Jeremy Stewart: Hidden city

Neighbours had under their house an ossuary
blamed it for evil emanating for a block
inverted saints manifested
supernatural reek
they told me it was there when they moved in
right
I planned to buy the bones     to remove them
but when I went inside they got         to me
now barking dogs are invited to my party
they’re the only ones
neighbours took their loud bass
& fell into a ravine
let them be added
to the number of the numberless
remains to be seen
what will be left when they’re gone
large enclosures armed with woofers speak
to me, it’s a numbers racket
I can’t read you anymore because
there isn’t any more now go to sleep
dust & sand in my mouth & muffled
sounds above, so be low

the disaster already
happened, & it made
a lousy movie. A pack of wolves against the orange horizon
watch the lousy movie. Daylight’s yolk
about to crack. Smoking
year-end best-of lists
of lists of lists burn in muted
television light             watching
the fireplace show, the log, every
so often a hand
or day of infinite justice          the chamber
of commerce should welcome erasure

searching out blind spots
          I created Nosferatu’s mirror

saw a tangle of black dogs & hair run after
unspooling tape

 & I felt like nothing so much
as

wounded absence of a line
while the house falls in
violet repeat offender
song of the violent repeat offender

can’t get nothing right
don’t you motherfuckers ever fuck with me
don’t fuck with my family
can’t get nothing right

watching TV puppet shows as a kid
gravel parking lot skid
I was a poet with no M.O.
never seen a poem before

bang this empty skull
about to fly away on the shop wing
no one’s gonna try to reach out to me
bang this empty skull

 honest work for honest pay
oh, you say you already heard that one?
I was a victim until I rewrote the scene
now it’s cops try to victimize me

I will buy one smoke off you for fifty cents
six weeks of compulsory anger management counselling
all the places I won’t get to go
with my hand smashed in the car door

yeah, you think you can fuck with me?
steal my bike & step on my hand?
suffocating in the space between
two burning buildings
mirror the hip sounds
of Bloody Holly


I quit the band, too
but somehow survived
traded interior deserts
for coastal deserts before falling
asleep at the bottom of a lake
where I could hardly hear the phone.

You asked for a complete account
of myself & that’s it
anything further will be in my RCMP file
along with urine, hair, teeth