Walter Sickert Art
Walter Sickert's Reluctant Light
Ash from the forest fires falls from the sky.
It is dark in the mornings, a reddish haze in
the afternoons
as thick smoke blocks out the sun.
Still, things get through,
like Walter Sickert's reluctant light.
The painter's models almost
rendered in silhouette. That single
stark window on the far wall
seems to have served the artist just
fine. There has always been little time
or patience for art, it has to scrimp and
fight and find a way.
Sickert's models just local girls from the
area, prostitutes mostly.
Positioned for hours in that suffocating
gloom while the painter
once falsely accused of being Jack the Ripper
tried to get it right.
It is that crippling darkness that almost
becomes the subject matter,
domineering and forlorn. But scraps of light,
like the artist, find a way.
It is an art and life of persistence.
For that Camden Town conjurer,
as much as for you and I. At great
distance and nearest circumstance.
Coming to settle into our thrilling
destitutions
like that blackened ash
that seems to get everywhere.
Removing the Fountain
The fountain
first appeared on that
busy city block
almost two years
previous.
In head-to-toe
silver body glitter,
striking gallant
poses.
A large jug of water,
so he could spout all
over the sidewalk.
Spraying shocked
pedestrians as they leapt
out of the way.
So that
the boys in blue
were called
to remove the
fountain.
"You can't be here,"
they said.
"Stop spitting like that,
it's a serious health violation."
"You can't arrest a fountain!"
our silver friend yelled
as he was cuffed
and lead away.
A few weeks absence,
then he'd be right back
at it.
Statuesque, a vision,
before the badge showed up
again to ruin everything.
Puck Bunnies
The city's hockey team was called the Barrie
Colts.
Everything revolved around them and their
chances of winning.
When I was in high school, the Ontario Hockey
League loosened the rules
so that the best players could be brought in
from all over the world.
There were a lot of Russians, many who did
not speak English.
Set up in billet homes that gave them food
and shelter
and enrolled at our school and in our
classes.
A giant new stadium had been built for the
team on the outskirts of town.
They needed asses in the seats to pay for it
and bringing international
ringers in was the solution. A whole
system was created for their success.
Teachers gave them top grades to keep the
players draft eligible,
our teacher was both a city councillor and
part owner of the team.
He had helped negotiate the building of the
new arena
and raised municipal taxes to help cover the
cost.
Some of the girls in the class were enlisted
to do all the homework
of the hockey players. Everyone called
them puck bunnies.
They were awarded with top grades themselves
for taking part.
The school got more funding for bringing in
the international players
and began building a whole new wing of the
school.
There was that much money involved.
Money from the city council,
voted on by my corrupt councilman teacher and
his friends.
There was a whole system in place of
kickbacks and grade fixing
to ensure on-ice success for the team and
city.
I was never part of the system and even
pointed it out.
That made me an easy target for bad
grades. With all the hockey
players and puck bunnies getting straight As,
someone else had to have
poor grades to make things even out for the
paper trail.
The less popular kids and any troublemakers
such as myself
became unwilling cogs that aided the system
as scholastic fodder.
Kids that could have had a chance at
university or college
no longer had the marks. Someone had to
lose so that the winners
could win. It felt dirty, and it
was. Like drowning in a huge mud puddle
that never dried up. Pockets were lined
and careers were made.
Futures ensured and destroyed to achieve
on-ice success.
It was a nasty crooked system within a nasty
crooked system.
The mayor was always a shoo-in for
re-election.
Vending Machine
We met at the vending machine,
arrived at the same time
with a dull hunger.
She fed the coins
into the slot
and pushed L6
on the black number
letter pad.
Suddenly,
the grey metal swirls turned
their slow corkscrew
and a cranberry muffin
fell down into the dispensing chamber
with a hollow thud.
She reached in and grabbed it,
said her mother was dying
of some terrible disease.
Had all these lesions
and leaking
wounds.
"But she had a good run,"
she assured me.
"A full life," she whispered
almost thoughtlessly.
I told her I wasn't there for anything
nearly as serious as that.
A man called her back into the room
and I wished her well.
She rushed off
with her cranberry
muffin.
While I lingered
by the vending machine
with my bag of potato chips
because I'm Irish, and for the Irish,
potatoes in all their forms
are god.
Usher
Themistocles guarded the waterways through
guile and maneuver,
while on driest land, it is the usher that
patrols the plunder
demanding to see tickets, his flashlight
shone through impeccable darkness,
and to others before the eyes adjust, he is a
guide to numbered seats,
to plushest subservience, both friendly and
stern in single gesture,
down dimly lit aisles, knowing as any map –
and if the berths may falter, elbows come to
gentle jostle
seem to divine that such limitations are
never theirs,
but rather a simplest deception of false
night,
a desirable snare for sweaty sots,
the feeling and unfeeling crowds brought
indoors
and only one brought to rapturous applause,
though all stand in strange union, gathering
coats
and wits and whatever else may be left
behind.
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