December Song

 In the Silk Hat you may meet a stranger
 sitting in a booth for two,
 and all the strangers passing through
 are in the corner of your eye.
 In the corner of your eye, sing
 in the corner of your eye.
 Sing arm and eye and hand and eye.
 Sing voice of lip that curves your ear.
 Sing Gerry with the coffee poured.
 Sing Charlotte with the joke on you.
 Sing all the strangers passing through
 that move the corner of your eye.
 

 
 
 In the middle of December 
 we talked about the weather: 
 "How lucky we are, it's just like spring 
 and here it is, winter."
 Last night I walked
 through the narrow night's sidewalk,
 through the noisy night's town watching
 crystal flakes cast silence on
 the turned enchanted ground, watching
 light white crystal snowflakes falling,
 slower and tinier than autumn leaves, falling
 crystal on the turned enchanted ground.
 

 I avoided the loud motors
 and the fire truck's roaring
 and then avoided the chill, slipping
 into an LRT where
 Perry Como sings Christmas carols
 Walking through a Winter Wonderland,"
 though I walk through the porcelain shiny
 turquoise LRT.
 
 
 
I sat alone by the side of the rail till
 some old man walkt by, and I
 caught the corner of his eye, sing
 catch the corner of an eye,
 and I said ‘hi,' and he just sat
 not very close to me, and said, after awhile
 something I can't remember.
 The talk was very, very paced.
 A cinema man who works the reels
 but has no time to watch the flick
 and works in wood and works in leather
 and moved over closer so he could hear
 and talkt of hands, and talkt of trains, he says
 The train takes 13 minutes," he tels me,
 13 minutes to get to Clareview,
  not including rush hour, of course."

 13 minutes, he timed it. Sing
 13 minutes, he timed it.
 When the train came he walkt away.
 

 

I walk through shopping malls today
 a black coated old soul known in streets.
 The corner of my eye waits
 The corner of my eye watches, singing
any vagrant love I'll meet
 any string of any eye," sing
 any string of any eye.
 I sit with friends in coffee shops.
 The setting sun leaves city lights
 and shopping malls, the wedding scenes
 of lover's in the winter, darkness
 and the city weather, violins
 in an acoustic shopping mall

 A man comes up to me and says
 I am a bird (he wears a feather
 stapled to his collar). ,"shows me
 blue scarabs from Egypt
 with a bird
 singing to high heaven, tells me?
 he is John the Baptist, come from the
 came back to tell you man, I'll tell you man.
 Jesus on his 40th visit.
 Alive and well and staying in Toronto. ," tells me
 I phoned the news, and on the news they said,
 Can a man talk on a telephone," sing
 can a man telephone talk, sing
 can a man sing.

 And on top of it all, as this
 black coated hobo sits
 against the concrete pillar of a
 marble shopping mall, meeting the eye
 of John the Baptist,
 a lady dressed for Christmas
 comes up and hands me a card and I take it
 and it has my name written on it, then
 I look up and
 it happens to be a friend.
 You didn't recognize me, did you?"
 "No."?We talk about the weather, no
 we talk about the coffee shop.
 She tells me she bought groceries
 and John the Baptist shows to her
 his golden charm with Jesus where
 he scraped the red paint of his heart.

 Sing scrape the red paint of his heart, and me
 I wait for violins
 to paint my brown heart red again.
 

 
 
 Sing violins in shopping malls.
 Sing ankles walking by my eye.
 Sing shopping feet and telephones.
 Sing little winter christmas children
 swirl around to violins.Sing
 violins in shopping malls. Sing me,
 i gotta go.
 

Mike Sullivan, Dec'87
 
 


infinitely developabale sketches from coffee shop patios


20odd poems for the end of the last century



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