On Tuesday December 19th I got a return call from one of
the events coordinators at the Gladstone Hotel in response to my request to use
the Art Bar for the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy’s 25th anniversary. I
explained to her that this had been a writers open stage that ran every week in
the Art Bar for almost six years. First off she gave me the disappointing news
that the Art Bar is no longer available for events because Ryerson University
uses the space as a gallery. I said I was still interested in using the
Gladstone for the celebration but when she asked me if I wanted catering of
food and beverages I told her that we could just get our drinks from the bar.
She asked if I was looking to rent a room for this event but I informed her
that I’m a poor poet on welfare and that I was hoping they would consider me as
part of the Gladstone’s cultural heritage and not charge me any money. She let
me know that she wasn’t the one to talk to about this event because she handles
rentals but she would pass my contact information on to one of the cultural
coordinators at the Gladstone.
That evening I
packed up my guitar, my pick and my tuner and headed out to Shab-e She’r. On
Brock Avenue, in addition to the bicycle route signs painted in white on the
road there was also printed in large letters was the word “SCHOOL”. This is
very dangerous. Stupid parents taking their children to school for the first
time might read that, think that’s where the school is and just leave their
kids in the middle of the street.
On College Street,
just before Ossington, I passed a parked van that had a Christmas wreath
hanging over its wing mirror.
While I was locking
my bike in front of the St Stephen in the Fields Anglican Church, Bänoo Zan came out for her
pre-event cigarette. On my way in I said hi and didn’t bother teasing her about
her smoking this time.
Inside, Cad Gold
Jr. and Tom Smarda were already there.
A few minutes
later, Bänoo came to
the stage and announced that she was looking for “brave” people to sign up for
the open stage. I asked if it was okay to read if I was a coward. My theory is
that there is really no such thing as bravery and that every apparently
courageous thing anyone does is actually motivated by fear. I read or sing my
poetry on stage because I am afraid not to.
I tuned my guitar
and was running through the song I planned to do that night, when Tom came over
with his guitar to play along. I went through the piece a couple of times and
then another that I plan to do at Shab-e She’r in about six months. Tom asked
if it was my own or one of my translations and I said it was the second. Cad
teased that I only do translations because I’ve run out of my own ideas. Tom
argued, “I’m sure he still does original stuff too.” Cad doesn’t know any
better but it’s a bit annoying when people don’t realize just how original and
creative poetic translations are. I know that Bänoo does translations of Persian poets, so she’d probably back me up
on this. I think that people that don’t do translations think that a translator
is just finding English equivalents to all the words of the other language. But
there are more factors to a poem than just the words. If there are rhymes then
new rhymes must be found; languages rarely have the same word play and
metaphors and so new ones have to be found that still fit the meaning of the
original poem.
For example, “Comme
un Boomerang”, a song by Serge Gainsbourg that I recently translated has to
have every other line rhyme with “rang” and still convey the meaning of the
return of the memory of a painful relationship. There are a lot fewer words
like that in the English language than there are in French. One of the verses
directly translates as: “I have on the tip of my tongue/your first name almost
erased/twisted like a boomerang/my mind had rejected/ from my memory because of
the carousing/and your love exhausted me.”
My adaptation of
the verse is: “On the tip of my tongue hangs/your name that I’d tried to
clear/twisted like a boomerang/my mind had thrown so far from here/the memory
of the whole shebang/when your love drained all the atmosphere.”
I started playing “One Hundred Hookers” and
then Cad told Tom that he’d co-written the song with me. I corrected him that I
had based the song on one line from one of his poems but he had not co-written
it. In addition to the line I used I wrote it inspired what I know about Cad’s life
and the claims that he makes. He declared that he’d co-written the song by
telepathically sending me the information. I told him he couldn’t even
psychopathically send messages to his own brain. He countered, “Yes I can
because I’m a psychopath!” I added, “You’re a licensed psychopath” and he liked
that.
It was getting
close to start time, so Tom went to his seat. Bänoo didn’t start on time though because I think she was waiting for
George Elliot Clarke. He finally breezed in at about ten after, came up to me,
shook my hand and sat down beside me, but one seat away. I asked him how,
“How’s the poetry teaching business?” He answered, “If only I could teach!” I
inquired if the university wasn’t letting him teach, but I’d misunderstood. In
his comment he’d been trying to show humility about is teaching abilities. I
wondered if he was doing Canadian Poetry again this year but he wasn’t. This
term he had taught African Canadian Literature and Black Epics of the Americas
with a focus on the long poem. He said next year he’d be teaching the
postgraduate Creative Writing course. I told him that I want to take that
course once I have my BA. He said, “Well, you have the talent, so I expect to
see you there!” That was nice for him to say and encouraging, since the Masters
course only accepts seven students a year.
I told George that
I was currently taking 20th Century U. S. Literature. He asked if we
were covering any non-fiction. I answered that we looked at some, such as
Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery”. George commented that Washington’s
autobiography had a lot of fiction in it. I added, “Don’t they all?” He nodded.
We started at
around 19:15 with the Laboni Islam reciting the native land acknowledgement.
Filling in as
photographer was Diem Lafortune. I’ve known her for years as a pretty good
musician and songwriter with the stage name of Mama D, but I never knew her
real name or that she did photography.
John Portelli
kicked off the open mic with a poem called “For Walid” – “Every day I see you
on your way to her … warm veil … Once there was Palestine … orange on her twin breasts … Like you, I
am fugitive … without knowing who I am … born to give birth to love … The
prophets are no longer scrupulous … the way pomegranates ripen … You, lover of
the princess … the robin has chosen to perch right next to you …”
Before the next
reader, Bänoo took a
moment to acknowledge the Shab-e She’r team and to announce that one member,
Giovanna Riccio was sick at home.
Waleed was next and
told us that what he would be reading was something he’d written the night
before – “When people see the chair and not the person … the identity is stolen
away.”
From another poem –
“If you only knew … the words I used when I described you … the battles I have
to let you rest … what would you do?”
Laura DeLeon read
two poems.
From “Ode to
Autumn” – “Trail gazing above and star gazing below … the deep chill arrives …
before the uncertainty … the striking darkness cast against the night sky … the
wayfarer shall find his way home.”
From “Winter Be My
Bride” – “Take my hand and learn my love … Kiss my eyes so that I may see the
way … I have the thorn in my hand / you wear the crown … Why are hearts made of
stone?”
Peyton Brien read
“Tales of Twins and Wings and Other Lives” – “This twin within … in moments it
is she who rules … glimpsing fierce gods … We are knives as we struggle with
our magnificent failures … This distant smile … Nothing but ruin … No silk
roads glisten to guide our way … Who are you now … the quicksilver sky thundering
… Death swept down … Each of us offered death a poem … That doesn’t mean she
draws my twin and I into her arms … We have wings / Why do we not fly? / No
answer …”
Diem Lafortune read
“On Holy Back” – “My wound is still bleeding / and all the hugs in the world
aren’t helping … I need you to hold me / for all the mistakes … The reds will
bleed out … rewinding my flesh … I need you to hold me like a child … like only
a good poem can rescue me …”
Then she read
“Fishing” – Where is that place / between agony and ecstasy … Where is that
silent pool where the rod tips, trips and ripples … Where is that place where
no means no … Where maybe is a cold, deep place … Where without the muse to cut
the line … Where is that place where truth can gut the lies?”
Nick Micelli read
“Solstice Poem” – “The longest night … My soul goes down deep … With old
faithful sadness I am never along … As the gloom fills with light there’ll be
none left but me.”
Annick read two
poems.
From “Magpies” – “A pest / quotidian /
You say ‘beautiful’ / and spark derision … The whiteness of the sky … rippling
our vision into mirage …”
From Translation Politics – “Finger
fucking you / came so easy last night … You said your body is strange / but no,
it’s like a song.”
A few minutes into
the readings one of the scheduled photographers had arrived. Bänoo announced at this point
that a third had shown up and on hearing, George turned to me and enthused,
“We’ve got paparazzi here tonight!”
Our first feature
was Lisa Richter, who first of all announced that some of her ESL students had
come to hear her read.
Her first poem was
“What You Find In the Attic” – “Beating the muffled footsteps into submission …
Bouquet of spider veins … The first great love that you … developed in a high
school darkroom … the past worms its way back …”
From “Long
Exposure” – “Sometime after midnight I found our old photos and contact sheets
… I scratched a mosquito bite until it bled … You backstroked towards me …
beneath the shadows that swam on the sloped ceiling … my hair still dripping
with lake …”
From “Boxing Day” –
“Along the curve of St Urbain … holding o to their original shape … dark in
Montreal … lifted off the loading dock … Green things groundhog up through the
thick mud … breathe in the stunted season …”
Lisa told us that
she wrote a series of poems based on some photo albums that she’d found
abandoned in a park.
From “Mountain Peak
at Red Rose” – “Nothing in these mountains would ever suggest convenience
stores … keeping propeller skins of vertigo away … intertwined more for warmth
than love … turning speech into constellations of syllables … dry needles and
bedrock.”
From “Cabin at Red
Rose” – Blackened roof … boards once nailed together … history of incomplete
stories … A white man spearing the myth of vertical power … Extract the Earth’s
… viscera and … process … setting out to chisel the mountain’s heart.”
Lisa informed us
that this was the last night of Hanukkah.
From “How to Write
a Hanukkah Poem” – “Choose your preferred spelling from the seven or eight
available … Latkes. Paper towels to soak up the grease … paper bags to soak up
the grease from the paper towels … Hard flakes of coloured wax … Don’t call the
menorah a hanukkiah, the proper word … you will alienate most people … Make dreidl
games dirty … Make space latkes that will get you high … Snort lines off … the
Talmud. Forget about inviting distant relatives … a catalogue of scars …”
Lisa shared that
she was living in Tel Aviv during the second intifada.
From “Gaza Under
Siege” – “ … house sitting … watering aloe and spider monkey … Slide open the
cool, mirrored doors … the nearby shudder of brush steel machines … the death
toll of children in Gaza reaches five-hundred … Sip your wine … until it reads
as diluted blood. Read the horror. Remember the sound of the fireworks in Tel
Aviv … could just as easily have been rockets … in Gaza, bodies … wood … and
metal … amass in baroque jumble … On Facebook … feeds of loathing, fear culled
from recipes … -- they brought this onto themselves, they hate us more than
they love their own – morsels you can no longer keep down, no longer …
kosher …”
Lisa’s next poem,
“Please Don’t Go! We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So!” was inspired by Maurice
Sendak – “Summer of ’35. The monsters / in your Brooklyn closet / go Look at
him / not a little / pischer anymore … Uncle Schmuel kisses you … Auntie
Rosie’s bosom / is a bosom … of moist cleavage she pulls / your face into …
groans of guttural Yiddish // On the way home from / school the Horowitz boys /
corner you in the alley / call you faygeleh … mocking you / with flopping
wrists, spritzing / lisp-spray through their teeth / into your eyes … mash your
face / with meaty fists // … someday /
in Greenwich village, you’ll find / other boys … who will spoon / you on lumpy
mattresses … whose / bodies you will devour with groans / of guttural Yiddish
// the hairy-starred night, your breath a silver / diaphanous shroud in … onyx
air … armies of arms / holding up a bridegroom’s chair … // you land … where
the wild ones / grunt and dance the world into creation / scoop you up into a
shaggy embrace / you hope they won’t let go.”
From “If I Could Be
Anyone I Would Be Winona Ryder” – “She’s corseted and hoop skirted … She’s that
shiny haired girl drinking big gulps on a Dallas morning … That one cup of java
and one Camel Light pass between them … Looking for someone to shoot the shit
…”
Lisa’s final poem
was written for Kate Braid and entitled “Form Work” – “Rank with sweat, hard
hated / in the trenches where men before you / have have slipped and stuttered,
you build the molds / that retain words or cement, construct / foundations …
you split the earth’s stone lip, heavy heel / on the shovel, grunt as it slides
in / like the sound of a poem cleaving / when the heart is attuned to the
breath … loved the honest thud … generous / creak of ladder rung … the
reassurance of gravity … Let this act of making go on. Let this winter morning
sink … fangs into my hide … you are slinging your hammer … showing me how it’s
done.”
Lisa Richter is
addicted to lists. Of course, nothing is off limits to a poet but if the poem
is written around the list as opposed to the list being a servant to the poem,
it becomes a trap. Lisa is also heavily in need of an editor because overwrites
her poems. She adds far more descriptions and adjectives than are necessary to
convey the meaning. Quite often she makes a description obvious and then she
puts more description in as if she’s not confident that she’s done enough. She
needs an Ezra Pound to, as T. S. Eliot said he did for him on The Wasteland,
perform a caesarean on the poem before it stumbles into overkill.
Bänoo called a break, during
which time I softly practiced my song and to my left watched a continuous
procession of people come up to speak with George and to give him things.
Kintsugi (Claudia) gave him a beautiful Christmas card from homemade paper and
some excerpts from her novel; John Portelli gave George a book of poetry. A few
others approached him as well and it reminded me a of the nativity scene, with
George Elliot Clarke being the central figure.
After the break, Bänoo introduced George as
having been the fourth poet laureate of Toronto and as the current
parliamentary poet laureate of Canada. She declared that he is the best poet
laureate because he comes to Shab-e She’r sometimes to perform on the open
stage.
To be fair, I don’t
think that George would come to read on the open mic at Shab-e She’r if his
girlfriend was not volunteering there.
George began with a
shout out to Giovanna Riccio, whom he said was “the companion of my heart”. He
said Shab-e She’r is special because that’s where he and Giovanna met. I assume
they came together as a result of being the two features a couple of years ago.
Bänoo didn’t mention that George
being the feature this time was the first break from her record of never having
the same feature twice.
George also thanked
the “battery of paparazzi” that was working the floor this night. I think that
having his picture taken is something that George likes, along with being
addressed as “Doctor Clarke”.
George read from
his most recent collection, called “Canticles I Volume II”.
He began with
“Post-Bellum Negro Inventory” – “Now cometh … the precipitously iniquitous
Negro … the cotton pickin, banjo pickin, nose pickin Negro / the recidivist,
throat cutting, Republican-Party Negro / the lavendar-gum, ivory-tooth,
indigo-sable Negro / the tubercular, diabetic, syphilitic Negro … the hobo,
itinerant, nowhere to go Negro / the alcoholic, Catholic, imbecilic Negro … the
Negro doctor … the bamboozling and/or wham-bam Negro … the Negro who sleeps at
your table and eats in your bed / the Negro of magnificent assets (auctioned
off) / the denim’d-down damn- y’all-to-hell Negro … the Negro of needless
sentences and useless explanations … the Negro whose sex imposes midnight on a
cloudy nymph … the Negro whose head is stuck inside a lyncher’s rope … the
silly coot Negro, tomcatting and twat stealing still / the Uncle Tom Negro,
quick with Bible verse and razor blade / the Negro spewing Machiavelli and
chewing macaroni … the Negro who never lets your blushing wife rest.”
George explained
that in this book he takes on characters and writes in their voices.
He clued us in that
his next poem asks what if Malcolm X had published his autobiography when he
was still a gangster. From “The Autobiography of Detroit Red (1946)” – “ … we
got summoned to the spastic casket opening / to view the cold drainage … his
sliced off trunk / limbs dirtied by slippage neath the trolley / in the
nigger-hating street … a hearty Upset, an inversion: His Death … Papa’s played
“an exaggerated suicide” … Mom’s complexion mirrored a boiled egg / She now
studied white people thoroughly / could spy the penis a Klansman … Her prayers
enunciated puke … How could we retaliate / for Earl Little’s bedraggled corpse
… transfigure Malcolm Little … into … Detroit Red … do creature-pleasing
feel-good Crime / while maintaining a spine of ice … bitter in my Splendour … a
shoe helps in trampling a throat / know how to appeal and how to appal … enjoy
the pure groans of a doll’s twitching / my slang flowed vivid and acidic as
graffiti … To be destructively digestive / to rivals, I’d be as blunt and
backward / as is a toilet flushing … To be big on Sex and short on Love …
diddling white witches all night … I boasted a machine gun / and I was
trigger-happy, dapper / no jigaboo bugaboo / Detroit Red … allies me with Mao …
authentically / drastic … mama’s in a madhouse / accepting antiquated
lobotomies / and brothers have gone so insane / with nationalized Islam / they
think themselves Negro Mormon / squares: same shoe, shirts, suits / (I snatched up a Qu’ran in a liquor store
/ that is either a sign / or it’s dissonance) … I got into the rackets by
osmosis … I fell in with Sophia / slutty beauty … tight cunt putain … She be
surreally sexy … nipples erect under the bossy fluorescence / of streetlamps …
she was humid, a groaning anchor … mastered her bones … white as death … tried
her Virgin Mary miraculous vagine … cigarette sobbing smoke … I helped rough up
Sicilians … gangsters must be soldiers / never civilians … we’d tear out
intestines as if ropes / from a crimson
pulley … faces looked like crushed crabs / only stench could be heard … (One
mobster got sliced and diced … a happy dog jumped upon him / gobbled … High
time to vamoose from Manhattan … crooks with a hard on / for a blonde wig and a
boob job … we rummaged damagingly / every property Sophia conned open … Shorty
almost short circuited / when he heard our sentence … Bunny Yeager / is
snapping Betty Page … Mao’s kickin the white boys outta China / impeccably
sinister, as I must become.”
From “Spirituals” –
“God never say no mumblin word … Our good god be a man of war … I hate the
cross … Ogle Jesus … Wiley as Homer … gleans soulful sweets from his lyric
orchard … Adam and Eve, like us, be Black …”
George’s next poem
was about the famous boxing match in 1938 between Joe Louis (the Brown Bomber)
and Max Schmeling. He let us know that this one was written in the voice of
Langston Hughes and informed us with a whisper that Hughes was “also a
Communist!”
From “Louis vs.
Schmeling (1939)” – “Joe’s blows arrive from vesuvian depths / I watch Max’s
shoes … like feet having a heart attack … I observe men’s hatted heads / jump
and jerk like violin bows … Dude emerges as a sassy-ass assassin / set to
wallop infuriatingly … that diplomat shat outta the asshole / of Berlin …
Schmeling squats … Carpet bombings occupy that pale visage … he seems lame,
then tumbling … like a ripped apart swan …”
George explained
that during the Fugitive Slave Act, any Black could be snatched off the street
and shipped south, whether they were escapees or not. From “The New York Times
Uncovers Arson” – “Slaves packed that burning house … Not even our most anxious
guitars / get close to the precise noise / an infant makes / as fire eats
through the flesh … Torrid immolation was their church … eligible to be
destroyed … bodies looked like blackened fish … under the ragged moon …
heart-strings sagged out of tune … The blazing house resembled a bird cage …
(Many do skedaddle to Gam Sham … as discretely as poisons / slip into soups.) …
My nightmare privilege was to hear … each crackling diminuendo of the darkies …
Then showered down indifferent starlight … Raking the embers, I felt sick to
find / a prune shaped man who’d burst open / his guts frying like all the pork
/ he likely loved to eat … One mother had a tarpaper spine / her face was a
charred shoe // I even stepped on - and squashed - a heart … It squirted out as
my foot pressed down … I stumbled over a hybrid body / a mulatto weeping
caramel … a babe already a lantern / of lustrous flies … charred nudity / and
lacerating sunlight … No crows will fuss over this burnt meat.”
George announced
that his last poem was going to be “Bessie Smith’s Seminal Blues (ca 1935)”. As
an introduction, he recounted how Smith had died on the road trying to get to a
Negro hospital because the nearby White hospital had refused to give her a
blood transfusion. George was about to read, but then he stopped and decided
that, because we were in a church, he
didn’t think it was appropriate to read it because it’s too raunchy. Some
people moaned in disappointment. As George was turning the pages looking for
another poem, I called out, “Jesus says it’s okay!” George said, “Okay,
Christian, I will accept your permission!”
From “Bessie
Smith’s Seminal Blues (ca 1935)” – “Won’t take no mean bully for my daddy /
Want no cock-jammed-up-his-arse fool … nor no blackface Uncle Tom fool … take a
snake-hip man with a jackhammer tool … I like a gin-white belle who’s spinny /
while her jaws be slurpin my tits / I make her twat twist and shimmy … Then
apes leap atop each jigglin bitch … True: I’m an adventurous sistah / Got a bottomless
uncanny cunt … Split white rum with rat’s-ass Rastus … I like boys with the
Grand Canyon for brains … Serve me a gal … Her disobedient panties bubblin …
sweet shenanigan juice … so she blushes and gushes blues.”
Before leaving the
stage, George told us that he had a CD of his poetry that he recorded with jazz
musicians in Italy and that he was selling it for “Only twenty dollars.” The
audience came back with the traditional ritualistic and comedic audience
response to such a declaration of price: “Only twenty dollars?” George then
turned this into a rhythmic call and response chant as he kept on repeating his
phrase and the audience enthusiastically participated.
One of the many
striking aspects of George Elliot Clarke’s poetry is his rich command of
vocabulary and his ability to not only marry sophisticated words and street
words, but to do it in ways that create a type of syllabic music when they are
read aloud. Because of this his writing takes on an odd but effective hybrid of
academic and down and dirty language, as if he’d turned a reference library
into a barrelhouse. It’s hard to describe in writing George’s reading style.
His emphasis on certain syllables in a given phrase is quite often improvised
and he may repeat an entire line once or twice for meaning and rhythmic effect,
even though it’s not repeated in the text. George Elliot Clarke is one of the
best poets around.
Bänoo seamlessly continued with
the second half of the open stage and I was the first one she called.
I stood with my guitar
in front of the microphones and joked that I couldn’t stand further back
because George had just sucked all of the air off the stage.
I played and sang
my translation of Jacques Prevert’s “Les Feuilles Mortes” – “ … Well, dead
autumn leaves can be raked up and collected / That’s one thing that I did not
forget / Yes, dead autumn leaves can be raked up and collected / but so as well
can memories and regrets / that the north wind takes to be lost then / into the
night’s cold oblivion / But one more thing that I have not forgotten / is when
you used to sing me your song // And you and I were like that song / when you
loved me and I loved you / and we both lived together as one / you loving me
and me loving you // Ah, but life often unravels sweet romance / so silently
and with so much ease / and the sea erases from the sand / the footprints of
lovers / on the beach …”
My playing wasn’t
flawless but it wasn’t too bad. All my extra practicing out of fear of screwing
the song up seemed to pay off.
After me was
Rajinerpal Pal. From “Why Now?” – “Because destruction has become an operating
system … Because an entire history can be whitewashed … Because there are many
ways of being held prisoner … Because the comedians have become the soothsayers
… Because we celebrated too soon … Because the centre cannot hold … Because
there is an unlimited supply of fresh hells … Because this is no time for
silence.”
Daniel Kolos read
“A Sack of Sugar” – “Bombs exploded … Russian soldiers robbed civilians of
jewellery … The residents were trapped … Russian soldiers hunted German snipers
… soldiers in red-scarred helmets … I was in my mother’s arms … A soldier gave
my mother a sack of sugar … She created small bags of sugar for other edibles
…”
From Cad Gold
Junior’s poem – “I wake up from another dream of you in a cold sweat … not
feeling myself … You are right beside me … laughing about the joke I made about
your see-through crotchless panties … What I’m left with is my soul.”
From Kintsugi’s
first poem – “I never wanted children … One stayed on a little too long … A
future was born.”
Kintsugi sang her
poem “Song of Loss” in a high voice – “I love you / I miss you / I want you /
You were dead / You were dead / You were dead / I want you / I need you / I
miss you / I love you / Love you / Love you.”
I assume that
Kintsugi chose her stage name after the Japanese method of repairing broken
pottery with gold and lacquer in such a way that the cracks and break points
become gorgeous golden patterns and the fixed pottery is considered to be much
more beautiful for having been broken.
From Jovan Shadd’s
first poem – “I’m the club megapixels … Self promotion is the new language of
achievement … Nothing exists that can’t be proven on the internet … so I’m
waiting on notifications to notify me I’m still here.”
From Jovan’s second
poem – “My mother and father when they call my name … the literature as litmus
… I want to speak the same … I want to speak it so it differs.”
From
Khadeeja Sajid’s poem – “I’ll teach her everything I know … in six-point font …
She’ll be half as comprehensible and twice as strong … She’ll have dark skin
and dark remarks … She won’t be pretty and she won’t be quiet … She’ll be my
poetry and I can’t wait to meet my baby.”
George
said he had to leave, but I bought one of his CDs before he left.
Chai
was wearing a t-shirt that was divided into two categories, a “Black List” and
a “Green List”. The Black list had a column of environmentally damaging things
and the Green list had the opposite.
Chai
read the same poem that he has read at Shab-e She’r for at least the last six
months, “The ABCDs of Climate Change” – “A is for Alberta … B is for B.C. … C
is for California, Canada, carbon footprint … D is for downsizing … H is for
hurricane … T is for torrents … W is for do you wish or want a weather wall by
your window … Reduce your carbon footprint … No poem can save you … They do not
need your approval … There is no app.”
John
Mathew had a long black beard and long black hair that was dyed at the back and
sides. He shared that he’d been writing for two months. He read three poems.
From
“Body” – “Feminine … Unabashedly feminine … A tapestry woven … Sexual, textual
… I can’t find it doctor … Femininity not in this body …”
From
“This is You” – “Your fascinations with my oscillations … I’m sorry you’re
pressed … Trespassing your fiefdom … I’m unlike you.”
From
“Child” – “I was was I … Son daughter … Chest out, standing tall … Wrong … Boy
… I am was always my mother’s child / I still will be.”
Susan
sang with a strong and impressive voice, her poem in the form of an old style
slave chant at the very roots of the Blues, with accompaniment from Nick
Micelli as he played the response to each call with mallets on a tone drum.
From
Susan’s poem - “Master … move them bones … Mistress caught them when she come
on home … A child was born, twas lily white … She done died when she had that
child … Put your body on the garbage heap … Mistress move to a county over
there … Mistress says she moved cause she got so feared … Master’s lily white
child work along side … Put that shovel in the ground … He wants her buried and
he wants her blessed … Master take a Bible done say your prayer … He done bury
her there … No mistress here, no mistress I see … He gonna wait till he gonna die
… He gonna join she in the big blue sky.”
Rex
Ricardus read “Traditions” – “ … Nobody with my blood understood … I hate my
family … They never found that some things are more important than others …
Look daddy, see what I can do … Learning to do something for the very first
time … Not traditions anymore, just symptoms …”
Shafia
Al-Khair explained that his poem had been written during the Arab Spring “when
everyone was happy!” The poem was called “Osiris” and Shafia told us he could
only read it in Arabic.
The final poet of
the night was Tom Smarda, who stepped onto the stage with his guitar before Bänoo had a chance to introduce
him. In introducing his song, Tom said, “There’s a reason we create poverty …
There’s a choice between starving and joining the military.”
From “Recruitment
Into the Military” – “If people could be coerced into jumping off the roof of a
downtown office tower and yell some nationalistic slogan, and were told that
they’d get a medal if they enlisted, would they do it? Would they make the
ultimate sacrifice … Get hit with teargas … Get hit with batons … The full
weight of the military state against those who demonstrate … Would politicians
ever think to send their own kids … Would we be any closer to peace?”
At the end of the
song I shouted, “Sign me up, Tom!”
He called back,
“You’re drafted, Christian!”
Before leaving I
went over to chat with Cy Strom, who was with Laura DeLeon and Nick Micelli.
Nick brought up the piece that I’d done and that I’d mentioned it was a
translation. I explained that I’d translated it from Jacques Prevert and that
the music was by Joseph Kosma, with whom Prevert collaborated on both songs and
movies. Prevert wrote the screenplays for several films, most notably, “Les
Enfants du Paradis”, which is my favourite film of all time, and Kosma wrote
the scores. Cy of course was familiar with the song “Les Feuilles Mortes” and
with a famous and less interesting English adaptation called “Autumn Leaves”.
At that moment I couldn’t pull the lyricist’s name out of my memory. The name
“Mercer” kept on popping into my head but I kept thinking that it couldn’t be
Rick Mercer. On the way home I recalled that it was Johnny Mercer.
Cy commented that
in my performance there had been only momentary hints at the original melody
and he assumed that was my intention. I confirmed that I usually try to make my
adaptations different from the originals. I admit that my version is barely
recognizable musically but it’s also much closer in meaning to “Les Feuilles
Mortes”. I could learn to play my version in the original, recognizable style,
but mine just evolved a different way but I still think it sounds good anyway,
though probably less sweet.
When I was
unlocking my bike, Tom left the church and came over to hug me goodbye. He told
me that he prefers my own songs to my translations. I told him I can do both.
The translations are an interesting writing exercise and they also expand my
guitar playing into unfamiliar styles and chords.
After Tom left, Cad
came up and walked with me almost to Ossington, all the while telling me about
all the many wealthy, successful and sexy girlfriends that he claims to have
nowadays, that are all doctors and lawyers and that love him for his body and
his intellect. I’ve noticed that since Cad turned 60 this year his
“girlfriends” have suddenly become professional women. Strange though that none
of these successful women that are supposedly nuts about him ever go with him
anywhere or even show up on social media.
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