strangled chickens
and other assorted heirlooms
in vain attempt for poesy
to thwart poxy.

A stone's throw
off in Hampstead Heath
guns (Big Berthas) could
be heard from the Somme,
German dirigibles dropped
incendiaries, the wounded entrained
at Charing Cross and a rascallion

(John Keats by name) drained
a draught at Jack Straw's
Castle near the Spaniards
while Turpin's hanged corpse
was soon to resemble good
English oaker casks
at the Flask.

[32]

Poltergeist activity
--the sun winding like a staircase
onto the pavement,
rickety afternoon
shooting back thru
shawls of the city.

Tippy-toe. Curtains
ajar, a face at the cross-roads looking,
looking for all the world as
pavement stones,
greasy & black, a thin
oiled compliment to
Mrs. Blight registered
at Old Inn Road.

[34]

The day I went to LaFayette's grave, the
concierge became
our tour guide amid an old
ruin of tombstones including bedraggled
de Tocqueville's crypt (and he, heir
apparant of America, too).

There, too, the odd City of St. Louis tribute
Fayettevilles
after yet another "Saint" Louis, despoiler
of the Jews--both sitting, squat and apparant,
in summer dust, so shingle-flat,
mindful of Place De La Nation, more
blood-letting blocks away (so the aristocracy
might be healed).
A chapel nun then reached in loud
silence for our Lord, her black
habit / upraised hands forming a
brilliant crucifix against sky and altar.

Some francs exchanged hands
(Monsieur le keeper, after all,
obliged us by opening
a private cemetery, après heures),
the graves looked so wretched--
death stylized in military formation,
row on row,
every private carrying a field marshall's
baton only this time of mortality's making,
crestfallen, no Agile Lapin/Moulin Rouge here,
in the joyless, little garden
(not a bird sang),
our old Frenchman narrating/marching
on in The Old Guard, Grand Armée
fashion
a little Napoleonic
his cemetery, his brandy
like his suspender buttons
lost to recent antiquity.

Place des Vosges, Place des Vendomes.
A dish of plaice at the palais
and a royal hippodrome.

[35]

Elfin & gold bug,
genie in the
twilight of a cave.

Virgin On The Rocks
--Da Vinci's painting--
aura light seeping toward
sun-lit crack of day,
the Master's Mona Lisa
in the Louvre
raptured,
luminescence amid aging pigment
steeping about rapt multitude.

Betwixt pit & pendulum,
another canvas--
Da Vinci in a beatific pose
(warm light of the room),
gentle finger pointing upward,
a puzzled crowd
with nowhere to see.

[37]

Jungle, the cave
human reservoir & cistern ....
quagmire and bog, but no alpine meadow,
fairest glance of goodness in
soiled wildflower under winter snows.

Pebbles into a cesspool,
our sometime passions alive
in the outback where honey-fuelled
ants soothe enemy bones.

My blood, tempest-whipped,
ardour drawn to the surface
fathom marks the depths
sees a spectacle on the roads
queues/Carnival & Lent,
unbridled raw and

"Everybody in the world is frightened of getting cut."
Charles Manson

I
The image complete
--collapsing corpses, rag dolls
with skulls shot away ...
ruby-red blood spurting
slipstick/eyeshadow/mascara
all so reptilian replete.

II
The long fingers of the pianist
playing rifle fire to a
captive audience,
stiletto tones;
the trance effect,
precedes a cobra's strike,
summer without smoke.

III
A glass of absinthe
--the Degas painting,
Marc Lepine measuring out his vial,
measuring the worth of a single
woman and finding her long on the call,
cartridge shells exploding
filaments of smoke
(long and blue) like a
woman's fingers up
from his death gun.

IV
Existential longing--
vision far ago, a
lost world of virile primates
where a man's worth
transcended his tie-clip
(suspenders ready, binoculars steady),
letting the stiff upper lip quiver.
Then his face the colour of rainwater,
shoe leather in that same rain.

V
"I am not a wallet," but he was
someone's son.

VI
Mystery (wretched Marc, so unfathomable
inside your debâcle, mélée that
the French so forlornly cloak,
enfant perdu).

VII
Marc, you are not confined to "why",
rather representative of a long line
of predecessors dead certain
they are nobley right. Gender knows
no restraint. Male crazies? I see the cloaks
and shawls of spectres breaking
saloon bottles with an axe cursing
demon rum, hear "red alert"
at maternity wards after the shootings
--boy babies, at risk, from estrogen cranks.

VIII
Strange, women speak of it,
Lepine died for it--his ersatz,
clouded vision, no milktoast he, yet
so much egg on the face this dirty
thing "Justice".
Naughty boy taking one too many
reprimands from Father, think
of Madonna's spankie.

IX
All the same, Saddam Hussein,
Pedro the Cruel (Butcher of Baghdad,
Montreal or writhing throes of
medieval pillage).
Getting one's own lid pried off--
the shaking indignation of Il Duce,
Der Fuehrer, the sanctimonious
hard-shell pose of Henry, Anne Bolyn
in the cell block for being
a witch (the reputed third breast
was a dead give away).

X
Little ripple, then blip on
a sonar screen trailing off
terminal living. Frame of reference
like a gyroscope breading free.

XI
History is a motherlode of fanatics
by virtue of association.
Wrong-minded'?
Why not, I never met anyone
who was wrong.
No joy in loveland, everybody
revelling in certain certitude this
balkanization of the sexes, Holy Crusade,
Jihad of the gender.

XII
Save us from people who are right,
the "firm but fair" rabid feminists,
rapid virilism crescendo intellects
with egos to stop a train.
Humility of purpose is decidedly
inferior to quiet perseverance
in the truth.

XIII
Inner light taken outside is
fiery and blinding.
Quietism. Pietism.
Everything is a calling or,
in the religious sense, vocation.
What is not a longing'? Craving?
Itch before the scratch?

XIV
The last, inner spike of saintly sanity
snapping to "calling", that siren
song persuasion Lorelei made
vision.
So watch their faces--lips set,
eyes aglow giving us all "an offer
we cannot refuse".
Silver or lead, red hot poker
up the innards in the name of
Self-Determination.
Columbian drug-lord, hat off
cleaning her glasses after
The Hit.

There is no substitute for victory.
Conviction has its price.
Its a funny, old world if only
Maggie Thatcher knew.

[40]

The thin, feathery blue
egg-shell curtains gently tossing,
the tin smile
of the roof armada
its metal armour flashing
to inch their shingle way
into escalade-escadrille formation
and leathery sky.

[45]

On twin tails of a comet
penguin men polka dot
the night------
waddle white suits
past pale the white Empress Night,
flickering graveyard stars
---a pitcher of inky black
upended in a choir and manger

II.
Lowing of the clouds
lowering overhead like bombardiers
rifling the Firmament,
black braying back.

III.
Millpond, satin and creamy,
then buttercup crush of waves

[46]

A green flotilla,
verdant armada
stone hand encased
in an arm of ocean
off blue-grotto bay.

Something avuncular where land
meets sea
--underdog, whipped cur,
adult "son" posturing to the elder,
pontificating man.

Melaque after dark
or was it Aguascalientes'?
Monterrey at sunset
prior to "the" pop festival
or Morelia, on eve
of feasts to that native patriot'?

Vera Cruz, 1915, at the height of
American occupation
with Pershing tailing the hirsute Pancho
Villa in Sinaloa
outdated rock & gunboat diplomacy
--no longer exotic fare
plate of frivoles,
fried banana
Mahi-Mahi.

On the palette,
dreams are fickle,
subject to "drunk
and disorderly resisting
arrest," outmoded and
fuzzy with age.

Policeman of the Olmec intellect,
you dance late on feather boas
this Mariachis of the soul
with glittering purse and yellow,
travelling nectar Tequila.

[47]

Mariachis, almost a Spanish temperament within those stars,
--a screen peppered to black,
pebbles as pinholes bright in the night air.

Winged bats, moist velvet

How desert islands
in a cartoonist's imagination
invariably are flat,
palm-studded
peopled by a solitary, abject
yet humorous man.

In real time, no delight;
such islets
are razor hot,
rock sharp
treeless, barren
slabs ... examples
of art shirking, but
not shrinking life.

Three days growth of beard,
bottle with note on the incoming tide
comic survivor swimming up
(tramp steamer in the distance),
shirts waved in unison
predictable disappointment et al,
glum hands to face
then the inevitable credulity
splitting retort
amid plaything for the crabs.

[50]

When I was very young
onto school,
a slick of water curled
under a behemoth, silver poplar tree ...
there, white underbacks
of leaves waved in showy pride the
dead underbellies of bass ...
as tall boys,
big with rakish, probing, anthracite eyes,
stooped in the creek
their red, exposed flesh
colour of school brick.

[51]

We built bottlecaps off
ship's sides
(soft, cedar bough),
Viking masts
shining thru imagined
Norse seas.

Sporting logs,
(sweet, cedar-wood shavings)
piercing beer hats/silver foil,
grey wraps & burlap,
Atlantic capes,
our twin peaks soared.

New Found Land
(a child's faery shrimp logistics
aide-de-camp simplistics)
marvelled tale
of warm, butter moon
with outpourings around
penknife's blade.

To tame Sutton Hoo,
(I am very close to myself tonight)
bronze copper, cruising wintery water,
Anse aux Meadows,
occasional dirt shack
skraelings,
jagged blade & arrow
backward into time
for Helluland,
yet marooned in the Land
God gave Cain.

[52]

My mind a buzz saw,
wood chips in decapitated thought
soil chilblained hands

II
Cleansing wood,
the keen smell of sawdust
--good, raw earth drenching
the nostril, clean odour
of nature like my brain,
a broomstick sweeping
the coffee pot speaking ...
bubbles massed in steam
inchoate in their pensive rivulets.

[53]

Baggage. Banal brigands,
turn-coats, stiletto to dirk
appraise warm flesh
upraised over a pie-shaped sky,
bread crust moon.

On oyster rock,
with grinning, red hibiscus,
jute and henequin
smother the lavender caress of stars.

[54]

Taken as metaphor ...
Ophelia's funeral oration,
derogatory snout
of the Morning Glory
breathing pollened fire
overladen steps of the church.

II
Limestone rock
caulking in grey
limpid cracks ...
doublet and hose
then gold doubloons
down sunlit honey
where a smear of red lichen
onto brown-yellow moss
colonizes rock.

III
Poor Ophelia, dicing
for a sedentary-free Hamlet,
duty-free of fissures + frost.

IV
Elusiveness,
water rushing over stone
torrent of words
(Ophelia receiving these),
red hand of the berry
swollen shut,
prisoner in the dock
bird of quarry, pit
& gunny sack.

V
Night plummets to quarry,
sky to earth in brazen glory.
Magic of the palm
spans an upturned hand ...
"To each his own
nothing's known."

[55]