There was no embryo, no static incoherency’s or lost pain as the Manitoba prairie expanded and blazoned before us like a vision of hope. There was bound to be peace, peace and happiness feeding on the roots of troubled times, for we had fled on too many broken dreams, granite and snow tricking reflections of cold forgotten substances. We had been passengers in an artificial womb, the sun blinding eyes that preyed on signs of worshipful meaning. The frosted thawing land and cindered faces had been like nightmares weaving their pain between breath and heartbeat, the highway demons thundering across the unyielding land like third dimension cinema-scope licking bloodless wounds. The car we were on moved not on wheels but in mid air like a quivering arrow, sucked by a powerful wind current into the expanding vastness of the prairie.
Winnipeg.
The windy city. The city where the Golden Boy statue, perched atop its domed structure, pays a lofty homage to its stalwart citizens. Future possibilities now turned like tumbleweed in our minds. Feeling the flush of our new found aspiration and excitement, we eagerly strapped on our backpacks, smiled warmly at one another, and proceeded, after waving a cheery goodbye to our driver, along downtown Portage Avenue.
We passed loud advertisements, chestnut stands and Sam The Record Man, weaving our way along the wide sidewalk. I strained wearily into the wind that unleashed its fury and debris. Chuck cut into it, squinting ahead with a grinning, yet intense gaze. Rock music vibrating from record stores seemed an integral part of the evenings rush hour melee. Men panhandling on street corners asked us for spare change. Chuck thought that was hilarious; so much so that he almost stumbled from the curb, but for myself, this warm, pumpkin colored evening had a distinctness peculiar to itself; a clarity of shape and form. High rises were irrevocable masses of interlaced steel, their windows catching the sun and throwing it back onto the street, anchored like gargantuan coffins to the earth. Even the affectionate couple ahead of us, giggling and feeding popcorn to each other, seemed ten feet tall, as if superimposed on a giant movie screen.
We stopped at the corner of Main and Portage, and despite the weight of our backpacks,we had to brace ourselves against the wind. A young man leaving a coffee shop turned to look at us standing there wondering what to do next. He approached us with short, jaunty strides,smiling into the wind, his whistling sounding a shrill reveille. He was wearing a multicolored silk shirt open to the waist and faded corduroy pants. He inspected us for a moment with a mixture of amusement and fascination, and then asked us if we had a place to stay for the night. Chuck couldn’t resist telling him that we had reservations at The Fort Gary Hotel. Still smiling, he brought us to a city park where other hikers lay waiting for a hostel called The Crypt to open its doors.
Wishing us luck, he walked jovially back towards Portage, stopping every few yards or so to talk to someone. Chuck sprawled himself out on the supple grass like a man about to sleep for a thousand years. “Wake me only if it’s an emergency, Reg, or if it’s food-or if a hundred dollar bill comes floating to you in the wind.”
A wind that tickled the whiskered underside of my chin; gastric implosions, one after the other, played havoc with my hungry stomach. But I was not nearly as hungry as the derelict I saw poking about in one of the parks wastebasket. His black eyes were like polished marbles, and his full dark beard was caked with dust and particles of food. He took out a Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch box, sat down on a park bench, opened it, and picked clean the bare bones inside, then ate a crunched up napkin stained with ketchup.
Night descended with the wind tiring like an overworked boxer. Chuck woke with a start, breathing heavily. “I hope you found a hundred dollar bill.” Yawning, he added that he was just about to hop in the sack with Raquel Welch. I told him that he was sleeping so soundly it would have been a crime to wake him. I also told him that The Crypt was a dungeon where wayward transients were tortured and their corpses left to rot. He surveyed the park and its surrounding high rises disparagingly, but then quickly brightened. “Well then, we’ll just have to get ourselves a bedtime snack.”
I sat on my backpack in front of a nearby variety store, waiting for Chuck. My face was so greasy it felt like an oil reservoir. My hair was just as bad. I tried brushing it back from my forehead, but it stubbornly fell back in large clumps. I checked out my skin and bones physique. Neither of us had had a decent meal since leaving our comfortable, suburban homes.
Chuck reappeared and held out the loaf of bread and can of beans he had bought, claiming that his purchase would be more fulfilling and appetizing than the superfluous sundries he had so carefully examined. I couldn’t help but smile. Chuck, his backpack still on, looked like a miniature parachutist. Unlike myself, he was far from being the caricature of Ika-Bod Crane, tall, thin, and gaunt. He looked more like a reject Viking, his short stature a cruel joke. Had he been tall, his Nordic features; long blonde hair and Kirk Douglas chin, would have made him a singularly fierce looking individual. As if knowing exactly what I was thinking, he gritted his teeth and suggested, in his best Kirk Douglas imitation, that we return to dine in the park-as any decent tramp would.
The beans were cold and the bread day old. Undeterred, I spread a glob of beans on my bread and gulped it down whole. The hunger demon had to be appeased, even if it meant catching a single bean that had somehow managed to escape my incinerator of a mouth. Chuck, watching me with a discerning gaze, abruptly erupted into a sudden fit of laughter.
“What’s so funny?” My apparent manner of phrasing and inflection convulsed Chuck into another fit of laughter.
“You! You should see yourself.”
“You think you look any better?”
Chuck laughed now so insanely hard and long and with such total abandon that large tears began to trickle down his cheeks. I too began to laugh. Chuck straight armed me and rolled onto the grass, performing somersaults and other various acrobatic feats with all the grace and finesse of a polar bear. Our unceasing laughter seemed to go on forever before we were able to regain some semblance of composure, and even then we were subject to erratic fits. I looked down at myself as if expecting to see some sort of aberration.
“To bad we haven’t got anything to drink. We could make a toast.”
“And who-exactly, would be the lucky recipient?”
Chuck looked genuinely disgusted. “Only we could be stupid enough to get ourselves into this predicament. But eh-I’ll drink to that.” Chuck guzzled down an imaginary drink. “And to our future wealth of course.”
“You certainly have a point there, professor Slurphenheimer.”
“I always have ze point. It is my profession.”
“So tell me, o wise professor. What is the point of all this?”
“Ze point, pinhead, is to laugh ourselves to death. It is ze only way to go-next to being ravaged by a horde of sex starved amazons.” He glanced up at one of the apartment buildings, sniffing the aroma of cooked food. Suddenly sober, he rolled out and snuggled cozily into his sleeping bag. I mentioned the prospect of city hall finding us accommodation until we found proper lodging.
“Fuck that. We’ll make it on our own, Reg.”
And with that final note, he quickly drifted off to sleep in the warm summer breeze. I too finally settled into deep slumber, only to find there the foaming phallus, the harpsichord heart, fireplace bazaars and ashtray stubble grasping pirouettes across empty words melting marshmallows on stained bed sheets...yellow frozen lines under pink-one fuck-two fuck-three fuck-steamboats, supposed to be steamboats, cries whispered in empty spaces sipping coffee, endlessly sipping coffee, mechanical motion spewing palpitations, she said man does eat by words alone and set down the steaming bowl.
Two in the morning, and hamburger Joey’s hard at work.
Penguins percolating poisonous pus, descending softly into mammoth breasts, nipples swaying in the mellow, pumpkin light. Don’t daddy. It hurts. It hurts.
Cornered solitude creeping
up
and
in
I LOVE YOU-I LOVE YOU-I LOVE YOU said the bitch goddess...vulva to the promised land.
Gary has worked in Social Services while continuing to write. Since first being published in Quills, he has been published in numerous poetry journals, including CV2, Quarterly, On Spec, Filling Station, The Dalhousie Review, The Nashwaak Review, and Grain. He was short listed for the CBC 2006 Literary Awards in the poetry category, a finalist in the Lit Pop Awards and received an honorable mention in The Ontario Poetry Society’s “Open Heart” Contest. His first poetry book, Over the Edge, has been published by Serengeti Press. He is currently completing his first novel.