42 – Fit to Print

allt fint

hints, hence the dense

bleak on white

the eye or a glint

alas, surpassed

tied the stage of page

the double not

curse and cursive

not quite minted

dangerous to read

a prayer ooo grayt

bass cats blessings

fit to be tied, ain’t it

you

need to be in a

Heidelberg Letterpress

scrawl on wall

crayon

the fingers of perps

in Helvetica bold a box

like whispers

evolutionary

rot

Angela Rawlings, Andrew Topel, Catherine Heard, Roger Hanna, Anthony Perri, Pearl Pirie, Brian Bartlett, Alice Robinson, Neil Hennessy, Joseph Brown, Warren Dean Fulton, Amanda Earl, Gary Barwin, Priscilla Brett

43 – The Revolt Outside

Nothing compared to the revolt

felt inside for the revolt outside.

The 6 o’clock news have advised not

to televise the tower under attack.

Outside is frightful,

the fire so delightful,

go

revolt revolt revolt

not – not because you’re guilty

not because you’re free,

because you scream on the inside

balm to the souls of the prisoners within.

Over puff pastry and foie gras

hints of a much darker war inside,

restore the necessary psychical voltage in time,

soon everything vibrating as

the prisoners’s heads raisd bloody.

My window inside my mind outside this world

inside this heart outside of words

is withering while torrents of rain fall

a house of cards

is quiet though unmeasured;

then the men in black appear,

pounding their shields in fear.

Over the opulent meal inside

snow beggars stand

caviar cowards in

my inner ear tickling me to death

erecting classifications of insurrection.

The revolt outside never happened. Go back to sleep,

pause to remember one who has passed away.

One who has done so much for so many revolutions.

The turmoil inside reminds me

I’ve given up on being piss and vinegar.

I was very young

playing a parachute game

lifted round film over our heads

and beneath I looked up and felt vertigo

my fabric ceiling inflated

there was no pressure

change

physically but geographically

I realized a map overlaid

every street, yard and building ever

those maps lifted off and away

my neighbours

my parents,

just gone.

Our streets were nameless

my house was nowhere

the map was being lifted and dropped

as nothing but a game

with no rules and no real playground

except the map itself.

The revolt outside was a Malthusian catastrophe

populated by droids & droogs suppressed.

Go back to sleep.

Andrew Waldie Porteus, Warren Dean Fulton, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl, Kathleen Betts, Richard Olafson, Susan Christian, Keri Cronin, Garry Thomas Morse, Catherine Heard, Andrew Topel, Brian Bartlett, Bryne Helen Lewis, Jamie Reid, Priscilla Brett, Maria Damon, Warren Dean Fulton, Thamyris Jones, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Kristen Peterson, Terry Trowbridge, Miekal And

44 – I Erased Facts

I erased facts with tact and still had a de Kooning theory before verifying that they were indeed facts; I may in fact have been erasing fictions; the fact is, fact or not; that in fact I erased facts or fictions.

I erased facts with acts but not those written invisible with the friction of fiction

and then I denied I lied, lambaste and please help me retrieve them. I shall gather up the eraser rubbings and rewrite truth with a nod, reason with a gesture; made dreams into memory, sight into sound and replaced them with fiction until there were none, but now it is a Rauschenberg so I could be adored for something I didn’t do, removed the truth and replaced it with this poem so you would vote for me.

Douglas: had a good chuckle on that one, as it is election day in Winnipeg and I just read this for the privilege and opinions for the agency and lay down all my weapons and wrote the truth and other mistakes of opinions in order to clear my conscience for another round, plunderversing the collective memory through Orwellian notions of mind manipulation as they squeaked by.

Ian Rae, derek beaulieu, Donato Mancini, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Amanda Earl, Brian Bartlett, Warren Dean Fulton, Kathleen Betts, Pearl Pirie, Jordan Fry, Alice Robinson, Martin Aitken, Catherine Heard, Kristen Peterson, Priscilla Brett, Douglas Barbour, James Yeary, Natalee Caple, Joseph Brown, Jamie Reid, Kim Goldberg

45 – That Exposed Malfeasance

being sexual

in nature will be

par for the course

teasels

the smooth cloth

which we all

cut

into different patterns

squat wart haunch

a ring

a dinner guest

deposed the center

still schemes

stealing, lying,

hurting, harming

swiftly buried again under

a welter of spinning words

too titanic to ignore

that exposed malfeasance

attempt to fool the public

sue and use

cartoons

show what he is:

a jail term

I’m changing mine

to hidden by Truth.

right?

if you can’t fight City Hall?

sure, you can fight city hall,

but in an officially-sanctioned match

you could punch out

Nick Treanor, Pearl Pirie, Catherine Heard, Warren Dean Fulton, Jamie Reid, Amanda Earl, Kinja Jakab, Kathleen Betts

46 alt – Shamefully Distorting History

Quantum leapfrogging

the ripples spreading

across this old pond

tune in the feed

squeezing cyclical lies

to the square of patriotism

to forget shame the historian wrote “the end”

revisionism the new solipsism,

I am what I say I was is a full-time job

the deeper we dig

the more archaeology makes a good novel

all too easy is her middle name,

the most fun you can have for one dollar

writing in a name for your unknown father

in hope of getting one more chance to deal

so high and wild he’ll never have another

creating histories in Canada

teaches that history shamefully distorts

I am writing backwards

the most banal landscape

into a utopian wonder

Warren Dean Fulton, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Alison Starkey, Brian Bartlett, Diane Schoemperlen, Joseph Brown, Kateri Lanthier, Ken McGoogan, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Ken McGoogan, Athena Madan, Gary Barwin, Catherine Heard

46 – Shamefully Distorting History

Quantum leapfrogging the ripples spreading across this old pond

as when aliens tune in the feed

squeezing cyclical lies to make them fit the square of patriotism

To forget shame the historian wrote “the end”

revisionism the new solipsism, I am what I say I was is a full-time job

The deeper we dig the more archaeology makes a good novel

all too easy is her middle name (I leapt) is the most fun you can have for one dollar

writing in a name for your unknown father in hope of getting one more chance to deal

so high and wild he’ll never have another

Creating histories in Canada teaches that history shamefully distorts

I am writing backwards the most banal landscape into a utopian wonder

Warren Dean Fulton, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Alison Starkey, Brian Bartlett, Diane Schoemperlen, Joseph Brown, Kateri Lanthier, Ken McGoogan, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Ken McGoogan, Athena Madan, Gary Barwin, Catherine Heard