mother and child

they got on the 107 just a few stops from metro lasalle on first warm day of april
mother with a strained smile and child of maybe ten years old holding onto her hand with idiot face of spastic joy dragging heavy foot of deformity behind him happy cause he doesn’t know any better
he’ll be lost without her

dawn over second avenue

I get up out of bed on my birthday and walk over to where I was born with just a tinge of blue edging the rooflines as I bang my walker down my front stairs into my memories with slight chill of wind as I sit down on a bench near public phone booth corner of Second Avenue glancing over at 633 sitting dark and silent where my mother brought me home a new baby boy first born son in her arms in a blue hospital blanket up those long outside stairs that later made her groan about what could have been should have been but smiling on this day sixty two years ago..when.. flashing cop car pulls up with cop asking me what an odd fellow is doing out at an odd time sitting cornerwise..and I just nod and stare and stare and nod until finally he asks where I live..633 second avenue..

house that didn't happen

[The Gerald Godin House in Carré Saint Louis]

the trees are old and gnarled but not from time and struggle
they are what they’re suppose to look like
the students on a school tour are looking at what they’re told to see but they don’t know
the pigeons feed but they don’t care
its all suppose to mean something
but it never was really true anyhow
house that didn’t happen
love that didn’t happen
ambitions plans
the impossible
utopia in our time
Quebec debout debout..debout

now an inscription on a fading wall
of an empty house
soon to be declared officially empty
soon to be a museum
censored by its own history


‘But no,my militancy fizzles to avowal
is false and lying like a dame
and tearful too but with a truth in there somewhere
I swear to godalmighty
and to my land to my Quebec
my song is false,my song’s not truthful
but the anger is,the anger is’
-Godin 1965

nothing to lose

me in a down mood out of tone and tune with myself from making same old pattern of mistakes but getting myself out on sunny warmish day pushing my walker down Wellington east of Hickson where I see a guy with loud drunken voice in ripped t-shirt and jail tattoos suddenly staggering out of oldtime hotdog place past a young girl pushing baby carriage with stunned look in eyes that will later change into a hard gleam that goes with a bitter pull to the mouth that comes with second and third kid in same old pattern of poverty but more squeezed and constrained into lesser space with gentrification narrowing what little choice there already was in the same old same old passing along thinking about when I was living just down the street from my old pal Jackie who was often getting loud and out of order in drunken broad daylight back in ripped t-shirts of the 70’s when I was just getting newly famous for writing about Jackie in plays like ‘On The Job’ and ‘Nothing To Lose’ celebrating what turned out to be his utter and terrible defeat
what would have happened to dave fennario of thirty years ago if I’d have been trapped into some deadend awful common fate shared with those who shared these streets with me back then instead of miraculously ascending into fame too strange so strange...i don’t know and really don’t spend much time thinking about it maybe because but my focus now is the same focus I had then that still makes my voice snarl and my eyes shine
Revolution

je me souviens

When the Patriotes were hung outside the City prison in February of 1838 they strangled more than just twelve men.A whole nation was shut down for generations long after the echo of the trap door on the gallows slamming open had died out of memory.I was witness to the power of that terrible defeat even before I learnt about the crushing of the Rebellion of 1837
In 1962 in the Verdun City Hall library there were books under censor by the Catholic Church officially stamped as unsuitable reading material.
Only in Quebec did any religious organization hold such power over public education.It was the Catholic Church’s reward for sanctioning the execution of the Patriotes by the British.
In 1963 they stopped the religious censoring of books
In 1968 they stopped flying the Union Jack over public buildings in downtown Montreal.
One hundred and thirty years later

famous playwright sitting on his walker waiting for the Verdun 107 in the rain

Charlie that remembers me from Verdun High School says hi and usually he just nods cause he’s very shy and lived alone with his Ma til she died and he was always too skinny and too tall but now looking skeletal skinny with shoulders hunched from maybe AIDS or could be lung cancer cause there he is coughing on a cigarette asking me if ‘Balconville’ is out on a DVD cause his VCR version is getting scratchy and well no I said I don’t even have a copy myself and oh he says and then says he watched it again the other night with Shane who’s standing there next to Charlie in the busline and maybe that’s why Charlies in a talkative mood cause Shane talks to everybody and says he’d stand on his head if somebody would pay him
‘Life is a shit sandwich but I just eat the bread'