what is hidden

what is hidden
what is underwater
what is submerged
truly amazing

People have secret reputations, secret lives. It is hidden from them. There are confrontations, blowups, and people walk away angry and dissatisfied.

A sullen child hangs her head and cries.

She is turned in to the cops.

There is no reason.

That child was me.

It was my mother, it was my friends.

There were screaming angry cries in the middle of the night.

Why won't you.

And that said it all.

***

calm and clean and pure as a vestal nun
I enter the door, I enter the portal
and everything is perfumed. I lie down on satin sheets
I spread my legs beneath the eiderdown ...

He was a middle manager from East Edmonton. He entertained playboy fantasies. He tied my breast up with string. He entered my vagina with a tube of toothpaste. He phoned the RCMP and told them I was a hooker. I took twenty bucks for a taxi home. I almost paid with my life.

People do stupid things. Why should they pay?

***

and the centrifugal force of the poles
they pulled my apart and yet I was not there

the mirror palled.

And no one knew. The truck came. I was off social services again. The vote came in. It was 2-1. It was tied.

And was I at home? Could I make it? Friends called. They called the welfare office. They called the police station.

I was supposed to know nothing.

***

I waited out
all in my mind
they wanted me back
but as what?

Social services wanted me back. There were no problems at staff. I tied out clean. Should I be glad? I felt for the victim. Did that make me an accomplice?

I felt everyone was innocent, basically.

Several men wanted to date you. Are you gay.

This was not a question. It was a statement of fact.

***

the camera turns inside out
the video screen
blackness falls out
the video test

these things never happened
witness I witness

I have witnessed this

the peppermill the saltshaker
old names for what

the past is forgotten and new names are given

I entered the ordinary. Family was never seen. Instead I chose to do this. Tears after tears of bitterness. I cannot name what I have seen.

I have seen the excreble.

Such suffering, such apathy, such cheer at the bottom. Another joke, another toke, and here's a beer, we're all here. And hoot hoot another rubble in the thunderbird.

And time unravels.

Significance layered with meaning.

***
I am a plaster statue
a million miles high

paris turnbull!

Some of the images are grotesque. They are not to be seen in public. They are images taken from the bible, from ecclesiastes.

To make an example.

How fatiguing, how sick and ugly and miserable in the end.

The child is crying.

The woman comforts.

***

fish swim in the ocean
and do not know what they see
what about me
I cannot say what I see

Then everything came easy. The ministry of social services and justice wanted me for smoking tobacco on the street. It was all a lie. They apologized on the seven o' clock news with Mervin and Ed. That's how I felt.

"Another drug bust in downtown Kingston ..."

And that is how the news went.

A schizophrenic woman left alone with a bottle of barbituates ...

And why not?

***

and there were dreams, shadows and fantasies
I pulled my shades and lay down

Never mind I said, and pulled him down. I was wild. He pulled away, repulsed. His face matched mine. There was extreme anger.

"Go away," he said.

I live here.

He pulled out a jay.

You smoke too much, I said.

He went away and never came back.

I called the cops on him.

I called his mother.

That outraged her.

It entered him in.

I was frightened for my life.

I was wrong.

It was just me.

I dreamt many things. They rejected me. I pulled apart. They forgave me. I was gone. They played cards. I didn't bother.

I ripped up the contract.

"good community behaviour"

***

I went to the wrong listings
there were no right listings

I had a new york mugging
it was wearisome
it was tenuous
it fatigued me
it was a firebombing

The saints at hotel dieu yodelled about prostitution, thug crims and street vandalism. I was to be permanently incarcerated in an asylum for being frightened of my neighbors.

They were curious about me.

I didn't recuperate well.

I stopped speaking to people.

Several people thought I had a nice apartment.

They wanted to live there.

I should stay at the sally anne with several team insurance unit investigative cops apparently.

This has happened before.

"disability"

***

And the natural waking and rise of sleep comes again. And everything is sweet, easy and peacful. One met junior newcasters. And there are no words. The ministry of social services met out. The detective department was called in.

In the end nothing was done.

Junior newscasting won out.

CBC cancelled programs.

A televised sense of humour was apparently called for.

There was "an apartment scene."

There was "an apartment scandal."

Unit investigation was called out.

In the end nothing was done.

Why?

Investations closed.

People should be grateful.

It was new little amsterdam. It was how it was created. It was clean. It was new. It was exciting. It was fun. People avoided the place.

People were "acceptable." Exciting. "Fun."

People left.

People were "finished."

People were "tired."

Excuses were made.

People shunned gatherings.

BIT

***

and will I be shriven over the fields when I die
or will there be a moment of reconciliation with the grasses
a moment with heart

a moment with stubborness, a moment with swearing
a moment with swearing

and memories lived up in the brain

There is illness, there is frugality, there is always having to move on. There are moments with fever heat. There is not knowing one, knowing or not knowing oneself in the looking glass.

And there is a moment of ridged glass on the nose, of not knowing one. And is there disease, is there famine, is there disorder ...

There is nothingness, and there is the void, and there is the drop ...

And maybe it is all nonsense, a mirror after all. Rumours of my death like a ghost in the sand. And rumours outstrip one, and one is always there.

And here one beaten, here one triumphed ...

There is the end.

And there is no new beginning made. It is sad, it is death, it is nothingness.

It is taking down the pit.

And is there renunciation before one dies, there is none.

Is there retraction, is there withdrawal, there is none.

Take back an inch and never go fighting.

Down to the inns ...

"lies"

***

And faces were farther and farther receding in the distace, bobbling up and down. They were white ants. Drone ants, hive ants, harbinger ants ...

They told the future, they listed stories. They were theosophists. They were my aunts.

Then one day I wanted to go off with the young people. There were none. They didn't welcome me. They did then, but I didn't realize it. It took me years to understand.

I emptied down a wind tunnel then
I took two vessels
two vesicles

two far stars

There was a commotion, a disruption.

Someone reordered the spheres.

They had changed.

I was gone. I did not know them anymore. I was not staff. I made none of the staff listings. They called them staff when they wanted to get rid of them. I was not beach. I made none of the beach parties..

I put a towel over my head and got rid of them.

"casino may"

***

And he was a real estate broker. He was a street hustler and wise to the knows and the ins of the game. He was an RCMP agent. A cop caddy with a gun. And he knew specialties, sure, yeah, he knowed them and played them. He met them in houses,. pretty women, and he knew they were up to more than they were saying. He cased angles ...

He didn't properly exist.

Neither did the milhaven stalker.

Neither did Tony Flint.

The mailmen and the garbagemen came. They took out trash.

He didn't exist. He was obscene, surrealist, absurd. Where was he?

He was trapped in void, a vortex of matter.

His game card was killed.

Something ceased to exist in the universe.

A bright spot ...

***

she was a lost woman
she was sinking under water
that was her imagos

it was a star flag
she was dreaming
she was leary
she was weary

she was on display

she was a flagstaff

She felt like Brittany Speers. Could she say that. Everyting had gone wrong since the bust of seattlefest. There were drug busts galore on the radio, and the cops had come to her apartment to find her screaming. There were three inces of water in the basement, but social services didn't care and her psychiatrist just brighly suggested she get out more.

She had counselled asylum once.

She was on lithium, and that was she, not her doctor.

Her mother didn't want to see her and then she did.

Whaddha glamour girl!

***

She looked through the room over her bellbottoms. Everything was ordinary, everything was decent. She missed Terry. No one spoke to her anymore. She had won prize place in her youth.
What was the matter, what was strange, what was different. She was old, she was ordinary. she was difficult, she didn't go out anymore. She looked about twenty-three.

She had made it through arts fest, she supposed, but what was ordinary?

She had been outed as gay, that was what, and she wasn't even.

She had menstrual tantrums, and her mother would say that was the same as ever. She always evered her woman when she wrote, and that was "what is it?" And her grandma clicking the phone and time to talk to the parole board. She's gone funny again and I don't like it. Now she's screaming and crying in her room, talking in three different voices and her jaw is clicking and won't stop.

***

it was the entire scene

a star burst like a bubble

it was over

It was truly pathetic making art, and that wasn't what they were about. They killed the small people. It was gordons riding to the hounds and strip the french maid. And no one knew after that what is was about.

"There was snow over the andironacks and into the rockies I hear," one said lightly to another and snow season was on.

There were a few drug busts

"I hear they caught the wrong people."

"They always do."

She said lightly and passed on.

3 DEAD

***

ones face is a clouded land
full of mirrors and places
a sign marks it closed

but it can still show faces
the faces that have looked at one
the faces one has loved

one looks in the mirror
and sees so many strange faces looking back at one

one has after all arrived
a destiny in a strange land

there is a man smiling back
he is kind, he means to tell one.

distinctly strange --
and I didn't like her

I didn't notice
and after all -- what was that one said?

a small thing always dreams of engulfment
a small thing always feels very large

captor prey!

***

one may simply be taking off
reflections in a pool

and yet but still ...

There was no answer. There never was. It was a unit call. It was patterson's men. They had come in to change the fixture, that was all. It was adjoined to the wall.

There was a stand unit stand copyedited to the wall.

and there was a stand ...
there was no stand at all

The microphone blinked. There was resonance. And that was all.

Idealism rapidly disappeared in the face of the call. And there was none. None came. None answered. There was a gulf.

a wave of remorse
and then --

nothing at all

***

reflections in water
reflections in glass
reflections that pass ...

I am writing this in a room as I sit. I am come up to the present.

People are famous. They pass.