July 15, 1993: Someone in the audience got mad because I said I was bigger than Bob Dylan

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I got up at 6:15 and left my place at 6:30. I got to Union Station in plenty of time to catch the GO Train to Oakville. I didn't see Susana Wald anywhere and so I rode the train alone. But she got on the bus to Sheridan College and sat with me. I worked for her until 12:30 and then I had an hour for lunch. It was very cold in the studio and so I needed a heater and it caused me to doze during the longer poses but I did mostly gestures. Susana and I rode back to Toronto together and then took the subway north. I got off at Queen and went to make some photocopies. I walked to the Zoo Bar because I'd heard there was an open stage there, but the door was locked and the people inside didn't know anything about any poetry reading. I met another guy who'd come for the same thing and he told me that there was an open stage that night at The Future Bakery and so I went there with him. At first the situation at Future's didn't seem like it was going to happen and so I decided to go home but to check the Zoo Bar one more time. But the door was still locked and so I went back to Future's and the open stage was just about to start. The guy I'd met before, along with another person and me decided to split a fifteen minute set. I was the first to go on and the first thing I did was announce that I was bigger than Bob Dylan, which for some reason made a guy in the audience mad, I guess because he didn't get the joke. I did the recent poem I wrote about my daughter and also "Hungry Hippunk": 

Well I decided to go down

way down

to the worker's hall one morning 

mainly because I had no better

place to go 

You see I'd been up

all night

in one restaurant or another 

and I still didn't feel like sleeping or even 

going home 

It's just that the weather

was fine

and I needed a place to walk to

I didn't want a job but figured 

what the hell 

and who needs to punch 

a clock unless it is going to be a knockout

but I thought I'd abandon my sainthood for a 

choice of meals 

Well I had to stand in line

three hours until they opened up the building 

but I felt pretty good that morning

inexplicably 

My attention was slightly off key 

and leaning towards a future 

when I wouldn't be so happy 

to be roaming the streets 

I wanted to stay free 

but really couldn't be too sure 

when I'd be kicking myself in the buttocks

for not having food to eat 

You know there's

nothing worse 

than milking the streets for anger 

and straining your heart to separate

the change from the chaff 

Because there's no such thing as 

spare change 

panhandling is backbreaking labour 

and one little toss of a coin could slice your 

soul in half 

I just wanted the means to sit

in my room

and drug my spirit with groceries 

then dilute my mind with a big stack of 

comic books 

so that’s why I crossed 

that bridge 

during a rare Vancouver sunrise 

to end my life of swimming 

for a life of swinging 

on a minute hand

hook 

            The MC gave me a $7.50 food voucher which we deducted from our beer. Rob did a couple of poems later on. At 22:00 I went over to Mudds Cabaret where I ran into a Native woman named Marjorie Rebeiro who I'd hear read there before and found her to be a great writer. I said I'd like to switch poems with her sometime and she said she'd like to do that. She told me she'd drop by my place on Tuesday.