Li'l Bastard. David McGimpsey
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just ask you to leave.
12. If Jesus drove a dependable family-sized recreational vehicle, He would drive a Dodge Caravan.
Maybe I shouldn’t have highfived the priest.
Maybe it was a mistake to fall asleep
at the Don Ho anniversary show.
Still, I forgave myself at Crookback’s Pub.
I invented a laptop with cupholders.
Previously, my sole innovation
had been putting my hand in my pocket
to give people the finger while they talked.
I longed for the road and the good things in life:
the warm breeze, eating chips while riding shotty,
selling rifles just over the Mexican border
to a compound of polygamists.
Those people who say you can’t run away
from your problems aren’t really trying.
I left my lease on St. Lawrence Street.
Off to Brownsville. Commence-toi la gris.
13. My second, less popular and even less critically successful Canadian novel.
The woman at the insurance company.
Georgetown, Ontario. The description
of exquisite unsaids. The turn will not
take place in an Olive Garden parking lot.
The male foil will disappear in good time,
and the mister with the disfigurement
will prove more deft with buckles. Regardless,
he or they will not just say, ‘Eat it, nit.’
No mitten too far, no Béliveau too
deconstructed. ‘The blue lights spilled over
the winter fields of Bowmanville as the night
offered bludgeon after bludgeon.’ Sleep, sleep.
The plot thickens when the mother’s file
is discovered and there are hushed hints
of New York. Just a weekend, it seemed.
Not that she really loved John Wilkes Booth.
14. Viva Smokey.
Contrary to rumour, I never owned
just one suit. I had four identical suits,
each with a nickname: ‘Stainy’, ‘Scuffers,’ ‘Elbows’
and ‘Smokey.’ I liked Smokey the best.
Smokey was the man. Smokey saw me through
nights on the couch; Smokey wrote long essays
about suicidal poets and baseball:
‘Bunting Is an Art, and I Do It Well.’
Smokey saw me through the bar on Bishop,
where I danced to the ThelMo Wheat Combo,
a spirited group whose name meant ‘Thelonious
Monk may be dead but we have to eat too.’
Not much could be won by my nickels and dimes,
but I moaned when I put Smokey away
and knew it was Stainy’s turn in the rotation.
Now, Stainy. Stainy, he was all business.
15. As my mother was always fond of saying, ‘It depends whose ox is being gored.’
Justin Bieber, someday you will grow strong
and then you will exact revenge for the pain
I experienced that Halloween night.
You know, when I was dressed as Geddy Lee.
My novel’s now called The Mistakener
and I dutifully watch the CBC.
I mean, PBS. It’s not like I killed somebody.
For my sin, I expect a pair of PUMAs.
So long Mount Royal, hello livin’ in a van!
Goodbye Wendy’s on Décarie Boulevard,
Hello Wendy’s on Lamar Boulevard!
For my virtue, I expect more thinness.
You know what might be easier? If you
all took turns poking me in the arm
with a jagged lamb shank. Then, just maybe,
I might stop to ponder your sweet ‘concerns.’
16. If possums were pears, we’d be having fruit salad tonight.
The phrase ‘a grey, mechanical existence’
made me think I’d solved something painful.
It somehow upset me to discover
it was nonsense. I craved sunshine, love.
My philosophical uncle would say,
‘When you’re old, suicide’ll seem redundant.’
Like me, he took TV shows personally
and cried at the thought of any goodbye.
At some point, the blows themselves don’t hurt
anymore. You already know you’ve lost
and what’ll really hurt is the healing pain
of tomorrow. Stupid tomorrow.
When I finally left that apartment
I didn’t even quite put on my shoes.
I stepped on the heels as if they were slippers
and ran to the car taking me to Texas.
17. Scrubland.
A sign for a gas station sixteen miles off
is like anticipating a trip to New York.
Everything bent west from hurricane winds,
a radio tower, a flutter of starlings.
Sun-sick, still thinking of a week in May
when I wanted a silent treatment to stick.
The glum, clipped calls and a waffle breakfast
I couldn’t quite sit through. Stupid waffles.
The gas station, of course, is just a gas station:
trucker-sized coffee, bags of corn chips
and local papers fourteen pages long.
Item: San Benito Soldier Killed in Iraq.
The Romans counselled Never argue with the sun.
Trying to not talk, happy without a phone.
Praying my eyes will survive the Texas light.
Dwarf juniper, mesquite, transplanted palms.
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