In the Park of the Jolly Meat Beaters

Gary Robinson

There’s no time to lose in this world

made more beautiful by its end so near

—Enrique Lihn

Each has staked out a tree a bench

—children mothers at sunset the day jubilant to be done with

shadows begin their encroachment like a bath house

males ready to trample with the downpour of night

third eye bewildered unblinking

Grass flowers cooling expanding into soft geometries

my mind thinking to pollinate reaches its verses of dry heaves

Men silent dog-faced as a sail of blue stars

though children are immune stripped tragic

dreams milked fragile as bones

Finally I awake to see the crime so plainly so bald

the crime the acts the desperate acts

while panic sprawls has been sprawling

There was Paradise once the garden flooded colors

I understand why the men leave their rooming houses

—escape the colloquies of crematoriums

the park unfetters improvises

takes away the past the future

This is their square foot of absurdity assurance

Mania challenges the hairy sun’s accusations

I am an autistic spasm that arranges the gauntlet

scattered when heaven somersaults into morning

***

Gary Robinson lives in Ottawa, Canada. He has written poems, short stories, and a novella. He enjoys reading and writing. Currently he is working on a new collection of poems and writing a novel.

---

Setu, May 2023

Poetry: Gary Robinson

Gary Robinson

Gary Robinson lives in Ottawa Canada. He writes poetry and short stories. In 2021 he completed a novella. His poems have been published in Canada and internationally.

***

Vladimir Putin Sodomizes Steven Seagal

in the Great Planetary Bum Blast

 

Ringed in a tour de force of light

circle of applause magnetizes the binge’s evening  

Remember unconsciousness: chokehold then

a hearty lunch sails upon a boat of shit

Pay-per-view breaks out the sweaty cosmos

Live audience murmur: take selfies /

get autographs of these bad boys

All are judge or jury for a price

We laugh because we’re tired of crying

Divinities descend: deux ex machina

pregnant like the rosy asshole of dawn

thousands of cell phones become archers take aim

Valhalla suspended like the madness of Hamlet

as Ophelia gives interviews translated into blow jobs

FSB assassins link arms with the Yakuza

Lubyanka prison hovers in the shape of a lotus

the ashes of Robin Williams are arranged in a soggy puzzle

We haven’t left the cartoons of Walt Disney:

the biggest child molester in the world

Minds climb into an acrobat jerking off

jism bursting in a milky rainbow of vocals

waters stir: Venus opens her gash

Octopus in full flight / centuries

distort an army of aliens:

a porn flick starring seven alpinist dwarfs

who gangbang a Bavarian maid named Eve

Heidegger’s affectionate Nazi salute

the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson gusses

the ghost of Norman Mailer

talk show hosts launder Idols

celebrities flourish jewel studded designer jeans

adulation chisels California tans

Rehearsals are over at last

Martial artists caked with their own movies tumble out

the stadium darkens its crotch

my body begins to bellow:

I am ready to take a piss

***

 

 

Five Minutes From Now A Daughter Will Forget Me

 

 

Nothing will be left of our hearts

—Roberto Bolano

 

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there

when it happens

—Woody Allen

 

 

Cartomancy flops on the stage of moon

bigger than Shakespeare’s bald sacrosanct head

Under the performance Delhi trolls

chorus of dogs / English beer / oasis of markets

leather coats / fruit stalls / roadkill

Gangbangers don’t believe in cards

“Who gives a f**k about begging for Heaven?”

Traffic lights are out / an influx of caution

Either flying saucers or the gods

embroider night like lunatic spores

Sidewalks are simmering in our throats

throng of phantoms unable to barter space

Horns erupt like paranoid orgasms

all are getting undressed / frantic vagabonds

tourists / rush into aroma of proverbial party crashers

Moon implodes between our eyes

something begins to drown in the soul

Crematoriums run alongside Bollywood songs

The Yamuna turns out like a penal colony

prisoners bob for a crust of Chaos

Monkeys gaze like cell block guards with vertigo

Give up the ghost right now?

As flowers organize the underground

convulsions of scars break away

sky showers the voice of childhood

Traffic jams tug at the trousers of Shiva

who threatens decapitation before mythology

When a woman scratches at a car window

it’s like a whistle of magic / Her will be done

Rupees are surrendered like a Holy electric shock

mutual fingers brace

Chew on that—death may not happen just yet

A minute of struggle

moon writes its equation

laughs at the confusion of eternity

light freezes us for a second

one long second

***

 

 

o o o Jack Kerouac

 

 

If the world’s not set on fire, of what use is a verse?

—Faiz Ahmed Faiz

 

Into nightmare life drunks go with their voluminous verbs

Sun’s semen stain drips down the western sky’s nose

If there are ceremonies to observe

—a poor attempt to reinvent the severing of dreams

only laugh grope awkwardly

The path to truth is fraught with contagion a chorus of shit

to explore sculptures of love jettisoned slandered

by the thought police academic brown shirts

Poets must reconcile flashes of madness

—subterranean picnics are fine up to a point

being discharged from Hell is always traumatic

Oh, to kiss hold warm bodies once more

The wind lashes a hedge fund investor

money vomits cancerous leaves on prostitutes

a professional starting point into History’s shadowy planet of hashish

birthing between the legs of our memories

Get drunk on maws of brick houses

swallowed in public rains nebulous as the end

Can’t remember the first time

the girl spoke on the phone spinning me lewdly in a song

Groaning in this new visibility

warnings to children

—exiles from mall washrooms

fall on deaf ears

Still our graffiti tongues seek

flesh or bones

***

 

 

The Passage

 

Mute: robed

—Stars like skulls

Moon’s dividing glance

There: night’s incendiary

Armed, feudal;

Boughs: pockets where

Birds forget

The fossil metamorphosis;

Or heart

In the branches

Ignites

A lunar world:

Overturned

When daybreak flares

Cools with

First light,

Footsteps

***

---

Setu, September 2022

Poetry: Gary Robinson

Gary Robinson

Gary Robinson

Little Day

Little Day abandons me

a child's kite tossed

up high,

discarded and bruised by

the boxing wind.

I walk down the sandy sun,

shrivel like an orphaned icicle

as time counts away

my shadows

heel by heel.

Plane in the Sky

Lights, red and white,

carry the sky

high and wet.

Noise falls,

falling

out with night.

Going west, lonely

one, going west,

beautiful one?

The Day was Blonde

The day was blonde, I remember that.

It sighed and swayed like a

petulant woman who wanted to dance

but couldn't find the right partner.

The music was there alright,

the trees rang like blue saxophones

while the wind had a soft drumbeat going.

Yet something was wrong.

The hair of the clouds flicked in a rage,

there would be no dancing,

none at all.

When the thunderstorm and its fatal

limbs arrived,

we were already in bed.

Explorers

A boat in every leaf.

This seen on wet days

when dark streets and laneways

dive with blind debris.

What to say about this profuse armada

flight and disorientation

since many pummel into curbs and lawns

caught in crazy disarray

when they may have been dreaming trees

that morning before elements

translated them into another career.

I have always admired a storm.

No grace in its journey

breaking like a psychic nightmare

from the mind of sky.

Lightning kicks like bony legs in spasm.

Rain is a trip any leaf may take.

Children when they step

rubbery and grinning

from their draining homes

know something has happened.

Travels made and stories

washed up after slippery voyages.

Step and splash among the wrecks of legends.

Once I went on a tour

of the Thousand Islands,

jumping through the teeth of waves.

But though I stood on that boat,

I was never one myself.

There. A leaf.

Sails outside my window.

Silent expedition.

How I envy the explorers

in the waiting foliage.

Pandas

The panda slouches,

eyes patched sadly,

a washed-up comic

who discovers while

the audience claps

politely and even

smiles, no one is

laughing at the punchlines.

With some bamboo

for a flute he hopes

to take up another

act but isn't given

enough privacy

to learn his lessons.

We need new

entertainment,

routines that do not

invoke a cross

of blood.

The sit-com of martyrs

should be cancelled.

Let these betrayed actors

retire to townhouses

and beer.

No more circuses

where we claw

happily at our

own colourful defeats.

Setu, January 2018

Fiction: The Staff Sergeant

Gary Robinson

Gary Robinson

            The car had been tailing someone for a while (first when the person was on a bus and now afoot), keeping at a safe distance. The driver and his partner slouched in the passenger side were calm and focused. This was a job to do and only that. There was nothing petty or personal to it. The time was 10 p.m.

            So far they hadn’t been spotted. But this was the suburbs and the odds of staying unnoticed were becoming less likely.

            Then an elementary school bordered by a small playground came into view. The person darted into the playground and disappeared. The car pulled over. The two men jumped out and hurried to catch up. Neither knew if they’d been made yet. Thirty yards ahead the men saw the outline of the target. They swiftly closed the gap between them.

            A man out with his dog heard the gunshots: nine, he counted. They came from near the school and he rushed home, almost dragging the dog.

            The police quickly arrived (several 911 calls had been phoned in) and people watched from their front windows and even the lawns as the playground was surrounded and yellow tape was stretched along the street.

            A Staff Sergeant drove up and parked at the school. It was 10:45 p.m. A police officer explained what the situation was.

            “They’re in the playground. We have a male deceased,” he said.

            The Staff Sergeant and the officer walked over past empty swings, a plastic toy house, and slides that resembled enormous tongues and colourful helixes. Half a dozen cruisers had blocked off the area. Cops in uniform gathered around two men who leaned against a car.

            “That’s Dunigan and Lapointe,” the officer mentioned.

            The Staff Sergeant recognized them. They’d been at his Christmas party last year.

            “Who was the shooter?”

            The officer shrugged. “They both fired.”

            The Staff Sergeant went to check on the body which was now covered by a blanket. He searched a wallet and a blood stained knapsack filled with textbooks, a cell phone, and a laptop. The deceased’s name was Daniel Jackson, a twenty-one-year-old student, judging by a university ID card. There was no sign of a weapon or anything that might have brought his death upon himself.

            When he returned Dunigan was pointing up in the sky.

            “I swear it was a bunch of lights, red and white, in a triangle shape heading south.”           “A plane?” someone suggested.

            “No way,” Dunigan said, shaking his head. “It stopped for almost two minutes before moving again. That’s no plane.”

            Lapointe, smoking a cigarette, agreed: “I’d never believed in UFOs. But, holy f**k, there it was. Like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

            The Staff Sergeant studied the sky but could only make out a star here and there. He didn’t know enough astronomy to say what stars they were. Like everybody else he was fascinated by the notion of worlds outside their own solar system. Scientists said, given the billions of galaxies, that the chance of alien life was, at least statistically, a probability. The Staff Sergeant owned a large collection of sci-fi films as well as books on the subject and was interested in what Dunigan and Lapointe had seen. Then he had some questions.

            “You were following that guy?” he said, not directing the question at anyone in particular.

            “He’s a dealer. We heard he was getting a shipment tonight,” Dunigan replied, staring upwards.

            “His ID says his name is Daniel Jackson, a university student it would appear.”

            “Shit,” said Lapointe.

            “Sure?” Dunigan asked.

            “That’s what the ID says,” the Staff Sergeant said.

            Laughter burst from Dunigan, Lapointe, and several officers who were talking among themselves. Even the Staff Sergeant smirked.

            “We were onto a dealer named Marcel. He definitely looked like him,” Dunigan said.

            For a moment the Staff Sergeant wondered if the UFO might still be there, maybe concealed behind a cloud. He wished he had a telescope with him.

            “So,” he said, getting back to business, “you fired at the guy. Did he do something to alarm you?”

            Dunigan and Lapointe shifted against the car (they were still resting on it), uncomfortable by the long wait and their backs that were becoming sore.

            “We told him to f**king stop,” Dunigan finally said.

            “But he didn’t,” Lapointe added.

            “He turned suddenly. It spooked us. We thought he had a gun and did what we had to do,” Dunigan concluded.

            Paramedics who were on the scene asked Dunigan and Lapointe if they needed any medical attention. The crime scene photographers had come and gone. The paramedics carried the student in a body bag to an ambulance and drove away.

            “You’ve had a tough night,” the Staff Sergeant said. “Go home, get some rest. Tomorrow you’ll have to give statements about this. Then the SIU will be involved and want to interview you. But I’m sure everything will be fine.”

            Dunigan and Lapointe seemed angry (or bored) the Staff Sergeant noted. The two accepted a lift offered by a cop and left.

            The Staff Sergeant took in the crime scene one more time. He would file a report in the morning. He felt bad for Dunigan and Lapointe. They were good cops. Probably they’d be suspended. Of course they would receive pay for the duration of the suspension. Until everything was sorted out. And it might not be for a while. That’s how it was. Nobody knew how hard police work really was nor the toll it took on all of them.

            He returned to his car. When he retired he wanted to take up UFO investigations. Who knew what lay beyond their own world? Could alien life be out there? Imagine how exciting it would be to actually stumble across an extra-terrestrial. There was so much they didn’t know about the universe. It was absolutely mind-boggling.

 Setu, January 2018

The Dead Girl - Short Story

Gary Robinson

- Gary Robinson

June 3, 6:00 am

A man out for his regular early morning walk finds the girl’s naked body near an Ottawa park path beside a row of bushes. A road goes close by; however, no motorist has reported the grisly sight. Later, this is put down to the drowsy commute when cobwebs of sleep aren’t completely brushed aside.

The man (a civil servant a few years short of retirement) experiences what many would label extreme (or creepy): while a stunned witness to the aftermath of a brutal and horrifying sex crime, he feels a surge of exhilaration and is ecstatic (to the point of being giddy) that he’s the one to have stumbled upon it. It’s like discovering a secret which, terrible though it is, bestows on him a status that he’s never enjoyed. By this time, he’s known death exclusively from television dramas and movies. Yet he has remained untouched except for distant relatives scattered around the country who occasionally depart the world. But due to this repellent business he rises to a minor celebrity as the inquisitive (and those who trade in prurient gossip) corner him and he recounts the lurid details until gradually interest wanes and the incident becomes yesterday’s news and is forgotten.

Police cruisers arrive (the man has hurried home, called 911, and returned to give a statement) and a police officer (a burly cop) questions him. Two officers take note of the girl. The younger is bothered by the sparse hair on the body. The second goes searching for evidence. A forensics team and a staff sergeant are on the way.

The burly cop glances at the corpse. He isn’t turned off by crimes like this. He doesn’t subscribe to the soul’s immortality or even divine punishment for that matter. Despite this attitude (for some it is detachment) he is fascinated by homicide. How it boils up as if out of nowhere. But in the end, he regards the victims as authors of their own misfortune—usually through personal weaknesses. His years on the force have only increased this cynicism. He has a friend who takes crime scene photographs. Sometimes, he shows him the most gruesome: streaks of bony meat glow harshly like lightning impaled into his retinae. (Now and then, his mind tricks him into believing the dead gaze with curiosity back at him, lifeless eyes on the verge of blinking.) Limbs and torsos forever broken off from depth and solidity. Extinction like a transformed environment: Obscene Theatre. Off duty, liquor bottle in hand, he will summon the images like a seedy director: the slain emerge one after another like bewildered players in a snuff film. The pornographic cinema of the murdered softens his bachelorhood’s downward trajectory (he’s twice divorced) as he drinks himself into a stupor.

The young cop’s earliest encounter with death is rooted in childhood. He’d owned a dog (a terrier which would never keep still) that was struck by a speeding vehicle and died of injuries. At that age the notion of anyone ruthless enough to run over a beloved pet overwhelmed him and spawned night terrors. That no one knew who was responsible lent it a distressing abstract personality, like a malicious entity lurking in the background and ridiculing the grieving boy.

Yet with the girl’s remains only feet away—a blanket has been draped over her—he again is conscious of something behind him, snickering. But now, at the start of a career in law enforcement, he is willing to concede—if only for a minute as the wind causes the blanket to ripple and lift—that even this child is not important or necessary to an indifferent world.

Ten years later a veteran police officer is visiting friends. They are watching an NFL game, drinking, and telling jokes. During half-time the cop slips outside—his buddies figure he’s gone for some needed air—hikes a number of blocks, scales a fence which separates the area from train tracks traversing the city, lies across the tracks and is still there when the train comes by on schedule.

June 3, 3:30 am

Even though she isn’t heavy (she’s as light as a pillow or cushion) he has more of a job carrying her than he could have guessed. She bounces like a doll losing its stuffing and whose equilibrium constantly shifts. Fortunately, the houses are dark at this hour. But there are street lamps that can’t be avoided. Then their shadows create a two-headed nightmare, as if they are fused to each other. The entrance to the park is not far. That is their destination. They continue their journey.

*

Beyond the bedroom window she sees a man go by with somebody slung over his shoulders. A girlfriend passed out, she assumes. Alcoholics—and addicts—are common in the neighborhood. She checks the clock: 3:30. She moved to this house following a divorce and after her daughter had married and left for a different city. So, she’s been alone—but not entirely. For a while she had shared the premises with the ghost of a woman who’d lost a baby in childbirth (as far as she was able to piece it together) and had returned to look for it. She was startled the first instance the ghost had appeared in an upstairs room where she stored books and a computer. Over the months, once her initial fear had eased, it was as if she were observing an actress repeating a scene continuously in a loop. She did a property title search all the way back to the original owners (the house dated to the nineteen twenties) but never determined the woman’s identity. Then after several years the apparition disappeared and was never seen again. Sometimes she imagines the ghost is wandering from house to house, confused, unable to locate her stillborn child and where she once lived. The woman wonders if that is what death is: an eternity of transient rooms.

June 2, 11:25 pm

He pauses at the door. The rooming house is quiet. The glow has worn off and now something has taken its place—if not quite panic then a kind of rational reflex kicks in: an awareness that he must act to protect himself. The girl seems to have sunk into the bed. Burrowed into the mattress. He finishes a beer and opens another. His heart is pounding and he understands he has to catch his breath, clean up, and get rid of her. None of this had been planned. It is a case of it falling into his lap. And who to say someone else wouldn’t have done the same if the situation had presented itself as it had to him? Morality never takes opportunity into consideration, he thinks. The rational reflex is stronger. He concocts a hasty plan. As soon as the house lights are all off he will bring her down the stairs, out the front door, and over to the park. He rests against a wall. The beer tastes good and he drinks quickly.

June 2, 8:30 pm

Goddamned sonsofbitches. Goddamned sonsofbitches.

A middle-aged man squats on the steps of a porch. The bank mailed a letter asking him to see them regarding his car loan. He has missed payments and expects they want to repossess the car. They didn’t care about the predicament: losing his job a year ago, and unable to secure employment since, a girlfriend who’d bailed on him, and a recent cancer scare. No, they didn’t give a shit. He’s sinking but will they throw him a rope to grab? As he views it there are two options, both undesirable: either he sells the house, and given the sluggish market right now accept a loss on the deal, or he can go to the bank with a gun and shoot the bastards. If the news concerning his prostate is bad he probably doesn’t have much time anyway. So, he is leaning towards going to the bank and shooting it up, and everyone inside, before putting a bullet in his head. When two people (a male and a girl with an iPod) pass he barely gives them any notice. Ever since his troubles began a year ago, he has cared less and less about everything. So much is a struggle now. Each day more difficult than the previous. There are nights when he goes to bed and prays he doesn’t awaken in the morning.

June 2, 6:00 pm

The girl sneaks out after supper. She has an iPod that’s a source of steady teasing from classmates, and hopes her parents keep their promise (it depends on how well she behaves) to buy a new one for her birthday. She doesn’t hold out for a cell phone—her mother believes she’s too young. Her father is increasingly suspicious of her friends. In his opinion troublemakers. Kids destined for juvenile delinquency and then jail. For example, Emile who had smoked marijuana. When they learned of it she was forbidden to associate with him. This made the 12-year-old despondent and sulk for days. Hypocrites! Her mother had spoken of her own adolescence which included drugs and sex. But when the girl asks why they are so hard on her, the mother shrugs and says a parent’s life isn’t easy: there are responsibilities. The girl’s birthday is not for two months but a gap is widening between them. They are moving away from each other. The father (he grew up in the seventies and has not aged well) is baffled by his daughter’s stubbornness. She is no longer the child he remembers and this makes him feel like a stranger in her presence.

The girl boards a bus. She’s done this before, months ago, during an argument at home, bussing around while her parents had no idea where she was and were ready to call police when she walked in the front door. During her absence, they had entered her room which disturbed the mother as being too unkempt for a girl to live in. Spotting what they realized was a poem though at first the mother thought it might be a suicide note: “The sky/ not my slave/ not my night.” Three lines in her daughter’s handwriting in purple ink. Its meaning had puzzled her. Then pride that her daughter had inherited her artistic side since she herself had painted and written poems as a teenager.

The girl listens to the iPod as the bus drives through the suburbs and then to the west end. Passengers don’t pay attention to her.

She winds up in a part of the city she’s never been to. The bus halts and the smell of lilacs drifts through the windows. The girl gets out. She goes past unfamiliar houses, small stores, and houses again. She isn’t aware a man is following until he overtakes her and begins a conversation. Are you lost? he asks. No, she replies. Then the man smiles and the 12-year-old smiles back.

June 2, 7:25 am

Last dream before the alarm goes off: she’s floating like a balloon across the sky, dizzy with the wind, alongside clouds while birds rush below: a wild traffic of wings and feathers darting madly. Then, whoosh, she slides down (it’s like going down a slide at the playground) and finds herself in a park that’s cool and full of shadows. She strolls among the grounds. All the time the trees and grass are growing until they tower above her and it’s as if she’s the size of an insect—or maybe she really has shrunk. In a clearing, she comes upon an old stone house (older than anything she has ever seen) and a tall woman dressed in overalls who is painting its portrait. But the painting doesn’t resemble it: simply lines crisscrossing the canvas like hundreds of scratches. The woman’s hands are raw and torn like she’s been hitting them against a rock. Blood trickles from the fingers. She leans and whispers into her ear. A secret. Do you understand? the woman asks. She shakes her head. Then she is travelling again, along deserted streets—empty of people—as if she’s the last person on earth; finally, she sees a bed discarded next to a dumpster, curls into it, hears the alarm, and opens her eyes.

Setu, February 2017