Author: Michael Warenycia

email: mgwarenycia@hotmail.com https://www.instagram.com/mg_warenycia/

The Night of the Raccoon (Kindle Edition) by Michael Warenycia

“2018, downtown Toronto: a ghastly spectacle unfolds in broad daylight on a busy sidewalk on the edge of Chinatown. A beautiful woman falls dead—a budding artist; the personification of the daydreams of so many youths who flock to the lakeside metropolis in search of education, money, glamour and themselves. What appears to be an unfortunate tragedy proves to be a crime; the foreground of a lurid canvas stretching from the OCAD campus to rural Québec, shadowy as the primal forest, whose spirit the bright lights of the modern city but feign to hold back.”

Pumpkin Pie

Round a table of unvarnished pine,

IKEA or a boulevard find,

Gather, hungry, maybe six or nine

Friends, or something of that kind.

The spicy steam the dishes breath

Feels warmer for the chill

That from now till March will relentless wreath

The house and wither the plants on the sill.

The apartment is small and humble,

Old and high in price,

And any chef is like to fumble

Stirring pots and baking pies.

Accidental comrades

Huddle in the storm,

Struggling for cash and grades

And love to give their lives a form.

The skies outside grow dark

Like OSAP’s poisoned prize.

Future’s grim face looming stark

In their minds’ daydreaming eyes.

The pumpkin fresh, the crust from the flour –

No packaged cheats for this festive feast.

Food and friends work their ancient power,

That firms all hearts – for some hours, at least.

Ryerson University, POD Building

Buried in the middle of Winter

And the Semester

In café and lounge the students pack

Like the huddled masses by the streetcar’s track,

On captive clients the Timmie’s shall thrive

As the body shivers and the brain takes a dive.

Between slices – dark glass and pale concrete;

Architectural torte –

Reading pdfs, jotting notes for a report,

Hoodie wrapped tight around your body heat;

Out the wall of windows, the temp’s dropped low

And the sun’s painted white with the falling snow.

Gathered in solitary clumps

Or cramming all alone

With JSTOR, pens and pencil stumps,

Textbooks and a muted phone,

Diverse colours and careers (they hope)

Made one kind

By their shared bind,

Seeking company to cope.

*

Frivolous and needful choices

Echo in doubtful, laughing voices

And the clatter of metal and wood

Dating from Trudeau (the First)

Where generations seek to slake their thirst

For the greatest and formless Good:

Knowledge,

Which keeps them living on the edge

Of a sheer and sharp abyssal ledge,

Borrowing deep into the red,

Nodding asleep – but spurning the bed,

Grinding late,

Trusting Fate,

 Because life’s a bet

It doesn’t pay to hedge.

*

A classmate, half stranger, pulls up a chair,

Face mirroring fatigue and care

And bored by books, it looks, as you.

Over Double-Doubles, fellowship warms,

Warding off thoughts of looming storms

From Now – which is pretty okay, and, presently, true.

By the Tapti Bank

            Wandering amidst the vast antediluvian plain

            Where flows the Tapti, as a broad green vein,

            I met – there, on the willow-shaded bank –

            A ghostly Faquir, lean and lank

            Who, seated upon purple rocks (by aeons smoothed),

            With Abyssal eyes watched unmoved

            The shifting sands trace strange contours

            Where the mind from shadows forms fleeting lures…

*

            Alone, I woke; again to wander

            Impelled by a portentous, half-dreamed hunger;

            The stretching sands murmuring with tenebrous laughter…

Québécoise Cat

Tiny feet, fiercely punching through the snow;

Amber eyes

Like owls’

Glow.

*

Beaver-shaped tigress, greasy piebald fur,

Plots murder

For her

Sport.

*

Cosy, chill apartment at black midnight;

Bristling hair

Clicks, sparks

Light

*

In an awe-struck gaze and lawnmower purr

Angelic

Love shows

Pure.

Antilles – Amsterdam – Amour

French roads are smooth like the language,

The Dutch are harsh as Calvinism;

The split can be seen through the prism

Of pavement and of herbage,

Though it’s but one little Island, where I chanced to roam,

A magic rock that’s more than a home.

*

Recent – it was yet in Kodachrome’s day

When was gathered in Marigot Bay

The silvery bounty of the turquoise ocean

Laid out before kerchiefed matrons

To offer for their teeming patrons;

Saturated colours of commotion

Bleached out by greed and regulation.

What the Islanders made well

And grew, they were not let to sell

Yet the bureaucrat in Holland wonders

Why the spirit of Morgan stubborn lingers.

*

Lucky there’s lands both drear and grey

Whose tired tenants eager pay

On bloated boats, take luxury rides,

From Simpson Bay to the Boo Boo Jam

Dance to the Zouk and drink a dram

Or ten – all duty-free! –

And at Torchee’s or with Golden Eyes to see

The ‘ti paradis, all its Janus-faced sides.

*

Alas, excess breeds its own bane

The night’s carousing should cease in the morn,

When sore eyes open on a vista forlorn

Scourged by more than a Hurricane.

Dwindling like turtles are the tourist fares;

It’s plain at a gander from a Boardwalk bar,

Hot and heavy are the shopkeeps’ cares;

The barmaid’s gaze wanders afar…

*

Would Old Man Wathey

Have fought the Kingdom’s claim,

As now they chastise their colony

To flip their own shame?

Can MPs and policies save

The merchant strips from debt’s red wave?

*

I wonder these things, but not for too long,

For I wonder most about one who has gone:

The barmaid who, for dollars or from dread,

To Amsterdam flew to lay her pretty head.

I wonder and muse, if, in the chill Dutch night

She finds herself in vivid dreams

Voyaging to somewhere – how real it seems! –

And wakes with a sense of sweetness and light.

Blackstone

Quaffing Lisbon’s finest – as a gentleman would demand –

Taking up a quillpen in his plump and artful hand,

Wigg’ed head well-steeped in the laws of this here land,

Parsing all the rules and customs that grew from Albion’s loam

Since the Anglo-Saxons threw off the yoke of Rome,

The portly age’d scholar compiles his weighty tome.

Midnight to Miami

The boat rides below

The crests of the waves,

Lunar light on the needle prow

Slipping out from mangrove caves.

The radio cracks infrequent,

And the hull is charcoal grey,

Lest lurking hunters catch the scent

Of their luxuriant prey.

Easy on the throttle stick,

Softly through the Passage go;

Traffic’s thin and the clouds are thick –

Prime for shipping summer snow.

Keep the course to eastward:

The Guard’s swarming in the Gulf;

Over guns to port and starboard,

The eyes of a starving wolf.

A hundred miles off Cuba,

At the bit begin to chomp;

Straight as a barracuda

Lies the peninsular swamp.

The coast is black and clear;

The go-fast’s engines scream;

Flying high on greed and fear

And dizzy as a Dream

Of Morgan, Drake and Teach,

Scudding to the vaunted beach

With a salt-kissed smile, roll the dice, For none’s the man who can roll it twice.