Saturday, 20 May 2023

May 20, 1993: I read at my first poetry open stage and it went over well


Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I took a lot of my writing to work at Northern Secondary School. I finished copying out what was worth keeping from my letters to Whitefeather when she was in prison. I got a lot of other stuff organized. After work I went home briefly and then headed out to work at the Ontario College of Art. I posed for Sandra Altwerger's class. She did a couple of demos that I got to keep. After work I went to Mudds Cabaret for their poetry open stage. After listening to a few readings I got up and read "Phallus in Wonderland":

Through early manhood he hardly ever got laid
but kept the hope of it warm upon his eyes' pilot flame
Every girl he saw was added to 
his fantasy’s over spiced but undercooked stew

His stare was caught by women like a hot potato thrown
at their electric defenses far too fast and far too soon
He wanted one of them to strip and to tan
beneath the frigid blue light from the eyes of this man

He wanted girls to slip into his iron gaze
as if it were one of their very favourite negligees
Calmly as if it was the private space
that surrounds an auto-erotic state of grace

and so he spent his free time agonizingly
moping around in his prison of celibacy
staring at the stains on his hotel room walls
and holding back from the impulse to empty his balls

He was saving it for "Her" but it didn't really matter who
Just any generic vagina to tide him till love arrived would do
Because the delicate textured fineness
aroma, heat & taste of the sweet milk of human grindness

in each of those sugar-swamp pleasure caves
between the legs of nature's daughters
surpassed what oily manipulations
his dealer's right hand could offer

Sometimes he could stretch it for a month of time
but overloaded the circuits of his two x-ray eyes
which became enormous spinning balls of fire
breaking free of his skull to become its satellites

As the bloodshot electrons orbited his skull
they had an effect on his brain with their magnetic pull
His neurotic-timeless-bomb of a cerebellum
finally ticked its last, but froze in mid-explosion

to become a headdress made of crystalline fire
a prismatic sea anemone with each of its spires
pointing out one of the centerfolds that was nailed to his wall
Each needle was an antenna sending a beacon call

His Sunburst for a head began to amplify
and absorb the discharge from his sixty-watt pregnant light
channeling it into what illuminates dreams
and thereby melting the stasis of these porno queens:

forever imprisoned in flat moments of power
as unconscious constructors of testosterone towers
These priestesses of his single steepled church of self-love
slid their shiny well-oiled bodies right through limbo's windows

to waltz around him may pole style but counterclockwise
to the orbit being maintained by his eyeball satellites
whose centrifugal force was causing the tide
to rise in his penis as it was straining against this rape from inside

and yet it stood up on his testicles with testamental pride
like a winning touchdown scorer on a victory shoulder ride
like a tripod under an outlaw biker popping a wheelie
or a plane about to take off with its nose just off the runway

high up and rigid as a power salute
the ideals of an immigrant or the spunk of prostitutes
and then they moved in closer doing their surgery
with a technique learned while exiled in a future century

long, red scalpels at the end of each finger 
cut off his arm and replaced it with a demon jackhammer
The Spirits of their cunts began to haunt his right hand
made him grip his love-lever and then yank back his foreskin

His penis's head screamed in silent agony
like a tortured snail in a laboratory
its gasping hole opened and closed so hopelessly
like an eel that’s blowing kisses at eternity

Then all by himself he shifted into star drive
not caring where he was going or even when he would arrive
Slowly at first the pumping motion began
over and back, and over and back, then over and back again

but faster & faster till the pussy-starved flesh 
was glowing like a cinder nourished by sweet Girl-Scout breath
his hand, a transparent wall of moving meat
a window to this mating dance of a sausage on speed

But before his rocket could start blasting away
from his crotch in bright eruptions made of plasma and flame 
to attempt a temporary prison escape
an unauthorized crash-landing on the Planet Rape

his emergency cooling salvation system
released its precious payload of born-loser-semen
to die like children crusading in some enemy nation

and right then and there their holy spirits immortal 
got sucked into the now shrinking dimensional portal
and deep into the pink Venusian vampire cave
between the legs of Hustler's Honey of '78

leaving one sexual pauper now to tremble behind
wearing tingling flesh and pupils gulping for light
The Moment slowed itself back to its normal time
while he acquitted himself of any sexual crime

then wiped away the remaining shots of gelatin
and tossed the towel into the closet to feed his skeleton

            Halfway through the poem Diana Dufretes walked in. 
            My reading got a lot of laughter and applause and it went over well. A lot of the other writers who'd shared their work complimented me. Ray said he liked it. He did a very interesting and dramatic performance of his own poetry. 
            We were there until 3:00 on Friday and when we left I walked Diana and Jodie to Queen and Spadina.

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