Foe

We woke in an inky black,

We rose from our slumber and meandered along a textured path, feeling the way with our feet.

Ahead there was a glow, a faint glow of hope.

In this glow sat a man, a man with a bee hive head.

He sat with his back to a tree, his chest was puffed

His shoulder blades were together, so his back would not set flat.

Occasionally, some flittering ladies buzzed by our head.

Some advanced army of Sophias and Cecilias; now pacified but alert.

I set my hand on his shoulder but he crumpled into a pile; unfolded laundry.

A back stabbing! This canker descended through his torso to his heart.

His shoulders still taut, his chest still puffed, he adjusts on to his side.

He writhes, Judith emerges.

“Ah, my good friend!!” she exclaims as she passes her fingers through the wound.

She is stung.

Untitled

Tables are turned, I rule.
I made my mother cry.
When its time to raise your parents
the world falls apart and comes together at once.

Legion III

Garrison was rushed by ambulance to Bounty Hospital on the edge of Bounty, the quicker picker upper of cities. In Bounty, everyone has what they need, hence the name. Since they al have what they need, they all watch out for themselves. Anyway, he was rushed via gurney into Bounty's hospital. His fat, lifeless body limply pooled itself across the hard cushion like a puddle of molten bree, his skin the ashen rind. Destination: the ER.

Four nurses congregated around a computer screen, all of them behind a screen designed in such away that anxious patients, their family and their friends couldn't see what the nurses were doing. But these nurses were standing up and laughing, they were on break. Meanwhile, a woman who began vomitting every twenty minute or so about 6 hours earlier, before moving on to dry heaving, began vomitting blood. In a gesture of good will, the nurses had given her a green waste paper container in case she needed to do something other than dry heave. All across the waiting room the other forty or so victims of severe trauma watched as the woman made Christmas.

Garrison's wound was luckily serious enough to merit a free pass to the head of the line. No waiting for Garrison. His throat got slashed. After pumping blood into Garrison and ghouling their way around his body with needles and knives, the doctors had brought him back to life and he lay sprawled across a white sheet, Scrubs at his side.

He woke up four days later.

"Gurpleblurplewurple," he said.

"Don't try talk uhm, mister, Bill."

The doctor tried to stifle his laughter but could not. Garrison moaned in anguish at his predicament and moved his head from side to side, leering uneasily out of the cheaply adorned hospital window. Stiff and dun, the curtains hung, framing the dew as it rose off of Bounty. He was in pain, his doctor was a cretin and it was dawn.

Legion II

James run. He run fast past the veteran's clubhouse and cut a man who was stumbly outside. The man yell, "Anarchist bastard," gurgly sound...he fall down. He choke on sidewalk, with blood. Blood make puddle in c'ment. I saw it first, then I saw James. James come see my mommy. Sirens loud when he came to my step. Mommy and me sat on step, it's bricks. "Hey kid" I looked down when he talked. Mommy was upset with Grammy. Mommy say, "You know James, when you have to raise your parents, the world comes together and falls apart at once. I can make my mother cry, she's powerless..." James say, "I don't know anything about being powerless." Rocks make scratches on brick, I drew James and Mommy talking. Man yelled down alley, say "Anyone see a guy with a knife?" James gave Mommy lots of dollar bills and say "See you in a few weeks." P'lice car at veteran's club, man say "I just had an argument with the guy over politics." Blind man make accident, put stick in blood and splash it around. P'lice man's shoes bloody. That was bad and lots of people cry and yell. On our bricks, little red spiders go around. They make bloody splats when you smoosh 'em, but not as much blood as the gurgly man makes. "Hold on Garrison" says a lady with a rag on her arm, like the kind mommy uses to wipe the cat's eye boogers. Garrison can't hold on, he's going somewhere floaty. Him's not there anymore. Lady crying. P'lice man laughed at Mommy when she said "Why are you doing this?" There was a big bee sound and she got really straight then she slept. I rode in the front seat. The P'lice man put Mommy in back, the door hit her head, but she was sleeping. James hide in weeds by chain fence when we went by. Ambulance take Garrison away now. Lady ride with him and cry. He's dead, she doesn't know.

Pinko in the Legion

"I feel bad for the guys, they're victims," said Garrison

A couple of the men on the other side of the bar shifted uncomfortably in their bar stools. The one to the right of the video lottery machine stared down into his rum and coke and stirred with his cocktail straw. He smirked and looked up at me. I ignored his gaze and just listened while I picked crumbs of black crud from behind the molding on the bar.

"Nah, they choose to fight."

"That might be true in some cases, but they don't know what they're fighting for, that's the sad thing. Now these boys are sold a load of fucking crap about terrorism and freedom, and you know it Pete."

"Fuck that, it's all real, it's not a line of shit...you know what Garrison? People like you piss me off-- how in the fuck did you forget about 9/11?"

"OK, OK Petey boy. Scrubs, give Pete a shot on me, he looks like he might cry."

Scrubs got a bottle of Beam and flipped it up, pouring Pete an exact dram. She slid it in front of him. He emptied it and handed it back to her.

"I didn't forget about 9/11 Pete. It pisses me off just as much as it pisses you off. But I don't see them any different to you or I. We're all victims. Either they got a hold of us directly or we've been affected by the fact that they've got so much control."

"How in the world are they victims just like us? You rarely make sense to me, man."

"And you sound like a conspiracy theorist!" hollered blind Stephen from the far corner of the bar, wobbling in his seat with his grey locks dangling. Garrison nodded and sipped at his pint.

He swallowed hard, squinted and looked up at the TV briefly, then began again.

"You got to realize Pete, the government has most of us convinced they're our protectors, but they're not. It's actually the other way around. They're exploiting each and every one us. American, or otherwise. Now, Al-Qaeda, they're just part of the same sort of system. But they're elusively resisting control by the dominant force, us! It pisses senators and CEOs off when someone can disrupt the traffic like they did on 9/11. And I agree with them, it's not right. But, as usual, the feds have got it all wrong. Rather than try and sell it to us that way, they've got this freedom and evil thing going-- rather than get people on their side using reason, they've resorted into scaring us," Garrison's voice began to boom, "threatening us with imminent destruction!" He drank again. "Just like Al-Qaeda's got them crapping in their pants. The thing that pisses me off is that they lie, Pete."

"Yeah, but our guys are still fighting for the right."

"What the fuck is the right man? We can even agree among ourselves what the right is. How the hell are we going to convince them we're right by peppering them with bombs?"

"He's got a point there, Pete, " said blind Stephen.

"We got to get on the same page, get beyond all this fake shit," Garrison added, "They're not fighting for us Pete, our ideas, our children. They're fighting to keep shipping lanes open, to keep offices from being blown up. They don't give a fuck about our local economy or the fact that they've tricked our kids into fighting and dying so their kids can go to Notre Dame and Princeton."

"I never really considered it that way, Gar, " muttered Pete.

"Shut up Garrison, you're scaring away my tips," said Scrubs.

"You're sounding like one of socialist faggots from Denmark that were in here a few weeks ago, Garrison," said Mick, as he returned from the bathroom, trailing dirt and mud from his boots as he clumped across the dance floor in his Carharts.

"I am part Dane, you asshole. And maybe I do sound like a socialist. We got everyone convinced that watching out for themselves is the answer, while Big Brother and his fucking CEO minions rape our sons and daughters. I think we'd be a lot better off if we started watching out for our own and stopped looking up to the feds, the banks, the CEOs and their armies so much. I mean, we've gotten pretty far since Obama got into office but we didn't all of sudden start planting gardens and singing Kumbaya. We're all still in here on a perfectly beautiful afternoon drowning in the man's brew. we've forgotten about what America is supposed to mean. We need to rethink the American dream and then revamp it. It don't mean fighting and spending money."

"What are you running for office!?" shouted blind Stephen.

"Shut the fuck up Garrison" yelled Scrubs, "or get out. It's not that I don't agree with everything you're saying but I need to make a fucking car payment and pay the babysitter when I get home."

Garrison got up and put his coat on. He pushed in his stool and straightened it for the next customer.

"You had me convinced until you brought up Obama," said Pete, "I don't mind go back to the old ways, everyone knows I believe in them. But being nice to fags, black power, c'mon dude. This progressive stuff is out of control, somethings have got to be sacred."

Garrison looked Pete squarely in the eye.

"That is because you are an old, ignorant redneck fuck Pete. Stuck in your ways. That's fine douchebag, you stay behind while the rest of us move forward. Your boy's over there in the shit, fighting for nothing while you drink and make pronouncements about shit you nothing about."

Garrison walked toward Pete and Pete got out of his stool-- he steadied himself and puffed up his chest. He looked like a big bearded turkey. The folds of his neck fat were trembling, his partially grey goatee and blue bandanna soaked with beer and sweat respectively.

"Be nice guys," Scrubs commanded.

Garrison strolled by Pete, and gave him a derisive look, then at the last minute he reached out his long skinny arm and flipped Pete's ball cap right off of his head.

"You've been uncrowned pal."

And with that Garrison walked out of the Legion for the last time. He opened the door and disappeared in a flash of sunlight and smoke.

Potholes

These potholes constitute crisis
Each drive is a role of the dices
I would like a new car
But I won't go that far
Since my 89 Camry suffices.

This limerick won the CBC Weekend Mornings Nova Scotia 2009 Limerick contest.

Soliloquy

I stood on my soapbox
to toot my horn
I talked about my wheat
I mentioned your corn
I talked about the fishermen far at sea
but my soliloquy finally
was all about me