March 19

Cécile

My grandmother is in a nursing home in Alexandria, dying,
and I’m moving boxes from a Home Depot van
into a spa in St. Henri
with a guy named Mike.

“Are you alright?” Mike asks.
“My grip is slipping on the love seat,” I say
and Mike offers me some work gloves.
“I’m alright,” I tell him.

“All they can do is make her comfortable”
my mom’s email said,
“The doctor says she lost her will to live.
I think she had lost that already.”

A mattress falls over into the mud
and Mike tries to clean it.
“Just move it inside,” I tell him,
“We’ll put other stuff in front of it.”

March 12

WGM – 1912-2004

My grandfather said he was part native.
He said that indians sometimes came to his house in the middle of the night
and “ate twelve cooked eggs in a shot”, he said,
then did a rain dance with him and went back to the bush.

My grandfather grew up mick poor
in Shawville with nine brothers and a sister.
They would bathe in an inch of bathwater
that was negro black by the fifth person.

My grandfather knew kids, he said,
who played with gasoline and firecrackers
and snowblowers he said
and now they are all disfigured and withered.

My grandfather flew bombers out of Malta
and said he caught malaria, but flew anyway.
He held the record for most missions flown by a quebecer
and said he was a pilot, not  a navigator.

My grandfather started rollerblading in ‘91
with a yellow hardhat and moving gloves on.
He, keg chested, wouldn’t say where he fell
but limped on a swollen blue ankle till ’99.

My grandfather died in 2004, thinking it was 1968,
and said Trudeau was prime minister.
He died of a virus they still can’t name,
his storied pride disfigured and  pilot’s chest withered.

March 5 - a sonnet

How to Make Moana Mine

“Twist!” and I’ll shake and you`ll sing just for kicks
Dabslash and glidepunch. Light strong, free and bound.
Roll with the steps if you can`t press the flicks.
Float with more quick if you’re wringing the ground.

“Croak!” and you’ll harken and bend at the hips.
Check out my secret and slip me some jive.
Make a frog happy to kiss on the lips.
Carve up my pumpkin and Prince up my ride.

Put on a show, I’m your number one fan;
Hang up the puppet and string me along;
“Baby, I love you!” “You isn`t my man!”
“Get off the stage” gongs the gong of your gong.

Or I could say  “Moana – buy you a drink?
I think you`re neato. Now what do you think?”

March 2, 2006

Filthy Hippy Haiku Suite

Tattooed hippy punkgot a hole in his Converse.Needs new shoes, looks sad.
(
Organic hippydemanding fair trade coffee,reeking of compost.
(
Asian hippy broad,burps while shoveling, pauses,kicks snow from her boot.
(
A Plateau hippy
eats sourdough ciabatta,
extra alfalfa.
(
East End busrider
gets up, won’t sit next to a
filthy dreadlocked hip.
(
Smoke-free hippy dive:
freeloading jerks bead bracelets,
share orgy stories.