Unfamiliar Streets
C. J. Leon

Copyright C. J. Leon, 2007, Vancouver

museslaveATgmailDOTcom
www.myspace.com/cjleonspoken
www.youtube.com/thesurrationalone
************************************

Contents

Lithe-Little Squirrel.....................1
Life is a walk between roses... ....3
After brooding over scabs... .......3
Skirt Thing...................................4
Angel and Devil.......................... 5
I Am.............................................9
La Folle........................................11
Le Fou..........................................12
Nettlichkeit.................................15
'Tis Now That I Am Free............16
moth with panache on a hill......17
Seal at English Bay......................18
Papa's Marrow............................19
At Nathan Phillips Square..........21
Laila.............................................23
If a rose is a rose is rose... ..........24
Seashells......................................25
Venus Trap..................................26
Passing By...................................28
My Favourite..............................29
My Punk Girl..............................30
Far North of Kansas....................33
Saddam Hussein..........................35
The Inuit Hunter's Wife............37
Grassroots Xianity......................43
************************************

Lithe-Little-Squirrel

Black, the fuzz-furry
lithe-little-squirrel,
who jumps in the schoolyard,
-and I have seen this,-
not in the regular arcs of his parents,
but straight-up in the air,
launching from all four paws at once,
landing with a quarter-twist
and a crash on his tiny shoulders.
He repeats his silly maneuver
again and again, apparently delighted.

Then, having planted himself
next to an intriguing food-wrapper,
he snatches it with tiny grey hands.
Wide-eyed, wobbly on new legs,
he excitedly fiddles with it,
spinning it intensely on curious fingers,
examining it, determined to determine
the nutritive value of it
from minutest remnant of food-stuff
to minutest crease of coloured plastic,
and to rustle up a mischievous racket in the process.
This new game, however, is bland to his emerging Epicurean standards.
He drops the wrapper; and he hops again;
and he seems, presently, to know better than any
the fun-pleasure-tickle of leaping barefoot,
and falling, young and nimble, naked in the grass.
************************************

Life is a walk between roses
I hope always to appreciate.
Certainly other things do happen,
but only the roses are essential.
************************************

After brooding over scabs for several hours:

The tragedy of life
is we are our own best victims
(we suffer well)

The comedy of life
is we’re everyone else’s too
(the humour’s black)
************************************

Skirt Thing

Wearing a skirt around you is clearly dangerous,
you say, at the door, trying to get away,
from my hand marching gently up your soft white leg,
from my fingers tickling and tugging gently
the pubic hairs at your panties' edge,
from my erection unzipped and fitted gently
into the space beneath, from behind, between your thighs.
I admit, I have this thing for skirts.
It's no reason to be leaving, darling.
************************************

Angel and Devil

Said the devil to the angel,
"But, my Love, it is just a kiss."
Said the angel to the devil,
"Oh, do devils love?"

Said the devil,
"Do you cast stones, O Guiltless Innocent?"
Said the angel,
"I protect my interests only."

And the devil,
"Yes. Only as you protect them, you do not serve them."
And the angel looked away.
And the devil kissed her neck.
************************************

I Am

I am a slug
I am a Jew
I am a purloined bicycle
I am the white wedding-present Bible
(the dedication page carefully torn out)
I am an accomplice in shadow
I am an airborne virus of questionable origin
I am a UFO
I am a plateless automobile ready to be crushed like cans
(there is no recycling program - really)
I am both John and Jane Doe
(pleased to meet you)
I lost my dog tag, my toe tag, my barcode is smudged
They removed my fingerprints for professional reasons
I am the original Pallas
(clutching an unopened can of Nivea)
I am Medusa
(but it has been ages since I checked)
I am an anorexic fashion-model silhouette
I am that red-faced, fair, belligerent Scotsman
drinking ale and scotch at the pub
I am that C+ student
(I was in your class, remember?)
I am an ant, a drone bee, an amoeba, a mushroom
I am a crazy drug-addict bumI am the overfat American paunch
(do you recognize me?)
I am concerned about money, clothes, and status, in general
(and generally neurotically)
I would rather take the bus than walk
(home is far away)I feel like I shouldn't
I feel like I can't
I feel even worse that I did
I am the bastard's bastard
I am the Iroquois
I am Rapunzel after chemo-therapy
I am an orphan
I am a stray
I am a forgery, a phony check
I am Canadian, citizen of the New World
(by Fate but not Design)
************************************

La Folle

A woman wanders,
bearded, swollen, past maturity,
footsteps over walkways,
footsteps in the street,
adding no more than a tattered ghost
to the relics of Avignon.
Where are the children she has borne?
For she wears that mark too,
the softened hips, the soft wild eyes.
Where are the living lives she bore
to save her from the living death she suffers,
of muttering to familiar gods and spirits
broken nonsense from an unclean tongue
that throbs between crusted lips,
of insanity, of solitude,
of sleeping just outside the fortifications
where now she hesitates,
while within the walls
stand distorted in view in line les desmoiselles,
where now she slowly stoops,
where now she delicately spreads
a sheet on the cobblestone?
************************************

Le Fou

Clément was a beautiful blue-eyed blond,
twenty-three years of age, and much too skinny,
underfed without the wits to feed.
Deep and distant, he glittered across the ocean of his eyes.
And he had a tick, to say the least,
a rather disconcerting habit of pointing at people,
and when his finger went click-click
his mouth went buzhou! buzhou!

And when the tourists, as there were many,
or the local Avignonese would join the sport,
or so they thought, pretending to be shot and die,
clutching their chests and crying,
“Tu m’as eu! Tu m’as eu!”
Clément would step back terrified,
waving hands in the air above his head protesting,
“Jamais! Jamais! J’ai jamais tué personne!”

He'd hitched his way in with the theatre crowd,
the festival being just done and his hand and his fingers
and the cock of his thumb in poise perfect
to beg courtesy from strangers,
unsuspecting strangers, soon surprised to find
a trigger-happy madman at their side or,
worse, behind them in their cars.

For several days we passed, both of us strange,
living and wandering in unfamiliar streets,
he shooting me, and I, without offence of his manners,
always stopping to ask, “Ça va?”
And as it was, it always did.

We took entertainment at the city-centre beside the carousel,
watched young illusionists do magic, yogis contort or roll glass balls,
jugglers, dancers, other displaced solo circus acts,
and older street artistes who made thirty euros a portrait, did ten portraits a day,
and still dressed like they slept beside us in ditches, on benches,
or in the piss-filled pits of Avignon's walls.
Side-by-side we sat.
Not much was said.

Then I had some extra food; we shared it.
Then someone gave me money; we bought ice cream.
Then I tried to cut his hair-his matted nesting locks, precisely.
(I’d thought we had agreed.)
He yelped a scratching high-pitched scream and,
“Non! Non! Non!”

Then while he vainly suffered to reaffix the cutting,
(he settled finally on a weave,)
I insisted on the benefit as I could see the bugs.
His lips then formed a jagged leer, his manic eyes delighted.
He stood up stiffly, wordless.
Then he walked away.
************************************

Nettlichkeit

When I am a dishwasher,
those will be high days.
Then I will pilfer table scraps;
then I will sweat for pay.

And when I am a dishwasher
in a fine établissement,
I’ll hit on all the waitresses,
and they will want me badly.

And if I break some dishes
by accident or spite,
I will finally add significantly
to unlettered material culture.

For now I need a day-job,
and dishwashing will do,
and then my Dad will love me,
and I won’t feel guilty about writing.
************************************

'Tis Now That I Am Free

I will sign-out and leave now, and leave this damn kitchen;
The diners have finished off, and I thank God for that.
Since nine we've just been standing, with nothing for us to do.
11 o'clock, my night's begun.

I will walk the Sea Wall home, it's 'round a half hour route.
I will pass under two long bridges, and by the marina,
where light shakes on black water, the water clapping hulls,
I will be singing myself a song.

I will sign-out and leave now, toss my whites in the bin;
I've had enough of dark baguettes, burnt skin on the grill.
Chit-crazy, claustrophobic, chopping parsley for prep,
I just want out this fucking place.
************************************

moth with panache on a hill

a fat-bodied beige moth-mutant
has crawled onto my leg,
and startled me.
her wings are the size of pinky nails.

hello, I say.
what brings you here?
but she only quietly creeps.
I extend my finger and she climbs on.

from her tapered segmented rear
two grey gooey drops
she deposits.
she must then feel at home.

we share a stare
before I lower her,
before we two park strangers part
for hillside perches, common dreams of flight.
************************************

Seal At English Bay

Now take that tough-skinned peppered seal out there
with his belly stretched on that mussel-scabbed rock,
swollen like a giant whiskery sweet potato,
carrying the sunshine on his back:

never shaved once his whole CV,
does boat-asana like a natural,
turns his doggie head to scope me out,
and isn’t much impressed with what he sees;

and I’ve never seen the chap before,
and I’m only going from the ready-given,
but he seems to be doing just fine for himself
what with living mammalian life at sea.
************************************

Papa's Marrow

Daily all this morbid melodrama:
the shitty ice creams,
the plastic spoons,
not to mention
the atrophies,
the ice cream shitties,
and the way we talk
around him awkwardly
about the weather
(as if it matters to him,
bedridden, bum-legged)
and our plans
for the coming days
and for our future lives
(as if he might live to see them;
or maybe so he knows
the parade goes on without him).
Yes, fine, he is deaf.
Yes, he has some rigour in the limbs.
Yes, blind, for many years the light is but a blur.
But note the warm white spittle,
the hot seething frustration
in his warped trembling,
in his discoloured desiccated lips and eyes and hands:
that there is unambiguous;
and as he tells you in his own words
if you can get the question through to him:
“How are you doing, Papa?”
“Goddamn it!” He shouts it every time,
insolent Scottish on his tongue,
“Goddamn it, I’m alive!”
************************************

At Nathan Phillips Square
(Toronto)

Our city-centre sea returned,
and with its fountains too.
Five tin trays with three palms each
mean for islands, one might guess.
Out early to make his catch,
shoeless in shorts and a tee,
a red-bearded sea-faring vagabond
dives like a gull,
making bridges in his arching,
touching down to pluck
wishful treasures with his fingers.
He splashes as he jogs,
shooting erratic glances
downward all around him.
Time presses.
He steps out to home base,
a stranded lump,
his tattered coat and sturdy liquor bag.
Cement darkens at his feet.
Wet-calfed with a hunch,
in his cupped hand
with a stiff determined pointer
he tabs his horde.
Above him the red-granite tower,
proud in maritime attire,
and the clock divided evenly
into six chimes.
************************************

Laila

The beautiful Laila is a user of crack.
You may see her on her street:
she is the young princess of Queen;
and you may see her black eyes and sassy lunge
and her skin sorrel mulatto;
and you may see her smile at her own reflection
in the window of a restaurant or shop,
as she turns her cap to the side
and blows herself a kiss;
and she may make you smile,
the way beauty makes smiles,
before she faces you and asks you,
with a honey-tone voice,
if you could help her out,
give her a spare quarter;
and you may think her worth so much,
and give for the act if not of generosity;
and you may see her at another time,
the beautiful Laila she is,
address any ears in the air,
no two particular,
when then she cries
wide-glittery-eyed and terrified
Please! Please, God, would someone just...
for a God-sent death.
************************************

If a rose is a rose is rose
with no one there to smell it,
is it still beautiful?
************************************

Seashells

There are living shells
with swirls and artful turns,
that are the skeletons of beings
in the dim depths of chill green sea.

Coating the two-sexed snails, tightly, crisply,
they too tread and suck the viscid slimes,
or bore through varnished armours
to tongue for the tenders of their kind.

Casings of eyeless oysters, clams, mussels,
they blister from the lime of barnacles
that flick-out feathered tongues.
Mollusk crust, weedy rock.

And there are the dances of the dead and dying
choreographed exquisitely by currents, under moon,
for the phosphorescent dark, for the shifting ocean halls.

And there are the arias, the wails of conches that find no echo,
and no ear will ever hear them, and no applause will follow.

And there are the shells at the bottom of the sea,
that lie, and that are beautiful to no one.
************************************

Venus Trap

The Venus Trap is aptly named
for the fair-bristled leaf-folds that
breathe thick sultry enticements
on the airs to errant turquoise
shimmering armoured flies,

who salivate gluttony and groan their lust,
whose divided eyes turn red with bulging,
as they light their crusty feet
and trace trails of disease
on sauced green plates.

Moth in flame, wasp in syrup.
Katana slice, morphine overdose.
Splattered by finest falling grand piano.
Rundown by humming red high-gloss Ferrari.
Sent to heaven by new young bride, rich old man.

Like a sick whore, perfumed, she offers
a vice of sweetest death to passers by.

Be slow and careful, she said at the counter,
as she handed me my store-bought prize.
She wants meat, that's for sure;
but she is plant, delicate.
When she yawns her bitty clam face,
feed her the tiniest meat you can.
Not too big, not too fast! Gently.
Or she may never open
for you again.
************************************

Passing By

I've seen you sitting,
you, the long, the white, the red-haired,
wearing Annex-girl chic, remarkable,
behind the glass of coffee shops
on College or Bloor, always with a friend,
maybe the same blond friend,
and I've passed you;
and I've passed you walking on Bloor St. too,
in your distracted self-observing way,
on footsteps that kind of just happen under you;
but I do, always something sadder,
if sweetly, for knowing and thinking your name,
and saying nothing,
mute, delighted, smiling in the brief eternity
between the lightening revelation
of Beautiful Free Soul
and city traffic thunder.
************************************

My Favourite

Now there! You see that?
Riding by above the flowing
flowery mauve skirt on bicycle?
Wearing braided white sandals, eh?

Those two opposite violin curves
and that smooth convex strip
of skin between the skirt waist
and the frill of blouse hem?

See how it shrinks, disappears
like a warm smile naturally,
evaporating into traffic
and other peoples' faces
and the debris of concrete
and civilization? Do you see it?

That's my favourite.
************************************

My Punk Girl

My punk girl says: Fuckin' flowers
in the fuckin' trees. What the fuck is this?
...Spring?

My punk girl has a gap in her te eth
through which she spits
the venom.

My punk girl never
looks at you directly
and especially when drunk
and if you catch her eyes passing
over you in passions, you see skulls.

My punk girl gets her tatts redone.
It hurts, she says - which,
I assume, is why.

My punk girl rattles long white petals
from short young trees: Ha-ha!
It makes a prettier now!

My punk girl lights fuses with her cigarettes'
cherries and flicks her smoking tips with
sparks and gunshot-like percussion.
My punk girl says: Walking.
That thing with your feet, right?
...and rolls her eyes to acquiesce.
Then halfway over says: Okay, I get it.
Bridge over water, black water, shaky lights.
I'm done; let's call a cab.
And does.

My punk girl says: I'm afraid of heights!
Leaping to the railing, causing me
to choke on a heartbeat.

My punk girl drinks
gin (anyway she can)
or vodka (straight)
or whiskey (no water)
or tequila (no lime)
or wine
or beer,
that or whatever else you got'll do.

My punk girl thinks safe sex
is for safe people, but oral hygiene
and mouth piercings are too much of a risk.

My punk girl has
scars with histories
whose scars have histories
whose scars were too drunk to recall
who or how or what or when - ie. in what part
of the missing life chunk
it was that...
gasps, corkscrew, and razorblades,
and her soft white skin smothered in red-lipstick kisses.

My punk girl says suddenly: Fuck, CJ! Since it's fuckin'
every second fuckin' word I fuckin' say,
I thought you'd fuckin' take
my fuckin' hint
by the incessant repe-fuckin'-tition
without the fuckin' need for a fuckin' explanation!

So...

And she puts me in a grunting clawing grappling mood
with the sharp raised hook of a pencil-thin black brow
and the gouging look of one brown dead forward eye.

...we fuck.
************************************

Far North of Kansas

From here it seems

Nationalism =

a few more shots of Jack Daniel's Tenessee Sour Mash Whiskey Old No. 7
+ we'd lynch ya for kicks if the sheriff weren't right there sittin' drunk
+ Confederate flags, instead of rear windows, in pick-up trucks
+ too many tightly spun nuts in the backward Bible Belt
+ who needs all that stupid geography stuff anyway
+ "We Watch FOX News" bumper stickers
+ cuz we speak American here, boy,

give-and-take the death-penalty.

I wonder why, were I, South and down under,
to murder a woman, crack her bones, carve her,
and eat her flesh, then I would be a cannibal murderer;

and I would, perhaps not unreasonably, receive that penalty of death?
Were I, on the other hand, to napalm
villages of plant, animal, human, indiscriminately,
because, I'm sorry honey, but that's our carrot in your garden,

and some skinny furious motherless black-eyed young David
hurled a rock from the toothy rubble of his stomped home,
under which his three cooked sisters lay swallowed,

and, Heaven's Grace!, it cleaved my head
and spilled my brains on foreign dust,
I would then die a death, where

by death

I mean a privilege of heroes.
************************************

Saddam Hussein

You were an evil man forced underground
and your execution will not be mourned
nor will your tyrant's life be missed;
and you will know a tyrant's hell.

I do not argue for the guiltlessness of a tyrant.

You hung whores in cracked-neck scores,
roped from the public architecture for the sake
of death-spectacles of Islamic decency; their blood
has bled onto bricks re-stamped with your ruling name.

Your political opponents realized
in the act that came upon them
that assassination was with you
a matter of necessary course.

Your nation's children held guns
that fired on your enemies' men.

Men who puked their bloody lungs while dying
will offer a chorus of burning stenches
into your dead breaths.

The emblematic predatory bird
stooped to ripping worms
from thickened earth
and found you
wriggling.

But for all the framing let a word be said:
For all your "Weapons of Mass Destruction",
that slogan of stupidity, you had a few moldy
Petrie dishes stacked in a wheezing refrigerator.
************************************

The Inuit Hunter's Wife

I used to be a little girl. Now I am the hunter's wife.
He is a great hunter. What is a great man?

When I see a bird my heart escapes.
When he sees a bird he takes his aim.
The living bleed, dead too. I use my knife.

In Winter here the white bees fly,
fly thick, you cannot see, they sting.
In Summer here the black fly bites
and the vulture-sun circles above.
The meat smells faster
so I work faster.

In Spring between my husband is a ferryman.
He rides his skiff with his rusted gun beside snow-cliffs;
he rides on the ocean's black rivers; and they come, they come,
on rafts on rivers the dead come home for dinners,
their killer at their tails, their entrails waiting
to be pulled by expert hands,
my expert knife.

Outsides, they change with the seasons,
like the Arctic fox white in the Winter.
Insides, they are always the same.

The rules I know, I've made my own,
colours, shapes, their parts are parts of me.
I used to know not any game, I was afraid of my knife;
but I am always winning now, I am queen in my dim-lit room.
The games are simple to me, like pulling apart the children's blocks,
the ones with sticky dots, disconnecting animal blocks;
and I use my hands, I use my knife.

Heaven beams 100 versions of grace to our white dish.
Children wait, watch, scream, sweat in our hot house.
My hunter watches too, silently, silent always man.
My son will be a hunter too one day, it is our way.
Everyone is happier in front of the wide screen.
They are in their underwear. I do not join.

My husband snores. Sometimes I scratch him
while I am asleep. He shows me the marks
when I wake up. He does not mind.
He has scabs and scars.

When the plastic burns away with the pockets
of urine and excrement and paper wads,
the bottles stay, the cans stay,
stay on to smell
like razors in gasoline.
Whiskey bottles stand
black, black gravestones
shattered when the children play.
Our teeth make wreaths for the leftover cans.

I have heard the ice is melting, sealing more difficult,
that seal pups die, float from seal mothers to Mother the Sea.
I too have seen unborn seal pups. They are small, slimy, with big eyes.

The Arctic spreads out on her back, her glaciers jut like knees,
and through ice-canals to water courses crimson avalanche.
Pup-slush rushes down, her broken womb is bleeding,
staining her snowy legs, staining red dark water.
I see this, in sweating dreams, cold death.
When new life shrieks unheard in water,
when lungs fill first with brine not air,
how the cold claws to the heart,
how death comes corkscrew,
how the death makes slow.
I have known it, too, gulping the salt,
a child in the ever-night beneath the white ice,
de-fingered, de-toed, de-limbed by talons of the freeze,
felt it quick like a blow, travelling through shocked stillness
like electrocution; and having known it, too, the cold, the black,
an empty sky from which the stars have snowed away
become lethally thick,
having surfaced blue pale
as a floe, I am never warm again.

The ice goes, gone,
the canyons widening
to more black ocean floor.
And are we going with it now?
I do not see; what is now our way?
The ice gone, we are as the animals, naked,
exposed to strangeness; where is what we know?
.
Sea Mother!
The Lights!

The fox's tail is on fire, silver sky-herring schools flash.
Come home, my children, come home, come home!
The Lights are out, out! The bright wind is blowing.
Whistle and the Dead will snatch your skulls.
My boy, my girl, come home, come home,
or the Dead will snatch your skulls away
and split them for their soccer match!
.
The dead fall on my feet, with my hunter's nod.
I do not have girl-toes anymore. I work.
I work my hands, my knife,
skinning, dripping,
scraping, scraping;
death sticks to fingers,
filling creases, under nails;
tar ridges on the steel, my knife.

I draw plastic blinds at a late bright hour,
our other windows are covered in foil,
and I pat my children into their beds
with hands that smell of blood, oils, kerosene.
I tell them stories that were told to me.
They go to sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
I remember sleep. I take their brown fingers
out of long black hair I had let down
for them and tie it back again.

I return to the dim room square where I am queen, where
spots and smears blacken the linoleum floor; I pluck
the feathers from a speckled long-necked bird,
that is beautiful, its beak hard, down soft,
ieyes closed... that is so beautiful
with its long
limp
neck.
************************************

Grassroots Xianity

When the End of the World comes, you will be channel-surfing,
or web-browsing, boob at the tube or zombie-d by screen.
What did you think you'd be doing? Something special?
When the trumpets of the Apocalypse are resounding,
you will want to check your emails one last time
and stop in at the bathroom to try-if-you-can't
and to fuss over your hair a bit, because
there's almost no time left, you see;
and, also, it is wise to be prudent
and take care of one's friends
and God wants us our best,
u'd think never if not now.
When Atlantis boils up out of the sea,
which might be a while with our ice-cap situation,
you will be couched, munching salty, delicious, lip-shrinking,
kettle-cooked potato chips chips, chips chips-
entertained, but not laughing.
When Hell freezes over, the devils will finally
be able to make step-ladders that don't melt
back to magma in their immortal artisan hands.
Then, then, then - you look out! There's a trap-doorunder the throw rug in your living room
and its hinges are creaky
but it's there.
When they drop the Bomb, in only a matter of days now,
hiding under the table will require both getting up
and crouching, so it's only fair to warn you;
and that's an ass-load more than
lifting a finger or thumb,
so... perspective.
When it all goes to shit, there will be no trees left
to make sufficient paper clumps to smear it all aside.
When the shit hits the fan, well, just always
carry a dark umbrella in your handbag. Always.
When the Dead walk the Earth, in their flaky skins
and by the yawning of their jaws, risen from dry centuries
of death-slumber, strong minty mouthwash and anti-dandruff
shampoos will be our secret weapons... but shush!
We can't let the Other Side become aware
of all our cogent strategizing.
& when the white Christ comes cruising down in his golden Cadillac,
mallet and briefcase in hand, with his pen-drive digital history of Every and All,he'll get the finger from a bunch of skull, leather, chain punks if he refuses the squeegee,
or a righteous flat tire if taking the squeegee
he refuses the clink offer of loose change.
It doesn't matter whose son you are
or what your glorious inheritance:
We're talking Judgment here.
What are the signs? How will you know?
Keep listening for the white noise
and the long pure tone of flatline.
Watch for it, watch for it,
watch for it. Keep watching.
You will be offered holy salvation in three easy installments,
you will hear a melancholy horn-rich anthem,
and the last thing you will think
will be "What the...?"
Then crash, static, chaos.
In that fine hour, in that fine flash,
it's over. Man, woman, child, it's over.
Crunch, crunch, whoops, Bang! You lose.
Or, at least, for you there's no more winning.
When the dust clears over the vacant wasteland,
don't expect human footprint trails,don't expect frozen animal tracks,
don't expect plants, even cacti.
The Earth will just be floating like a blue bubble,
oily & pretty, smudged with orange & green,
then !POP! and after that who knows?
But watch how the bits of planet
will scuttle like cockroaches
to the walls
in the vacuum
of collapsing space.