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.

Mattress Factory

In the southwest end of Scarboroughtown

Behind the bar and fitness club

Where wallets empty,

Sweating in shorts, betting on sports;

You’ll find a dim-lit den of misery.

Festering residue of un-exported Industry

Hidden from passers-by.

Small wonder why,

Who wants to buy

Tired exhalations of lives fading by?

All the colours of Benetton

United by a white-picket-fence lie.

*

Sicily to Saigon to Colombo to Kabul;

A catalogue of victims of history. 

Every few years, ruddy men in green fatigues,

Beaters in a Medieval hunt

Drive the bomb-frightened game

Into their abattoirs of aspiration.

The terror of hunger makes for docile hands,

Tremulous in gratitude,

To stitch the fabric, fry the food, scrub away the feces

Cheaply, with a Smile.

One needn’t give a warm welcome

When the guest has nowhere to return to.

*

Walls stained by decades of profit black,

Sewing machines hum, staple-guns click-clack.

The only windows

 Sleep-craved imaginations,

The only song

The hacking of Jazz-Tex-encrusted lungs.

The Victims of History each earnestly conducting

A human sacrifice,

Seeking to bless their children

With certificates of exemption

From life as bipedal oxen.

*

Shudder,

Grateful I did not have to learn

How to console a heart

Too tired for dreams.

Scarborough Sakura

Oh, blessed season, spring and summer’s brink

Inlaid twixt frozen hell and sweltering stink;

Time to flee the grey city’s human clutter,

Pensive strolling in solitude utter.

*

In garden suburbs, fit for families to grow,

A park, neat and pretty, in Scarborough North

Where a little stream gurgles, winding forth

‘Neath umbrellas of billowing willow,

Where ducks dive amongst stands of man-high reed,

Place where ‘twer  planned many a crazy deed.

Here, in this unwitting monastery,

Catalogue a year’s triumph and folly.

*

Arranged high upon the manicured bank

Crabapple and pear stand in serried rank

Open floral salute in white and pink;

Their cheerful petals on the warm breeze ride,

Paint pastel dots ‘pon the emerald ground.

Oh, ersatz hanami, quaint and sublime!

Pacific Highway

The highway snakes through the ocean of conifer trees

Through the fog-shrouded mountains, high above the sea

Where trucks and saws through the summer hum,

And fitful dreams sometimes echo with ghostly drums…

*

Sallow, amorphous faces

Drifted in from unknown places

Wait lonely, frost-bitten nights

Playing Russian roulette with each pair of approaching lights.

Dispossessed tenants who are their own rent

Paid through the nose

From meager accounts soon spent.

Trembling, sun-starved hands collecting unwritten bills;

The primeval stands of Douglas fir

Shading the stain of social ills…

*

Summer’s rude growth of reeds

Swallows, thrown from a passing van,

A black plastic bag of…old beer cans…who knows?

And a debt still owed

Contracted on the side of a Pacific road.

Exiled Among the Crowd

Adrift, whipped on by fear, fashioning a mask

Image of the doppelganger of defiant daydreams,

Frantic trembling, lest it should tear at the seams.

*

Hollow shells, growing ever more hollow;

It is easy to lose track of one’s soul;

In the suffocating darkness, the lonely vastness,

Where that which is scattered may not be made whole.

*

Some suffer in silence, some seek a prideful fall;

Ah, priceless is a knowing heart, a warm lamp amidst the somber pall.

*

A soft prison insidious cruel;

When wounds are forgotten, the heart abandons the battle.

The flesh unconscious indulged, the spirit, numb, slowly starves on watery gruel.   

*

The day done and the night still, the mind half-lucid wanders,

Losing the struggle to sleep, beginning to fret;

For misdeeds and deeds undone equal carry a life-sentence of regret.

*

Was it wise to part

If, when asked “why?” we armour ourselves with anger?

Alas, to spare us tears we impose an exile on our hearts,

And make of ourselves a stranger.

For a Barmaid from Orient Bay

Entranced by the icecubes dissolving in my drink,

I sit, and I think,

Wondering if this mutual exile

Will reconcile…

*

What vision did you see

In moonlit clouds swirled by the passaat breeze,

That Elsewhere seemed so clear?

Whatever could it be

That blew you across vast and vengeful seas,

So far from all that held you dear?

*

Rum and pain and neon lights

On long and hot and throbbing nights

Make for aspartame dreams;

Castles of sand

Where the blind grasp of a frail and hopeful hand

Discovers only coarse and cutting dust;

Desiccated substance of illusions that, I suspect,

You did never truly trust.

*

Between sighs and sips of spirits vile

My eyes unwitting betray a smile;

Though invisible, now, among these concrete canyons,

Thronged with grey and sullen millions,

That Island,

Our Island,

Salty as tears,

Sharp as memory:

It must exist,

For there were You and Me.

Canal-Side

Behind the wide rock-bastioned strand,

Where inky waves on moon-white sand

Beat out their timeless harmony,

The owl’s flight

In dead of night

A pearl inlaid on ebony;

‘Mid the canebrake leaves, pricked as thistles,

Night-heron stalks and potoo whistles

And something makes your neck-hairs bristle

That jars the nocturne melody.

*

Stilt-shod village, canal-side lot,

Under zinc-sheets, air thick and hot,

Table claps with another tot,

And fever seeks its remedy.

In paddy field the crickets sing,

A chilling gust makes lanterns swing

And Omen flits on scale’d wing

As bottles drain to clarity.

Swift with sinews and hoarse with rust,

With sweated groan and rum-willed thrust,

So taunted and red-seething lust

Shall fill a backdam sepulchre.

* * *

*

©M.G Warenycia 2017

The Persian Grocer

July in Toronto is a day drawn long,

Giddy with the swelter strolls the sluggish throng;

In a land of Winter, the fleeting heat

Is a bewildering and exotic treat.

The sun – does it put pedestrians’ minds

On adventurous tastes from foreign climes?

Or do the blogs and journos’ foodie tales

Bring in the bodies, ring up the sales?

On statisticians don’t waste your query;

Better to ask Rostam Esfandiari.

Up on Yonge Street, not far from Finch Station,

An old strip mall is your destination.

The parking lot’s broad and plenty spacious,

His shop, though small, is strangely capacious. 

Beneath a sign, writ in languages two,

Through the glass-pane door, you’ll head into

The domain of the town’s top bazaari –

So, at least, says Rostam Esfandiari.

The shelves and racks – close-stacked – form avenues

To which your gaze can’t help but pay its dues;

Like checkerboard crop-fields, glimpsed far below,

Guiding nose and eye like a river’s flow,

Bags and jars, serried bins of rich-toned woods:

A display enchanting as the retailed goods.

His patrons ask if they ever left home:

Pistachios piled like a palace dome;

Raisins, almonds, and white-baked pumpkin seeds;

Gaz, saffron and halva for festive needs,

Cheeses of the quince, as well as the cow,

And pastries that paint sweat on the ‘keto’-mad brow.

Barbari and sangak in skateboard loaves,

In bottles, olives, of a thousand groves.

At this middle-noon hour, business slows;

Old Rostam, he shrugs: “That’s just how it goes.”

Slowly, slowly, the sun reddens and shrinks;

He strokes his moustache, and, idle, thinks

Of the half-recreated Far Away

That floats in perpetual Yesterday

And makes him, wondering, rub his shiny pate

As he ponders the whims of fickle Fate.

With nothing he arrived, when came the fall

Of he whose photo stares stern from the wall.

Confused and fearful was that midnight ride;

They lost wealth and status – but kept their pride.

Oh Cyrus! Sage King, who succoured those wandering in the wild,

Do you weep for your heirs, now forty years exiled?

With necessity’s wit and full measure of grit,

He and his wife won the place where they sit

In comfort enough to buy their son a Bimmer

And fund him to voyage on adventure

To see all that’s grand in Nature and Art,

As well to understand his father’s heart.

Their daughter – he knows not what she’ll be,

But she’ll be it better with a PhD.

A television playing, hung up high,

He watches the news and heaves out a sigh:

What’s this? His Homeland is on the program;

Feelings like water pressing at a dam:

Some sort of protest or grand gathering

That sets memories – bittersweet – tingling;

Faces – like his, when young – hardened with hope

Such that truncheons and teargas strain to cope;

Girls with green scarves flaunt their hair flowing bare,

Steely students for freedom – o’er life – care.

Alas, no more leisure for daytime dreams:

Work and school done, keen shoppers inward stream.

They pick and poke and squeeze and smile:

“Yelp-recommended”…”Haven’t had this in a while…”

Maryam and Soraya on their weekly round,

A gaggle of students, come from downtown,

Whose questions and critiques often are silly,

But the scoops in the bins scuffle busy.

Sometimes when he hears an inane discourse,

He must restrain his tongue with no mean force;

What can such folk ken of his fair country

Who learn it from docs on the BBC?

Breathing deep, in time’s wisdom finds his calm –

Sharing with sympathy: soul-soothing balm.

Thinks Rostam with a smile, his cheeks aglow,

“The more they’ll love, if more they know!

* * *

*

© M.G. Warenycia 2019