China Blues

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that piece of cream&dullred bacon you put on the sidewalk

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POETRY

Poems
       1961

The Blue Sky
       1977

Settlements
       1980

The Natural History of Water
       1986

Water Street Days
       1989

FICTION

The Blue Ontario Hemingway Boat Race
       1985

NON-FICTION

Hemingway In Toronto: A Post-Modern Tribute
       1982

“A paper published in
Science
in November, 1987—and signed by enough geologists to make a quorum at the Rose Bowl—offers evidence that the San Andreas has folded its flanking country, much as a moving boat crossing calm waters will send off lateral waves.”

–J
OHN
M
C
P
HEE
,
Los Angeles
Against the Mountains       

“I don’t like rock music; I don’t know why I’m in it. I just want to destroy everything.”

–J
OHN
L
YDDON
, The Sex Pistols, 
lead singer on “Dancing” and  
“God Save the Queen”            

“One of Traylor’s pictures shows a huge, mastiff-like dog towering above a small white man who holds his leash. But the leash is slack, the dog is calm, and the idea of the man controlling the dog absurd. The two proceed as companions.”

–P
HIL
P
ATTON
, writing on 1940s
black folk artist Bill Traylor,   
Esquire
, September 1991         

My title comes from an interest in China and Chinese history, Delta blues, the road-blocks that were set up outside the Chinese consulate on St. George St. in Toronto in 1989, which I pass on my midday walks, traffic barricades piled high with flowers at that time for several days after Tienanmen Square; a number of expressions such as China Hand, All the tea in …, etc.; and last, but not least, Greg Couillard’s excellent—and now in other hands—Toronto restaurant called China Blues. I think China Blues is a melancholy and a joyful book, and the title seems to me, at least, to be apt.

D
AVID
D
ONNELL
     
Toronto, Fall ’91

Dope isn’t like photographs or album covers, or Ward’s Island photographs of old girlfriends, or a first printing of Mark Strand’s
An Elegy For My Father
, or Jack Nicholson driving north in that vintage film,
Five Easy Pieces
, after giving up on Susan Anspach. Now there’s a cool actress you don’t see very much anymore. So, doodly: Woodle. I’m going to be infantile this afternoon, and then I’m going to be adult this evening because we’re having people for dinner. Katharine Ross was brilliant in
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.
Let me confess something of very little importance, I’ve never read beyond the first few pages of that long book by Marcel Proust, and thinking of all the different things I have to do, I doubt very much if I ever will – especially if this sunny afternoon becomes any bluer.

for Angela Morrow

           Gay women love men’s bodies. And she said,

“No, they don’t,

                    that’s ridiculous.” So I said, lazily,

“Well, okay, not fat men’s bodies, not guys with thick fur

down the backs of their necks,

not square-faced guys in rumpled suits. But what about

tall clean well-built guys with a clean shave

a nice tan & a snow white singlet?” She said, “Well,

that does sound a little more attractive.”

                                                     And it’s true,

of course it’s true. At parties sometimes you’ll see

a woman leaning all over some comfortable easy-going

well-built young guy, baby smooth shave

nice cornflower blue eyes, a tan

&, of course that white singlet. There’s some

shoulder stroking,

& naturally they’re both laughing. “O wipe your hand,”

he says in a really funky voice,

sloppy jeans but the singlet is really an S-curve

under the belt,

“I’m all sweaty,” he says, & laughs at it. She strokes

him anyway, flashing her lipsticked mouth. She can’t get

enough of it, because his body’s so nice to touch. She

just doesn’t want to have intercourse,

                                                  that’s all;

&, thinking about it, why should she? Intercourse

should probably be reserved for really intimate

situations,

           occasions that take place in a

comfortable structure of intimacy. What she would

really like to do most with this guy

is just roll around on a huge white bed

preferably if he would stay on one elbow

part of the time,

                    that would be nice, she thinks

just roll around heaven all day.

                                with its myth of the boy moving

away from the family was written for me.

They gave me a copy for my birthday when I was 11. There were

other factors. There were other novels.

There was always a sense of blue infinity

simpler & more marvellous than headmasters at
UTS

could have dreamed of slumped

(Philosophers get tired their heads swollen like Grade A eggs)

Protestant & red-faced in western Ontario white pine chairs

unable to define infinity

although we found it easy to live. And by the time I was 20,

or 23½, or 24,

my favourite streets were Gloucester, Dundonald, Isabella.

                                                                                   The

east of the city. There was always an abundance of chicken pot

pies & good cold beer.

                             There was no gaga social pressure

or rigid white pine chairs in those rundown Victorian

2nd floors I lived in on Church,

                                           cross streets:

Dundonald, Gloucester, Isabella,

                                            to do anything

except enjoy myself.

                          I was happy. I read a lot

& drank quite a bit

                         but I wasn’t comfortable.

                         And when I came back

to what people generously refer to

as the liberal arts,

                     
Saturday Night

&
Toronto Life
, I was testy. Other people

were variously snotty or generous.

                                                I was testy

& sometimes it would affect my body,

                                                     tension,

muscle spasm,

                 seizure of light

the jellyfish of light rising up in my mind

like a West African beach trophy. “Just cloud patterns,”

a friend of mine said to me, “go with it, and see where

it goes.” Okay. I went.