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Looking Back

Born late and light, nearly killed by the freezing cold in a broken-down trailer, courtesy of a broken air pump that filled my infant quarters with the ice-air of Ontario winter

A screaming mother brought me back, blue and blinking, breathing

Living in the transient suite of a live music club called the White House, Renfrew, ON '79, baby rocked to sleep to the pulse of my Dad's Fender Precision… Lost to an East Montreal pawn shop in a later chapter

From there we ended up in that trailer… backyard outcasts of my mother's father, himself no more than a motherless orphan, sin streaked, blood streaked red… traded as workhorse in the olden days and given many names, all of which fell short in dignity and durability… in the end and beginning, he named himself - chose his name - that we could all make such a grand, free choice… arrived at through torment and dirt-sleep

My mother tried for more children and the effort was fruitless, there was to be no sharing of affection - I was the only, for her, now burdened with a weight of eternal sadness… the birth of a monumental element inverted, to a black emptiness

Barrie, ON; Arnprior, ON; Petawawa, ON; Renfrew, ON; Pembroke, ON; Ottawa, ON

923 Gladstone was the closest I would ever come

Forced-friends with the filthy, sad, neglected bully from school - mom recognized his needs and brought him by - I taught him to swim - met again for the first time, grown, in the docket of an Ottawa courthouse… There is something to be said for the accuracy of statistical probability… anyone could have told you we'd both end up there

Yellow walls, birthdays, dirt-yard and demolition orders

Kicked in walls because who gives a Fuck

Cats running for safety, and the only safety is Escape

My parents escaped each other and split my World in two… and Three…

That house came down and any dream of a Home went with it, because you cant have a Home without a Family

Me and Dad took over the apartment on the 21^st floor

Me and Mom took over the apartment on Preston, where I dreamed the Death of her new love, … a beautiful, sad, ex-junkie stick up man from Montreal, how perfect… he loved us and we him and I saw his death and he died a few short months later, in a fire… surrounded by the smoke and sirens I saw in nightmare previous

Nightmares, burnt keepsakes

We moved to Spadina, and again… We moved to Irving, we moved to Rochester, we moved to Nepean, we moved to Korea, we moved to British Columbia, we moved to Montreal…

I move and writhe like a rat in dirt, born corrupted and trying to chelate this hatred out of me, this weakness accepted and returned for value

I belong in the corners, the cracks, the empty warehouses and the thick, pristine comfort of a bed in a fine Suite… precisely because I don’t belong there

House of flesh, castle of cloth, will of steel, heart of stone

A Master Student, loneliness, provocation, despair, serenity, sanity

Chased and killed with an iron spear in an East Coast alleyway

Peter died, chosen name Grandfather dies, secret smoking Grandfather dies, with a purple face and three dozen tubes like clear snakes growing out of his wretched body, red rooms and green rooms… his final eyes for me at nine, they Apologized and he died that night

Neil died, Donna died, black spider on her foot, her body killed by alcohol and her three year old daughter spent a couple days with her body, trying to wake her up… mom's clients died, illness settled in all about me

And I was ill too

Ear infections, Throat infections, strep, broken headaches, twisted back, weak wrists, and an ever-lingering white-hot blade sheathed deep in my abdomen, picking it's moments to strike

Racked with the misery of feeling, nerves alight like a bloody Christmas tree in the night

Terror of sleep, Mario 3 on black and white TV

Shawn, smiling and handsome, red as blood, seller of survival and sincerity, seller of small crack rocks that will get you killed

Owner of a gun, sworn to protect me, unfocused infused, killer of threats

Tried to kill my mother

I wasn’t there or things could be very different now

Mike, lover, not a fighter, twelve to eighteen beers a day Mike, stay-warm coffee mug filled with suds and off to work

Mike who would be a pal of pals, who would have two beers and start to sway, who in an inopportune moment of quiet demanded of my mother what no son can tolerate

I promised to do my best to end his life if he didn't leave, and when he did, for the first time I became the man of that house

The next time we really hung out she was away and he had run into a quarter ounce of high-quality cocaine

A few days later me and my girlfriend awoke to him smoking jumbo crack rocks in the living room, 11 am, three or four beers into the morning

People cry when they smoke crack

I left and never came back

Once I was gone, my father bought a house, and began converting it to a Home

A home where I was not quite invited until I broke myself, then I forced myself upon this oasis of luxury… I needed it, but more than anything I didn’t want to be forgotten, left behind as a relic from another Time, another Family...

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