The Game of 100 Ghosts Read online

  (like a wedding)

  she had one once; it was

  a happy day

  must

  ob-

  serve

  the social

  graces (

  her daughter’s life

  was embarrass-

  ment enough)

  seems like yes-

  terday

  she

  met and fell in

  love

  with

  a Black Man

  a refugee from the

  war for Civil Rights

  • a taboo embraced

  • a disgrace born

  • estrangement sworn

  a baptist wedding:

  $1000 with a potluck

  dinner yuri &

  yukiko were the maids-

  of-honour

  with Rev (small “c” christian)

  Dave

  presiding

  the black &

  community

  drank,

  sang & danced

  but

  laughter gave way to tears

  years

  of wandering

  the wilderness

  with a child

  born outside with-

  out blessing, with-

  scorn and

  out of

  shame

  came defiance I am not

  what you say I am . . . I am soul on ice, sister

  to

  the black saints to Malcolm,

  Eldridge, the Panthers

  with the courage to create

  but then she reached

  out to her own

  no

  one

  understood,

  identified, and she spit in our

  faces

  and disappeared.

  eventually teaching

  taught

  her compassion so

  she embraced the sansei

  ethos

  —of denial, no history, the suburbs, lost customs and traditions

  and wrapped a-way

  her anger of her youth. to be put

  away,

  stored in a trunk somewhere

  In her hospital bed,

  her

  mother dismissed, her

  child a comfort,

  she struggled

  against the cancer

  as Reverend [Buddhist this time]

  Grant [a touch of compassion]

  shared

  the Dharma with her

  and she cried

  but not out of sorrow self-

  pity or the fear

  of the gloom of darkness

  she cried

  as the enlightened self

  and closed her eyes

  as the tears

  solidified and glued

  her

  sight shut.

  i didn’t

  know her well

  but

  at least in

  the end we

  met

  in the

  Buddha Dharma

  and I am grateful.

  Nighthawks

  at

  the diner

  a neon wash a-

  cross

  venetian blinds

  splinters

  and lightdrop-

  lets

  in-

  to the restaurant

  Gerde

  leaves the pieces on the floor

  the flatscreens stream

  the hockey brawls for no one in particular

  maybe

  Nat King Cole

  and the Tijuana brass

  or Mantovani Music to Strip By

  tired record covers

  and

  publicity shots of:

  Betty Grable, Bette Davis,

  and Bogart, Bacall and even

  Johnny Mercer pinned mute

  against the wall

  maybe they pay attention.

  maybe

  the only ones

  flapjacks over

  easy or is that

  the eggs?

  rack ’em with an Apple Betty

  for de-ssert

  what’s the soup today?

  split-pea, but hold

  the bacon

  any specials?

  “did you hear

  the one

  ’bout

  the new Jew dog?”

  Gerde shakes her head and wipes the counter.

  “it’s a cross

  between

  a Spaniel and Bathurst

  Get it?

  Do ya get it?”

  Gerde half- smiles and pours the coffee

  “You know, Spadina &

  Bathurst? Jewtown?”

  “Yeah, I get it. [Lot of cold

  people in Toronto.

  that’s why out west

  they say it’s

  colder

  than a heart in Toronto.]”

  anti-Semitic philosophy on a vinyl spinaround

  with a side of asinine

  the lateness of night

  turns the joint

  into

  a Brother Waits sermon while we

  fall

  un-

  to our beers

  and we turn to the blues in a

  Hopper

  painting

  sipping cups of coffee while

  dreaming

  about

  our tomorrows

  and

  knowing there ain’t none.

  while i listen

  to some asshole

  coming

  on

  to old Gerde whose

  broken teeth

  speak of romance decades ago

  he

  just wants some company [she

  just

  wants to go home

  and i want to listen

  to the

  next record

  nighthawks at the diner

  while

  i

  eat

  my blue-plate special:

  sweet & sour porkchops

  with a side of fries, slaw

  and topped with

  melancholy.

  The Heart

  of

  Saturday night.

  Richard’s a once fabled resto

  at the inter-section of

  Dundas and a

  tea room: hooker- infested

  and

  long dead,

  Tom waits on the

  phoney-

  graph

  singing

  his gravelled

  blues

  for the days that

  have gone by-bye

  i sat with Judy long ago

  her

  future cloaked in

  a confusion of

  unrequited love affairs

  a gurgling child

  with fetal alcohol syndrome

  its

  face

  distorted its mind

  conflicted confused edged

  with death

  her soul
<
br />   seared with hate and the love

  of the father,

  but not that night;

  no,

  an evening of scampi and

  wine

  the grapefruit wedge after the appetizer

  don’t ask

  for more bread

  you may be thrown out like garbage

  into

  Dundas

  rainywet asphalt smeared with

  deadbodies in the alleyway

  died of broken hearts & exposure

  hookers and homeless circle;

  a concrete street

  with

  the filmore beckoning

  with mascara’d

  women

  in nylon-meshed

  legs

  Richard, the brawny scot

  proud of his food once

  threw out a sold-out

  night of

  CBC

  cognoscenti idiots of

  fashion because they

  demanded butter

  for their bread.

  Judy’s eyes cobalt glo of

  eyes candle-sparkled

  blue bright

  spiked

  a hint of evening as if

  telling me

  maybe we

  will

  be

  one.

  [a hint of the working class in her sharp

  cheeks, in her eastend voice] short height &

  hunger

  but no, no

  such

  thoughts in our

  search for the heart of most nights,

  her lips soft her rose perfume

  reminiscent

  of a rainstorm her hair as

  luxurious as an

  erupting coke bottle

  I don’t deserve her,

  my

  arrogance

  exceeds my asian desire

  and vanity of my worthless-ness

  we drove the streets towards

  the east-

  end deadend hopes

  as the wheels sizzled

  in

  the rain that night.

  i never

  saw her again

  deadlost in the ever-changing

  swirl

  of events

  but i wander back to that night

  every time

  i stand outside the window

  of that emptydead restaurant

  of long-ago meals

  and

  afterhour drinks in the

  denouement of

  a cityscape

  evening.

  those were the days of roses, of poetry & prose and

  his voice

  was

  weak, the last time

  I spoke to him

  on the telephone, a landline,

  A tribute to

  our

  youth

  misspent & wasted

  [ ]

  there was a rasp

  to it

  like a voice from the grave.

  he

  was saying

  goodbye.

  from a nursing home up Christie

  in-to the

  Avenue Rd after-

  hours

  club playing Evans

  heavens bill evans

  on a beat-up up-right getting

  those syncopations

  and

  modulations right a Waltz for Holly

  he

  was caught by her shadowed smile

  siren lips

  her ardent bosom and twisted

  tangled legs

  they ended the night near

  Chinatown

  a lower Bathurst

  apartment. of peeling wallpaper, musty smells of

  meals half attempted, half eaten.

  an artist’s loft; an intellectual’s conversation coffee-klatch

  right

  down

  to deco posters, Sylvia Plath and cheap brandy with

  marijuana images on the side

  a decades long love-affair the

  poetry

  of angst and

  the music of suffering

  ended with amputated legs

  (shapely legs)

  in her sanctification in a

  hospital bed far from that

  cigarette-caked smoke

  burdened

  genius-filled-

  conversations

  jazz-club with the scratchy

  Dizzy Gillespie mingus

  parker records

  revolving as sonorous horns swirled

  into

  the romantic unholy night.

  goodbye roy

  “i’ll talk to you soon,” he said with faint hope

  I could

  feel him

  sigh, bent over and perhaps

  fallen

  into

  his regrets

  as I held my own middle of despair

  bemoaning

  the

  loss of jazz, artists and red-lit

  nightclubs i never knew.

  Closin’ Time at the 5 & Dime

  the neon buzzes

  underneath the

  Coffeetime Donuts sign

  in the attempt to be cheerful,

  welcoming

  but

  Gladys

  is

  working the last hour of a 15-hour shift

  the light coats any goodwill

  with apathy

  with a kind of sepulchral mask

  and she is limping

  on withered legs ulcerated and dripping pus

  just

  to get the order right

  a crueller, honey-glazed,

  cake donut with a double-double

  medium size coffee, forget the Venti/

  grande, tall-short shit.

  a snap of the bag and a pour out of the carafe

  and that’s all she wrote.

  “this here place

  used to be a Dairy Queen”

  that’s right.

  my dad used

  to bring me

  for a butterscotch dip cone on

  a hot summer’s day the edible oil product dripping

  onto my arm

  we bought

  our christmas trees here i always got the back end

  carrying it home. That’s my dad—strong, honest

  i loved his immigrant eyes

  once, i worked all afternoon

  washing my

  brother’s car, a pugeot, and

  he flipped me a quarter to buy

  a small soft cream cone here;

  as

  he drove away I realized he never helped. We

  never

  did anything together.

  the light

  clears

  the facial shadows

  and she appears bloodless maybe think-

  ing of bill, her husband lying

  dead

  of cancer during the ice storm of ’69.

  “the manager can’t make it in so

  I do a double shift. [a double-double

  in a small cup of hands]

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