Five Poems by Bob MacKenzie

 

            

Paint it Black



May 1606,

bored and swaggering

painters and swordsmen

prowl Rome’s streets,

a wolf pack

desperate for a fight.



Hunting with this pack

a brawler driven by anger,

Michelangelo Caravaggio,

his sword slashing

easy as a brush across canvas,

murders a man.



None of Caravaggio’s patrons

no friends in high places

none can clear his name,

not in time;

painted into a corner,

the artist

fears execution.



Caravaggio flees,

slips out of Rome

to Naples,

to Malta,

to Sicily,

back across Italy

again to Naples.



In Naples, Caravaggio completes

two final paintings, of saints.



His style darkens,

revels in darkness

more complete

and absorbing of light.



In The Denial of Saint Peter,

dark as the paint itself,

Caravaggio shows Peter

denying he knows Jesus,

realizing he can’t take back

what he's said.



Caravaggio’s last painting,

The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula,

is as dark or darker.



In legend Ursula headed

eleven thousand virgins,

all but one beheaded

by Huns besieging Cologne.



Desiring the virgin Ursula

for his personal pleasure

the Hun leader Uldin spared her,

but she would not be taken.



Uldin’s well aimed arrow

penetrated Ursula’s heart.



Caravaggio seeks papal pardon,

a chance to return to Rome,

but an angry moment kills hope

and the darkness overtakes him.



Trained to join the Order of Malta,

he almost kills a member knight;

instead of receiving pardon

Caravaggio flees again,

murderous record doubled.



Caravaggio in his black moods

understands all too well

Uldin's dark look of regret

realising what he has done.

Cruising the Ritz, 1980



Betraying

Friedkin’s bogeyman

As massed imagination,

as nonexistent

for this insular world,

The Ritz profers its rear

to Tracey’s

Detroit strippers,

rummed up Yankee traders

and the outside world,

in the meantime

boldly

putting on

a gay front–

Windsor conservatism

reels at the thought,

ignores

the possibilities.



Another dingy disco

bar brightly blurred

under mirrored light;

police are known,

quickly,

for minimal drinking

and for being

far too gay

as they wait, like Al,

for action

which never happens

here;

for someone,

anyone,

to make a move:

in a corner

chess players smile

at some joke.



In Windsor,

Pacino would don

the uniform

factory workers wear:

blue jeans,

plaid shirt,

gold chain:

when necessary,

a hard-on.



Inspired by characters and events in the Noir film Cruising (1980)





Cowboy John Ware



Let me tell you a tale of the cowboy John Ware

master of longhorns and wild bucking broncs

his fame was legend from Brooks to High River

sixty years on this earth and his name lives forever



A slave and a legend in South Carolina

a fighter for sport in the master's ring

no man could beat him when forced to fight

no man could own him this man called John Ware



When freedom came down with the armies of Lincoln

John Ware understood he'd always been free–

none could own him and none could beat him

and no man could tell him what he had to do



He went down to Texas to a ranch near Fort Worth

to learn to be a cowboy and follow the herds

till none was better with horse or with rope

than the man and the legend of Cowboy John Ware



John was too big for the Lone Star to hold him

so he followed the north star to Canada's west

drove three thousand head to the Bar U Ranch

first man to bring longhorns to the northwest



When the longhorns went wild and the cowboys had run

John grabbed the lead’s horns and pulled back its head

flipped over that steer with its legs treading air–

steer wrestling was born thanks to Cowboy John Ware



The horses were panicked and set to stampede

but John climbed the fence and he walked on their backs

and he found the lead stallion and calmed it right down–

the horse is not running which John cannot ride





Mildred Lewis and John took the buggy one day

but lightning shot down and the horses were lost

so John took the traces and hauled the rig home

and young Mildred Lewis soon married John Ware



When pneumonia took Mildred in nineteen-ought-five

the woman was gone but John's love never died

and when a hoof in a gopher hole took his horse down

John went at last to be with his true love



John’s saddle was silver and a steer wrestler's prize

and it shone near as bright as his young Mildred's eyes

and when he fell to the ground thrown by his horse

his heart it was pierced by that fine silver horn



They say you couldn't find a man

who wasn't John Ware's friend

He had a heart as big and warm

as that old chinook wind–

the cowboys said he was the best

the legend of the west:

the cowboy John Ware

This is the true story of a mighty man. In 1882, John Ware came to the District of Alberta in Canada's North-West Territories on a cattle drive for the North-West Cattle Company. He worked on ranches around Calgary and in 1890 started his own ranch. Ware, Alberta's first black cowboy and a respected rancher in southern Alberta for over 25 years, died on September 11, 1905–the year Alberta became a province–when his horse stumbled and crushed him. (google John Ware)

and the band played on



spring in Lansdowne was never fun

cold and muggy with little sun



I hated spring in fifty-eight

for sure no time to celebrate



the dance’s theme was tropical

faux palm and orchids topical



just a runny-nosed kid and shy

I was not a real confident guy



and she was the belle of the ball

her sheer beauty above it all



girls at the dance in the school gym

all pretty and poised and so prim



my pals and I stood to the side

me just wishing I could have died



the belle of the ball took a chance

to wrest me from my pals to dance



I backed down fearing I’d dance badly

but this girl dragged me off quite gladly



with her slow dancing close to me

we sailed across an imaginary sea



where no other dancers but her and I

were floating under a clear blue sky





Untitled Poem



yes many a night I have heard

heard those wandering confessions

some of them in places I lived

too close for comfort the other

side of the wall (in apartments)



in a wee house and farther away

from bars and such heard young women

mostly chatting and later on

the chorus of crickets in the night

my neighbour's soft guitar playing



all soft enough I can now leave

my windows open for the night

for the night to weave through the house

a blend of cricket, breeze, night birds,

cats’ purrs all illuminated



illuminated by the moon

everything was a cool blue

glow last night until the wee hours;

softer music of the night while

I write and nestle in for sleep

a few hours before the sun brings



another day.

Bob MacKenzie grew up near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in rural Alberta with artist parents.  His father was a professional photographer and musician and his mother a photo technician, colourist, and painter.  By the age of five, he had his own camera and ever since has been shooting photographs and writing poems and stories.  Raised in this environment, young Bobby developed a natural affinity for photography and for the intricacies of language.  He now lives and writes in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Bob’s writing has appeared in nearly 500 journals across North America and as far away as Australia, Greece, India, and Italy. He has published nineteen volumes of poetry and prose-fiction and his work has appeared in numerous anthologies.  He's received numerous local and international awards for his writing as well as an Ontario Arts Council grant for literature, a Canada Council Grant for performance, and a Fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Georgia.

For eighteen years Bob’s poetry was spoken and sung live with original music by the ensemble Poem de Terre, and the group released six albums.

Bob’s novel of political and religious intrigue, The Miriam Conspiracy, will be published this year.