restaurant owners telling kids they can't use the
washroom then made to mop up the waste they helped create.

The world, a stand-up comic throwing away his happy face then
coming to sit in disgust at the unchronicled petty evil of our times.

VULCANS

Adder toothed flowers snake
the broken ground where
molten tongues cremated
the twisted, bunker forms--
a Latin cross of
green jubilation
lies matted atop a
sweating road, calligraphy in broken stone.

As trembling shale collapses into thin hills,
light fuels to cross the Pale.
A little exploratory weeding droops this lava rain.

A long, dove fence comprised
of stones & rattled by ancient slaves
winds its distance
along the gully
borne in fire, percussion caps,
cretin growth
lobbed under
creeping wire.

Shafts of pioneer light
delight in coral baskets,
empty twilight darts the
agave swords' mauve pitcher plants.

The 1692 Tremens decimated Port Royal[1]
--moved a ravine from
florid to mossy shadow
where antler shoots today announce
temperate plants, eclipse by-gone tropic flowers.

[1] An earthquake destroyed in the seventeenth century not only the
stronghold of Jamaica's pirates but also changed the topography of
the North Shore creating Fern Gully.

DRY GUILLOTINE

In my childhood, "Verdun," meant madness.
Bars on the windows, cages around the intellect.
Time was a poor keeper of souls, it seems, wore out all but
a fragment of my memories. Musical, poetic. The sounds of clay china
being dropped on the floor. Fierce Celts with a gift for the muse in
keeping with their love of lyricism and war.

Driving by 999 Queen in Toronto accompanies a lot of the above.
A cuckoo bin by any calculation and a reference not meant to be
pejorative. A subject so clothed in solemnity only irreverent
"kidding," can hope to disarm its grasp. Still, the truth must be told.
In university, no one shrinked from whispering the ultimate fate--
a stint in Sydenham or a trip down the road to Cedar Springs.
Delightful euphemisms, the names reminiscent of sonorous rivers,
tree lined groves, peach blossoms across Georgia springs. Or
Ophelia's funeral oration wherein Polonius rightfully alludes to her
sudden falling away amid laughing brooks.

I am reminded of Charriere's desperate attempt to stay sane on Ile
du Diable, the cutting edge of his dry guillotine--h