Daylillies

With the palette of a raw sunset

Daubed impasto, on a ground of a limescent cascade

Bursting from the cool blue shade

Of the walnuts and maples,

Breeze-brushed ripples

Swelling over the battlements of sun-bleached beams

(As some fortress of Vauban’s the terraced garden seems),

Floral trumpets, in their voices of colour, proclaim

The end of Thallo’s regency, fitful and unsteady,

And the arrival proper of Auxo’s reign, brief, alas, but heady,

The orange blossoms glow

Like childhood summers

Whose embers are yet warm in memory.

Children of the Orchid Tree

North of Steeles, the fallow cornfields lay,

Stubble and mud, in the frost-bit winter’s day;

What saw he, under the cloudless, heatless glare –

What notions formed, what phantoms glimpsed he there?

Leathern briefcase clutched in jade-ringed hand,

Bearing ghostly visions for a changeling land.

No tome yet does proper chronicle

The tale of a human flow, most paradoxical;

Like Strange Moths from the bright lights they flew,

The frigid void them inward drew,

Out, out, from the Pearl of the East,

To beavers and ice, saccharine tree and unspiced feast.

Though they’ve been slandered as rootless and sleazy,

To leave that sweet harbour…it can’t have been easy;

Barely settled upon their island blessed,

Again to fly – who’d have guessed?

Alas, the Red Emperor had just been laid to rest,

And the sluggish dragon sudden came a pest;

Throneless empire, without charter to guide

It, save lucre, power and pride;

Their dwarfish chief, itching hot for war,

To spite the Bear, on the battered southlands vengeance swore.

As the Hundred Yue gave to Qin Shi Huang,

So the PRC got from Charlie Cong.

Their legions rotting in the Tonkin mire,

Softer targets were sought for the Party’s ire;

As the bay’nettes’ sanguine thirst was slaked,

The Queen’s last colonials at their breakfasts quaked;

The Iron Lady turned to rust,

Their Rock of Gibraltar crumbled to dust.

Dare’st they dally past the hando’er day,

Living under tyrant Peking’s sway,

If not grinded ‘neath tread of tank,

Then ‘neath Party stooge and crony bank

They’d soon find themselves less free

Than when, in Lion Rock’s lee,

On the smouldering ashes of war’s scourging fires

They’d staked the shoots of the morrow’s sparkling spires.

Dark-eyed nights, it must have bred,

The ulcerous anxiety, daily fed

By the question: “leave what we know –

To cross the sea, to a land of six months’ snow?”

But black and white dreams, granddad’s confiscated fields;

Optimism wavers; soon enough, it yields.

The television crackled with naïve students’ cries

And any reassurance seemed a stack of blood stained lies.

Unlike the railway coolies in times of old,

This jet-borne wave had plenty gold;

Indeed, a might bit more than most

Reared ‘pon the soil which served as host;

Bitter words were not lacking –

What’s more, they’d government backing.

Shrewder heads early saw a way

To a separate peace and good feng shui.

No Chinatown walk-ups, grimy and cold;

No ‘Victory’ bungalows, damp and musty with mold:

Where once but maize and pumpkin-vines grew,

They’d develop the ground, build it all new.

On the bleak-faced plain, dull as the moon,

A shining suburb, a new Kowloon;

A few clicks from the Queen’s high road,

A mecca for shopping and food, like Nathan Road.

Homes bright and solid, of beige and pink brick,

Like the sugar-bush maples, they planted ‘em thick.

While Jane Jacobs’ fancy it sure was not,

The Honger sure loved his fifty-foot lot!

Nightmare of the downtown degree-rich New Urbanists,

The realtors had buyers signing on waiting lists.

They threw up a mall with a borrowed name

That soon earned wealth and international fame;

On weekends it stood ‘mid an ocean of cars,

Come for shows of elder as well as rising stars,

And through the year, the bustling throngs

Seek purest herbs and pirated songs,

Computer parts, fashions, books, jewellery and the arts.

Once-exotic hometown flavour

All – East and West – now come to savour.

Leather sofas and Lexus vans, plasma screens and hardwood floors:

Gilded ghetto, familial fortress – half-locked, but without doors;

Bourgeois island of cosy contentment,

Busily blissful, heedless of resentment;

The vanished clapboard cabins of selfish toil and Puritan sin –

What links, what truck have they with New Sha Tin?

One wanders, wonders what gives these streets so quaint

Their ether, so curious and devoid of taint;

Perchance its source – if not firstly there –

Is a child’s smile and doting parents’ care;

These, and the ancient and familiar things

Of which Andy plays and Siu-Fung sings,

Unconscious made what stands there now –

A marvel, just think, once how

North of Steeles, the fallow cornfields lay,

Stubble and mud, in the frost-bit winter’s day.

. . .

The Artist

She came from a village small,

Sepulchral mills and bingo hall;

Where Blackrobes traded beaver pelts

And bruins feast on running smelts

By ruins of idle industry;

Where frowning, peeling clapboard homes

Harbour mould’ring and unspoken tomes

And the remnants of a beaten race;

A listless, best-forgotten place.

Zeal and gumption she did not lack,

Though belt-clasp had scarred her naked back;

South on the Greyhound,

Wings unbound,

To the edge of waters half-Lake and half-Sea,

To seek her own Futurity.

The Queen’s Park worthies a hand did lend

Ancestral imprudence a chance to mend;

A prestigious academy;

The first of all her family

Whose lurking shades even Facebook friends can never see.

She found a home beneath the Tower,

Gable, dormer, shaggy linden bower;

Painted brick, fanlights and a silver birch,

Herein she made her laic church,

And was blessed with an Identity.

Condos, food trucks, Chinese signs,

Bixi, Uber, streetcar lines;

Rompers, jeggings, yoga tights,

As faces flash dreamy in neon night;

Dionysian harmony.

Thick-framed specs gave artist’s vision,

Paint and protest, her newfound mission;

Profs and critics alike are wowed,

Spirit of the 6ix on canvas shroud;

Acrylic urban symphony.

Smoke’s and Hero, Mongol hotpot, gastro pubs,

GoodLife and yoga, lest she’s getting too chubs;

The housemates crowding the Gable and Bay,

NOW and X-tra there to show the way

To haunts of modish infamy.

The rent keeps growing, hikes ‘pon hikes,

The junkies keep nicking her fixxy bikes;

The gurls want to hang at such and such,

But OSAP gives her just so much;

What’s a stone-broke maiden’s remedy?

Perchance the Siren’s steaming java brew

Will perk her schooling through,

Keep awake a fighting chance

For art and drama, Instagram romance,

And stave off cruel monotony.

Soccer mom tongues, like flaming brands,

And urn-wash blasts her nimble hands;

With ramen, Goodwill and other thrifts,

She wanes wan and weak on extra shifts

And paints armour for her Dignity.

Semester done, the ground deep froze,

Straphangers wrapped in Goose-patched clothes;

A bestie’s gossip three beaus hath jaded;

By the manager each day upbraided;

Darker, longer each night’s lonely melancholy.

Snow is high, account is low,

A slick-lipped friend a way doth show,

Where one can sleep in bed the livelong day,

And making rent comes child’s play,

If she’ll lose her old temerity.

Faustian deal for a short-term pass,

Riding high on the Rail of Brass;

The speakers moan ‘My Cherry Pie,’

Limelight smooths a fish-white thigh

Tempting gross and grizzled Lechery.

Mud and ice mounds clot the yard,

The Sacred Fire sparks slow and hard;

Paint on palette getting dry and stiff,

What harm to seek a bracing whiff

Of secret powdered levity?

Rosy cheeks are draining out,

She’s stopped at the curb by the gatekeep lout;

Tramping homeward, heels in hand,

Foot-skin raw with salt and sand,

Her blood boils up a strategy.

Trembling digits weld to brush,

Liquid lips in monastic hush;

Solicitous knocking is not answered,

Social affairs are thrice deferred;

She’s blurred in her celerity.

Naples yellow, cerulean blue;

The door is locked and the window, too;

Madder red and deep chrome green;

The face in the mirror is long and lean

And laughing most uncannily.

A housemate who’s a CAMH worker

Says exams have caused go full berserker

The fair northern artist Maid

To whom all tributes are willing paid

Except, of course, hard Currency.

The landlord cried “it’s got to stop;”

“If ought should happen, the rent will drop!”

She grabbed the phone and called a copper

As was only right and proper

To staunch her liability.

The officer came, boots and Glock a’glisten;

He crept and stood, and leaned to listen;

He could have heard a dropping pin;

Said, “Ma’am, sorry, but I’m coming in;

It’s all for your security.”

The fair maid’s door the copper bashed;

Into her chamber the whole crowd dashed;

‘Mid brushes, paint and flowing hair,

The ghostly Maid was lying there,

Expired upon her Artistry.

Snake-tongued gurlfriends shed winsome tears,

Colleagues hid from private fears;

Then eyes of cop and landlord, snitch and weasel,

Turned to the majesty ‘stride the easel,

Awed by the spirit, dabbed and globbed into waves

That could steel the wills of heroes or quake the hearts of knaves.

Yet, on its subject they could not concur;

Those claiming her friendship did equal aver:

“’Tis the Lake, aye, that was her womb!”

“’Tis the Lake, aye, that was her tomb!”

. . .

An Old Man on the Mona Road (‘Indian’)

Behar and Belize claim this prodigal son –

Two kinds of ‘Indian’ both meet in one.

Fallen on hard days, it’s plain enough to see,

Sleeping in a slice of pipe, in the Mona tower’s lee.

Hands worn rough and a grin well keen,

That glinting eye a Hemisphere has seen,

Travelling in storied secret, twixt lands of palm and pine.

Like the Island, just independent, wondering what to do;

Better mus’ come – so they said in seventy-two.

Alas, Socialism’s crisis would come with that of oil;

Scarce food to fill the pot, the streets began to boil.

There was no way

To make sweat pay:

Dash and drugs and a loaded gun –

A young man’s recipe for Fortune.

Nineteen eighty, it was Election time,

Thirty-eight Special, guarding the Garrison line.

With swaggering irreverence,

Helping usher in Deliverance.

Uncle Sam smiled and the tourists came back –

It would not be long ere he got the sack.

But once has been planted Ambition’s seed,

The scheme, unbidden, will ferment and breed.

For those brave enough to nocturnal sail,

Ship gold – green and white – by the taped-up bale,

‘Neath the spotlights and the rifles of the curse’d DEA,

There’d be all a man could snort in untaxed hazard pay.

The future, like the moon, must have seemed bright,

Heaving bundles to the shore, lost in a tropic night.

When the heat rose, northward he went,

Strolling down Spadina, fighting snow and fearing rent.

How many winters passed in that subarctic City,

Tall, grey and rich, yet so cold and poor in pity.

Bidding farewell to the CN Tower and the TTC,

Whether by choice or as a deportee,

To Jamaica he’d homeward flown;

The Winds of Change – oh, how they’d blown!

With wiry arm and a rusty cutlass,

A hardscrabble life – but hardly ‘wutless’;

Weary with wandering, the years drifted by,

Many moments of wondering just how and why;

Stretched out to sleep beneath the sparkling stars,

Lulled near to dreaming by the passing cars,

The future, like the moon, must have seemed bright,

Drifting on the waves, lost in a tropic night.

. . .

Chariot of the Plebs

The icy wind rattles the salt-filmed bus stop panes,

Night yet weighing heavy on tired and fevered brains;

Weak and blurry forms huddled in puffy coats,

Hacking puffs of fog from mucous-clotted throats;

The Chariot of the Plebs, in tri-color livery,

Comes lurching by unpunctually,

Diesel fumes billow a charcoal plume;

No merry voice nor lyric tune doth break the leaden gloom.

Its cargo – padded like penguins, packed like sardines –

Sri Lanka, Jamaica, the Philippines:

Imported – cut rate – from this and that far-distant land,

Bricked up – at handsome profit – in castles made of sand…

43B, 86E, Bloor-Yonge Line and LRT;

Is this how it was supposed to be?

In a box making boxes, to pay the rent on a box

Secured from one’s fellow man by half a dozen locks

Or shelling out for hackneyed styles while one works for free –

Why, the sugar coolie’s pay was as a prince to thee! –

Fretful fur-trimmed zombies, on the sap of the Maple tree drunk –

‘Tis bitter, alas, as Hemlock – Oh! Who would have thunk?

. . .

Ashes of a Beachside Fire

A waning noon in early Spring,

Lilac skies reveal the waxen moon

As northbound cloudwalls rumbling bring

Brooding shades o’er the tussocked dune.

Wearied mind and dust-greyed shoes, I reach

The circling stones of a camping fire

On a grove-ringed spit of City beach

In sight of the heaven-piercing spire.

Five years of snow in this cloistered spot,

Autumn rains and the vandal heart of Man

Have spared this humble, sacred grot

Where we feasted, drank, shared joke and plan.

Soot yet stains each egg of wave-smoothed shale,

Shrine of youthful commensality;

I toss a pinch of the cinders pale –

A gust dispels their unity.

Round this primal hearth there gathered six,

With fork-stuck wurst and mallow brand,

Where lie these stones and scorch-tipped sticks

And steel-faced waters crash the rock-piled strand.

As the Ash-fruits in the March-wind shivering,

I feel my spirit frail and bare;

When Winter does its winnowing,

Who chooses how we fare?

One lies buried, as some repugnant sin

That burned, self-expending, in the nocturne din.

Two have flown, like the maple’s breeze-borne seed,

Seeking far Salvation as traitors to our creed.

Two have gone to hiding

In a war they cannot win,

Work and play repelling

The thoughts lone midnights breed.

A bird of passage roaming a Paradise Lost

In melancholic awe,

Here then, at last, is me;

I raise a torch, cold in the e’entide frost,

And fling it out into the maw

Of that mocking inland sea.

. . .

Soualigan Cat

Not straying far from home, as a home you haven’t got,

Each day a lonely battle; survival is hard-fought.

Slink about tin-roofed hovels and gaudy tourist traps

Prowling for fatted roaches, hunting for kitchen scraps.

Soft though your fur might be, it’s grown patchy and matted,

From your yearning/fearing eyes, clear it’s ne’er been petted.

Hunger pulls the skin between your joints; truly, a crime

That none heed your plaintive mews, that none have heart nor time.

Do you ask why you were brought, abandoned, left for dead?

A lifetime without cuddles; no bowl of milk, warm bed.

In old Kemet or Japan, your plight would draw forth tears,

How long, kitten, till your cries will reach compassionate ears?

Leaside Ravine

Down gully clad with grape and strangler vine,

Belted, booted, dark-clad troops in bleaching sun

Grasping weed and branch to scale the cline,

Not far from where the deeds were done,

‘Neath hickory and maple, and cicadas’ brassy whine.

Dusky ramparts shade the sheen

Of the languid, limpid river,

Now snaking silver, now unseen,

Whose murmured tales make hard men shiver.

Aspen-leaves flicker like coins in a pond;

At forest-edge a reporter guileless asks

For what they probe with spade and wand,

Cursing the sin that birthed their tasks,

While rouge-stained twilight, looming low,

Suffuses the swelter with a ruddy glow.

. . .

After the Storm (Sint Maarten, 2018)

The Boardwalk’s mosaic of pink and grey

Frames a vacant vista, asleep at hot midday;

Bare-sparred boats, like drunkards lay

Bone-white and gleaming upon the azure bay.

A pye-dog pants in an almond’s purple lee,

Grateful to meet a live and leaf-crowned tree;

O’er mugs and magnets, cowry beads, tacky tees,

Shopkeeps lean, uneasy, looking out to sea.

Fresh-clothed, the houses, in florid hues, raked clean

The alleys, the palm-fronds shooting green;

Fragrant with salt and peace, the landward breeze –

Blows in a Princess or the Sovereign of the Seas?

No! On the blue beyond the beachfront pale,

No liner looms, nor heaves a yachtsman’s sail;

Barren, ‘tis, as the dust beneath the acacia’s thorny veil,

And silent as the insects before the fateful gale.

An Age of easy gold and neon light,

Blood, drums, and witching eyes a’glow in sweltering night,

Dissolves into memory, as the sand drinks the rain,

Leaving yet a sweet perfume, and a wet and wine-dark stain.

The Pelican roosts, the red Flamboyant blooms,

Unsold trinkets gather dust, and the maids sweep empty rooms;

Looted store and raided resort

More than stormwinds scourged the blossom’d port;

Hands that scorned to plant the soil

Stealing the fruits of their brethren’s toil.

The brazen spark in the Old Man’s eye –

Would he fume and froth or, smiling, sigh?

The Winds of Change have blasted by,

But that dreaming Island will never die.

. . .

The Tower

The Tower rises – stern and steely spire –

Rises over the Lake, surveying the frost-bit lands,

Beacon – aglow with neon fire –

For eager eyes and willing hands,

Led by rude or noble lusts,

Fed by hopes, frail or delirious,

Till, by process both plain and mysterious,

Bones and minds and dreams alike

Are quietly,

Quietly worn to dust.

After the night –

Long and dense and brooding night –

A brief and cold and pallid light:

Unforgiving Day;

The beacon fades,

Fades to grey;

Fades,

Fades away.