Benjibopper

Shirt off, deep in the mirror
chest protrusion, washboard abs
chiseled face, tanned Adonis
Ain’t nobody looks as good as me

Pimple-poppin’ scavenge
face all ravaged
body like a chicken
with Harry Potter glasses
ain’t no geek like a geek like me

Ideas flow
a river of genius
eloquent articulation
a gigantic penis
When Carlin needs a joke
he calls on me

My brain is dead
as I blunder through stutters
can’t find a joke
I’m a cigarette butt
ain't no loser like a loser like me

Look at all these losers
knots all tied
round their little minds
talkin’ all crap
obvious blue skies
oh how I wish
I had something to say
more interesting
than what I lost today
ain’t no bore like a wimp like me

Look at me now
top of the mountain
do you know what courage
it took to go here?

Let them have their safe little jobs
Steady cheques and benefits
I left all that behind me years ago
Couldn’t cut that 9 to 5
Too brain-dead to keep my body alive
Too courageous to be safe
Too ridiculous to be sane

All the girls here love me
The women too
The boys are mostly jealous
The men don’t have a clue
Me I’m not horny
or I’d surely score
That chip-dip looks good
and I’m no conversation whore
I’d rather be alone
in lonely creation
and loner cool
When you’re cool like me
alone is the rule

Who else is good enough to keep me company?
Who would wanna spend time with a loser like me?
with the tunes running through my head
Nobody knows the tunes like me
Each word triggers a new melody
Ain’t nobody can rhyme like me:
outrageous contagious perfection erection
Even the drummer don’t love music like me
and I’m too busy singing inside for conversation
Why can’t I get these tunes outta my head?
ain't no obsession like obsession like mine
dashin’ fast after breakfast to write my lines

Perfectionists obsess over inane detail
My edges rough like toughs from the Bronx
Poetry in the gutter
Artistry in jagged lines
Who needs right angles anyway?
Right angles are for squares
I never built a house
or wrote a perfect book
I don’t have the patience
for that measured editing
no discipline

I tell the truth
when I exaggerate
to make the points
of my own bias
run-on sentences
lists are my style

I look down on you all
I look down on me
Nobody else changes their mind like me
ain't nobody steady as a rock like me

The future’s mine
Infinite possibility
If I only had the strength
to make a home just for me
but oh I’m too generous
what generosity!
I share myself with the world
Repressed agility
The world is my clamshell
You can’t predict me
If I could just live in the present
I might stay happy

I got the power
Ain’t no power like power like mine
I humble the sun
Humble the redwood I never seen
Humble my admirers
Oh but I feel so weak
Too many temptations
Inability with creations
So much I don’t know
but I know all you have to tell me
My intuition is that good
Ain’t no instincts like instincts like mine
Don’t know how I’m wrong all the time

Ain’t nobody self-conscious like me
but sometimes I feel fine
Forgetting myself sets me free
ain't nobody free like me
Ain’t nobody free like me

Labels: 2001, philosophy, Poetry, west coast

So Different

Scanning the Mars horizon
for seaweed heroes
I asked “who will stand?
Who will be my guru savior?
Who will be my man?”
Bob Dylan stumbled
from the whiskey wasteland
Nietzsche denied my soul
Charles Wallace near off’d my head
Dragon slayers swallowed me whole

“To hell with them all” said I
“No heroes reside in this puppy pound.”
Rosie stood there observing
She caught me as I spun around
She held me there with her prayer-book eyes
Said “how about me?”
With that leprechaun smile
“I’m something you can never be.”

Rosie you think we’re so different
but we’re the same you and me
We both come from Africa
but live here in eternity
When we bleed
we both but sigh
and wait for lonesome privacy
before we let ourselves cry

Rosie led me through society’s gates
busting through if necessary
She showed me rows of orchard trees
We climbed together to reach the cherries
Dylan, Nietzsche, Wallace and the Knights
they followed far behind
Rosie never said a dull thing
and never stole my mind

The talks we had were of real life
True stories each single one
Personal tales of triumphant translations
and the pie eating contest fun
Nietzsche took notes and Dylan did coke
Wallace and the Knights chucked spears
Rosie with ballet-dance effort
assuaged each all of my fears

She said to me
“You’re not from my world
You don’t understand
these blacks these girls
neither not you
not any white man
though you may try
I don’t think you can
You’re welcome to follow
don’t expect to keep up

You’re allowed to watch
but you ain’t got the stuff
You belong with them
that are lagging behind
not leading with their hearts
but followin’ with their minds”

“My hero!” said I
my hero of mud
The source of creation
the source of these studs

Rosie you think we’re so different
but we’re the same you and me
We both come from Africa
but live here in eternity
When we bleed
we both but sigh
and wait for lonesome privacy
before we let ourselves cry

Labels: 2001, philosophy, Poetry, west coast

photo by Molly Crealock

Nocturnal Gabriel speaks softly
Staring hippie-eyed
at the neon dining room
globe of white
“Electric lights are so strange
We steal power
from the earth
so we can meddle
with things when
we should be resting
so we can rise with the sun.”

Labels: 2001, philosophy, Poetry, west coast

"I love bein' a trucker. I just drive and have fun all day, listen to music, play with the CB, talkin' to other truckers."

The queued up radio crackled, "Up ahead a click."

"Thanks, have a good one." He geared down - 21st to 16th - cruised by a white sparkly cop car.

"Never had a speeding ticket in my life. I love drivin' a truck."

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Our Nanaimo salvation - a 7---horsepower 120,000 tonne steroid-addicted caravan, driven by a wife-beater-mesh-cap-adorned paleface Newfy. Quiet at first, as he child-molester eyed Sadie. He felt sorry for my Nova Scotia roots.

"Yeah, I worked for a while in Halifax, haulin' fish from the docks. Shitty job. That's where there was the most suicides. Oh yeah, people kill themselves all the time jumpin' in front a transit trucks. I had 15 people jump in front a my truck in the 13 years I been drivin'. I remember every face.

"Five a those happened in Halifax. Now I make a point a drivin' in the passing lane; makes it harder for 'em to get in front a me. It's illegal but who gives a shit?

"Here it's mostly animals I have to worry about. Hit an elk last week - cost me $18,000 in damage. Those things are just the right height to fuck up your front end and smash your windshield with their antlers.

"I drive 14 hours a day, 6 days a week - so I hit about 5 deer a week. I own this truck so all those repairs come outta my pocket. I do okay though, $3,000 a week, not bad for deliverin' mail. I got a 5-year contract with Canada Post, renewable. Paid my house off in 3 years. But mostly, I sleep in my truck. S'okay though, no one at home anyway."

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

I can't believe I miss the people trap, the Big Sneeze, home of 5 million shoe-staring power walking Bay Street hustlers. I miss Mykeyz, my Death-of-Ladies-Man-Lawyer, Minister Swears, Ingrid Bergman my north-north magnetic crush, KK n Lodowne in the Loo, and of course You-Know-Who.

Laying concrete turns out to be an adequate withdrawal treatment, as long as you don't know what you're doing. The nanosecond a task becomes monotonous the cravings set in. Shit, I even miss XX right now.

"The Queen of the Netherlands, or some place, at 80, just learned to stand on her head," says Chera, Queen of Serentity by the Sea. Nurse Wratched on valium, prozac, and yoga. Same computer efficiency without the whip torture.

"Wow!" responds her King, "You know, just 15% of the global military budget would cope with all the world's environmental crises. It'll be a great day when education ids adequately funded and the army has to sell cookies to raise money for guns."

True dat cliche.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Serenity is an asylum, for all its claims to be in tune with the land like some supra-eco-literate Walden, it tries like everyone else for absolute control, blasting creeks with concrete because the natural flow is painful aesthetically displeasing. "I'm okay with the use of concrete, but only if it doesn't change the natural shape of the rock. Don't put too much on." Multidirectional orders for the willing lackey.

The meals are killing me. My palate is a long-repressed virgin at the college res, ultra-stimulated with new nerve sensations in every pore - you never knew you had so many erogenous zones in one place! Nipple raped cows suffer for my flesh sins, if indirect. My stomach attacked by acids fatty grooving in my guts churning excremental absolution time after time, gastrointenstinal stress. Perscription addiction can't even save me.

Serene concentration camp with Nazi hours, yet free muscle liquidiation massage therapy and psyche straining clarification exercises.

But where are the answers?

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Ed dropped us in hell - also known as Nanaimo BC - where you can't even buy a nanaimo bar. Second-hand two hours and no highway ride - we were so close to Victoria and a bed and shower we decided to buy into Buster's paradox, but as usual the legacy lasted for a four-hour wait. We managed to hitch a station wagon ride from an off-duty trucker to the other side of town, the side closest to Victoria. "You'll never get a lift to Victoria from downtown. People don't pick up hitch-hikers because they think they're prostitutes. I'll take you to a good spot."

The minivan hatchback halt-screeched right away, full of Quebec hippies. "You got room in there?"

"Parlez vous fracais?"

"Ah...oui. Est-que c'est-"

"Ahhh, you got any...um...mariJUana?"

"Oh. No, sorry."

"Ok, merci." Bullet departure.

"Well, at least we know people can stop here."

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Port Hardy is the Twilight Zone, the same caravans passed us 6 times each, with the same nursing home attendants waving and pointing excuses for not picking us up.

Big bearly man saved us on only his second pass, after getting gas. Covered pickup man, slicked grey-white hair, big deer belly under plaid shirt - cannon voice - a logger. "Oh I don't cut trees, I build logging roards. But I'm semi-retired now - only work 6 months a year. Not as much work these days anyway. So I have more time to visit my daughter. She just dropped out of school. She's a receptionist now. I guess she's happy. I'm on my way to see her - first time in 6 months. Thanks to the US boycott on softwood. I'm a yank myself - from Louisiana, not far from Baton Rouge. Wife makes the best jumbalaya you ever tasted! Yessir.

"But I love Canada. Came to this island 30 years ago and never wanted to leave. I rarely go back to Louisiana now - been 5 years.

"I like the land here. I like the animals, especially the bears. See them all the time. We had one at work got into the whipped cream. We warned the chef not to leave anything out, but he didn't listen. Sure was funny to see that bear into the whipped cream - ate a whole barrel! Oh yeah - seen one carry my neighbour's garbage can 100 yards one time, into the woods. I wished I had a camera - funniest thing. He carried that thing, walkin' on hind legs, hundred yards. Ha! It was so funny.

"Only thing about Vancouver Island is all the Indians." I zoned out on that broken white man record. Nice friendly white bigots coast to coast.

Labels: 2001, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

Sixteen days since Sadie left - withdrawal in full force now. Flashbacks - rose-coloured glasses flashbacks in futuristic Utopian fantasies, me her and ever'thing's fine.

Been a long time traveling without ever connecting with anyone new - not since Indonesia: Lodowne and Shorin. Inexplicable connection despite barriers of culture, language, religion. She a religious junkie, the worst kind, except maybe a love junkie like me. But everyone has addiction in common. "Leave it to fate," she said. I'm fate's bitch, all it does is screw me.

Okay, that's not true, that's the withdrawal talking. Serenity chores sweat it out of me: seaweed harvesting, cliffside weeding, bread-making.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

"Killer whales are known to be very cunning with their prey. I heard about a pod that played with dolphins for hours, luring them far out into the ocean, where they ate them." Pseudo-cousin Katy'd told the same story, except with coyotes and dogs.

"Another cute wild animal that has been known to be aggressive is the elk. A friend of mine was chased all through Jasper by an elk while the tourists snapped photos. It's true!"

Crazy tired arrival at a campsite in Port Hardy called sunshine sanctuary, with scary-ass Paul Bunyon killing stuff statue at the entrance.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

BC's southcoast ferry is so gay they call it the Queen. Big smiles abound for glorious gaiety. A 16-hour trip. Cold tin cafeteria tables and hard plastic chairs. Comfy pleather chairs with porpoise dolphins circus-playing for show. Free newspapers and funny movies. Occasional pitches by Natural Resource Tourguide Salespeople (NARTS) on the top deck channel deeper than wise, mountain and small village adorned.

"If everyone here is pure of spirit, we may get to see Kermode, or spirit bear as the natives call it. It's a white black bear, not an albino but a sort of separate breed with a recessive white gene. I've even heard of one with a black head and white body." Ahhh, KK with your blazing orange hair, fat pouty lips, brown eyes into which I gaze from far below, your white magazine skin and coke bottle hips, your swolen hummus belly - how I miss you. Soneone on that boat was not pure of spirit.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

On the way home we were gravitated into a line country music pub. Dinah and Flo - two middle-aged Haida Gwaii women, invited us for a beer, their 17th.

"Y'don look olenuff a be in here, Chris. Bet yer m'son's age. An yer cute." This record backgrounded the live act all night - two Newfies doing folk country - Hank Williams even. "Chris, y'wanna dance?" Of course.

Flo worked packing fish till her fingers curled gnarled and arthritized and it was too much pain. "Chris, y'wanna smoke a joint w'me? It's mediss, mediss, y'know, for my arthritis." Not now thanks.

"Chris, yer m'son's age and yer cute, but m'son's cuter a course. But yer cute - Ai-eeeee!" High-pitched Haida Gwaii cat call.

Dinah was cute too, but her man-catcher was Owen-pointed.

"At this point in our show we'd like to invite our friend Owen up to sing a song or two." Johnny Cash base voice pumpin' hard country - Hank Williams and Snow too, Cash, Willie Nelson. Of course hot-blooded Dinah was drawn, and sung, and danced - old-folk shuffle sweetly.

Mavis joined the party late - the sister of a Haida Gwaii artist who happened to carve Sadie's argellite jewelry: Miles. Miles and Mavis.

We stumbled to the tent after midnight and our old friend Florian woke us up: "Time to get up! Ferry's coming!"

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Busted flat in Rupert - rain pourin in - me under a V-roof picnic table shelter sippin' gas station coffee, Sleepy Sadie out in the tent oblivious to appropriate rains. BC ferries are designed not to connect with each other - part of a Board of Tourism plot to keep up accomodation spending in small-town BC.

Sadie rose playful giddy - me on the rag again. Playing the avoidance game with my books and walking trails. We went for island-priced Sushi on the mainland, eating bioregional irreplaceable pieces of the ocean.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Haida Gwaii's short impression flew by from the cold back of a red pickup, holdin' hands, battered together in too much time, and not enough. Resilient forests winding road and Lucian-like seas sparkling pink, as if the waves gave colour to the sun.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

But there was a ferry to catch, a due date in Vancouver. Strange to wander into an open stranger's home for dinner then leave so soon.

"I don't know what to do with myself. I see the beauty here, and what's happening to it, I don't wanna go back to Toronto. The ocean - I need it. But my friends - I need them. And anyway what would I do here? What would I do about these clearcuts?" Bits of light short greens - tree harvest scars, still beautiful but insinuating greater beauty that once was - an aging actress. So plentiful these scars.

"Maybe the trees are just smaller here, in some spots."

They're shorter because they're younger, their parents massacred by our greed.

"You could move to Vancouver - lots of cool people there, and the ocean."

"Replace one urban nightmare with another."

"Not all cities are the same."

"The point is I gotta get out of Toronto, but I'm afraid to."

"Yeah, me too," she said.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Migrant hippies fluttered in and out for an hour, passing joints and malt liquor, taking turns holding babies, while the indy folk music poured in through the cabin windows. Ken talked sex, chit-chat, geography, weather, politics.

"The DFO wants to come to Haida Gwaii and tell us how to run our fishery, when it was their policies destroyed our fishery in the first place. Now what we need to do is all sit down together, the fishermen, the natives, the locals, consumers, and all sit down with the the feds, and all tell those bureaucrats we don't want their policies on Haida Gwaii - we want to manage our own fishery!

"I really believe in the circle you know. It's the only legitimate form of justice left in the world; when the native elders look at a guilty man and say, 'We can forgive you, but this is how you gotta repent.' Well, we need to all sit down - like in a circle, and talk about how we're gonna manage the resources on this island." Hippies' heads glue-focused, without a noise in thew room but Ken's crackerjack voice. Even the children silent listening, like church.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

Sign on the cabin's 2nd floor said 'Come in, We're Open.'

"What's up there?"

"Oh, that's Ken. Go on up and say hello."

Tentative stairclimb to peek inside.

"Oh, hi! Come on in, have some chili. I'm Ken. Have a seat next to the basketweaver." Sparse-bearded, toothless menonite cuddling a basket in hand.

Ken poured us some slaughtered bovine chili. "It's great stuff. Harvey made it, thanks Harvey!"

"No problem Ken." Beer-sipping bronze bearded kid in the corner, Hulk Hogan smile.

"Now, this here's Anna, Jane, oh, here's Stevie. Hey Stevie!" Stevie delivered us a few cans of malt liquor and the Basketweaver quoffed his and stumbled off to a class he was teaching on weaving hats.

"He made me this one," said Anna, long-time west-coast hippie, pretty in her fifties.

"So where you folks from?"

"Toronto. Well, I'm from Halifax originally, but we live in Toronto now."

"Nova Scotia, eh? I got a job offer from there yesterday. They want me to come build them a gazebo."

"That's a bit of a commute Ken," said Harvey. Ken emitted this cackle - it volcano erupted from his torso, stalled, turned over agin like a cold Calgary engine, sputtered, and exploded once more - hyena laugh, body convulsing hands slapping knees.

"Commute! Ha!" he finally sputtered. "No! They wanted to fly me out there. They heard my rep!"

"Which rep Ken?"

The same laugh had me bellowing my own cowardly lion laugh - Sadie later said she'd never heard such noises from me. "Which rep?! Which one do you think?"

"You have so many - could be the professional, could be the personal. Or was it the romantic?"

"Oh, I've dipped into those lush meadows many a time Harvey, many a time. Ha-ha-ha-haaa! He-heh-ha-ha-haaa!" Made the Polar Bear's roar sound like a mouse being stepped on.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

By coincidence it was Vibes Bahai who took us to the nature trail, brought sightless Sadie back the glasses case she'd left in his car. "Yes it's a good thing I see you again. I can sense your are a special lady - talented." But the trail was no great revival. The biggest oldest trees had been taken - more stumpiness.

A four-doored red stinky ugly polluter (SUV) took us away from paradise destroyed - we were headed to the folk festival at the edge of the world, an hour north.

"I'm a tree faller. Oh, you've heard of us?"

Speechless serendipity. "Uh, well, yeah, sorta. We hear work is scarce with the US ban on Canadian softwood."

"Oh yeah, just got laid off yesterday. Can't complain though. More time for kayak surfing."

"Kayak -- ?"

"Surfing, that's right. You use a short kayak to do all the same stuff you do on a surf board. It's beautiful! It's the next big thing. We're going to start a bed and breakfast and give kayak surfing lessons there. In the meantime, we have her income."

"I'm an interior decorator. Business is good."

Rob the addictions councellor had wondered about foresters. "I don't know how they sleep at night," he'd said. "I really don't."

Another forester kind enough to carry hitch-hikers told us how he'd spent as many years as a tree-planter as he had cutting them down, and it made him feel good.

On our way out from the clearcut I started pulling logs onto the road, just to annoy the loggers. And I put any garbage back on the road to remind them of it. Sadie joined me in my little boy vandalism. We found a sledge hammer used to imprint logs and smashed the lock on the entrance gate. I threw the sledgehammer into a puddle of sledge. Jobs are hard to come by, but I don't know how they sleep at night; I really don't.

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast

High on caffeine, human goodness, chocolate, sugar, newness, we dampened my poor hapless dome tent. Mordechai Richler died that same night, said the headlines as we sipped $4 split pea soup at brunch. Lunch was sardine sandwiches on $5 bread from the organic grocer. Hitched an afternoon ride to the Haida museum with a frenchman named Vibes Bahai, a divorcee with 3 San Fransisco daughters.

Further on up the road a homely housewife dropped us near a logging road: "STOP. Active logging in progress."

We walked 500 metres through tree trunk humility, stopped breathless beheld massacred acreage - tree carnage. Waded in. Bloody mess.

I struck a pose on an 8-foot trunk for camera perspective. Followed a dumb little grousse - hunter's dream of slow stupid fat prey. Doe-eyed deer dream snacking on the undergrowth. We walked until a feartruck rambled by as we ducked behind dead wood. We split up and walked tree trunk miles - sparce miles of densely crowded carnage, oil cans tilting, beer bottles strewn. Material discarded. Trees cut to the shore, into the river, with the bank eroding. We reunited, stared over vacant destruction onto unobstructed shimmery sea.

"All this useless beauty."

We sat arm in arm silently crying. Wounded forest healed friendship.

"Tomorrow we'll go on a nature hike, and appreciate it much more because of this."

Labels: 2001, non-fiction, Travel, west coast