I always arrive back to the ship in a funk,
and I don’t mean the Bootsy Collins kind.
On the highway at four in the morning,
my high beams are twin projectors
projecting the last three months ashore
on the black asphalt screen ahead of me.
Mentally unpacking I think they call it,
though I seldom like what I put away.
Can I say I’ve got the blues?
Not some anodyne Hootie & the Blowfish
‘Let Her Cry’ iteration of them either.
No. These are full blown Robert Johnson
in a Hotel in Houston in 1936 blues.
These are Crawling King Snake blues.
These are Blind Willie Johnson howling
into the maelstrom at midnight blues.
This,
despite spring having arrived
in the city these past few days.
20 plus degree temperatures
meant that in Kensington Market
music spilled out from storefronts
and the pedestrians were out in droves
and the vendors were on the sidewalks
and the lines of the female form
were revealed once more
after their winter long sabbatical
and skateboard wheels sang on the street
and the bass beats from the 905-ers souped up
cars escaped through tinted windows
and out-of-towners turned the wrong way
down Augusta Avenue
and the smell of street food
and of plant’s blossom was in the air.
And while most of the other trees showed
not the barest sign of bud
the magnolias, those perennial show-offs,
petals were out. Pink and purple,
wafting their sweet scent on the breeze.
And the lady who writes poems
for passersby for a buck
was outside our apartment,
and I could hear her tap-tap-tapping
her cue cards of clever verse
on her typewriter
for any takers.
Alison passed me in the street
She’s swapped out her soiled and ratty, too big trackies
for some solid thrift store chic.
And she wasn’t screaming
but smiling serenely to herself,
like maybe the change of season
is doing her good too.
She was even wearing makeup.
Heavy on the rouge and eye shadow,
the way a child might smear it on or wear
in a grade school cabaret.
But if that makes her happy then power to her.
I hope she’s off the bad drugs
and back on the good ones.
I hope she can stay that way.
And a bird shat on me at brunch
on the patio at Kos yesterday.
Not once. Twice.
‘That’s really good luck’ my friend said.
And it must’ve been because I trounced him
at backgammon nine games in a row.
‘You idiot, you wasted all that good luck
on backgammon,’ he said.
‘You should have bought a lottery ticket instead.’
I saw a hawk flying over the Market.
Two times in the last few days.
The same one. High up.
Describing slow, meticulous ellipses.
A hypnotist’s pendulum high above
the residential rooves and the turrets
of glass-condos and government buildings.
It was bigger than a peregrine.
Smaller than a redtail.
Brown.
And did I mention I’ve got the blues?
Mama?
I don’t know why but I do.
I buzzed my hair off
to try and shake them
and maybe effect a
change of mood,
but now I feel naked,
and look like a bro.
Or worse, a neo-Nazi
who’s cold dumb head
isn’t in the game.
And all of you know, none of the above
can cure ‘em when you’ve got ‘em.
And this dread just sits on my chest
like my room mate’s overweight cat.
And I’m driving back to the ship at 4 in the morning
for my first tour at sea of the year.
The sun is zipped up in
the black polyurethane bag of night.
My high beams, twin tunnel-boring machines
tunneling through it.
And I don’t need the World Service
to remind me all the ways we are
bent on our own destruction.
And where this handbasket we live in is
hurtling to.
I’m doing a good enough job thinking about it,
and getting there all on my own.
Afterall, these are some super king-Sized, XXXL,
deep down in the bones blues.
And I guess Neil Young must not have got the memo
when he wrote ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart,’
Because Townes Van Zandt can do it just as good.
A sad Townes song
or driving alone on an empty highway,
in Southern Ontario,
going 115km an hour,
in a rented Toyota hatchback,
on the way back to the ship,
after three months ashore.
That’ll smash it all to smithereens.
That’ll do it every time.