Bread of Tears
Page 2
To Ed, the blond titan in a Lite-Brite sky
Voice One:
CONSUMER WARNING. This leaflet comprises Part IV
In a 36-part product monograph
Originally published when anecdotes
And self-doubt were introduced commercially
In caplet form under the convenient description
"Poetry".
ABOUT THE MEDICATION. Death/Explosions/Malaise
Were the tri-factor powerhouse
Behind Mr. Prairie Tooth Timothy Hay
Standing up in the course of his Wednesday evening
Anxiety group to declare while under its influence: "King Josiah followed me on rollerblades
Around an electronics and bedding store
While burdening me with facts
Regarding his personal life. You know, things like
„I told my wife that I have a recurring desire
To drive my Rolls-Royce Phantom V
Into an oncoming Mack Truck. But with the
Law of loving kindness on her tongue she squeezed my arm And said that she could never afford to lose such a precious Car. Subsequent models just don‟t have that classic look,
She assured me.‟"
The other members of the group shook their heads, Swore beneath their breath, and generally conferred Sympathy that Mr. Hay assumed was for himself, but was Actually intended for King Josiah.
The nine-hundred milligram dose of poetry Culminated in Hay‟s bloodstream. He started to Wrestle both heart disease and peptic ulcers. His Voice thickened and lent a dark tone to his story.
"That was the idiot card for the supporting actor
In the third act. I pried the sliding door off a wooden
Box and watched a toy picture disk spin its 2-D depiction
Of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in a traffic accident
With a mountain of legs in leotards, exposed hearts strung Together with a single guitar string stuck in a scratch. The Vienna Choir Boys sang in mangled English, „I was Mama‟s Confidant. I killed her enemies to sleep with her dreams.‟
SIDE EFFECTS
Changes in vision, i.e., patient sees two angels rather than one, And both are wearing jogging outfits with Legea athletic shoes
Which are worn by amateur athletes throughout Italy.
The ability to read scathing remarks in arbitrary combinations of letters
And numbers. In one recent study, a woman in test group 3 found the code YRDK3M7 on the back of a candy box. From this she compiled the message: Where are you, Maya Angelou, with your greeting card rhymes and your carton
Of wine?
Voice Two
Mr. Burmis Tree
Seven centuries of age,
Drove an ‟83 GMC Wrecker for Hebron 24
Hour Towing Services.
He said to a brick wall while drinking from a fish-shaped bottle Of Bianco Antinori sweetened with Pennzoil on the edge of town Well past midnight:
"I was overtaken and therefore forsaken
By your apostolic power with its two-page flyers
Staring at me in a stroke of whore-coloured pronouncements
Regarding Black Friday, speculation and profit."
Brick wall was of the asbestos shingle variety and Felt too old and resigned to life‟s cruel twists to Respond.
Mr. Burmis Tree,
Seven centuries of age,
Suddenly looked very, very, old.
Voice Three
Henry Herman Blackheart
Got his life locked up
In a semitransparent, plastic dollhouse
That split down the middle. The thing
Remained locked together like a cartoon brain With two chimneys to carry the two Hemispheres around.
You laugh now, but you played with it for hours Before you attended primary. You and your little sister Used to open it, toss poor Henry into the hallway,
And stick your candy-smeared faces close to the
Dollhouse parlour to sneak a peek out the window
At the stranger standing there on the steps, who
On one occasion was an old, wheezing lizard from
Hibbing, Minnesota.
And from beyond this reminiscence, a flesh-and-blood girl
Of four greets morning with a definite demand for Pop-Tarts. She holds a fragment of Henry in her lily-white palm.
Her father sits in an armchair, scratching his nose, Too many god names tattooed on his clothes.
Voice Four
Inside, Ivan Melvin
Lights the end of his paintbrush, And
Releases the string on his crossbow.
There follows a daub of paint through crenellations
Piercing the walls of Ms. Ida‟s heart.
This heart is a catacomb.
Ms. Ida waits for darkness. She‟d rather no one see her
When she crawls inside.
All voices cease.
Surreal Estate (Antic Loo, Antic Loo)
Take a hint from your neighbours Graciously barge through the Sugar-coated throng
Of fair cousins speaking of the weather
To fair weather cousins
And punch holes
Through the local headlines
Roll them through a music box
Around and around they go
Maple leaf meets
Maple butter
It‟s
Cheaper than two-ply Deconstruct by simple means Meanness in the simple
All that remains
Is an empty pit
Coated with sugar
A September Tale: Georgian Bay
There,
Beneath gale-pummelled trees with
Writhing limbs sleeved in wet, green rags
Stood Muppin and Huppin, the systemic twins,
The chandler and the cooper. Both
Shared a kindred affection for
A green door that adorned their upended
Double-ender-boat-turned house workshop.
Their brother, Ard, got a job down at the gristmill
For two summers before going to trade school on an
Air hockey scholarship. He emerged with an encyclopaedic
Store of knowledge
And an unchallenged, practical facility for the repair of
Clock radios (all models and makes).
Meanwhile, back at the boat shack, Muppin and Huppin made candles and
Soap and round barrels to ship them in. They silenced
Their own profanity with grease and lye.
Ard sold a prototype radiophone to the military, selling them
On its secondary applications as a nut cracker
And doorstopper.
Trees of Georgian Bay were stripped to their raw flesh. Rocks received their ribbons of green rags, dividing them And casting them on the water.
Ard punched Dickens in the bush plane when
His stories from The Northern Review were collected
And published in book form, winning rave reviews.
He went to expensive parties with expensive people, Became a successful distributor of televisions in kit form, Dabbled in collecting Haida carvings.
Ugly spines of broken trees guarded Muppin and Huppin out of Habit. They in turned continued making wares that piled up with no Buyer in store, until there was scant room to move about. They returned the boat to its original vocation.
Its engine was retrieved from a junk pile and soothed and primed.
As Ard pulled up in a new ragtop convertible, he saw a queer boat
Sinking in the water. Muppin and Huppin smiled broadly,
Clinging to a bright, green door.
Daytime Drama, Noon Hour
The handsome doctor leaned forward, Speaking in a low, thin voice.
"You‟ll lose sixty percent of your fluids,"
He said, "and you‟ll doubtless be
Gone in seconds. Seconds! This is a
High-risk, invasive procedure."
The bowl of soup greeted him with silence, Simmering.
Soft Eject
(Who is Right, Who is Left)
Amarillo Naranja was
A woman with a starlet‟s face
Xeoroxed over Butterball fresh turkey and
Fragrant pears
An d a
Geisha-turned-geyser
She was the genuine article
If the genuine article
Were made from
Fluorocarbon plastic
In an Osaka novelty factory
I can still hear her cherubic words
Of dissent, watch
Her silhouetted profile attack
A typewriter until
It vomits wallpaper tongue rolls
Of apocryphal exposés
Feet stamping off-tempo to
Sprightly elevator pap
Going down,
Down,
Down
Hers was a funeral dance
A spastic eulogy descending a staircase
For the classmates of her youth
(They were not dead; they had turned
To better things)
Using veils of untruth
In the trade of kings
Flimflam Flammable Unification
DJ Rabshakeh "Safecracker" Purdey Grows lots of agile and chirpy Discontent for you right here
In Happy Valley
And did you know
That discontent is high in naphthalene, Sodium nitrate, matches and mothballs And much, much more? Lots to extol,
Lots to extirpate.
When not composting porridge
And freezing your puck,
Masticate
Locally grown discontent!
Super Wash (Cold*Warm*Hot)
The mechanical, moth-eaten dog
Who strikes
The Inglis super capacity washing machine
With rubber mallets between cycles
Is not a fraud
A freak, perhaps But not a fraud And
The Casiotone keyboard
Plays in automatic counterpoint
The chicken in the unlined,
Forty dollar suit and banjo is a fraud
She‟s
Down on the floor
With the Moabites Measured on two lines To put one to death
Warning: Not a Life-Saving Device
It took years for the manifestation of
Unwavering individualism to declare itself
In the frostwork and parquetry of the everyday. And then,
In a shifting townscape caught in the throes
Of the Apple Blossom Festival, underneath
The gumshoe goosestep of high school marching bands
And war veterans dragging their green-tinged medals,
Unheard against that screaming clown car siren
Pronouncing foregleams of frivolity wrapped
In the patriarchal cloak of yesteryear,
Heinz Feindschaft, an unassuming chicken catcher
Of few words and fewer allies, turned his hunched back on
The weary piecework of grabbing four broiler chickens at a time
(For chickens cannot be herded) to load onto a truck to be
Driven to the nearest abattoir.
He had been prepared to request pardon from his employer, Mr. Maxwell Minor Worthylake, for the inconvenience
Of his presence for some thirty-eight years, holidays and sick days
Notwithstanding, and to beg leave.
But Mr. Worthylake was not to be found. He had not picked up The Chronicle Herald from the driveway in front of his new house, And his truck was gone also. Feindschaft hitched a ride to town And found at Mrs. Brighton‟s boarding house.
The runt chickens he had kicked aside haunted his mind. He felt a strange Kinship with them. A knife slit the lining of one large pillow and with some Paste and an old sou'wester he produced a fine coat of feathers. A facemask Was made to complete the new role. He lined his room with straw and made Large eggs out of papier-mâché. All of this framed and adorned his great Expectations in a sort of haloed Gemütlichkeit replete with Spitzweg depictions Of The Chicken in Repose, The Chicken Awakens, or, The Chicken Toasts
A Stale Bagel-- all painted scenes possessing a luminescent and rosy hue in their
Celebration of the Bourgeois from a fowl point-of-view.
But painted dreams can crack.
Feindschaft‟s savings and occasional town commissions
Dried up in rapid synchrony.
He was no longer the overlooked but accepted chicken catcher,
Or the culler of staves, or the town‟s inspector of pickled fish. He could not
Produce the extra money for warm meals at the dining room table.
But then manna in the form of a job collating flyers came along. In a warehouse
Devoid of dust and the scent of ammonia, Feindschaft stood before two fold-up Tables made into an "L", with boxes on top to create a second level. Store sales Flyers totaling a dozen or more were scooped up and shoved into
A large flyer like a sandwich then piled twenty-five at a time and bundled together.
Such bundles were stacked nine-over nine with a cardboard sheet in between
On top of a truck pallet. No bones or wings were dislocated, no skulls cracked.
For a beginner such as Feindschaft, an evening‟s work yielded minimum wages
Paid in cheque form at shift‟s end.
There were thirty people and occasionally their children engaged in this labour,
Including a pregnant teen. She charmed the flyers so that
They leaped to her fingertips like enchanted
Butterflies. Her husband watched the rapid migration
While his mouth slowly worried a bread roll
Into oblivion.
People were not paid to give Feindschaft or his odd presentation any concern.
Two years of fluorescent lights and grey winter skies were broken
By a two week vacation in Florida. A day‟s visit to Gator Villa revealed cruelty
Of a sort unseen since the bloodshed of martyrs in the Roman Coliseum. On this day, hundreds of visitors endured the sun‟s incessant stare to watch Alligators make war with live calves and lambs.
Feindschaft had never taken delight in killing poultry or pigs or anything else,
But had endured not a few who did. He found this strange circus of the damned Unconscionable. He produced from his backpack an inflatable, bagel-shaped Pool lounge. A fellow tourist‟s cell phone video
Shows him throwing the inflatable lounge over a
A high fence and climbing over the fence with
Obvious effort, entering the artificial pond in his ever-present coat of feathers,
The stunt catching the attention of a 362.873 kg, 3.3528 m, leucistic monster
Imported for a limited time only—and for this alligator, it was lunch time.
An onlooker‟s back suddenly blocks the eye of the cell phone, but the high-treble
Screams that distort into a piercing crackle indicate what we are mercifully
Not witnessing ourselves.
Then the dark T-shirt-cum-curtain is removed and we see a tail swishing away from
A floating mess of feathers and torn PVC vinyl.
Then, the inexplicable. Hundreds of ring-shaped loaves surface and rise from the water Like Olympian swimmers who have tired of fancy jumps and want to go the other way, Maybe see what this flight-thing is all about. There is no specific leader of these things, But it is obvious as the cell phone follows their ascent that they are negotiating some Form of migration. Their fall some hours later over Orange County, eclipsed the freak Snowfall in the Orlando Sentinel and other major news forums.
Coincidentally, the German-Canadian‟s demise and resulting bagel phenomenon
Tied in neatly with another oddity cover
ed by The Chronicle Herald of Halifax, N.S.
A short item describes how farmers from Shelburne to Antigonish watched helplessly
As their chickens stood motionless and silently for upwards of an hour. All the while
The normal stench of the farm was replaced with the delicious smell of fresh bagels.