Beneath the Beauty
other titles l)y PMip Arima Anthologies Playing in the Asphalt Garden Shard I Shard II chapbooks B...
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Beneath the Beauty
other titles l)y PMip Arima Anthologies Playing in the Asphalt Garden Shard I Shard II chapbooks Blood Guts and Automatic Beds QuacMed N.D.H. Wednesday's Children Beneath the Beauty Rainbow (with Jen Hatbeiman}
Beneath the Beauty
PHip Atima
INSOMNIAC PRESS
Copyright © 1996 Phlip Arima (text) Copyright © 1996 Bonnie Portalance (art) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 6 Adelaide St. E., Suite 900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5C 1H6. Designed & edited by Mike O'Connor Copy edited by Lloyd Davis, Liz Thorpe & Tony Hightower Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Arima, Phlip, 1963 Beneath the beauty Poems. ISBN 1-895837-36-7 I. Title. PS8551.R762B45 1996 PR9199.3.A53B45 1996
C811'.54
C95-933020-8
Printed and bound in Canada Insomniac Press 378 Delaware Ave. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6H 2T8 Some of the pieces in this collection were previously published in the following publications: Hate Literature, Plazm, The Gargoyle, Bomb Threat Checklist, The L.C.P. Museletter, The Muse Journal, and Pmoderkeg Magazine. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council Writers' Reserve Program.
tltank yott
Kyril Chen Tony Hightower Kingsley Ettienne Manny Goncalves Tod Monahan Christine Coy Bart Cross Mariko Chow and, especially, Elizabeth Richards. Your friendship and encouragement helped me become the person I am.
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I Remember Holiday Home Is Where You Go When They The Crack Train Ride To See Red The Volume Inside Cranked Too High The Scene That Screams A 5 Block Skip Mister Blind Man Today Fallen Player Rainbow Desire Thoughts three through seven Softness Outside TGH Parting Mayuko Last Breath Madness Spare Change Your 3:57 Media Flash Baml>er D.S. We Cut Short The Squirrel 8 The Girl The Daily News It's Different Out Here The Killing
11 13 16 18 19 20 11 11 14 26 28 29 30 31 32 34 35 36 37 38 40 42 43 44 45 46 48 49 50
Portrait Plea Tears With Patience Survival of the Fittest Road Kill The Colourful Dust Drought The Light Stays On
56 57 58 59 60 61 63 64 69
For Lee who always asked me the cpiestions I most needed to answer,
And for Maggie who held my hand while I wrote this hook,
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i r e m e m b e r an empty i s l a n d
d r i f t i n g in a p e t r o l e u m sea
without destiny
screaming
take me
free me
g e n t l y seed me
w i t h w i l d f lower
beauty
ill
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Holiday. Lady Day Little Lady Holiday. Two-twenty Saturday night, st. clair near yonge in a roundthe-clock restaurant, big mike, christine. carla, June, carl, fred, tamarra. all three Steves, brian. a dave i knew and a dave i didn't, and a whole bunch of others that i'd never met. doing the caffeine scene to close the evening. I'm at a table with four near the door, one empty chair sitting there available, when jeanie, lean and clean arrives and says: hi, this is my kid. sits the child on my left then buzzes off to learn what's what from the who of who's yackity-yacking the talk they walk.
"1 ') I
:,.J
They called her Holiday, named after, you got it, Lady Day, Miss Billie Holiday, just ten years old was Little Day, Little Lady Day, Holiday, ten years old and holding her own with five strange guys she'd never known, sipping chocolate, eating crackers, listening then replying to everything we asked, bright, sweet Holiday, laughing at the things we'd say, laughing at the things she said. Now, getting close to three a.m. the crowd is thin with more folks leaving every few minutes, jeanie's sitting on brian's lap and he, who knew the thread he tread, keeps right on pushing despite the fact the heads remaining scattered throughout the room are turning his direction, checking out the action. From the side of an eye with a nod of the head, big mike tells fred, tamarra, me: shit's about to splatter, be ready to happen. and sure enough, before i can even signal acknowledgement, stan (Holiday's daddy, jeanie's old man) strolls through the door and reads the score.
14
The fight is quick — three accusations, a shriek, jeanie's two
slaps earning her a swollen beak, one glass broken, the party over, everyone leaves for home, stan, dragging jeanie by the hair, leading the exodus without regard for the rest of us. Holiday looks to me. i to tarnarra. tamarra to fred. fred to mike. but big mike's up front pushing his face into the couple's space, so i try to smile for Little Day's sake and she says to me: it will be alright, takes my hand and asks if she can stay with me for just one night. I look to tamarra. she to fred. and he says: yes, we'll take the kid home with us. so i give Little Day, Holiday a hug goodnight, she kisses my cheek, pulls back a foot as if to speak, then silent, turns, takes tamarra's hand.
15 'A
-. /
more insidious than myth.
Home Js toe profile of a smile hanging above the shifting crowd, the piss in the pavement cracks turning to ammonia, style a cape draped across visceral response, denial is the penultimate commandment, it is also the first, iporance the last, they alternate until all slots are foil, subconscious imperatives carved in a substance less yielding than stone. home is where yon go.
the woman on the other side of the aisle is scanning through a stack of over-sized envelopes, checking labels, three: five: eleven: twelve: she shows to the man whose hand fidgets near her shoulder, he nods, he smiles, he nods, he looks bewildered, the smell of pizza through tie window, i become a salivating dog. i am disappointed, thought my stoicism
•"1 /i
better equipped, wish i could crawl inside an envelope.
Where You Go the profile of a smile as depicted by a dentist, a man vacates a forward facing seat, i am too slow, a globe reader gets there first, has a buttou-dowo collar and chain 'rand his throat, he immediately tarns to context, is deeply enmeshed in our planetary problems. Blind-numbing miracles. monocular thoutht
home is where you go.
more insidious than myth, this is my stop, the air hot, thick on my palate. taste of e\haust/ion. i make the three-block walk, wait for a train to pass, cross the tracks. back a hoard from the derelict factory, climb into the basement cool.
,.$ t.
-M^jt f
17 if
sleep.
when they look at me like that
When
the edge of my vision gets watery i|f§| vacuum mutes surrounding sound f "4°v" spine feels like a high voltage wire ^ when they look at me like that i am a bird in city traffic when they look at me like that i think of automatic weapons walking down the street alone beneath a sunny summer sky hearing streetcars automobiles rock 'n' roll music too watching the world on the move walking down the street alone humming a song as i go i see their eyes get a little wide hear them hush hold their breath when they look at me that way i know the thoughts they think to say when they look at me that way i want the strength to speak my say
18
they
To See Red
Mav^iearA&pieg^akgf see||ig red whenin.a rage, ^ong di|f)rted vie^ ' Far too often I go blind, a complete blackout: no thought, no feeling, no perception of anything at all. Only in the aftermath of the madness do I realize my loss of control; destroyed tables, chairs, shattered glass, broken bodies, sometimes blood, on two occasions dead puppets no longer breathing.
20
At times I can induce the mysterious red haze, sitting quiet in my room, walking down a sunny street I sink into the memories of my childhood home: the screams, the shouts, throwing of things, the drinks, the drugs, swelling faces. But always, always somehow it feels artificial, divorced from the anguish churning inside, the tension straining my throat. An approximation of the torment I wish to inflict.
call it tunes, icall it plaq.1l
all it.sedation, i call it the iiay. i coll it donee, i calllit existence, the volume inside s cranked too high. I'm just
a pretty baby trying to 5LUOi|. i'm just o pfettn tiatii trying to sway, screaming!
loud cd sound noise in
stereo, screaming loud cdj sound noise in stereo, neigh-i kours collinj to complain, floorboards trembling, still the pain, screaming loud cd sound noise in stereo, logic thought collision course, every mirror breaking from its frame, still the pain. so i hold me tight and i silent say: oh pretty baby, baby smai|. oh pretty baby, baby
suiay. andi do not seethe
pain, i do not hear the call, i do not feel the shard of glass The Volume Inside
no matter houi hard i slash. Cranked Too High
t
h
e
s c e n e
t
h
a
t
screams Hiat-i atoove
the ooh, the goo. the ooewgooey overcoats stained with dirly slush and stockings splashed with boozey vomit, the gagglely-gagglely-gagglelyboo office towers dark with carbon monoxide automobile exhaust. the muck, the uck. the concrete parks, apartment complexes, houses with windows that have never been opened, the hiss and the piss and the hidden sewage system and flashing advertisements... High above the blah and the blech and the radio stations that repeatedly play the same |j|y songs.||he eekjjhil freak, the magazine sho?|^ph€? x-rated films are watched, the tacky-tacka:ugfi-fq^|^-ug :gf:g|i|J|| :.
