For G.D. Rip and Holly Arnold-Final Poems

Kitsilano Killer

 

Kitsilano killer

A fucked-up, tucked in bed, loved-up, 

Mommied-down, act of revenge

Makes a great Aussie soapbox thriller 

Murder mayhem monster human

Who hikes up his shirt for sex

And then suddenly delivers

Or missing on the back of milk and cereal

“Save all the murderers, yeah! Cowboy soldier!”

 

Oh, days of the wild west guns

Days of the rage

Nights of being let out

Sent out the cannonball for fun 

To get out of that corporate cage

Need a few bullets to disengage

 

Gas station bitches get all the riches

Then they leave a hole in the ground

Eleven years, they will be back again

Black oil valentine

Not a reason to get behind
Take care of it with acts

That betray a rational mind 

 

Stuck some glue onto the box

That is my bed and decided

To sleep on the street

Instead of in Kingston-Stadium again 

Hobo blues reading the paper

Can barely make out the words

Oh, Kitsilano Killer

Wasn’t he a friend?

 

Boy and Girl

 

Cowboy on the street

Negative twenty degrees

But he sees the boy

And feels that white heat

She comes along suddenly

She’s got everything

But it’s the wrong thing 

So he said, 

 

“I don’t do straight love

But I can take you out tonight
We can dance to X and 

Pretend it’s circumstance.”

 

Honestly

 

When you don’t take me seriously?

I always think furiously

In my head, in my head

Something I never said

 

Honestly, it’s in my head

It’s what I see each night

Going on with a sense of dread

But it’s a need that must be fed

 

“I could just slit your throat tonight

But what’s the point?

I’ve got a midnight flight

And to those like you, good night!”

 

Generosity is my virtue

Playing my violin strings

For so many, I have given

I don’t expect anything

 

Just kindness, please

If I could accept myself

If you could accept me 

If we could accept reality

 

I am human, I can be weak

I can be shy, I can feel meek 

Be just me, not some King

Or Queen of Leons type

Created from a view

Of another reality

 

I play this role each night

I believe in civility

Act like it’s the age of chivalry

Given the opportunity

 

And what do strangers want

From me from me from me only

I am in a crowd, they speak loud

But I feel lonely, alone, in need

 

Fake Love

 

Fake love, I can’t stay

I won’t do this again

I looked in the mirror

And I saw him instead

The feeling of being dead

Left me, my cells came

Alive again

 

Fake love, never again 

 

Commercial Drive 

 

The juxtaposition of justice

Contained without purpose

Prosecute the innocent

In surplus and the wild man

Goes free, the imprisoned

Seething and victims barely

Breathing, lied to, and holding

Onto false security

While their secret minds are dreaming

Of some reality

Not another fatality

 

It’s not in your head

It’s what the papers read

It’s not in your head

It’s what the prosecutors said 

 

What He Said

 

Eyes never dead, full of lives

That were misled then fled

I read his writing on the ledge

Reading inside of my bed

Leaning on me like a post

He pushes me close, leaves me on edge

 

I rest and stare, try to think

What shock value would dare

Calm waters reign again

To break him from his book

He looks away, would not stare

I see morning waves rise again 

 

I remember yesterday 

In the mirror, what he said

There are no bills to pay

Be mine forever or go 

But don’t go, stay instead

But other bills are due today 

 

I was looking for my sanity

Trying to escape other’s vanity

Out on my new journey

I resisted and found serendipity

 

2nd Avenue

 

I got up, it was too late

Serendipity on a plate

Egg ramen with roe interplay

But the bus left and bill’s paid

Got a twenty and some change 

What can I do? Looking for work
While others head to the avenue

In search of cheap white, Listerine

Substitutions for booze, glues. 

 

Now as it was

Twenty years, something changed

State of emergency

Five years and six thousand dead

Give them the drugs, shoot them in the head

Galleries and maintenance

Or jails and arrest

A system I detest

And it ain’t working

It never did

Second Avenue fatality

Overdose depression

Not dealing with reality

 

It’s what I see

It’s not in our heads

It’s more than what the 

Tabloid trash papers said

Something has changed

And we are two steps back

And one step ahead

It’s not in our heads

 

Toe Blue

 

Put my foot in the water once

Three seconds and toe blue

Left Waterton bereft of vision

Heard the Mormon carriages

And ice blue waters against

Silver rocks along the shore

 

Beautiful to walk around

But the evening’s such a bore

Plays on the opening of the Prairies

Girl lift ups an inch of a skirt

Get a glimpse of a hairy leg

Left by the bus stop near

The gravesite of pioneers

Oh, 100 and some years 

 

Harvest coffeehouse sandwiches

Waffleton on Windflower

With maple and blueberry sauce

Served by nineteenth century girls

Maidens in bonnets 

From another planet?

 

Got to leave the vale to drink

Dry community, watching tv

Find a hellhole in Montana
Oh, those big American skies

Cowboys on the loose

 

Signs of national pride

Oh well, they say that they tried

Growing BC’s finest in the backside

Secret entrance to the patio shade

Insulated, ventilated

Got to make the AAA grade 

 

Flesh-eater

 

Brandi always liked complex men

Of many careers and passions

They were her Achilles’ heel

Their arrows aimed for her talus
The soothsayers had warned her

About garbage can lifestyles

And esoteric assassins

 

She put her wig back on 

And lace-up leather S&M boots

Were strapped on and fastened

She got up in the morning

Breaking dishes in front of the kids

 

Her boyfriend a many had left her

And the last moneymaker

Became viciously bedridden

Necrotizing, flesh-eating something 

Everybody said she had a 

Box of chocolate-tinged rat poison

 

Her made-up face like a street queen

Freshly powdered and lips moistened

A barracuda ballerina

Fond of dancing in mid-position

Horizontal or vertical

Whatever war dance was his wishes

 

Now that his death had slowly 

Warmed over, he looked tanned

Instead of pale and ashen 

She took his credit card

And bought herself

Baby toys and newborn fashions. 

 

HAM Radio

 

She screamed the flavor was bland

As she took him in her hand

Cheese came in all flavors

Groovy moves and bad pick-up lines

In the back of a Dodge truck

Highway 16 fades fast behind 

 

She was looking for a setup

He was searching out 

An escape from love

Twenty years together
Separate beds and baby carriage

He simply became discouraged

 

Now here they were together

Severed hands sharing blood 

Forty channels on HAM radio

She settles on 27 Hz

He was a lion in disguise

So innocent, while waiting

To be pet and fed

 

Here the sound on forty channels

As he dips down and the car

Shakes around, tires hit the ground

But nobody is paying attention 

Motorcycle intervention

Paramedic’s resurrection

Now license now 

 

For Holly Arnold and G.D. Rip

 

Famous Last Words

 

As the winter days get wetter

Black humor makes me feel better

You know they’d really like to get us

They don’t know us, but they want all of us

You told those Eastern bastards to freeze

No way to an oil monopoly

No energy sharing

Just price gouging

You invest in the company

 

You know the man has a shine on his shoe

He sees his reflection, adjusted his tie

Polishes up his Ruger .22 Caliber Rifle

Loads up and is headed this way right now 

“Let those Western bastards bleed!” 

Famous last words, so take heed

What you gonna do, cowboy soldier

Can’t run past the mountains

Unless Jesus moves a boulder

Nobody around here wants you

 

I suppose he’ll creep up on you

Read you a line from Sir John A. 

And tell you that you’re through

I could say that I am sad

But it doesn’t bother me 

As much as you do. 

 

What are your famous last words?

Did you come from a hellhole town?

Or was it beautiful before the oil 

And you just didn’t look around?

Now it seeps into Slave Lake

And all around Slavelaketown

Smell of bismutin all around

Black gold seeping out your veins

All for money and Fort Mac Fires

It’s just insane it’s just gold-digging

 

Famous last words, please 

People get along, please

Famous last words, please

People get along, please

 

Mountain Top 

 

Disappear down 93

The deer passing by me

Pictures by the Japanese

Who lean too close below

These glacier-fed waterfalls

 

In April, still frozen in time 

Like images from a film camera

Behind mountain top views

Take these images now

You won’t see them in twenty years

 

Head cut off down to the crater

Watch it melting from the gondola

Spin around and look at the town

There are people gone who 

Should be here with me

 

There are people who came here

Unwanted and should not be 

 

Kananaskis Rear View 

 

Reverse your point of view

Always looking in the front mirror

And never the back

You could get tailgated

You could have accidents

I have been watching 

I have been listening

You east of Lake of the Woods

And onto the Laurentians

You don’t get it, now do you?

 

Kananaskis rear view 

 

Do we need a little resistance?
Resources to you fields of subsistence

Take the money and run

Pipeline has begun

I’ve seen both views

And I am dissatisfied

Not calling it national pride

Not good enough for me

They have never really tried 

What does it mean, thus?

 

Kananaskis rear view

 

I bought a ticket out of here

Back to Rupertsland

And I saw the rebellion

Red River squares or the cuts

Of New France, water access 

Les voyageurs, les coureurs de bois 

You transfer sovereignty

Taking along the Metis 

Dead bodies of Riel and Scott

Still fighting over the meaning of a lot

Ideas to toy with

Republic of Assiniboia

So who’s wrong and who’s right?

Starving in your plight

Sign Treaty 8, give up your rights
You slaughtered an innocent man 

You slaughtered a rebel with a
Future in hand, elected 

Says a lot about the whole thing

Oh, but what can you do?

 

Kananaskis rear view 

 

Go down here, it’s all the same

Look front or back

It all looks the same

Past is the future

It all comes around again 

Say when?

 

Kananaskis rear view

 

Bear

 

I’m sorry I didn’t mean to get in your way

You cut through my land with a highway

Once this was my territory

Miles and miles of trees

That went down to a frozen sea

Glacier was not melting

I used to wander across fields 

Gonna bomb and blast my outta here

Flash of light, then dynamite

I have had it up to here

Open up for me, I have a carriage

Full of my life, my belonging

Past these Rockies, down this valley 

No foothills and meadows life for me 

 

Running of the Company

 

Got to worry about 

The company

Can’t start a colony

On whose land is this, anyway 

Metis land and deprivation

Smallpox and starvation

Forget that on native land

Our home and look over at

Juneau, Alaska horizons 

Just thinking dangerous thoughts,

“It could have been ours.”

But look north, I swear it

Doesn’t belong to anyone else 

Some say 54 40 or fight

Others, stop at the 49

Others, say take that last stance

Up at the edge of 69

Tromso, but if that’s your last stance

Might as well go up to 89

Trying to square dance with

Two left feet and trying to

Hold a tune without a beat