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Friday, December 1, 2017

Part 2 Continued

Images of the first years. Scenes and sounds and scents.Locked in my mind now, making this place home, or as much so as it can be.Images. I can see the pictures.Two buildings dropping to the ground.Burning first,inward parts melting.Soldiers off to war. Two soldiers approaching a doorstep. The soldiers are outside the door. A wife, a child, sibling or family awaits within. Two soldiers outside, they don't see the soldiers yet. Eating the evening meal.Rising in the morning.Telling bedtime stories.Once upon a time...

Rolling into town on a Greyhound.Muscles aching,dark rings of sweat and grime around the eyes,hair dust saturated. Back sore from hauling brick and timber. Settled into the seat, trying to find comfortable. Like a pile of twisted rebar, removed,cast into the corner of a lot, waiting to be hauled away, cut down maybe.Reused? Dusty blue jeans leave a print on the dark blue seat.Dust and mud and grime.In the cargo hold below, a small bag of clean church clothes. Fouled yellow bandana, covering a white spot, mid forehead, extending around.Heather sees me in the bandana and she calls me Gypsy now, has been doing it for some time. Buses are smooth these days, no rattle, no heavy diesel smoke.Quiet,like a magic carpet.Down the road, straight and true.Rock me to sleep if I could sleep. from one town to another, from green country to yellow country, both now fallow with November. Down the North Hill. What's that blacked out spot to the west? Nosehill, high and vacant,sages and tall grass, inhabited by Native spirits. Colonized all about, for grain and gas and oil.For real estate. Downtown buildings twinkle, beckon; corporate phallic symbols. Down across a tilted bridge.Lions on one end.Then left, easing into a downtown canyon. A few more blocks, then up a ramp, into a bus barn and out into bright neon lobby. A line of taxis below. Close to downtown, but not much around.A black snake of a river, running almost straight here. She waits in a drive-in pick up area,slim and lithe, grey eyes,long yellow hair.Into a warm and lingering embrace, the into a decrepit red car. Conscious of the need of water now,to wash me clean,to take away the day.A few blocks along a well traveled strip. Nightclubs.Still warm. Crowded with pedestrians.Police car flashing by. On to a dark street, one block off the main drag, behind a gas station. Hand in hand through a dark urban outback and into a building.

I can see the pictures.Hear it all too. A building starting to groan, under the weight of history, because the stripes on black flesh have not been atoned for, far away places have been colonized. Groaning and starting to tilt, their years complete, for better or worse. The silent sound of a world turning. Two soldiers outside,taking another step. Safe within, singing the anthem.Lost in studies or stories, writing of letters,not knowing of the last few hours or days of those being addressed. Scarred land and people.Water, washing clean.Two soldiers approach, another step. Shadows and tangled sheets,and a child says"I love you." Two soldiers drawing closer, removing hats and holding them,dignified in their hands. Once upon a time.It's strange for a story to end with Once upon a time.

May as well work here now.Busy streets. Rushing of in dark hours. Down on Ogden Road, the air smells of paper fiber and mash from the distillery from the treatment plant.And it all clings to a body, choking a bit at a time. Walk along the road.It's too far, and a silver van operates a photo radar in front of the metal re-cycler. Old ovens piled by the gates.A corrugated fence and a mountain of rust beyond. One machine lift, another devours.Dusty and windy in this town. Up along the tracks.It's shorter, but sometimes there are coyotes.Old boxcars. High yellow grass. Once a sirocco wind blew up on the walk home.Twelve degrees leaving the factory gate, twenty eight an hour later in a thunder of dust, eyes gritty,skin blasted. Out on McLeod Trail an olive army truck rolls by.Don't work at the mill now.Everyone hates each other, it's a wonder anything gets done. The tall foreman stares lifelessly at his peons, laughs and calls them racists.Have to leave.Going to strike him down with a board. The bottle depot oozes stink, every poison, every known drink that's unfit to drink.Pours out onto the floor.Bottles stacked in cardboard flats, soldierly, or tossed into canvas bags, like pits. Left the mill, working again ,a day later. C-Train home, conscious of booze stink,little sticky patches.Hands poisonous and black. Needing water to wash me clean.Passengers on the train, thinking me uncouth.Needing water.

A fire burned away, just across the river,the day after leaving the bottle depot. Talk of poor air quality.An exploding propane tank, a fireman being knocked down a latter. It the lawyers office, downtown. Everyone at the window, staring.Brown haze to the south, but how far? Better go look.Close to home...just across the stream.Multiple buildings. Cinder block apartment building.Springtime. Geese on the lawn, sometimes aggressive. Smoky inside, worse than the mill. Chopper in the sky, low. Talk about evacuation,maybe. River flowing by, Hell just beyond. Looks like a war zone. They parked the fire trucks along the road in the days just after the building tumbled, flying maple leafs and stars and stripes both.People honked, stopped to donate money to the families, right there by the roadside. Now the trucks are working, the neighborhood burning.Too close

Working.Food warehouse.Produce from Mexico. a scorpion scuttling across the floor.It came in with a load of watermelon. Stomp it flat, ruthless. Working,a linen factory. Shop steward says"I don't mind blacks...everyone should have a couple tied up in the back yard."He's unbearable, and he's a shop steward, ex-military.He lives to beat the system.Believes nothing good at all. Selling drugs on the side, locker covered in porn.Unbearable.

Talk radio.Iraq, Iran.Syria. Right wing all the time.Does any mercy exist in this town? "People are homeless because they choose to be. The Arabs hate us. They hate that we are free and successful.Why should peanuts be banned from a school just on account of one child? We have to close our borders. Don't work, you have no right to eat.Why shouldn't I jump queue to get the medical help I need, if I can afford to? And have you seen those palatial shelters? We need to stop making things so soft on people who won't work." Man walking down the alley.See him from the window.There is some kind of a thing growing on his cheek, blue and puffed up.Tumor maybe.Plastic garbage bag.Into the dumpster he goes.Looking for bottles and cans.Stomps the cans flat in the ice and show.Muffled...sounds like a gunshot in winter air.

Flood waters rising.Evacuate today, maybe in a few hours.Serene river's angry now. Apartment door left open again.Won't stop the water anyway.Might stop the crackheads if it was closed.Water creeping up.A bit muddy running from the taps.Won't wash me clean now.Cant drink it.Pitching sandbags end of the street.In the rain. The bridge just downstream is nearly awash.Waters rising.Then a cop comes by,with a city worker.Knocking on all the doors.Needles on the floor.One hour.Have to leave.Too much water.

Then up the North Hill.Number three bus.Sometimes late at night there are small race riots, really just fights on the bus.It's high up here.Not going to flood.Neighborhood looks hard and nasty. Three miles to work.Coyotes and skunks, and gopher holes.Jackrabbits. Rough cut here,for a city.Sidewalks just end sometimes. Walking underneath planes.Work is tolerable.Walking works out the kinked muscles, from pitching boxes and a flimsy bed. Hard to sleep, to get enough rest. Strong and able but feel unwell sometimes.Look up at Nose Hill. A few roads look like ruts. White piss stained porcelain.Beer cans.Stiff necked Mormons. Living behind a door, sleeping in cold winds of winter. Two buildings, two soldiers and the rest of the world.Approaching.Looking for water.

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