Je Me Souviens

*

nervous on Parc avenue
pacing through the rainbow-boîtes
pastel & trippy

baby gardens, dead flowers, prickle weeds,

broken bottle under my shoe
ganja-mon begging me for one-seventy-five
to hop for Tam’s
he-lazy-stoned-don’t-wana-walk

& i’m eating poets,
spitting out drums, banging on trees,
(dancing underground)
waking up the dead
good-morning-radio
they say

i say where’s Em café?
i want a pint & a burette
i want a French-accent & a gram of clay

*

prochaîne station: Charlevoix
& the amputee tells a junkie-lean lady
that when it comes to the egg
the more boiled the beautiful,
an asthma sucker smiles, because it’s true
the blank white image the same
but the bubbly beating unknown
a memory
a mystery
a question
of strength & untold evils of the golden canvas

obvious as confetti, sincere as spaghetti
it laughs like a clam
as it swallows your face
and all your dreams which it then
drags
in a potato bag through the forever lemons
stuffed in the cheeks of paranoid pigeons
that pace past unstoppable stilettos who lift their skirt
& do nothing but chirp

*

jack! where’s your box?
Jean-Talon?
where the cheap coloured suits say hey bella,
come amo? you call your father?
& i say that’s none of your business, okay?
but sure, money maker – knee breaker,
got a dollar to spare?
got a phone to use?
got a number to score?
got a box to build?
a shoe box? for a poet-man,
he’s dead but his mad creations shouldn’t be exposed to light
& need to
chant & smile & maybe play banjo & never die?

*

drunk in St. Henri,
peeling band-aids off the abandoned gas-station
onto the bloody butterfly of my knee

flying on the backs of street-cats
with broken doors hung off the hinges

if i weren’t drunk i wouldn't be here

i wouldn’t be in this should-be-white bathroom
which never has toilet paper

and he cups my cotton-crotch
grande with faux-heat & erection

he thinks he poured my puddle
(the piss i couldn’t wipe)

an hour in, and
no lotto
no casino
no flamingo lights

my legs are sleeping & i have to fart

i’m not drunk anymore, so i scream sincerely

*