Chapter 2

As she's lying there in sherbet panties looking somewhat disaffected, a nez perce expression bordered by sleep, think of the Sultan's regalia his entourage of kings chance upon dark laughter from Saladein's[1] concubines, Nell's[2] white turn of the knee or the pretty bosom of a Confederate officer's belle . . . all satin & lace ... perhaps, again, the splendid neck of Titian's choicest nude.

To further turn the phrase, ponder a basket of fruit-- the sexual omnipotence of its texture a dreamy sensuality thickened by red Emperor grapes ripened against the elongated nails of a Pompadour's[3] milk white hand.

[1] Richard the Lion Hearted's adversary [2] The Merrie Monarch's favourite mistress [3] Louis xv's courtesan and adviser

LEAF DOCTOR

You said happiness was a bird --a hand extended could bend its perch. span the perfect wings.

I spoke of swallows. lived off flies ebbed when flying. seldom came to rest.

TUSSAUD'S

In the wax museum with Attila and Genghis and Tamerlane all so close in spirit with our century.

At Madame Tussaud's in London: Neill Cream. Burke and Hare. It's hard to keep the legitimate heroes straight from the villains. I expect Houdini to make this Niagara Falls and appear at midnight Halloween.

With so many real and picturesque notables in abundance, I plan the idea of creating my own arch criminal wax museum assembled from the hallways and stairwells of my own life.

I imagine employment counsellors from across the years with sardonic laughs and strings tripping off records to make them authentic. Then busts of fiendish ex-teachers and hatchet fanatics that pass as librarians giving me advanced nausea because my card has technically expired. Think the occasional gesture at remembering a swine or two from freeway driving might not be entirely out of place or that mindless clerks administering my life from afar and costing a future deserve an enshrining.

"A nickel short," droned the bureaucrat, "no transfer," secures him passage to my waxworks. "Sorry," and "we'll certainly keep you in mind," as a litany of woe with its users made to memorize and make good all promises ever made.

Wish the mind and her memories could be enlarged; I would recreate my own historic scenes to stand alongside Nelson's Death, the Little Princes in the Tower. Detail Israeli Nazi-hunters to track down my Adolf Eichmanns.

Instead of samples from Jack the Ripper's handwriting in the waxworks, rejection slips and the stylized, flowery "we'll keep your application on file," would be served up as horror epics.

Dunces that compose form letters made to live out the threadbare future promises. Each human roadblock making decisions out of ignorance would have his statement dutifully recorded before entering a world of his own design. Ad agency types made to explain in effortless detail to packed houses why their ketchup commercial should stand up.

Crooked garage operators made to oil and grease the chassis of every car owner hoodwinked since the automobile began.

Football made a crime punishable by fate.

Shyster store owners too cheap to bag my newspaper made to launder all the soiled white pants across a lifetime.

Tailors that mistakenly think they are being shortchanged and become vocal made to attend Sartre courses where "hell is other people," doctrines predominate.

The huckster, the con-man, those who prey on the multitude transposed from whatever city of origin then made to tramp the streets of Toronto where every wrong syllable or misbegotten accent costs them a dollar of their savings.

My whole museum a living aviary, a subway at rush hour where snotty, telephone receptionists are fed a steady diet of the Biblical injunction "by words they shall be known."

Well meaning but ignorant people endlessly poking with the "you should smile more," placed in a house of mirrors with durable cassettes of Laugh-In.

Belligerent restaurant owners telling kids they can't use the washroom then made to mop up the waste they helped create.

The world, a stand-up comic throwing away his happy face then coming to sit in disgust at the unchronicled petty evil of our times.

VULCANS

Adder toothed flowers snake the broken ground where molten tongues cremated the twisted, bunker forms-- a Latin cross of green jubilation lies matted atop a sweating road, calligraphy in broken stone.

As trembling shale collapses into thin hills, light fuels to cross the Pale. A little exploratory weeding droops this lava rain.

A long, dove fence comprised of stones & rattled by ancient slaves winds its distance along the gully borne in fire, percussion caps, cretin growth lobbed under creeping wire.

Shafts of pioneer light delight in coral baskets, empty twilight darts the agave swords' mauve pitcher plants.

The 1692 Tremens decimated Port Royal[1] --moved a ravine from florid to mossy shadow where antler shoots today announce temperate plants, eclipse by-gone tropic flowers.

[1] An earthquake destroyed in the seventeenth century not only the stronghold of Jamaica's pirates but also changed the topography of the North Shore creating Fern Gully.

DRY GUILLOTINE

In my childhood, "Verdun," meant madness. Bars on the windows, cages around the intellect. Time was a poor keeper of souls, it seems, wore out all but a fragment of my memories. Musical, poetic. The sounds of clay china being dropped on the floor. Fierce Celts with a gift for the muse in keeping with their love of lyricism and war.

Driving by 999 Queen in Toronto accompanies a lot of the above. A cuckoo bin by any calculation and a reference not meant to be pejorative. A subject so clothed in solemnity only irreverent "kidding," can hope to disarm its grasp. Still, the truth must be told. In university, no one shrinked from whispering the ultimate fate-- a stint in Sydenham or a trip down the road to Cedar Springs. Delightful euphemisms, the names reminiscent of sonorous rivers, tree lined groves, peach blossoms across Georgia springs. Or Ophelia's funeral oration wherein Polonius rightfully alludes to her sudden falling away amid laughing brooks.

I am reminded of Charrière's desperate attempt to stay sane on Ile du Diâble, the cutting edge of his dry guillotine--his mind's fabric giving way to the slightest irritation. In the present, the chant of a crowd's "jump, jump," to the would be suicide. Then there is the most foreboding type of all dementia, the collective sort. A strength through joy movement of the Hitler camp with society's many institutions set up along the spit and polish order of the Reich.

Indeed, if we think of it, we all have a deep knowledge of madness; days when the centre is about to break alongside the pit. Days when wars on the periphery take hold, colours appear different.

As a child, madness was watching Ichabod Crane in cartoon form outrace the Headless Horseman. In Sleepy Hollow trying to put down the panic in himself. Ichabod, the peaceful school master, driven to the edge. At war with himself but trying to reassure that same self the plodding sound of approaching hooves was only dried, bullrush stems hitting against his head.

Madness is more than Van Gogh offering an ear; Druid priests garnishing oak trees in a British forest or plaintive Gauguin abandoning his family at 34, mid-stream in a successful career. It probably stands behind half the men on skid row, beckons like a welcome friend before turning fiend and consuming impulse to a bag lady.

The close relation between the creative impulse and "letting go." Between the arts and wide eyed eccentricity. Between wanting to be free. And knowing. Hearing if you go on like that you'll end up on the Lakeshore. Another pretty euphemism. A dangerous truth left like an upturned rock for someone to trip on in another garden.

The farthest away anyone can be.

MANGROVES

How do you survive in the mangrove swamps-- amid the twitchings of fetid water & water lice thick as baby tears?

How, with all the wallow of thick muck making suction noises and the teams in relays searching nightly with baited hounds, do you pull free?

Your bamboo pole knows every ploy but is a slender craft ill-equipped to sparring blows from every quarter, the undergrowth necessitates.

The closeness of the clammy night heaved about like so much rotting fruit will draw the ants . . . devouring like that abundance of cold, yellow eyes-- the firefly swarms that mock your heavy steel machete arm.

Across the drift of darkness and the insect life you bat in swarms, the ultimate danger is not in the cayman giant or his reptilian cousin named of copper wire, the Anaconda; or even mindless holes, thick black ooze that throttles a victim . . . but the two legged form coming, searching . . . a spectre on hind quarters with a bolo knife stepping free of that beaded circle, the inner camp.

PONDICHERRY

Chess pieces resting upon the jade mantle piece see sampans move quietly thru warm night, rich bundles of bougainvillaea crowd market squares where deck chairs extend to the Persian Gulf.

Leisured gentlemen finger walking canes, hold eyelids thick as goblets, sharp tridents beside private lairs.

Skin in puffy whiteness bulges under lamp's white glare, becomes copra gathered miles from Pondicherry, sesame oil in rotting casks.

And the Indian heat, closing with certitude akin to the trance of the snake charmer, holds his flute poised with the Bengali lancer riding a slow crop over the prostrate polo ball.

THE CLEARING THAT IS THE TREES

"They know they are going to the filth of numbers and laws, to the games anyone can play, and the work without fruit." Lorca

I want to go walking in troubled marshes where cold gray coves leave off the mind and the scent of rushes twist the wind as fall covers dungeons of angry sparrows.

I want to go quickly to troubled marshes, hear the squeak of brackish waters over crocks of sponge bubbles crabbing their surface.

I desire stands of dead brush to wave in grave solemnity, whimpering little houses off forest glades to flicker out lamps with large dogs poised on verandahs like stone gargoyles.

I want to handle anguish as if it were an interesting bauble plucked from the shallows, a curious snail with ritual markings or a mauve shellfish caught in swift eddies as the tide goes out.

I want to examine canker introspection as a peevish child might faint tracings on an old stone lodged in the most forgotten corner of a graveyard; sample its wonders fingering the many indentations with more than slight awe or hear the crashing of waves far off from the physical restraint of the marsh or this forgotten burial plot so near an angry sea. Then, awaken as if from a dream, rub troubled memories from my eyes but never the brain for on winter nights just before retiring as the wind stirs packets of snow or the moon is chased by skeletal hounds along Gretal trees, there will come the realization another day is thru with another night to pilot away fresh brush & rubble before emerging, at night's end, from the clearing that is the trees.

HUMBOLDT'S CURRENT

Cresta roja wine --colour of arterial blood, vena cava of the alcoholic soul.

And seeing bottles bob in mainstreams of men's blood to pistol whip their reddened eyes, Humboldt's current becomes a rash of drinking, a map that charts more bloody lies.

The thirst that passeth all human understanding, (an alternate Biblical rendering) certainly body heat surpasses Vulcan's bellows adding new faces to Delirium Tremens.

THE GINGHAM DREAM UTTERANCE

As I watch the clouds assemble, steam-ship fashion, with funnels to alert passersby, I realize the Romanovs tore silk & riches from every bazaar leaving the bright spot of this evening studded with emerald marks. A dot in the ocean is a spark upon which minnows play, their silver bellies upturned to imitate the moon's white shawl.

I am wanting in the delights of the reef narrowly hauled from rambunctious depths, the tiniest splashes of green, yellow, blue darting in an upturned fish's tail. An octopus rock commands squadrons of fingerlings while the eisel fish decorates a steeper, coral garden.

Jet black sand crowns the lagoon volcanic ages' past the innocence of this spurting palm while mounds of pitch dark ants deposit slivers of rich eggs.

After a fashion, onyx enamours pearl and pearl ivory as cays and atolls are swept to the wiggle of sun's dance on white sand. Eel-like islands are only pomegranates undigested by the moon.

The amber breath of growing leaves is rich dark coffee stolen as in a smile.

Almond drink is refreshing as the tips of cloven hooves to the dried earth.

One might hesitate to watch firm nipples being given as broaches to a king but the sandpiper is a river barge commanding slow access to the next water.

Near barely lit lamps alongside make-shift beds, a woman with olive skin prepares her toilet.

Hatchet brown birds beseech her with brittle songs stolen from one wing.

A cathedral bowl lies overturned in the warm twilight of lovers kneeling before the growing strength of day.

Stone stars are flattened by the glare of sun and shell encrusted beaches bear a passing resemblance to chalices strung around an avuncular stretch of land. Perhaps in the hunted meadow near red spined caterpillars feeding near the larvae of the elephant hawkmoth, a cistern will open the earth and drink as a thirsty spoon.

JUNIPER TREES

Sitting as Buddha on a chocolate juniper --the theme of madness thirty cinnamon centres Ophelia squares; Brunelleschi floating down a fallen river on nougats, perhaps onyx pears. The sleek eyes of a cat stare floodlit topaz, ocelot rings round her burning mask.

And sipping dry wine Beaujolais, decantered Anjou with iron doors not Ghiberti's fashioning but sweet meadows waving fresh, summer grass.

And I at the garnet Buddha box-- a cold winter day pledging choices pale, juniper tree the carnival log egging up thick cordial; the inlaid satin box hovering about silent, apple wedge a child's fantasy, orgeat or bordeaux, lactose fudge, bon appétit syrupy taste of Burgundy cherry.

The axe ring of squirting tissue with drone of passing feet up finger stairs until the rustle of cloth crosses the turquoise box, clamours almond clusters into the courtyard cafe.

DISTEMPER

Looking into the glassy crucifix of water. slits of rock form stigmata across creviced limestone-- green pools with an occasional fish passing air bubbles to the top the eerie night crumbling under shafts of starlight with the smell of hemlock pods & cedar bringing nard and precious stone within crowns of natural thorn-- this body of muskeg pressed onto aromatic herbs then borne away along the road to a wooded Calvary and the sense of Christ in that light at dawn.

NIGHT WINDS

They made us sit alphabetically in rows. Green oranges are sprayed systematically in volcanic soil near pummelled surf.

One stood to answer questions, was called after the surname, requested permission for trivials.

Outrigger canoes with barnacles in tow splash menacingly near coral reefs. Under a lazy orange-ripple moon halfing itself between stages of growth, night winds taunt puffish clouds.

AMHERST ISLAND

In winter, you were a flash of light, tundra against Arctic floor

Warm breath stirred yr summer's breast and I saw windblown hair the colour of kelp transfix the lavender print of a scalp strewn shore

Later, tiny bits from a calico dress became domiciled wings off butterflies, miniature bitterns ever more shadowy strewn across the Barrens, an unbridled strength from that

Faraway isle released to orchestrate sunlight amongst all colonies that flower-- a statuesque Red Admiral, Banded Purple, feckless Comma all aswirl to the pipes of a Devil's Paintbrush, stranded drumfish, sage, and tubercular ragwort

ANCIENT OF DAYS

It's Epsom but could pass for Epping, New Forest or Dumbarton Wood.

There's ivy of the thickest English sort not commonly found in America; sprigs growing across open ground mantling it.

Shiny to the eye, soft encircling the touch, I am reminded of blue waters, green grass Blake's Ancient of Days: an old man's beard stepping from the trees, Spanish Moss so unearthly it covers a southern forest.

There are tendrils in herbal potions of unbroken lips that move across both dew and clover.

I see Druids reciting psalms, weaving ivy along garlands of oak, the incantation set before a British lake-- briar baskets carrying the trusting dead; food offerings transversing the waters.

The ivy calls to mind all these things, just a sprig held tightly yet aromatic beyond imagining, my timorous English settlers seen thru a spate of leaves clutching their holly on Roanoke island.

The End