Rainyass Sketches of a Steeltown

     Ferrous Bushings 17, Hamilton, Ontario.  Ed Burtynsky photograph

Rainyass Sketches of A Steeltown

It's none of my business.

Nothing is.

Just cursing & Easter

eggs & rain.

Leafs tied at nothing, heading

into game five.

What else is new?

Everything: it's spring.

Everything: the dying and

the rising.

Praise be.

We break this unleavened

bread

in solidarity

with the orange groves of

Jaffa

with the teenaged ghosts

of Attawapiskat

the Ticats

the holy martyrs of north

Scarborough

with the FAS jaws

twitching down the

street and the Adidas

stripes shifting dope from

heel to wakeful heel;

we break

for the nightshift’s

shattered override

for the beat cops in

the coffeeline

for the straggled hair in

another cold-ass rain

for the chunk of glass

stuck in my slicks —

Here's to cold Portuguese

wine & hot bademjan

and garbage days of pizza

box and Budweiser

to the abortive aspiration

of old men's belts

and the yearly masochistic

parade & its cruciform grief

and to everyone who lost

their sweat ah their

sweet mother

or their father while

all anyone was trying

to do was grow the fuck up

while all anyone was trying

to do was get through

this piece of shit season

and the rest of their

half an orphan life.

Here's to life, and the

drenched gutters rising

in counterpoint

to the people

who settle in its

troughs like sediment;

who are played

like pipes or plump

pigeons, heading

for the fall.

~

Here's to the pregnant

pizza lady who could

not give a fuck;

fuck it, here's to every

pregnant bitch in

a cafe, to the

monster truck prams and

the swinging dicks & the

playoff fever and the stupid

pink headbands of the infants

w/ their tumorous bows;

and the kids in hoods

with ears and the

grownups in hoods

w/ ears and the

kids who died because

their shirts had hoods

and to the hoods themselves

because no one deserves

to die, no one deserves

anything — & to the boys

in the bay,

their mouths gummed

up with flabby bleached

bread, prison butter

and jam &

bleeding b/c no one

deserves anything

but you get it anyway,

don't you, right in

the teeth (yer mother

never knew you left

too soon didn't she

damn right she did),

right in the cakehole,

you get what you get.

~

Danny's ma skipped

out when he was just a

walking baby boy,

forged too many

cheques on his dad's

account, treated other

men with the cash.

You know what I'm saying?

Stole the dough and showed

those guys a nice time.

You know the drill.

When his dad went one

day to the bank and they

asked about where's all that

money gone, and he stumped his

hard finger down and said

That ain't my signature

and went home, where he

found her, no words required,

after which said I won't call

no cops and I ain't gonna

charge you and I ain't taking

back that scratch but now you

leave, you leave now get

out the fuck from this house and

when he said that also

he said And the boys

stay. And she left.

And Danny says fifty

some years on sucking

back a cold Molson

Canadian lager Yeah

my mother was a bitch.

But my dad was a hard

Irish bastard anyway he

beat on her and on me, too:

you get what you get.

~

So you're driving in this

pissing up a tree rain and this

footless old sock of a

man's begging & shuffling at

Parkside and Bloor just as the rain

starts to really pour and pummel

windshields and newsprint shelters

and the big, white

SUV up ahead's a humming

tension gushing hot clammyass

rain as the man's making pleading

please please faces and the light will

never change and the great white beast

purrs its robot window down,

hands over a twenty.

And the twenty's torque &

shine in the driving

hotknife

rain.

And the guy runs

for his girl under

the bridge like fuck,

let's go score.

And it goes on, it

went on raining all along

Lakeshore like your life

was one big

car

wash

rainrainrainrainrain

like it’s rain’s

graduation day

and this is its big

sendoff like pomp

& circumstance of

rain like Motown

man ain’t supposed to

cry rain

like a girl is dancing

in it that mud-ribboned

citypark lawn of used

sharps & capsized spliff

hepatitis rain, a girl

is dancing in it like all

her friends are dead

is how it rains and it rained

all along Lakeshore

that night and all

fucking March

& fucking April, too.

~

If for one day you

could drive like a car

ad.

If for one night you

could fuck like a

saint.

If the men you did

time with had a mother's

love for

you

or anyone if

this biblical rain

would stop –

Here's to the staggered

Listerine straight

malt-licked two-stepper

in the bikelane

stumbling into the

minuterice-white

jaws of morning

to the plastic bag

high 

the methadone

tomorrow

glow

the kilt-hiking

classcutters,

lipglossed puffs of

vapour & gossip &

the glint & click

of switchblade

manicures

to the hotboxed sedan's

woofer-rending

autotune, KO'd

taillight trailing

skunk

the rap-trilling

babes in arms like

spring fledglings in micro

braids and racing stripes

singing down the sidewalk

with that grade eight

grad swagger

the Eagles-cranking

Harley grinding

that corner again

leathers sweating hot

take it easy

dew

to the ones who never

got away,

squawking acrid

on their nasty old

sofas and their cigarette

stoops

to the bright

trauma of staying

that shines mould-lurid

off every lifer

like a halo

and the burp of siren

launching its pale

headlit

pablum

into the bonyshouldered

night —

& the rain detains

the sky

a little longer

— o here’s to that

or any other

light.

                                      -Eva H.D.

Oh yeah, Danny Lanois wrote a song about Hamilton Ontario, recorded by Emmylou Harris