Jukebox Cackle

you told me drugs are too good to be true
so i
used your Mother’s umbrella
as a plug for eight months
minus six rainbow days
with hugs around my neck
and a nipple
of reason
(that i forgot)

but took three hours
to take the bus
from one stop to the next
because the people were so friendly
until one gunned me down with daises
those
crazy
daisies
hurt like rabies
but i didn’t and don’t have rabies
but
i saw David Bowie
on Mars
and he told me“people are beautiful when they have nothing to believe in”

Our Conversation is Ripe

im surprised all these pills haven’t killed me, yet
heehaw!

what vibrant veins i've got
what a useful nose i’ve got

(i can’t comment on my brain)

maybe my heart how it’s all over this page
and maybe
burning up your eyes
with no
Pepto-Bismol
to help
but a silly image
like a smoking foot
to surely cure you
of
my hot-hot fire
my no-wart magic

that i use on madhats like a poetcat with
asthma
and
insomnia
who might call me a bloody wanker
because i drink like my Grandfather
and my white is nasty
and what is more honest than white?

Cul-de-Sac

a
cavernous
head

sheltering
the vulnerable veins
of the orange-peel littered streets

poppy-filled
teabags
suckin’ smoke

crystallized eyes wide for reaper
bare-breast
gardened with pig-tail hair

nude as a knob
twisting & turning

bumbling & yearning for a succulent fix

[JACK in d' BOX]

snakeskin (fluorescent) fishnet
tranny-trix

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

*

Uncle Wait-on-it-Murphy

your tambourine don’t clack or
jangle
like it used to, rusty red beard

no,
all that cactus chewin ain't sane old sir

you mop like a wet sock
when you spit barbells into the puddles,
them preppy puddles
only four fingers away
from your tin foil feet

those penny vacuums
sucking out soup
pouring all over your favourite David Bowie cd

no, Major Tom can’t help you on this planet
of Cracker-Jack maps

leading
you to them puddles

where you let the guppies decorate your toes
and tell you
sad
sad
stories
while you wait for the soapy cardboard to melt
and then the purple wave hits
and the guppies
go
and you wonder why this imaginary toilet bowl
won't flush you to the infinite underworld
where your mad suggestions would catch you a fine fish
that would lick you dry
of your
empty earphones
and
magical Mexican plants
that leave you
c o n s t i p a t e d
as you pop-corn over the golden dumpsters
burping out melodies
twisting to the fat fingers
stuffed in piano keys
and
you tighten your knees with your fishnet skin

when i was a cabbage patch kid
you were cooler than pop-eye

i'm not as dumb as i was two hours ago,
them things ain’t candy cigarettes
puffed outa
that plastic flamingo

HOWL for Liana Paré

monotone canaries whistling Sinatra
waking the noon-dreamers from protectively hidden memories
of tragic-comedies printed on banana-peels
stuffed in the sealed Freudian-slip drawer
& scattered recollection of the illusionary countless days
of endless sunsets scratching crotches for friendly-fags
preaching equality
& black coffees by the dozen for one-seventy-five of your seven-twenty-five
crusted tastefully in back-pockets from panhandling the lightning streets
filled with cold bodies plagued with sour-breath philosophizing the psyche
and household plumbing
who wink at little boys gesturing pleasantly-disturbed intentions
while they broom heavy-tissues weighed down by divine brain-fluid
leaking out the exits poisoned by the unfortunate good & glad mother-nature
& swarming fruitflies in empty soup-cans with charcoaled fire-craters
dusting expired baking soda stolen from the dépanneur owned by clueless Chinese
behind the blindly-decorated boxes
glamorously sheltering the nameless & the ageless corner-warmers
who dance casually & hop spontaneously
at the bus stops bumming cigarettes in exchange for crooked smiles
never rehearsed
& empty sandwiches that sympathetically hype the tightly-capped heads
of the expensive soda-pop drinkers who both support
& minimize the hopelessly misunderstood souls vibrant with rubber-pets
& imaginary-friends contemplating Hitler’s many assassinations
hidden in the deepest cracks of empty flower-pots
kicking scummy-boots
behind the governments-gate who generously lends a half numbing
tease-of-a-cure
for a half/paranoid half/dead moist feather-plucking latex worm
who sweats sweet-pearls onto the eyeball shine of the
hospital waiting room floor
where madly destroyed hopefuls sit desperately
praying & calculating mathematical coincidences to the almighty
who-knows-who
of unexplainable fertile-faiths with questions answered by mad geniuses
illuminating the starless-night
celebrating mental illness with loaded guns
& it’s many gifts to art and science from Italy’s Renaissance
to the confused wet raindrop tattoo sliding concretely
down the clammy face of a moaning crackbaby loosely wrapped in the boiled-spaghetti arms of her overdosed mother knocked-up drunk & helpless
whose repressed-anger dissolved intravenously
with the dirty-needle of her howling husband the black-eyed slack-mouthed
one of many misguided money-hungry dogs brainwashed by greed & ecstasy
suffocated with pointless pride
broken-nosed
pope-grande
distributor of galaxies spinning indescribable emotionally with flashing streetlights pretending to be candy while therapeutically impossible of the
no-need prescription
to the third underworld poisson floating lively in a calm infinite ocean
of the other planet unknown paradise
patient & precious with groovy-angels
banging on bongos and blowing in harmonicas
hypnotizing & earthly Shaman
welcoming & warm
where the moon is worth carving riddles
no one bothers to think-twice about because your angelic cursive is illiterate
to any level-headed-joe connecting the little-dipper
while constipated at a boring house-party full of health & mindlessness
dulled by repetitive life-experienced aliens scrubbed-brightly like trophies
who know nothing of childish naked-nights rolling down the golden hills
of limited-laughter and sublimated-paintings
coloured brightly with opium flowers
who blossom freely in the trusted swamps of a sewer
over by the sleazy after-hour bar
snowed in by sneezing freckles on the powdered noses of young prostitutes
selling colourless rubix-cubes to the amputees of St. Catherine
studying literature in a quality university who frequently recite beat poems
out perfectly diseased mouths to the pierced ears of the zombies
who squeal in heat of a high that fall gracefully like autumn leafs
onto the lap of a forever-bitter grandmother helped across the busy-city-street
while strained obviously-racist against traumatized-eyes sunny for a present
wrapped in karma & rotten-teeth biting over blued-lips who kiss the ripe-apples of Eden
& the butts of many bowler-hat wearing psychologist
in the wrinkled hand of enlightenment
lied to spirits in red who chant
head-hunter head-hunter head-hunter
in the silence of meditation fully-medicated
meowing space-wonderers
right back to the symphony of morning on the greenly garden
of a lone psychedelic purple-mushroom infested rock
where woken with crisp visions singing
“that’s amore”