The Weakerthans

When the bus shelter windows and napkin-dispensers surprise with distorted reflections, it's never the someone you're hoping to recognize. When the rent is too high living here between reasons to live and you can't sleep alone and your memories groan and the borders of night start to give. When you can't save cash or conviction; you're broke and you're breaking - a tired shoelace or a wave. So long past, past-due. A new name for everything. When the one-ways collude with the map that you've folded wrong and the route you've abandoned is always the path you probably should be upon. When the bottle-cap ashtrays and intimate's ears are all full with results of your breaks and the threads of your fear are unfurled with the tiniest pull. One more time, try. Stand with your hands in your pockets and stare at the smudge of a newspaper sky and ask it to rain a new name for everything. Fire every phrase. They don't want to work for us anymore. Dot or Dash our days. Make your face the flag of a semaphore. All you won't show. The boxes you brought here and never unpacked are still patiently waiting to go. So put on those clothes you never grew into and smile like you mean it for once. If you come back, bring a new name for everything.

> I want to call a request through heating vents,
And hear them answered with a whispered no,
To crack the code of muscles slack and tense,
Let every second step in boots on snow,
Complete you name in accents I can't place,
That stumble where the syllables combine,
Take depositions from a strangers face,
Paint every insignificance a sign.
So tell me nothing matters less or more,
Say whatever we think actions are,
We'll never know what anything was for,
If near is just as far away as far,
And I'm permitted one act I can save,
I choose to sit here next to you and wave.

How I don't know how to sing,
I can barely play this thing,
But you never seem to mind,
And you tell me to fuck off,
When I need somebody to,
How you make me laugh so hard,
How whole years refuse to stay,
Where we told them to bad dog,
Locked up blindly in a word,
Or a misplaced souvenir,
How the past chews on your shoes,
And these memories lick my ear.
I know,
You might role your eyes at this,
But I'm so
Glad that you exist.
How we waste our precious time,
Marching in the picket line,
That surround those striking hearts,
And the time is never now,
And we know who we should love,
But we're never certain how.
I know,
You might role your eyes at this,
But I'm so
Glad that you exist.
I know,
You might role your eyes at this,
But I'm so
Glad that you exist.
I know,
You might role your eyes at this,
But I'm so,
Glad that you exist.

Well I'm lost,
I'm afraid,
Rope tied down to a leaky boat,
To the roof of a car on a road in the dark and it's snowing.

If I'm more,
Then it means less,
Last call for happiness,
I'm your dress near the back of your knees and your slip is showing.

I'm afloat,
In a summer parade,
Up the street in the town that you were born in,
With the girl at the top wearing tulle,
And a Miss Somewhere sash,
Waving like the queen.

Beauty's just another word,
I'm never certain how to spell,
Go tell the nurse to turn the TV back on,
And throw away my misery,
It never meant that much to me,
It never sent a get-well card.

And I broke,
Like a bad joke,
Some bodies' uncle told,
At a wedding reception in 1972.
Where a little boy under a table with cake in his hair,
Stared at the grown-up's feet as they danced and swayed.

And his father laughed and talked on the long ride home.
And his mother laughed and talked on the long ride home.
And he thought about how everyone dies someday.
And when tomorrow gets here where will yesterday be.
And fell asleep in his brand new winter coat.

Buy me a shiny new machine,
That runs on lies and gasoline,
And all those batteries we stole from smoke alarms,
And disassembles my despair,
Never took me anywhere,
It never once bought me a drink.

Let the waitress put the chairs up,

let the glasses that you broke,
form a picture of our leader
with a halo made of smoke.

Let the golden oldies station
crackle and come through.
With a final benediction
we'll hum along to.
Before we say goodnight

Let our talk about the ball game
and the weather show we care.
Like a sound we didn't notice,
until it stopped and left us there.



With the traffic and our heartbeats
beating in straight time,
let our hatred and affection
march in the same line,
Before we say goodnight.

Oh, protect our secret handshake
once more with feeling.
Let the toast to absent members
push through the ceiling.
Before we say goodnight.

Why don't you ever want to play?
I'm tired of this piece of string.
You sleep as much as I do now, and you
don't eat much of anything.

I don't know who you're talking to
I made a search through every room,
but all I found was dust that moved
in shadows of the afternoon.

And listen,
about those bitter songs you sing?
They're not helping anything.
They won't make you strong.

So, we should open up the house.
Invite the tabby two doors down.
You could ask your sister, if
she doesn't bring her Basset Hound.
Ask the things you shouldn't miss:
tape-hiss and the Modern Man,
The Cold War and Card Catalogues,
to come and join us if they can,

for girly drinks and parlor games.
We'll pass around the easy lie
of absolutely no regrets,
and later maybe you could try
to let your losses dangle off
the sharp edge of a century,
and talk about the weather, or
how the weather used to be.

And I'll cater
with all the birds that I can kill.
Let their tiny feathers fill
disappointment.

Lie down;
lick the sorrow from your skin.
Scratch the terror and begin
to believe you're strong.

All you ever want to do is drink and watch TV,
and frankly that thing doesn't really interest me.
I swear I'm going to bite you hard and taste your tinny blood
if you don't stop the self-defeating lies you've been repeating
since the day you brought me home.
I know you're strong.

Just one more drink and then I should be on my way home.
I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about.
I've had a really nice time, but my dogs need to be fed.
I must say that in the right light you look like Shackleton.
Comment allez vous ce soir?
Je suis comme ci comme ca.
Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica.
I could show you the way shadows colonize snow.
Ice breaking up on the bay off the Lassiter coast.
Light failing over the pole as every longitude leads up to your frost bitten feet.
Oh, you're very sweet, thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida,
But I must be getting back to dear Antarctica.
Say, do you have a ship and a dozen able men
That maybe you could lend me?

> So you watch the sunrise sinking
And she's talking in her sleep
A dream of how alone she was
Tomorrow when you keep
All those promises to someone
In a mirror you will find
At your parents' house in 1989.

Terrorized by the ruling party: calendars and commas.
Small request, could we please (Turn around and around and around) turn around?

Then you whisper your arrival
walking backwards to the door.
Wonder briefly what it is you're hesitating for.
All the streets lie down, deserted
in the darkest part of night,
To lead you through the evening to the light.

Pulled along in the tender grip of watches and ellipses.
Small request. Could we please (Turn around and around and around) turn around?
(Turn around and around and around)
Turn around?

Doctors play your dosage like a card trick
Scrabbled down the hallways yelling "Yatzee"
I brought books on Harper in the Arctic
Something called "The Politics of Lonely"
A toothbrush and Quick Pick with THE plus
You tried not to roll your sunken eyes

And said "Hey can you help me? I can't reach it"
Pointed to the camera in the ceiling
I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn't see


Turned to find you out of bed and kneeling
Before the nurses came took you away
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray

The mirrors and the unacknowledged nods.
Dial tones and license plates.
The words you didn't choose.
Everything the day's too small to hold spills on to the dusk,
and shorts the evening's fuse.
So you fumble for a voice and sing "Happy Birthday."
Read it to yourself again.
The stories always end the same.
He can't stay and she won't run,
and fear is where they're calling from.
Staunch the blood from countless tiny cuts.
We're all out of bandages.
The heaters rattle taunt.


Sifting through translucent shards of glass,
looking for a filament that lit the life you want.
So you stumble for the phone, grasp the cord and pull.
Will your readership complain the stories always end the same?
She can't stay and he won't run, and fear is where they're calling from.
Afraid is where you're calling from.

Measure me in metered lines, in one decisive stare,
the time it takes to get from here to there.
My ribs that show through t-shirts and these shoes I got for free;
I'm unconsoled, I'm lonely.
I am so much better than I used to be.

Terrified of telephones and shopping malls and knives,
And drowning in the pools of other lives.
Rely a bit to heavily on alcohol and irony.
Get clobbered on by courtesy, in love with love, and lousy poetry.

And I'm leaning on this broken fence between Past and Present tense.
And I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play.
But it almost feels okay.

Circumnavigate this body of wonder and uncertainty.
Armed with every precious failure, and amateur cartography,
I breathe in deep before I spread those maps out on my bedroom floor.

And I'm leaning on this broken fence between Past and Present tense.
And I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play.
But it feels okay.

And I'm leaving. Wave goodbye.
And I'm losing, but I'll try, with the last ways left, to remember.
Sing my imperfect offering.

> late afternoon another day is nearly done

a darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
a thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
that hollow hurried sound of feet on polished floor
and in the dollar store the clerk is closing up
and counting loonies trying not to say
i hate winnipeg

the driver checks the mirror seven minutes late
crowded riders' restlessness enunciates
the guess who suck, the jets were lousy anyway
the same mood every day
and in the turning lane
someone's stalled again
he's talking to himself
and hears the price of gas repeat his phrase
i hate winnipeg

up above us all,
leaning into sky
our golden business boy
will watch the north end die
and sing 'i love this town'
then let his arching wrecking ball proclaim:
"i...hate...winnipeg"

So you don't get to be a saint
Martyrs never last this long
Guess I'll never be the one
To defeat desire in song
Here's a marker
Here's my naked skin
Our 'exhibit A'
Put a small x where I lost my way

All the actors broke their legs
And it's to late to postpone
The producer's getting high
And the audience went home
Smile and take your awkward bow
Turn and stumble off the stage
Let the rain be your applause
Every encore sooth your rage
Squint with one eye


Hum a show-tune
wait for your right to say
oh that's where you must have lost your way

Megaphones in helicopters squeal ??짖€??"hey are you okay???짖€????
Searchlights circle, where we lost our way

All our accidents were purposeful and felt
Stripped of providence or any way to tell
But our intentions were intangible and sweet
Sick with simple math and shy discoveries
Piled up against our impending defeat.

the sirens woke me up again
i know they're coming for me someday just a matter of when
count to 25 and yawn
touch the clock and turn my back against the dawn
and hope for that one dream of hardware stores with checkered floors and buckets full with nails
we're floating effortless over the apartment to the boat
im rowing past the office windows
mother, mother may i cry
father will you teach me how to die the right way someday
i don't want a second chance to turn my stuttering reluctance into romance
with these documents and kindergarten anthems with my drunken liturgies


tune the fm in, to static and pretend that its the sea
but four words fumble for the microphone
you should have known
you should have known

Doctors play your dosage like a card trick
Scrabbled down the hallways yelling "Yatzee"
I brought books on Harper in the Arctic
Something called "The Politics of Lonely"
A toothbrush and Quick Pick with THE plus
You tried not to roll your sunken eyes

And said "Hey can you help me? I can't reach it"
Pointed to the camera in the ceiling
I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn't see


Turned to find you out of bed and kneeling
Before the nurses came took you away
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray