October 26, 1994: I performed a list of the things women wrote about Dannie Marx on the washroom wall

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I was supposed to be at the Islington passenger pick-up area for 12:45 to get a ride to the Etobicoke Art Group’s studio. But I was a little late and the kiss and ride section had been moved because of construction. Since no one was there when I got there I assumed that they had come and gone. I couldn’t find the number for the place but I called a few people who did have it and finally got through so someone came to get me. After posing there I got dropped off at the subway and went home for a while. In the evening I worked for the Ontario College of Art in the Stewart Building and then went to Albert’s Hall to perform on the open stage. I found out that next week they would be switching the open stage to Thursday nights. So knowing I wouldn’t be back I got Jackie Just to go into the women’s washroom and copy for me all the stuff women wrote on the walls about the host Dannie Marx, then I went up on stage and read the list as a poem. Then I performed “I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound”: 

I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound 

I am the spilled fresh crimson mirror 

that’s still forever at the spiral’s centre

in the open wound that is the rock and roll night 

tangling a cat’s cradle made of dying light 

I take one last suck off of a bloody sunset 

and now it’s empty for another day 

then I head up to the old Green Dolphin 

accentuating my minority 

My natural mutability 

lets me breathe the air of every culture

I don’t need to dig my roots in any 

just ride their fringes like a leper 

like a leper surfer 

The street and I are equal partners 

neither is boss and neither is slave 

It pours itself into my pen to siphon its darkness 

while I pick the bones from 

I pick the bones out of its psychic graves 

After one long beer I’m back out on the street 

where traffic threads the needle of my mind 

ready for anything and also nothing 

either could happen here at any time 

I love this place and the flowers that blossom 

on the hearts of the weeds of humanity 

and it’s a warm breezy summer evening 

with lots of action on the spinning 

on the spinning street 

The streets are in the process of fermenting 

into a torrent flood of mucous wine 

I am a bitter aphrodisiac 

thrown in the mixture for a flawed design 

Parkdale’s teeth are mirroring the moon 

 as it chews on something funky and red 

while by day it merely nibbles on a bone 

digestion echoing the groans 

The groans of its dead 

Bernice has gotten in another fight 

She’s lost her life out here upon the street 

I don’t mean that she’s a motionless corpse

she’s a very animated crack zombie 

Her spirit left her a long time ago

now she just uses a powdered instant 

From street to jail the girls will come and they’ll go 

busty Bernice remains 

She remains un-busted 

The street and I are equal partners 

Neither is boss and neither is slave 

It bums a match from me to scatter its darkness 

while I pick the bones from 

I pick the bones out of its psychic graves 

Roofless tunnels of these city streets 

house the zigzag of human endeavour 

like a hyper-spatial video-arcade

shooting cartoon targets of forever 

Now Parkdale is broken 

Parkdale has died 

and yet Parkdale jerks back to spastic life 

over on the other side

of the barbed wire nightmare 

and the narcotic lie 

We see it fanning its very own funeral pyre

in the process of waving “Goodbye” 

            I think the reaction was pretty good. The other host, Tenesia had me come up again near the end since I wouldn’t be coming back, so I did my new song “Full of You”: 

I am full of you

I was full of you when I first met you 

Full of your presence and your appetite for me 

Well I’m still full you 

Although I try I can’t forget you 

Full of your absence and indifference to me 

Full of you Full of you I’ve had it up to here with you 

Fed up with waiting and just hoping for your call 

Full of you Full of you If only I could hear from you 

Even a kind word might help to cushion my fall 

Filled up with our history and our future 

We both starved the moment 

Filled up with your pain I fed you spoonfuls of my strength 

Filled up with your strength I merely served you platefuls of my pain 

Filled with your passion I extended mine in length 

Filling me with truth what in the world was left inside of you 

Perhaps you lost your grasp and thought that I was dangerous 

Full of me Full of me You left behind your just desserts

I was still eating but you said you couldn’t wait 

Full of me Full of me So full of me it must have hurt 

To join another table where ate and ate and ate and ate and ate 

Now I’ve had my fill of trying so hard to interpret 

The fluctuations of your fickle will

Oh baby I’ve concluded you are

full

of

it