The ravens song

The morning ravens sing me their songs

Their black sparkling eyes

Hold mans worst nightmares

Hundred a pond hundreds

Blanket sleeping winter trees

They are the eater of the dead

The eaters of this dirty old city

The ones that welcome us to Hell

I walk alone down the dark morning street

Holding onto my very soul

As their songs get louder and louder

As if they hate the very living

They wait for the sun to rise

Cursing the full moon

Waiting for the sun to conquer the darkness

On this battlefield of East Hastings street.

 

Note. still my need work.

Beer Stain Journalism. HST.

I work as a janitor in a 3 story mad-house with about a hundred souls in it.

Just before quitting time at 3pm the line up was well on its way,

from the top of the buildings stair case to the front office.

Everyone is waiting for their Hunter S Thompson cheque.

I think to myself with a laugh.

A long line of maddness, with kids not even out of their 20s

or dirty 30s, tweaking and freaking in this place.

The mail man is finally buzzed in as the place

explodes into a shark frenzy.

You can feel the old dirty building move.

The first guy in line has been there all bloody

morning, but there’s no cheque for him.

He freaks out and picks the closes garbage can,

like some crazy Godzilla dude and throws it

down the at the running Asian mail-man.

But he escapes with a smile on.

The cops are called, as I pick up the garbage and can.

Punching out my union time card.

I say good-bye to my wide-eyed co-works, like they

are going into battle on some crazy suicide mission.

And head for the bar, thru the smiling drug-dealers,

standing outside.

It’s the middle of the month, but one would think

it’s welfare wednesday.

With 2mugs of beer I look for a seat in a sea of madddnesss

and find one in the far corner, drinking another work

day away in victory.

The place is back to the rafters reminding me

of  a sinking shit.

The waitress creams at some dude that just pinched

her big round ass.

He stands up in a dumb state of innocence, holding up

his right hand. He’s missing three fingers.

This is getting interesting. I think to myself

finishing off the first pint.

But she doesnt buy it and cuts him off.

A big native dude nick name Big Foot

escorts the guy out in a head lock.

Everyone cheers.

Two native women get up to dance to Free Bird by

Lenard Skinner.

Free in there happiness,free from there pains of lonlyness.

Natives have the most beautiful smile and laughter.

I drink my own pains and lonlyness away and order

another 2mugs of beer.

I need a thin sexy dirty women. thinking to myself.

She didn’t even know I was there but I talk to her anyways.

“Theres logic in my maddness” I tell her.

“I mean its crazy-funny that the HST,, stand s for

that political junky, you no Hunter S Thompson”

“You know that writer that wrote Hells Angles and

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

“Good old Johnny Depp played him in that movie”

“Shit I had to read the novel on account that I was

too drunk in the theater with open cans of Bud

and was escorted out half way thru by the cops”

I order another 2mugs and hope that there is a

HST cheque waiting for me at home.

Note for readers.

In the province of BC.Canada the government

has something called Harmonized Sales Tax

Beer Stain Journalism

London’s Calling.

The bees are dyeing the ice is melting

and they are shortening the pints of beer

at this dirty old bar.

But I have no fear and order 2 mugs of beer.

It’s Welfare Wednesday and it’s hard to

find a seat after work at 3pm.

Most have been here since 9am.

The waitress has her referee hocky jersey with

a whistle around her neck.

I wonder if she’ll use it tonite.

There’s a line up in the back.

Everyone is feeding the loco shark.

Feeling good that I’m not in it this week.

I take another drink with a smile on.

Sitting in the back corner of no man’s land.

Drinking another hump day away.

But feel that I’m just doing time.

Wishing I could wash my sins away.

“One must eat their sins alone”

She said to me taking a seat.

Long thick black curly witch hair and dark eyes smile at me.

“Hay Joe how’s your war going?”

“Half way thru it” I say.

Like a seer she looks into my blue eyes.

I tell her I woke myself up the other night speaking Latin.

“You got an old soul Joe”

I order her a double vocal and another 2 mugs.

Both of us have been on a drunk since Verna’s death.

She was a waitress here in this dirty old bar and in

the DTES.

She laid there on the sidewalk from her 6 story window

of the Regine Hotel.

Thro those never-ending screams we stop making love

and look out my apartment window across the street.

Death is always open down here

Never closed down here

Ghosts are always roaming down here.

Beer Stain Journalism

It’s Valentine’s Day and my heart feels like a plug up toilet full of shit.

I order another beer then head for the can.

On the bathroom wall, it is written.

The Bees are dyeing

The ice is melting

And they are shortening

The pints of beer in here.

I top off the mug with a mouth full from my old one.

I tell myself it’s okay now I have a full mug of beer now.

When you first walk into this place

thru the heavy doors.

That beer stain air hits you like a city bus.

An old KISS pin ball machean is on your left.

The bartender looks like he’s doing 25 to life.

As you order a beer.

The place is dotted with old gray men sitting in a sea

of red top clothed small round tables.

Tall waitress with pan-cake breast reminds you of

a street hooker waiting for her first trick.

The juke box is playing a song from that dirty old junky

Hank Williams.

Bet you never knew that.

Ya most don’t.

Thinking it’s easier to see someone failures then their greatness.

The waitress buts on a Whitney Houston song.

Thinking it’s a good time to go out for a smoke

and watch the Crack-Heads on Hastings run thru traffic.

 

Beer Stain Journalism, Dead Society All Around Me

My waitress comes over with 2 more mugs of beer

It’s last call

I’m writing down my maddness

With pen and paper

On a back of a

Hunter S Thompson book

Better then sex ‘ confessions of a political junkie

“How’s it going ?” I ask her not looking but writing

“I feel like the waking dead man”. I look up at her.

“Shit” I say, giving her a tip.

“That bitch Suzzy never showed up for her shift. I’ve been her since 9am”

I give her another tip.

Maybe that’s where all this dead stuff came from:

Dead socirty all around me

Here in the DTES

From kids not even out of thier teens to pencheaners

Hiding in back allys smocking thier rock

Everyone got there HST cheque

The DTES went crazy

I walk home thru the back alley

As ambulances and fire trucks with cop cars

Race up and down Hastings street like madman

Thinking this dead societ is all around me.

This was publish in

Megaphone

Vancouvers street paper, issue 95 January 13.2012

Hey Joe

He sees her at that corner every morning just before 6,

both of them survivors of TDES

Her with that painted professional smile,

him in those worn out construction boots, hardhat and

work gloves

She walks up to him, swaying on invisible waves,

long bare legs and high leather held black-laced boots.

“Hey Joe you got a smoke?”

With a light she gives him that smile.

“How’s your war going, Joe?”

“Losing with a smile on,” he says.

“Still hiding behind Hadrian’s wall, hey?”

giving him the eye, lighting his own smoke.

“Why’s life so hard for Hey Joe?”

“Because God’s a bigger drunk than I am.”

She laughs with that long painted smile.

Grasping his right pocket arm, holding him tight and close,

“Do you have any dreams Joe?”

“Yeah 2 mugs of beer at the end of my day.”

“When you getting off work?”

“When God turns out the lights.”

A car pulls up.

“No rest for the wicked,” she says.

“Take care Joe.”

That rush-hour bus ride to the DTES

with a dead surrendered face’

wishes he could sell his soul for a seat.

Stands there in cement-covered dust,

his tool belt over that sore right shoulder.

Gets off on Main St.

Feels like he’s getting off some U-Boat

being a Bully

not Canadian

not polite.

Wishes he washes back in Toronto.

Pushes his way through.

He cashes his $52 slave labour check at the Ivanhoe,

the closes tavern.

That smell,

that comfortble darkness.

“You buy 2 beer and we cash your check.

Just sign here, Joe” the bartender says

with a Roman highway face.

With 2 mugs of beer he heads for that dirty fish-bowl

smoke room.

His body sits down like a crash landing plane.

He downs the first one in silance and pain.

She sits in the corner with her double vodka,

her long-fingereed hand saying hi.

One Sundaay afternoon they were the only ones

swimming in that dirty fish-bowl.

Her with her double vodka and him with 2 mugs of beer.

She says hi with that long painted smile.

“How’s your war going Joe?”

“Me and God don’t fight on Sundays.”

She laughs like a song bird.

“Come home with me, Joe.”

They make love

with eyes wide open,

he climbs up and down her long body

kissing every part of her

until the sun gives in to darkness.

THE WRITERS CARAVAN

          ANTHOLOGY

A PROJECT OF

THURSDAYS

WRITING

COLLECTIVE

EDITOR

ELEE KRALJII

GARDINER

GUEST EDITOR

MICHAEL

TURNER

OTTER PRESS

13 Days

Sunday morning and I’ve been up since 4am

Drinking thinking and writing

It’s going up to 24 today

The radio is on

Bryan Adams is saying it’s all right

I must be getting older

Not hating his music anymore

Looking into 50 in 13 days

Shit, KISS is playing

Killing the radio

Turning up the weather chanale.

Published in

Meganphon Vancouver’s street paper

November 11. 2011. issue 91. 

Drunken Laundry Day With Charles Bukowski

It takes a six-pack just for him to get it together

In that dirty underground room of his

His radio is cranked

“London’s calling”

He gets that mess together into a pile

Condemned rages, he thinks and cracks another beer

With a pillow case and a box of soap

he heads out

with that beer-stain Bukowski book of poems

The Days run Away Like Wild Horses

His rooming house is in the DTES

The laundromat is around the corner

The cashier just on his left

The rat, tat, tat of a sewing machine

behind the counter

He heads for the back

Chairs, tables, scattered newspapers

He stuffs his stinky rags into a washer

He stays and reads Bukowski

Puts his workman’s rags into the dryer

Sinks enough quarters in for an hour

and heads for the closes bar

“I’ll have two of your cheapest draft”

he says to the young bartender

He puts Bukowski’s book down

to get at a twenty-dollar bill

“I think Mr.Bukowski would approve”

the bartender says

“I read his shit in college, a lot of us have, dude”

He heads for that dirty-fish-bowl smoking room

Thinks, all-right college students still read Bukowski

After the third round and another poem

“Song of my typewriter”

He heads back in sun glasses

Through a gauntlet of drug addicts

Curled up in dirty street blankets

Syringes scattered with garbage everywhere

Skinny hardened rat-faced drug addicts

Committing suicide slowly

He stops as this twenty-year-old kid jumps

in front of him wrapped in a blanket

holding a garbage bag suitcase

Thin, tall, shaggy long blond hair, blue eyes

a sculpted bronze sunken pimpled face

Wondering if he’s that fallen angel

He looks at him from head to bare dirty feet

“Do you want to buy some crack?”

“No my life is hard enough kid

I don’t have to make it harder man”

Stumbles into the laundromat

feeling like he just escaped a bunch of zombies

The place is full

With the extinct middle class

Watches them as they slowly turn into fossils

Feels more pity for them

Than the ones that are outside committing suicide

He opens the dryer door

“Jesus Christ,hot as hell”

he says out loud

Bangs his head

Curses in silence

“Fuck”

Then hears a little voice

“Mommy there’s another man arguing with God again”

He turns around and takes off his sun glasses

A little girl with sun-kissed freckles smiles

As she sits there, on the table

Her mother continues folding their clothes

With a smile she says

“Let the man be, Sara”

“My laundry is really hot”

he says in his own mad defiance

Stuffs his rags into his pillow case

Thinks only of that other warm six-pack

Says goodbye to the little girl and her mom

Apologize to them and God

He heads back to that dirty little underground

To drink and read

Bukowski’s drunken Knowledge.

Drunken Laundry Day With Charles Bukowski

Was one of three winners in the 2011 Downtown Eastside Writers’

Jamboree Writing Contest.

Others where.

Lorren Stewart. A Little Girl

Daggar Earnshaw. Wine and Doorbells

We where publish in Geist magazine issue 82

The jamboree was organized by the

Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University

With support from the Carnegie center

 Friends of the Vancouver Public Library

People’s Co-op Book store and the Geist Foundation.

Thru all this

Born thru all this

Lived thru all this

Walked alone thru all this

Hated thru all this

Loved thru all this

Drank like a madman thru all this

Workes like a slave thru all this

Lost myself thru all this

Typed down my madness thru all this

Skidrow-Skidrow-Skidrow

Felt real thru all this.

The DTES Doesn’t Hide Its Pain

Madness runs deep down here

Fear and hate rule down here

Sadness screams down here

Death is buzzy down here

The DTES doesn’t hide its pain

Here people ride on the end of a dragon’s tail

They eat their sins alone

They cry alone

They die alone in the company of deaths tired arms

The DTES doesn’t hide its pain

On a drunk again

Hating myself again

Killing myself again

Broke again

The DTES doesn’t hide its pain.