Autoroute St-Urbain

St. Michael’s               Dome-crown

hill-top lip                    tower over

tene-domi-                   -ciles not

so jewish                     not so junk

chic 70s                       gentrile-fied

trafficked                    ghost deline-

-ation ghost                 bikes truck

black zoom                  noise sewn

light lines                     j-dash

unsystem tra-               -‘triffic

Plat-centric                  vue Avevue

Rachel iglesia              d’espagne

zoom-car                     park lot

festi-limo                     streamer stream

line lights                     lit-tred/rature

scrolled on                   brick page

ghost lit                       rue-signs

at stitches                    over doors

rich/er ppl.                   dwollicile

here ghost                    decades

deca-bles                     /dents historical

sud-vue                       Notre-Dame

iglesia Place                 d’aux Armes

Aldred fntn.                lumed

byover                         fluve-water

New poem, in need of title

Freshly inked, my latest. In need of title.

Also, today’s reading recommendations: Heather O’Neill and Max Blagg (Autobio A Gogo, googlable, can you spot the influence?)

————-

Hopped off the bus at Central Station
where the junkies winked thru the winters etched on their faces
where I lifted the empty tin of a Berri Square beggar to my ear
& heard the sounds of suicides in the Saint Lawrence river
Red-light Archambault drew me up the street
and the unhatted hustlers sheep-herded me in with Peeping Toms
We clung to our seats & our whiskies & our favourite girls
knowing it was concrete and cold outside
but here the lights shed red roses on our eyes & the dancers’ skin
Lights off. Doors shut. Kicked to the curb like unwanted kids
blowing over the streets discarded burger wrappers lined with grease
I drifted with the taxi cabs upwards St-Denis after they’d dropped the bomb
everyone’s a liar their guts & hearts empty as their coffee cups
eyes desperate as their cocks & cunts & wallets
like Lucy, with whom I traded an eye for a tongue
& we danced til dawn when up the sun sprung
On I went chanting with my new tongue to the foot of the mountain
where the cross was up-hung over me
& Pan played his pan-flute to the laurel tree
Onward and onward til the bars let us in again
danced I & the satyrs past the unfucked and dreary
their jeers and their laughter drove us downstairs
& when they ask me @ home “What do you remember of Montreal?”
The hip of a UdeM girl like the ’90s, on the blue line.

Robert Allen “The Encantadas”

Having just stayed up all night writing an essay on the final work of my professor’s recently deceased poetic mentor (a short-sightedly-made nerve-wracking decision, I mean, how the fuck can you and your puny undergraduate brain hope to do justice to this man’s magnum opus, finally completed and published as recently as 2006 with virtually no critical essays written on it other than a small section of an essay in a book assigned for the course), I have an urgent book recommendation:

The Encantadas by Robert Allen.

Look, it’s fucking $15 on this website if you can’t find it in your local bookstore (which is probably the case). Or, if you know me and I’ll see you again, some time, I can get you a copy here and bring it to you with the appropriate re-imbursement. If you’re not sold, I’ll loan it to you when I see you, but I’ll demand I get it back before I leave town, and will hunt you to the gates of Hades to get it.

It’s one long poem about Jack the oceanographer from les Cantons d’est of Quebec, his body-double Teddy the Antediluvian Vaudevillian (a tap-dancing turtle), and then Jack-as-Dionysus, smuggling wine from Crete to England.

Fear not it’s “Canadian poetry” categorization, you will not be assaulted with boring-ass Canadiana, word-paintings of the prairies or la fleuve St-Laurent. No mention even of Toronto or New Brunswick (a handful of Montreal references, never explicit), only Hollywood, New York, Hotel Gobernador on the jungle coasts of Mexico, Crete, and the islands of the title piece, The Galapagos Islands — as well, for those of you who resent Canadian literature or poetry that disdains its own geographical location, the Eastern Townships, and an acute awareness of its Anglo-Quebec context. In other words, whatever your opinions on “Canadian poetry,” you will hard-pressed to get pissed off about anything, either present or absent.

It’s also the best piece of “Canadian” poetry I’ve ever read. It’s one of the best pieces of poetry I’ve ever read, holding up against the works of any American, British, French, Chilean, Greek, Latin or Russian poet, dead, alive, or zombie.

Hock and soda water

“Few things surpass old wine – and they may preach
Who please (the more because they preach in vain) –
Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication:
Glory, the grape, love, gold – in these are sunk
The hopes of all men, and every nation;
… But to return, get very drunk, and when
You wake with headache, you shall see what then.

Ring for your valet, bid him quickly bring
Some hock and soda-water. ”
– Byron, Don Juan

For god’s sake, let us have hock and soda-water. Or water, coffee, and Alleve.

I once met some cat from Halifax who, hung-over at breakfast and offered coffee, proclaimed he only had “fizzy drinks” when he was hung-over.

The only really concerning thing was the colour of the bile. I think the only thing I’d eaten that day was a burger from the Mad house (hatters).

Lessons learned: When faced with 2 hours to kill before meeting your prof and class at the bar, go read a book in a Starbucks, DON’T go to the bar you work at and start drinking in the middle of the afternoon.

Likelihood lessons learned will amount to anything more than a half-hearted New Year’s resolution: goose egg.

So goddamnit, bring the hock and soda water!

Yours, from Montréal,
-strych9

Because man does not live by porn alone – letter from the Resistance

Here I am, typing away, praying to the coffee gods that 10 seconds under lukewarm water is enough to kill all the bacteria on the inside of my coffee machine after leaving the grind&filter in for about a month, drinking this fresh cup and hoping that I don’t wake up tomorrow with a culture of coffee-grind parasites in my stomach… Wow, ever written away your appetite? This is good, as I have nothing but saltines in the cupboards and it’s just started snowing (WHAT!?) yes, snowing — I’m beginning to understand this CanLit obsession with winter, and nature more generally, for as I get older the winter occupies an increasing(ly neurotic) chunk my psyche, beginning with the anxiety of October (ohgodjustletitcomejustletitcomeandgetitoverwithsweetjesus), the minor reprieve of December when it finally does snow, and it’s all very fresh and Christmasy-looking, to that month-long hangover following New Year’s Eve molding into February, one prolonged coughing fit, snifflefest and bout of suicidal thoughts, into optimistic March, when every weekend could be the one, the Spring Tease only to have it stolen right from under you, and then April, the rains, the rains, the rains, and then, on a day like to day, it snows again, as if to tell you “You’ll never be safe from me, bitch.”

I write to warn you of the impending invasion.

It won’t be long now.

They came from the east. There was nothing we could do to stop them.

Our only hope now is Gilles Duceppe’s laser eyes.

We fear he has been captured by Stephen Harper’s gestapo, imprisoned in Alarm and replaced by a body double.

Our messiah will not come.

The coffee mug is empty.

The curtains still have not been hung — no, it is in fact a green piece of cloth held to the window frame with tacks, requiring yet another new hole in the wooden window frame every sunny day.

THEY COULD BE IN YOUR TOWN TOMORROW!

Oh god. I hear them at the door. they’re coming. i don’t have much time. resist resist with all possible measures RESIST AT ALL COSTS!

The only good that could come of this is the fall of the West Coast. The hippies and yuppies will be consumed without question, screaming “GENITAL IMPERIALISM! GENITAL IMPERIALISM!” all for the better — the Vancouver junkies and denizens of L.A.’s barrios might make it. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get my knife, a long blunt object, and light a cigar (for eyeball-scorching).

Don’t let them take you alive, cabron.

“He wants to smell my shit”

Here I am, smoking outside the Tim Hortons at Guy and de Maisonneuve, in the pigeon-shit-stained Place de Norman Bethune (Norman Bethune, a hero of China, Montreal-born doctor who joined the medical units of the Chinese Communists’ army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, also developed mobile blood transfusion in the Spanish Civil War), when this woman (22, as she told me, and attractive) walking down the sidewalk holding this large bundle of toilet paper spots me and says “He wants to smell my shit!”

“You want to smell my shit? Smell this. I’m 22. It was my birthday a few weeks ago. My parents are trying to poison me. Can you believe it? I’m 22 and my parents are trying to poison me. Look at this. Do you see how big this is? Imagine,” she turns toward the street, as if to look at the image she is painting for me, “the biggest black cock that’s ever come out of your ass or mouth. That’s how big this shit is. I’m 22, I shouldn’t be shitting like this. Smell it, come on, smell it.”

She smells it herself, “Smells like Indians. Smells like Indian cigarettes and du Mauriers. I have to go to the hospital and show them this. My parents are trying to poison me. Can you believe it?”

And off she walks, up Guy to the hospital on Cote-des-Neiges, to show them the giant pile of human shit she’s holding in her bundle of toilet paper, in her bare hands.

O, Dr. Bethune, Hero of Communist China, Champion of Shit, must I dump at your feet like the mentally ill, and the pigeons?

Demonstration Against Police Brutality – March 15, 2009

The banners and black flags wave, the chant rises “No Justice, No Peace” and the chorus “FUCK THE POLICE!” Some here are peaceful. They will disperse when the police inevitably begin their assault, and the others, dressed all in plain black with their faces covered, fight back.

The threat of arrest is very real. Police are in full riot gear and we haven’t even begun our march. Thanks to their ongoing contract dispute, they’re also in camo pants. 2 or 3 police helicopters hover low above us. Around the square at Mont-Royal Metro where we gathered the streets are blocked off by cavalry – literally, cops on black horses.

We began the demonstration with a face off on Mont-Royal, facing east. The crowd gathered in front of the police line. We launched eggs, garbage, beer bottles, a papaya, and one glorious Roman candle into their line, ejaculating red and green fireballs of defiance over their heads. The police hold their line. This demonstration is already illegal, but their bluff has been called. A clash here would be disastrous. The space is too small, and we haven’t destroyed any private property. The media was everywhere — they had been covering a peaceful gathering so far, so the police wait until the eye of the camera turns to their favour. However, the police chief, in his armoured vehicle, announces that the demonstration is now illegal.

We about-face and march south down St-Denis, led by the banners. The Anarchist Marching Band led the stragglers. A handful of cars stood at the intersection, immobilized by the crowd who held them in the smug disdain of the pedestrian empowered — in great numbers, and you can see this on any overcrowded corner, the pedestrian is merciless.

Our crowd is dispersed, thick at the front and the back, thin in the middle, where Gabe and I scan the crowd for my roommate. We are in the middle of St-Denis. The scattered punks and demonstrators, the black flag, the red flags, the helicopters, they’ve turned this stretch of St-Denis, the Champs-Elysee of Montreal, a broad boulevard framed by balconies, silver domes, and church spires in the distance into what looks like either a war zone or a victory march.

Unfortunately, by Sherbrooke metro I’m already late for work and head underground. It was my guess that it would turn into a riot by Berri-UQAM. I was mistaken. The police unleashed the tear gas at Sherbrooke and St-Denis, five minutes after I left. At this point the mostly peaceful protesters (a couple of eggs thrown at the GAP and an over-turned mailbox notwithstanding) pushed back. The protesters broke off into several groups, heading down the hill to Ste-Catherine. According to the Gazette, 221 people were arrested, $200 000 in damage was done to private property, and (who really gives a shit?) 2 officers were injured, no mention of how many protesters were injured. Another 189 were fined $144 for unlawful assembly. Given there were no more than 500 demonstrators when the march began, odds are my roommate was either arrested or ticketed, although I haven’t seen him yet.

Many of the ignorant shits who saw the reporting of this march dismissed the crowd as a bunch of thugs, punks, and skinheads, and all of the best pictures of the march I’ve seen were of thugs, punks, and skinheads. But what the Gazette, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star all neglected to mention was that the riot began when the police struck. The crowd fought back. Why is it up to the police to determine when a protest, especially a protest targeted against them and their abuses of the law, is illegal? If the police attempt to shut you down and shut you up at their whim, the only thing to do is fight back. I do not consider the police force to be a legitimate branch of democracy. They are a bureaucratically controlled armed gang who, on most days, uphold arbitrary traffic laws, keep peace amongst the pass-out drunks on St-Laurent, and try to stop crazy and/or homeless people from bothering the rest of the “citizens,” and are otherwise employed in beating up protesters and shooting black people. (Detectives notwithstanding, they might actually be useful.)

Fuck the SPVM.

Yours,

strych9

From the foot of mount royal

My roommates are both back in Ontario. The streets are covered with a thick layer of ice. The wind is battering the houses and lone and desperate stragglers out on St-Laurent. It’s 5.30 a.m., I woke up after 3 hours at 1 a.m., and I have just finished the 10th page of the 60 page play I have to have written by January 3. It’s taken me about 2 weeks so far. This project is going to have to consume my life very, very soon.

There’s a small chance I won’t be going home for Christmas because of work. At first I was a bit bummed about that, but now I’m thinking I won’t get any fucking work done in Kitchener, and this play is a monumental challenge. I was thinking staying here might be the solution, but it looks more and more likely that I will, in fact, be going home for a week.

On my desk: laptop, open notebook, pen, empty mug with powdery Turkish coffee residue, empty Cafe depot cup, a pile of books and CDs and papers involving, but not exclusively, a Stadium Art Calendar, 2 copies of Soliloquies, Modern Tragedy, a mixtape my girlfriend made for me, at least 3 poetry chapbooks, 2 empty pocket books, N*gga Please (R.I.P. ODB), my passport, a pack of zigzags, a fortune cookie fortune that reads “You will enjoy good health; you will be surrounded by luxury”, and thumb-tacked to the wall above my computer is an unpaid Visa bill for $453.69 due tomorrow. At the foot of my desk is a stack of plays with written comments, a full notebook, another full notebook missing the back cover, a copy of Fear & Loathing, CDs: Late Registration, Danger Doom, Down with Rappers, Kind of Blue, there is also Dan’s screw driver. At the other foot of my desk, 2 over-stuffed plastic bags of garbage, several empty Tim Hortons cups, wires, and the other, bigger desk lying disassembled waiting to be put together with Dan’s screw driver. Behind me, next to the bed, is a growing stack of more books, having run out of book space on my window sill. Inside the top drawer of the desk is a morass of crap, the only important things being various bottles of hangover pills,  empty packs of Camels and Marlboros I kept for no reason other than I like the packaging, a bag of weed, and the lighter with a picture of a mostly naked woman I got in San Francisco.

Thank you, and I hope you’ve enjoyed in at least some small way this categorization of my room. Really I just needed to write something other than the highly-fraught and vexing dialogue of my first attempt at writing tragedy.

Election day in Canada

As some of you might know, yesterday was election day in Canada. I wasn’t planning on voting — you need 2 pieces of valid I.D. and proof of your address, like official mail, to vote. When you’re a student you can either vote in your home riding or your current address. I missed all the dates to mail-in vote in my home riding, Kitchener Centre, where the Liberal MP lost to the Conservatives this time around. And I haven’t received any mail where I currently live, in the Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding of Montreal. It didn’t matter too much anyway, this is Gilles Duceppe’s riding — as the leader of the Bloc Quebecois it meant he was pretty much guaranteed a huge lead and that I live in powerful separatist territory. If I was going to vote, I was going to vote for Francois “Yo” Gourd, leader of NeoRhino, the party that wants to get rid of the Canadian government and promises weekly orgasms for all Canadians.

I got home last night at 21.15. The polls closed at 21.30. My roommate, who didn’t have any piece of mail yet either, told me he used the lease on our apartment.

Of course! The lease! And the nearest polling station was only 3 blocks away! I could make it! I could do my civic duty and cast my vote for the very first time in my 19 year-old life.

But I had to take a shit. And if I dropped trou now I’d be toilet-bound for at least my 15-minute time frame. This was one of those rumbling-around-come-and-go-all-day shits that had just been waiting for my cold bare butt cheeks to kiss the porcelain.

I asked my roommate if voting for NeoRhino was basically like shitting on the Canadian political system. He agreed that it was. I spent the next 15 minutes on matters scatological.

From now on, everytime I take a dump, I’ll excuse myself to go “cast my ballot.”

Yours from Montreal,

strych9

A little bit about me

First of all, fuck blog-writing.

The reason I can’t write for blogs any more, is I’ve started holding myself up to some… expectations. When you start thinking about writing as some kind of career, and you read some real blogs that talk about shit like urban planning or, like my favourite at the moment, keeps you updated on all the cool shit going on like Midnight Poutine, all of the sudden you can’t just ramble on about your bullshit insights or what you did today. No. You’ve got to write something. You know. Worthwhile-like. Mostly I hold myself to the standard of Sharp’s upper-level blog-writing, you know, when he writes like, literature for his blog posts. Motherfucker doesn’t write anything BUT blog posts, they just happen to work as beautiful routines in the, uh, world beyond blogs. Now, it’s another thing to write something and post THAT as a blog post. Something about it doesn’t feel right to me.

Oh yeah. I’m strych9. A.K.A. Wynd. A.K.A. Jason. I’m a new inparentheses contributor. I don’t like keeping journal. I used to like keeping a journal-blog, but then that got embarrassing.

Sometimes with my other blog I’ll post news stories with some sort of commentary. Like this:

Are you fat? Think there’s nothing you can do about it? WELL GET YOUR FLABBY ASS IN GEAR, BECAUSE THE WORLD’S FATTEST MAN LOST 250 KG AND NOW HE”S GETTIN” MARRIED! That man lost me x4.

The name’s strych9, ’cause everybody used to think their LSD and heroin was laced with it. I kill kids who buy NYC street drugs.

A little bit about myself?

Los Angeles and New York are awesome in theory, but really, what you’re looking for is Montreal. That’s where I stay.

I write. It’s my shtick.

I smoke. It’s my pastime and my party-card.

I’m a line-cook at a little dive bar called Madhatters on Crescent Street, MTL, QC.

I’m from the K-Hole, Ontario. At the age of 18 I climbed out of a paralyzing fear that death was imminent, realized I could feel my arms again and moved to Quebec for school. In all fairness, three-quarters of the greatest people I know live or are from there, and it is by far the strangest city I’ve ever intimately known, much to its credit.

There you have it.

I posted something. There wasn’t much point to it, but hey, you know me better.