dead names

At the Second Cup on Greene Avenue I get a takeout petit corsé coffee balanced on a cardboard tray on the seat of my walker for tottering trip over to the Westmount Memorial triangle of a park in front of castle turret Westmount City Hall with no park bench now that most parks are meant to be decorative rather than actually utilized so its not easy for me to maneuver knapsack walker and coffee up close enough to the Memorial statue of a marching WWI soldier with hovering guardian angel to read in glint of sun the names on the ‘Honor Roll’ plinth expecting to find myself meditating on what those names might have meant or who they could have been had they lived but obviously they didn’t learn a fucking thing or else put it out of their memory
’Their Names Liveth Forever’ reads the brass inscription but the flag they once saluted is not flying

corporate decor

La boulevard rene levesque by any name just another drive-by now and there facing me the monumental Hydro Quebec building with its political aura and glint of Mousseau’s famous mural a bright gleam even seen behind dark glass but not to be viewed except under scrutiny of lobby security and hidden cameras all locked in with me locked out because I look like who I am and who I am is somebody that gets questioned when entering lobbies of public buildings that are now being privatized by people who never worry about being challenged by the security that smiles for them
This is the manifest legacy of the refus global they are trying to sell sixty years later
Nothing more than corporate decor

emile nelligan in these post modern times

The trees in heartbreaking bloom with husks from the buds falling down on me sitting on a park bench in Carré Saint Louis nearby the Emile Nelligan statue in the clear light of noon looking up at the face of the statue.
It doesn’t faintly resemble the face of a boy driven insane at the age of 19.
Theres nothing of the spirit of a tormented visionary in the sculpturer’s dis-interpretation.
He simply produced a conventional mask of convention as required by a committee of municipal functionaires.
Nelligan as an idealized arts administrator pondering another career decision in public

what are they here for

Somehow suddenly I feel more confident than I have in years that we will see a resurgence of the kind of class struggle we saw back in the 60’s.I think it came from something that my partner Liz said the other day.She said that that one of the nurses who works on her floor in Saint Mary’s Hospital had asked for time off cause her brother had been killed in an accident.But the hospital administrator,one of the Charest government new appointees,bluntly refused her request.When the nurse asked for some sympathetic support and understanding the administrator said ”I’m not here for that”
How often are workers all over this country hearing a variation of the same words from other administrators
“I’m not here for that”
Now that nurse,by no means a militant,is asking herself
“Then what are they here for?”

easter uprising

Every Easter Sunday I read Yeats poem on the Dublin Uprising of 1916..‘A terrible beauty is born’

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.


My hope is that stone in the stream

it won't be pretty

Strange floating dreams last night like having or experiencing unfocusable senility with no logic or control in the flow of thoughts.We’re in the Mont Royal cemetery to visit Gary’s grave and its been dug up.We can see the white bones of skeletons lying there exposed like water pipes about to be reburied with no one knowing why or barely bothering to even question what we were seeing
People just doing what they’re told
Somebody must know what they’re doing
An overweight and medicated middle-aged working class set up for the slaughter
Not with a bang but a burp

George W. live at the Economic Club in New York

Yesterday IMF first deputy managing director John Lipsky warned authorities worldwide yesterday to ‘think the unthinkable’ and called for ‘decisive policy action’ amidst a credit crunch stemming from US real-estate meltdown to ‘put the global financial system and economy on a firmer footing’.
Lipsky didn’t say what decisive action but obviously it’s a challenge to the hardline free trade policies favored by the Economic Club members so they decided to let the world know that they were going to stand firm by having George W. do a press conference that would be broadcasted around the world.
I had to grin seeing George W. doing his phoney folksy act for the camera saying that like others he can remember worrying about having to pay off his house-as if the son of a son of a millionaire ever had to seriously worry about his mortgage-and yes he could feel for those people-a hundred thousand of them so far- who lost their houses but the market must be allowed to correct itself without interference-as in you’re going to lose your house cause we don’t want to lose any money so just quit your whining and go borrow some more money somewhere..don’t know where..not from us..see you in the mall..
I had to grin when I heard the warm(as warm as a banker can ever get) applause from the members assembled in the richest most powerful city in the richest most powerful country soon to lose its own credit rating.
The Chinese must be grinning too.
Time to cash in those American dollars.

what I am really thinking about the response to 'What I Was Really Thinking On The Night I Went To See Toni Nardi's 'Letter Two' Show

Ray
I polished up the "What I Was Really Thinking On The Night I Went To See Toni Nardi's 'Letter Two' Show" and it reads out well as a poem I didn't mean to write and usually my best poems are the ones I didn't mean to write-read it out loud for full effect
Got the impression from lack of general response that most readers thought I've become unhinged not realizing that me being unhinged goes back too far and deep to even bother to explain to those who couldn't understand what I just said if I got stupid enough to try to explain what they could never understand-but it was stupid of me to send it out to certain well hinged people
Dave

what I was really thinking on the night I went to see Toni Nardi's 'Letter Two' show

Do I dare not to go out on this evening of impending storm blowing in a forecast of freezing rain and snow and sidewalks potentially a slip and slide down into a cracked hip or broken arm-all this in mind as I head out for the Verdun 107 to take in Toni Nardi's show at the Moyse haunted hall up the hill at McGill telling myself I'll see myself when I get off at Sherbrooke stop if the campus is too iced and snowed for me to navigate my walker with trick wheel that now twists awkwardly up the middle of the street past McGill bookstore on this dark but not yet stormy night chill of frost and the weight of the past with my only last candle flickering still alive although no longer sure how much longer I can keep the focus required to keep myself from just one slip and slide away from utter catastrophe inching up an icy incline to the side door of the Leacock building dream on design made by New Age architects when they still had cutting edge glint in their eyes of a utopian future but how dim the future broods now in heavy concrete shade of neon with my memories no longer there on the bulletin boards of socialist meetings grim in unsmiling classrooms of going nowhere 1980's and 1990's in strange don't want to remember dead ending corners and how come I never noticed yes up there the decorative mobiles that have been hanging for decades of Icarus in disattachment from his wings falling with bland impassive face in predicted predestined part of the curriculum falling on schedule while I maneuver whats left of me hunched over to 1st floor marbled sanctum of Art's building with doors open to the Moyse Hall doomlike with sweetening scent of mouldering deceits where lingering students escorted the crippling me tottering up and down fall-of-the-house-of-usher auditorium stairs katunk-katunk with walker making an ungraceful and unwarranted and totally unacknowledged entry of yes we know its you the artist formerly known as Dave Fennario taking a back seat facing the closed curtain and podium and small audience of proven prerequisites waiting to be told what they already know with smug set lips and indistinguishable non gendered eyes wide shut there not to see a show rumoured to be a secret shocking exposee on Canadian theatre by the artist known as Toni Nardi who holds out a hand to me like I'm suppose to be in a rear view mirror but now there in his way clothed in the truth of what I'm hoping he will say behind that pornographic curtain on the snickering stage in words that do slash and flash but alack and alas for the wrong people in the wrong place for reasons beyond reason..
But that's how it starts I tell myself tee-tottering back out into a storm not yet blowing in my face a wild whirl of ill wind that blows nobody but the nobodies any good

Good on you Toni

road runner

A video seen on CNN of a US marine in Iraq in full helmet gear on a mountain road holding up a whimpering puppy by the shruff,grinning at the camera as if to say-it’s cute eh-and then still grinning suddenly flips the puppy up in the air where it does a comical cartoon spin and turn before plunging over a cliff to its death..oops...want me to do it again?..

the Portrait of Barack Obama

Despite myself I find myself like a lot of other people wanting to believe that Obama will live up to his promises for radical change if he makes it into the White House.Despite myself I find myself rooting for him against Hilary Clinton in the primary elections hoping that Obama does get the Democratic Party nomination as candidate for President.
Obama is by far the most progressive sounding mainstream American politician and looks perfect for the part.Not like Hilary Clinton who looks and sounds like a CEO with a smile from the teeth out.Not like the Republican candidate John McCain who looks and sounds so utterly falsehearted-Obama looks and sound like a decent well intentioned individual ready to lend a helping hand to all in need.
So the temptation to accept Obama at his word is strong because it would make it all so much easier to believe that there are nice people like him in power who are going to take care of us just like they said they would and save us the trouble and risk and worry of doing something ourselves that might get us all in trouble.
But when I hear Obama talk about shutting down the war in Iraq so we can deploy more troops in Afghanistan,when I hear him hedge on granting full universal health care,when he backs off from shutting down NAFTA,then the same old suspicions creep back into my mind that like Dorion Gray there is a portrait hidden in a closet somewhere that shows the true face of Barack Obama.
The face we’ll get to see if he is elected president

chip off the old block

Another dramatized version of 'Goodbye Mr.Chips' was recently featured on Masterpiece Theatre,one of many versions done over the years.But,unlike the other versions this one does attempt to place the characters in the context of social issues affecting Great Britain in the Late Victorian period.
Professor Chip argues for a kinder gentler social system based on individual decency and honor.He is seen struggling to humanize an elite institution designed to brutalized the children of the ruling elite,so that they in turn will be qualified to brutalize others in the course of their future careers as masters of the British Empire.
He does his personal best to impress on the young male students the principles of fair play then sends them out into a world where fair play is a platitude used to cover up what's really going down.
A good book to read if you want to find out what Mr.Chips boys were up to after graduating from Eton or Harrow ,is 'Late Victorian Holocausts' by Mike Davis

"Queen Victoria's favorite poet Lord Lytton,as Viceroy of India,on the occasion of the proclamation of Victoria as Queen Empress of India organized a week-long feast for 68,000 officials,satraps and maharajas:the most colossal and expensive meal in world history.An English journalist later estimated that 100,000 subjects of the Queen-Empress starved to death in Madras and Mysore in the course of Lytton's spectacular ceremonial"
-Mike Davis