Apartment 10, Rue Dorion (June 11th, 2008)

I watched shadows mount the moon
an ellipse in a February poem
sitting at the open window of my dive apartment, Montreal

cold air and smoke clashed then stood standoffish
like the Chinese and the whites in a San Francisco past
on either side of an Imperial saint saying prayers of peace in the middle
(and on his death there was a complete eclipse of sun)

on the outside was the frozen night and in there was the stale stench
of exterminator fumes, cigarettes, whiskey breath, mold, empty bottles
unclean laundry, unkempt person, and I swear a sift of sulfur
from the muse that sang me methods to know all from deep in here until the end

I knew everything for months:
I am a performer to keep myself at bay
or an actor pretending to perform to protect
a pained and wide-eyed child
or a child trying to transform a traumatizing world
of trivial obsessions trying to trap wonder with mere conceptions
or a collection of obsessions putting perspective on the lessons
a hammer nailing a coffin closed

I am a man alone and happy
or not a man at all
a parasite sucking esteem
from my supposed friends
from the blankets of their beds
they are too kind not to mean to kill me
like they kill me
hold me now,
I want to be alone

I am crazy,
am I crazy?
would you listen
if I told you?
Could it be explained if I tried?
Let me try:

There have been signs out on the streets
of a man bound at ankles and wrists to a chair
blindfolded beneath a bulb, naked on a wire
in an accusatory damp basement unforgiving
they say “Les Malades Mentales Enlevent
une quebecois sur six”

One of six Englishmen go insane
from isolation in your fucking city!
One of six people on St. Catherine
has no home no money no hope
some tell jokes so their tears don’t
freeze to their faces
children’s laughs from far off places
imaginary piano men play haunting notes
from withdrawn hopes and what they use to cope
These people are hallucinations
from our cultural DTs!

I don’t have a dollar to give you,
it costs almost three bucks for bread
I lost my job, I’m eating words
and pray my landlord takes I.O.U.s

saw a man slit his wrists at the welfare office
with an empty pasta-can – Chef Boy-R-Dee -
he was subsequently tasered twice by security
once for pacifying, twice to stop his crying.

every place in my apartment
there are hanging sentence fragments
I read a lot of Burroughs and experiment with collage
I’m lying on a scrap that says “la Fin du Monde”
hearing voices on the street comment on the eclipse
and it occurs to me:
I am the last light from an eclipsing moon
Myself, a reflection of another
Being blocked out by the shadow of myself

Footsteps in snowfall
Breath clouds below zero
Old graffiti in bad weather
I am fading here
And soon you won’t see me at all